Ch. 26 - Henry the Seventh

KING HENRY THE SEVENTH did not turn out to be as fine a fellow as
the nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of their
deliverance from Richard the Third. He was very cold, crafty, and
calculating, and would do almost anything for money. He possessed
considerable ability, but his chief merit appears to have been that
he was not cruel when there was nothing to be got by it.

The new King had promised the nobles who had espoused his cause
that he would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The first thing he
did, was, to direct her to be removed from the castle of Sheriff
Hutton in Yorkshire, where Richard had placed her, and restored to
the care of her mother in London. The young Earl of Warwick,
Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had
been kept a prisoner in the same old Yorkshire Castle with her.
This boy, who was now fifteen, the new King placed in the Tower for
safety. Then he came to London in great state, and gratified the
people with a fine procession; on which kind of show he often very
much relied for keeping them in good humour. The sports and feasts
which took place were followed by a terrible fever, called the
Sweating Sickness; of which great numbers of people died. Lord
Mayors and Aldermen are thought to have suffered most from it;
whether, because they were in the habit of over-eating themselves,
or because they were very jealous of preserving filth and nuisances
in the City (as they have been since), I don't know.

The King's coronation was postponed on account of the general ill-
health, and he afterwards deferred his marriage, as if he were not
very anxious that it should take place: and, even after that,
deferred the Queen's coronation so long that he gave offence to the
York party. However, he set these things right in the end, by
hanging some men and seizing on the rich possessions of others; by
granting more popular pardons to the followers of the late King
than could, at first, be got from him; and, by employing about his
Court, some very scrupulous persons who had been employed in the
previous reign.

As this reign was principally remarkable for two very curious
impostures which have become famous in history, we will make those
two stories its principal feature.

There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, who had for a
pupil a handsome boy named Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker.
Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and partly to carry out
the designs of a secret party formed against the King, this priest
declared that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the young Earl
of Warwick; who (as everybody might have known) was safely locked
up in the Tower of London. The priest and the boy went over to
Ireland; and, at