Ch. 26 - Henry the Seventh - Page 2

Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the
people: who seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly
irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland, declared
that he believed the boy to be what the priest represented; and the
boy, who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such things
of his childhood, and gave them so many descriptions of the Royal
Family, that they were perpetually shouting and hurrahing, and
drinking his health, and making all kinds of noisy and thirsty
demonstrations, to express their belief in him. Nor was this
feeling confined to Ireland alone, for the Earl of Lincoln - whom
the late usurper had named as his successor - went over to the
young Pretender; and, after holding a secret correspondence with
the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy - the sister of Edward the Fourth,
who detested the present King and all his race - sailed to Dublin
with two thousand German soldiers of her providing. In this
promising state of the boy's fortunes, he was crowned there, with a
crown taken off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary; and was
then, according to the Irish custom of those days, carried home on
the shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal more
strength than sense. Father Simons, you may be sure, was mighty
busy at the coronation.

Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and the priest,
and the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to
invade England. The King, who had good intelligence of their
movements, set up his standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers
resorted to him every day; while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but
very few. With his small force he tried to make for the town of
Newark; but the King's army getting between him and that place, he
had no choice but to risk a battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the
complete destruction of the Pretender's forces, one half of whom
were killed; among them, the Earl himself. The priest and the
baker's boy were taken prisoners. The priest, after confessing the
trick, was shut up in prison, where he afterwards died - suddenly
perhaps. The boy was taken into the King's kitchen and made a
turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the station of one of the
King's falconers; and so ended this strange imposition.

There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen - always a
restless and busy woman - had had some share in tutoring the
baker's son. The King was very angry with her, whether or no. He
seized upon her property, and shut her up in a convent at
Bermondsey.

One might suppose that the end of this story would have put the
Irish people on their guard; but they were quite ready to receive a
second impostor, as they had received the first, and that same