Authors: Margaret Campbell Barnes
For weeks the people of England lived in a state of tension. In northern towns there were constant outcries that the invaders were at their gates, and all over the country children were pulled into their homes at dusk with shrill cries of “The Scots will get you!” As usual Henry Tudor had set forth, if not to fight, at least to direct operations; and as usual he rode home to London triumphant. But he rode home a tired and irritated man. Besides the cruel loss of life, the invasion had cost so much money that he immediately summoned representatives from all the towns in his realm to a Great Council at Westminster, where they willingly voted him a grant of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for defence against Scotland and—much less willingly—the promise of loans to the amount of forty thousand pounds.
“Henry always makes his wars
pay
!” chuckled his Uncle Jasper admiringly; which must have been almost the last joke he enjoyed before he died. And the people who were left alive found it rather a poor one, anyway, because Archbishop Morton and Sir Reginald Bray not only set their underlings to collect the promised sums from every individual, house by house, and town by town, but were so extraordinarily thorough and extortionate in their demands that they were soon suspected of having enriched the King's coffers by a sum far in excess of the agreed amount. Morton, in particular, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, produced an ingenious device by means of which he delved into people's purses either by the argument that they paid too little or that they possessed too much. Men called it “Morton's fork” and many an honest man was ruined by it, writhing for years on one or other of its merciless prongs.
The popularity of Morton's royal master waned alarmingly. And when the time came for the tax-collectors to take up contributions in the West of England the men of Cornwall flatly refused to pay. Remote from the rest of England and completely indifferent to what happened there, they saw no reason why their hard-working lives should be still further impoverished in order to pay for something of which they had scarcely heard—"a little stir of the Scots, soon blown over.” “Why should they, who laboured below ground in the tin-mines for a pittance, be expected to pay?” they asked. “Let the leisured people pay.” A lawyer called Flammock inflamed them by assuring them that the levy was illegal, and a blacksmith of Bodmin called Michael Joseph sharpened their bills and sickles and led them through Devon into Somerset. From Wells Lord Audley, who had been extortionately taxed himself, led them through Salisbury and Winchester towards London, with their discontented numbers growing all the way. It was all very much like the Peasants' Revolt in Richard the Second's time, thought Elizabeth, who had recently been reading about it to Harry as part of his history lesson.
It became even more like the Peasants' Revolt when the stalwart Cornishmen encamped on Blackheath outside the very walls of London. Even Henry, whose whole attention had been centred on the army he was sending north to punish the Scots, was caught completely by surprise. But he acted promptly. He recalled the main army for the defence of London and put himself at the head of it, sending a smaller force merely for defence purposes to the Scottish border under Elizabeth's new brother-in-law, the Earl of Surrey. The Cornishmen fought valiantly; and although they had only obsolete weapons with which to oppose new Tudor cannon, they disconcerted their opponents by drawing a bow which sped an arrow long as a tailor's yard. It was a very shocking experience for the prosperous citizens of London to look down from their city walls and see an invading army gathered at their gates, and at first almost everyone believed that Perkin Warbeck was leading them. That this was the real invasion, or the return of England's King, who had promised to lighten their cruel taxes—whichever way one cared to look at it. And Elizabeth, who knew that it was only a horde of discontented West-countrymen, looked out over Blackheath too, and tried to imagine how she would have felt had it been her real brother Richard out there. Her despoiled brother battering at the walls of London and her own sons within. On whose side would she have stood? For the first time it came in full force to her understanding how the right of one must necessarily disinherit the other. And for the first time the secret hope that had always flickered in her heart became a fear. Much as she yearned after her young brother, she did not really
want
Perkin to be Dickon. And common sense had long ago persuaded her that he was not.
It was only afterwards that she knew how nearly the semblance of that very dilemma had come upon her. When Lord Audley had been executed on Tower Hill and Flammock and Michael Joseph hanged at Tyburn, Henry forgave the Cornishmen and sent them home, showing them none of the severity which had been used towards Perkin's followers when they landed in Kent. Indeed, as the Cornishmen themselves said, they had a sort of safety, because if the King were to hang everyone who objected to his taxations he would have no subjects left. But he could not forgo the opportunity to take some of their pitiful saving. Over and above what they owed, he fined them for their insubordination. So that as soon as they had returned to their far-off county and Perkin landed there they welcomed him as their saviour and clustered round him and bore him to Bodmin as their King. Three thousand strong they marched on Exeter, but Exeter—being a prosperous city which had benefited from Tudor encouragement to trade—would have none of them. Had Perkin landed a month or two earlier he might have been more fortunate; but now there was none of that first fine flood of enthusiasm which would have borne him along to the very gates of London. And Henry, hearing that the man who had caused him so many sleepless nights was in England and actually besieging one of his principal cities, left everything and hurried westwards with all the armed men he could raise.
Perkin, having fired the gates of Exeter and yet been repulsed, led his men on to Taunton, prepared to fight his way to London; but the Earl of Devonshire, to whom the Queen's sister Katherine was married, rose loyally for the Tudor. He called upon all the Devon Courteneys to surround Perkin's little army until the King's forces should arrive; so there was no more hope for the Yorkist pretender. With a small company of horsemen Perkin escaped in the night to the sanctuary of Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire. Henry, delighted with the turn events had taken, presented his own sword to the gallant city of Exeter and promptly had Beaulieu surrounded. “Now, at last,” he said to Thomas Stafford, who had ridden to Exeter with him, “the cat's-paw of Europe is in
my
hand!”
“Save that the ubiquitous pest is in sanctuary!” sighed the sore-tried Mayor of Exeter.
“For the peace of the realm the Pope would surely permit your Grace to drag him thence by force,” pointed out Stafford.
“Your Grace could then put him to death and be rid of him for ever,” the Earl of Devonshire backed him up eagerly.
“And have the truth about him go with him to the grave?” said Henry, with his tight-lipped smile. “No. Death is too easy. For six years he has cankered my life and set half Europe by the ears. He himself is nothing, yet lives and money have been poured out because of his impertinent pretensions. We do not want any more heroics about the Yorkists sung in Tudor England. I will make him confess again and again before all my loyal people and before all the poor fools whom he has deluded. By all we hear, he is a squeamish, sensitive fellow,” he added more lightly, “and may as well pay for his pretty imaginings the price of ridicule. Did not my Uncle Jasper—God assoil him—once say that ridicule is the surest weapon of all?”
And so, in spite of all their urgings, Henry would not grant to Perkin Warbeck the importance of martyrdom, any more than he had to Lambert Simnel. “Give him a decent horse to ride and let him follow somewhere in the rear of our company to London. Neither served nor ill-treated,” he ordered contemptuously. “Has any one of you heard news of my cousin, the lady Katherine Gordon?”
“They say that the first thing the impostor did upon landing, before ever the fighting began, was to have her placed for safety on that little rocky island off the toe of Cornwall which is called St. Michael's Mount,” Stafford was able to inform him.
“If he did, it is the only decent thing I ever heard of him,” said Henry. “Find out if she is with child, which God forbid, lest there be no end to this matter. And have her conveyed honourably by some other route to Greenwich, where she may be solaced by the Queen's kindness.”
Henry saw to it that Elizabeth was at Greenwich when Perkin was brought into London. It was in order to spare her feelings, he said, since—being but a woman—she appeared at one time to have entertained doubts as to whether the rogue might really be her brother. So she was spared the sight of him riding defencelessly through London, with the mob throwing rotten vegetables and howling derisively at his heels. And of course there could be no doubt about his being counterfeit now, for, although the King's servants had never laid a hand upon him, he had been forced to read aloud a confession—not once or twice but many times. It was, in fact, that same biography which the King had had printed and circulated throughout the country, giving an itinerary of his short wandering life and details of his comparatively humble parentage.
Elizabeth was glad to be out of London, because merely hearing people joke about it afflicted her with the kind of vicarious shame which one feels about the exposure of theories or persons one once believed in. She was kind to Katherine Gordon and was glad to be able to assure her that once the hubbub of his arrival had died down Perkin would be allowed to live somewhere in the Palace of Westminster with no more restraint than a turned key to his apartments and a couple of guards. It was a triumph of Tudor clemency. But Elizabeth had to be very firm with Katherine about assuming that they were sisters-in-law. She found herself flinching every time the charming Scots girl referred to her husband as Richard, and— since nothing would shake her confidence in him—the Queen had to banish his name from their conversation.
Soon there was all their excitement of the Earl of Surrey's return from Scotland, and Ann's joy at welcoming him. Actually, he reported, there had been very little fighting. James challenged him to single combat with Berwick as the prize—which offer he had felt obliged to decline, since Berwick did not belong to him but to the King, his master. But with Perkin's claims puffed out like a candle James was clearly in a more conciliatory mood, and Henry, always tireless in the pursuit of peace and prosperity, took advantage of it to arrange a long peace treaty between the two countries and a marriage between the handsome, gifted James and his daughter Margaret. And with the arrival of the Earl of Bothwell and all the preparations for a proxy wedding and the making of much finery for their daughter, Henry could no longer keep the Queen away from Westminster.
“We Tudors will soon be the arbiters of the world!” she bragged merrily, peacocking before her sisters in her own new gown.
“
We Tudors
!” mocked Cicely, who had come back to London for the event. “Why, Bess Plantagenet, I believe you are really growing proud of this Welsh dynasty you have started! You look like a galleon in full sail, with your new purple velvet and your children grown up and marrying and going out into the world!”
“She looks lovely,” asserted Ann, tweaking the pearled sides of her eldest sister's headdress to a yet more becoming angle.
“And you must admit that the Tudor himself will look most impressive in his state ermine as the bride's father!” laughed Elizabeth. “Henry must be at the peak of his power; and if hard endeavour goes for anything, he deserves it, and I am heartily glad for him after all the worry he has had. He is so pleased, Cicely, that our Margaret will be Queen of Scotland.” Elizabeth walked to the window, her gorgeous train swishing after her, and raised her arms in a wide gesture of relief. “Think back upon those awful days of insecurity we endured during the Wars of the Roses, my dears, and imagine how fine it feels to have one daughter Queen of Scotland, my small, bright-hued Mary destined one day perhaps to be Queen of France, and Arthur married to the rich Aragon princess.” Even if her children were growing up, Elizabeth herself was barely thirty-five, still slender and young enough to be foolish at times. She swung round and faced them, arms akimbo, as she used to do when encouraging or haranguing them when they were small. “As I say,” she bragged again with an air, “we Tudors begin to bestride the world!”
They laughed at her, affectionately, glad of her high spirits. “And What about Harry, your favourite? What high honours is
he
destined for?” asked Ann, the perspicacious.
Elizabeth's face became all motherly concern immediately. “Oh, Ann, you must not say that! No mother should have favourites,” she protested, yet at the same time realizing how precious it was to be still the centre of his world. “I am afraid the King has arranged no spectacular marriage for him yet. He is only a second son, of course, and recently since Henry has become so much more devout he has spoken about training him for the Church.”
Irreverently, the girls burst out laughing. “Harry, a sober prelate!” they spluttered. And Patch, who had joined them unnoticed, placed a platter upside down upon his head, joined his fingertips together and raised his eyes to Heaven, treating them to a ridiculous mime of Prince Harry being solemn in a tonsure.
“Let us go and look at Margaret's gown for the proxy wedding. That is what
really
matters,” suggested Elizabeth, linking her arm in Cicely's. “The dressmakers are with her now.” And as Ann had already seen it the two of them went along together. Margaret Tudor was standing in the middle of her room, a mere child in her bridal finery, with her women busy all about her. “She is too young to go to James yet,” whispered Elizabeth, touched by the virgin freshness of her daughter.