England Under the Tudors | Page 9

one of the princes murdered by Richard III. had really
escaped and was still living; and on the other hand that the boy
Warwick was dead in the Tower. Some one devised the idea of
producing a fictitious Richard of York, or Warwick. A boy of humble
birth named Lambert Simnel was taught to play the part, carried over to
Ireland, and produced after some hesitation as the Earl of Warwick.
Presumably the leaders of the Yorkists intended to use the
supposititious earl only until the real one could be got into their hands;
but Lincoln, who certainly knew the facts, espoused the cause of the
pretender, in complicity with Lovel and Margaret of Burgundy. In
Ireland, Simnel was cheerfully and with practical unanimity accepted
as the king, and a band of German mercenaries, under the command of
Martin Swart, was landed in that country to support him; though in
London the genuine Warwick was paraded through the streets to show
that he was really there alive. Lincoln, who had first escaped to
Flanders, joined the pretender; they landed in Lancashire in June.

Within a fortnight, however, the opposing forces met at Stoke, and after
a brief but fierce conflict the rebel army, mainly composed of Irish and
of German mercenaries, was crushed, Lincoln and several leaders were
slain, and their puppet was taken captive. Henry's action was the
reverse of vindictive, for Simnel was merely relegated to a position,
appropriate to his origin, in the royal kitchen, and was subsequently
promoted to be one of the King's falconers. Kildare, [Footnote: The
narrative in the Book of Howth gives the impression that Kildare was at
Stoke, and was made prisoner; but this is probably a misinterpretation
arising from a lack of dates.] in spite of his undoubted complicity in the
rebellion and the actual participation therein of his kinsmen, was even
retained in the office of Deputy. Twenty-eight of the rebels, however,
were attainted in the new Parliament which was summoned in
November, the Queen's long-deferred coronation taking place at the
same time.
The same Parliament is noteworthy as having given a definitely legal
status to the judicial authority of the Council by the establishment of
the Court thereafter known as the Star Chamber, of which we shall hear
later. Besides this, however, it had the duty of voting supplies for
embroilments threatening on the Continent.
The complexities of foreign affairs form so important a feature in the
history of the next forty years that it is important to open the study of
the period with a clear idea of the position of the Continental powers.
[Sidenote: The state of Europe]
Lewis XI., the craftiest of kings, had died in 1482, leaving a tolerably
organised kingdom to his young son Charles VIII., under the regency
of Anne of Beaujeu. With the exception of the Dukedom of Brittany,
which still claimed a degree of independence, and of Flanders and
Artois which, though fiefs of France, were still ruled by the House of
Burgundy, the whole country was under the royal dominion; which had
also absorbed the Duchy of Burgundy proper. The daughter of Charles
the Bold, wife of Maximilian of Austria, inherited as a diminished
domain the Low Countries and the County of Burgundy or Franche
Comté.

East of the Rhine, the kingdoms, principalities, and dukedoms of
Germany owned the somewhat vague authority of the Habsburg
Emperor Frederick, but the idea of German Unity had not yet come into
being. On the south-east the Turks who had captured Constantinople
some thirty years before (1453) were a militant and aggressive danger
to the Empire and to Christendom; while the stoutest opponent of their
fleets was Venice. Switzerland was an independent confederacy of
republican States: Italy a collection of separate States--dukedoms such
as Milan, kingdoms such as Naples, Republics such as Venice and
Florence, with the Papal dominions in their midst. In the Spanish
peninsula were the five kingdoms of Navarre, Portugal, the Moorish
Granada, Aragon, and Castile. The last two, however, were already
united, though not yet merged into one, by the marriage of their
respective sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. Sardinia and Sicily were
attached to Aragon.
Finally we have to note that Maximilian, son of the Emperor, had
married Mary of Burgundy; but on Mary's death the Netherlanders
recognised as their Duke not Maximilian but his young son Philip--the
father exercising only a very precarious authority as the boy's guardian;
while the Dowager Margaret, the second wife of Charles the Bold, the
lady whose hostility to the House of Lancaster has been already noted,
possessed some dower-towns, and considerable influence. In 1486
Maximilian was elected "King of the Romans," in other words his
father's presumed successor as Emperor.
[Sidenote: France and Brittany]
For the time, then, the consolidation of France was more advanced