Henry VIII. | Page 7

a less
congenial end. An unwilling puppet at first, Perkin Warbeck was on a
trading visit to Ireland, when the Irish, who saw a Yorkist prince in
every likely face, insisted that Perkin was Earl of Warwick. This he
denied on oath before the Mayor of Cork. Nothing deterred, they
suggested that he was Richard III.'s bastard; but the bastard was safe in
Henry's keeping, and the imaginative Irish finally took refuge in the

theory that Perkin was Duke of York. Lambert's old friends rallied
round Perkin; the re-animated Duke was promptly summoned to the
Court of France and treated with princely honours. When Charles VIII.
had used him to beat down Henry's terms, Perkin found a home with
Margaret, aunt to all the pretenders. As usual, there were traitors in
high places in England. Sir William Stanley, whose brother had
married Henry's mother, and to whom Henry himself owed his victory
at (p. 011) Bosworth, was implicated. His sudden arrest disconcerted
the plot, and when Perkin's fleet appeared off the coast of Kent, the
rustics made short work of the few who were rash enough to land.
Perkin sailed away to the Yorkist refuge in Ireland, but Kildare was no
longer deputy. Waterford, to which he laid siege, was relieved, and the
pretender sought in Scotland a third basis of operations. An abortive
raid on the Borders and a high-born Scottish wife[24] were all that he
obtained of James IV., and in 1497, after a second attempt in Ireland,
he landed in Cornwall. The Cornishmen had just risen against Henry's
extortions, marched on London and been defeated at Blackheath; but
Henry's lenience encouraged a fresh revolt, and three thousand men
flocked to Perkin's standard. They failed to take Exeter; Perkin was
seized at Beaulieu and sent up to London to be paraded through the
streets amid the jeers and taunts of the people. Two years later a foolish
attempt at escape and a fresh personation of the Earl of Warwick by
one Ralf Wulford[25] led to the execution of all three, Perkin, Wulford,
and the real Earl of Warwick, who had been a prisoner and probably
the innocent centre of so many plots since the accession of Henry VII.
Warwick's death may have been due to the instigation of Ferdinand and
Isabella of Spain, who were negotiating for the marriage of Catherine
of Aragon with Prince Arthur. They were naturally anxious for the
security of the throne their daughter was to share with (p. 012) Henry's
son; and now their ambassador wrote triumphantly that there remained
in England not a doubtful drop of royal blood.[26] There were no more
pretenders, and for the rest of Henry's reign England enjoyed such
peace as it had not known for nearly a century. The end which Henry
had sought by fair means and foul was attained, and there was no
practical alternative to his children in the succession to the English
throne.

[Footnote 24: Perkin was the first of Lady Catherine Gordon's four
husbands; her second was James Strangways, gentleman-usher to
Henry VIII., her third Sir Matthew Cradock (d. 1531), and her fourth
Christopher Ashton, also gentleman-usher; she died in 1537 and was
buried in Fyfield Church (L. and P., ii., 3512).]
[Footnote 25: See the present writer in Dict. Nat. Biog., lxiii., 172.]
[Footnote 26: Sp. Cal., i., No. 249; see below, p. 179.]
But all his statecraft, his patience and labour would have been writ in
water without children to succeed him and carry on the work which he
had begun; and at times it seemed probable that this necessary
condition would remain unfulfilled. For the Tudors were singularly
luckless in the matter of children. They were scarcely a sterile race, but
their offspring had an unfortunate habit of dying in childhood. It was
the desire for a male heir that involved Henry VIII. in his breach with
Rome, and led Mary into a marriage which raised a revolt; the last of
the Tudors perceived that heirs might be purchased at too great a cost,
and solved the difficulty by admitting its insolubility. Henry VIII. had
six wives, but only three children who survived infancy; of these,
Edward VI. withered away at the age of fifteen, and Mary died
childless at forty-two. By his two[27] mistresses he seems to have had
only one son, who died at the age of eleven, and as far as we know, he
had not a single grandchild, legitimate or other. His sisters were hardly
more fortunate. Margaret's eldest son by James IV. died a year after his
birth; her eldest daughter died at birth; her second son lived only nine
months; her second daughter died at (p. 013) birth; her third son lived
to be James V., but her fourth found an early grave. Mary, the