Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/98

84 He was believed to have escaped, but no traces of him were discoverable; many thought that he had perished in attempting to swim his horse across the Trent. But nearly two centuries afterwards a subterranean chamber was discovered accidentally by some workmen at Minster Lovell, in Oxfordshire, the ancient seat of his family. In this chamber was seated a skeleton in a chair, with its head resting on a table; and this was supposed to be the remains of this same Lord Lovell, who had reached his house, and secreted himself in this apartment, where he had perished by some unknown cause. In West's "Furness" it is also stated that there is a tradition that Sir Thomas Broughton also escaped, and lived in concealment amongst his tenants at Witherslack, in Westmoreland.

After the battle, Henry travelled northward to ascertain that all was secure in the tract through which the insurgents had passed, and to punish such as had aided the rebels, and those who just before the battle had spread the rumour of his defeat. The royal punishments did not consist in putting his enemies to death, but in fining them severely, for Henry Tudor much preferred making a profit of a man to killing him. On his return he gave his thanks to "Our Lady of Walsingham," for having listened to his prayers; and from Warwick he sent orders to prepare in town for the coronation of the queen. The late insurrection had taught him that if he did not wish for a repetition of it, he must concede something to the Yorkist party, and must pay some respect to the queen. Accordingly, on the 25th of November, 1487, Elizabeth was crowned with much state at Westminster.

The crowd which attended her from the Tower to Westminster was immense. It was the first time of her appearing in public in London as queen. She was not yet twenty-two years of age. She was tall, and of a fine figure, like her father, and her complexion brilliantly fair. She was clad in a kirtle of white cloth of gold, damasked, and a mantle of the same, furred with ermine, fastened on the breast with a great lace or cordon of gold and silk, with rich knobs of gold and tassells. Her fair yellow hair hung plain down her back, with a caul of pipes, that is, of pipe network over it. Her train was borne by her sister Cicely, who was still fairer than herself. She was carried on a rich open litter, over which was held a canopy by four of the new knights of the Bath. Henry had created eleven on the occasion. Before her rode four baronesses on grey palfreys, and the king's uncle, Jasper, Earl of Bedford, who had lately married her aunt Catherine, the widow of the Duke of Buckingham. Behind her came six baronesses on their palfreys, and her sister Cicely, the Duchess of Beaufort, the Duchess of Suffolk, mother of the Earl of Lincoln, who lately fell at Stoke: such was the barbarous policy of the time, when private sorrow, however poignant, gave way as nothing to royal pageantry. These rode in one car, and the Duchess of Norfolk in another. The king, that the queen might appear the first person at her own coronation, did not present himself publicly, but beheld the scene from behind a lattice. After the ceremony, she dined in Westminster Hall, on which occasion, we are told, "the Lady Catherine Grey and Mrs. Ditton went under the table and sat at her feet while the Countesses of Oxford and Rivers knelt on each side, and at certain times held a kerchief before her grace."

Having thus made this amende to public opinion, Henry, instead of giving Simnel consequence, by putting him to death, or making a state prisoner of him in the Tower, turned him into his kitchen as a scullion, thus showing his contempt of him. "He would not take his life," says Lord Bacon, "taking him but as an image of wax that others had tempered and moulded;" and considering that if he was made a continual spectacle, he would be "a kind of remedy against the like enchantments of people in time to come. The priest Simons he shut up in a secret prison, saying he was but a tool, and did not know the depths of the plot. He even professed to regret the death of the Earl of Lincoln, who, had his life been spared, he said, "might have revealed to him the bottom of his danger." In his peculiar way he threw much mystery over the matter, for mystery was one of his greatest pleasures.

Having settled these matters, which he did on his own authority, Henry summoned a Parliament to grant him supplies, and to increase those supplies by bill of attainder against all those who had been engaged in the late conspiracy. To prevent similar risings, he demanded that the law should be rigorously put in force against the practice of maintenance. This maintenance was the association of numbers of persons under a particular chief or nobleman, whose badge or livery they wore, and to whom they were bound by oath to support him in his private quarrels against other noblemen. But the instrument was too convenient not to be turned on occasion against the crown, whenever rich chiefs took up the opposite party, and by this means it was that such numbers of troops could be brought at the shortest notice into the field against the monarch. Various laws had been passed on this subject, and heavy penalties decreed; but now it was ordained that, instead of calling such offenders before the royal council, as had been the custom, a particular Court should be established for the purpose. The chancellor, the treasurer, the keeper of the privy seal, or two of them, one bishop, one lay peer, and the judges of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, were empowered to summon all such persons before them, and to punish the guilty just as if they had been convicted by ordinary course of law. This was the origin of what came to be called the Court of the Star Chamber, from the walls or ceiling of the room where they met being decorated with stars. It grew, as we shall find, under the Tudors and Stuarts into a most arbitrary and terrible tribunal—an actual Inquisition, in which whoever offended the reigning monarch came to be punished at will, without any regard to justice or the constitution; for all pretence of trying a man by his peers was then done away with, and the monarch's will, through his officers and through venal judges, thus dependent on the crown, was the sole law. So long as this odious Court of the Star Chamber existed, England may be said to have lost its constitution, and the monarchy to have been absolute.

The internal peace of the kingdom being restored, Henry addressed himself to his foreign relations. The truce with Scotland concerned him most nearly, therefore he sent Fox, now Bishop of Durham, to the Court of James III. This monarch was most amicably disposed