Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/69

 to grant the king a goodly sum. This artifice was known as “Morton’s fork,” for if a man escaped one tine of the fork, he would certainly be caught on the other. Henry also took advantage of the confusion due to the civil wars, and of the defects in titles of property, to seize the estates of landowners, or else make them pay heavily to keep them. By such means and by forcing the French king to pay him a large sum to withdraw his troops from Boulogne, Henry gathered so much wealth that when he died he left nearly £2,000,000 in his treasury.

2. Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.—Although Henry had married Elizabeth of York in the hope of satisfying the Yorkists, there were still many who were dissatisfied with his rule. Henry had taken the precaution to put in the Tower the Earl of Warwick, the son of the Duke of Clarence, Edward IV’s brother. This, however, did not prevent an impostor, Lambert Simnel, from coming forward as the Earl of Warwick, and claiming the throne. He found many Yorkists ready to support him, but in a battle at Stoke, Simnel was defeated, and being taken prisoner was made a scullion in the King’s kitchen.

A more serious rebellion arose when Perkin Warbeck, a native of Tournay, claimed the crown as Richard, Duke of York, second son of Edward IV. The Yorkists said this boy had escaped when his brother Edward V. was murdered in the Tower. A great many believed that Warbeck was the Duke of York. The kings of France and Scotland acknowledged his claim; the latter, James IV., going so far as to give him in marriage his cousin, the beautiful Catharine Gordon, the ‘‘White Rose of Scotland.” James, also, helped him to invade England in 1496; but the invasion failed, and Perkin went to Ireland. Thence he made another attempt to get a footing in England, this time in Cornwall. His courage, however, failed as Henry’s army approached, and he tried to escape. He was taken prisoner, put in the Tower, and a few years later, with Warwick, was executed.

3. Foreign Alliances.—Henry saw that the kings of France, Aragon, and other nations had much power over their subjects, and he sought to secure their support by making alliances with them. His elder daughter, Margaret, he gave in marriage to James IV. of Scotland, to keep that country from molesting his northern frontier.