Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/450

 322 HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. .and, and that their Plantagenet was indeed but a puppet or a counterfeit. The third was, that there should be again pro claimed a general pardon to all that would reveal their offences, and submit themselves by a day. And that this pardon should be conceived in so ample and liberal a manner, as no high treason, no not against the king s own person, should be excepted. Which though it might seem strange, yet was it not so to a wise king, that knew his greatest dangers were not from the least treasons, but from the greatest. These resolutions of the king and his council were immediately put in ex ecution. And first, the queen-dowager was put into the monastery of Bermondsey, and all her es tates seized into the king s hands : whereat there was much wondering ; that a weak woman, for the yielding to the menaces and promises of a ty rant, after such a distance of time, wherein the king had showed no displeasure nor alteration, but much more after so happy a marriage between the king and her daughter, blessed with issue male, should, upon a sudden mutability or disclo sure of the king s mind, be so severely handled. This lady was amongst the examples of great variety of fortune. She had first, from a distress ed suitor, and desolate widow, been taken to the marriage bed of a bachelor king, the goodliest personage of his time; and even in his reign she had endured a strange eclipse by the king s flight, and temporary depriving from the crown. She was also very happy, in that she had by him fair issue; and continued his nuptial love, helping herself by some obsequious bearing and dissem bling of his pleasures, to the very end. She was much affectionate to her own kindred, even unto faction; which did stir great envy in the lords of the king s side, who counted her blood a dispa ragement to be mingled with the king s. With which lords of the king s blood joined also the king s favourite, the Lord Hastings; who, not withstanding the king s great affection to him, was thought at times, through her malice and spleen, not to be out of danger of falling. After her husband s death she was matter of tragedy, having lived to see her brother beheaded, and her two sons deposed from the crown, bastarded in their blood, and cruelly murdered. All this while, nevertheless, she enjoyed her liberty, state, and fortunes : but afterwards again, upon the rise of the wheel, when she had a king to her son-in- law, and was made grandmother to a grandchild nf the best sex: yet was she, upon dark and un known reasons, and no less strange pretences, pre cipitated and banished the world into a nunnery ; where it was almost thought dangerous to visit her, &quot;or see - ; and where not long after she ended her life : but was by the king s commandment buried with the king her husband, at Windsor. She wa.s foundress of Queen s College, in Cam- bvidtre. For this act the king sustained great ob loquy, which, nevertheless, besides the reason of state, was somewhat sweetened to him by a great confiscation. About this time also, Edward Plantagenet was upon a Sunday brought throughout all tlie princi pal streets of London, to be seen of the people. And having passed the view of the streets, was conducted to Paul s Church in solemn procession, where great store of people were assembled. And it was provided also in good fashion, that divers of the nobility, and others of quality, especially of those that the king most suspected, and knew the person of Plantagenet best, had communica tion with the young gentleman by the way, and entertained him with speech and discourse ; which did in effect mar the pageant in Ireland with the subjects here, at least with so many, as out of error, and not out of malice, might be misled. Never theless in Ireland, where it was too late to go back, it wrought little or no effect. But contra riwise, they turned the imposture upon the king; and gave out, that the king, to defeat the true in heritor, and to mock the world, and blind the eyes of simple men, had tricked up a boy in the like ness of Edward Plantagenet, and showed him to the people ; not sparing to profane the ceremony of a procession, the more to countenance the fable. The general pardon likewise near the same time came forth ; and the king therewithal omit ted no diligence, in giving strait order for the keep ing of the ports, that fugitives, malecontents, or suspected persons, might not pass over into Ire land and Flanders. Meanwhile the rebels in Ireland had sent privy messengers both into England and into Flanders, who in both places had wrought effects of no small importance. For England, they won to their party John, Earl of Lincoln, son of John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and of Elizabeth, King Edward the Fourth s eldest sister. This earl was a man of great wit and courage, and had his thoughts highly raised by hopes and expectations for a time ; for Richard the Third had a resolution, out of his hatred to both his brethren, King Ed ward and the Duke of Clarence, and their lines, having had his hand in both their bloods, to dis able their issues upon false and incompetent pre texts ; the one of attainder, the other of illegitima- tion : and to design the gentleman, in case him self should die without children, for inheritor of the crown. Neither was this unknown to the king, who had secretly an eye upon him. But the king, having tasted of the envy of the people for his imprisonment of Edward Plantagenet, was doubtful to heap up any more distastes of that kind, by the imprisonment of De la Pole also ; the rather thinking it policy to conserve him as a co-rival unto the other. The Earl of Lincoln was induced to participate with the action of Ire 1 and, not lightly upon the strength of the proceedings there,