Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/498

 370 HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. Warwick, then prisoner in the Tower; whom the weary life of a long imprisonment, and the often and renewing fears of being put to death, had softened to take any impression of counsel for his liberty. This young prince he thought the servants would look upon, though not upon himself: and therefore, after that by some message by one or two of them, he had tasted of the earl s consent; it was agreed that these four should murder their master the lieutenant, secretly, in the night, and make their best of such money and portable goods of his, as they should find ready at hand, and get the keys of the Tower, and presently let forth Perkin and the earl. But this conspiracy was re vealed in time, before it could be executed. And in this again the opinion of the king s great wis dom did surcharge him with a sinister fame, that Perkin was but his bait to entrap the Earl of Warwick. And in the very instant while this conspiracy was in working, as if that also had been the king s industry, it was fatal, that there should break forth a counterfeit Earl of Warwick, a cordwainer s son, whose name was Ralph Wil- ford ; a young man taught and set on by an Au- gustin friar, called Patrick. They both from the parts of Suffolk came forwards into Kent, where they did not only privily and underhand give out that this Wilford was the true Earl of Warwick, but also the friar, finding some light credence in the people, took the boldness in the pulpit to declare as much, and to incite the people to come in to his aid. Whereupon they were both presently apprehended, and the young fellow executed, and the friar condemned to perpetual imprisonment. This also happening so oppor tunely, to represent the danger to the king s estate from the Earl of Warwick, and thereby to colour the king s severity that followed ; together with the madness of the friar so vainly and desperately to divulge a treason, before it had gotten any man ner of strength ; and the saving of the friar s life, which nevertheless was, indeed, but the privilege of his order; and the pity in the common people, which, if it run in a strong stream, doth ever cast up scandal and envy, made it generally rather talked than believed that all was but the king s device. But howsoever it were hereupon, Perkin, that had offended against grace now the third time, was at the last proceeded with, and, by commissioners of oyer and determiner, arraigned at Westminster, upon divers treasons committed and perpetrated after his coming on land, within this kingdom, for so the judges advised, for that he was a foreigner, and condemned, and a few days after executed at Tyburn ; where he did again openly read his confession, and take it upon his death to be true. This was the end of this little cockatrice of a king, that was able to destroy those that did not espy him first. It was one of the longest plays of that kind that hath been in inr.mory, and might perhaps have had another end, if he had not met with a king both wise, stout, and fortunate. As for Perkin s three counsellors, they had re gistered themselves sanctuary-men when their master did ; and whether upon pardon obtained, or continuance within the privilege, they came not to be proceeded with. There were executed with Perkin, the Mayor of Cork and his son, who had been principal abet tors of his treasons. And soon after were likewise condemned eight other persons about the Tower conspiracy, whereof four were the lieutenant s men : but of those eight but two were executed. And immediately after was arraigned before the Earl of Oxford, then for the time high steward of England, the poor prince, the Earl of Warwick ; not for the attempt to escape simply, for that was not acted, and besides, the imprisonment not be ing for treason, the escape by law could not be treason, but for conspiring with Perkin to raise sedition, and to destroy the king : and the earl confessing the indictment, had judgment, and was shortly after beheaded on Tower-hill. This was also the end, not only of this noble and commiserable person, Edward, the Earl of Warwick, eldest son to the Duke of Clarence; but likewise of the line male of the Plantagenets, which had flourished in great royalty and renown, from the time of the famous King of England, King Henry the Second. Howbeit it was a race often dipped in their own blood. It hath remain ed since only transplanted into other names, as well of the imperial line, as of other noble houses But it was neither guilt of crime, nor reason of state, that could quench the envy that was upon the king for this execution: so that he thought good to export it out of the land, and to lay it upon his new alley, Ferdinando, King of Spain. For these two kings understanding one another at half a word, so it was that there were letters showed out of Spain, whereby in the passage concerning the treaty of the marriage, Ferdinando had written to the king in plain terms, that he saw no assu rance of his succession as long as the Earl of Warwick lived, and that he was loath to send his daughter to troubles and dangers. But hereby, as the king did in some part remove the envy from himself; so he did not observe, that he did withal bring a kind of malediction and infausting upon the marriage, as an ill prognostic : which in event so far proved true, as both Prince Arthur enjoyed a very small time after the marriage, and the Lady Catharine herself, a sad and a religious woman, long after, when King Henry the Eighth s resolution of a divorce from her was first made known to her, used some words, that she had not offended, but it was a judgment of God, for that her former marriage was made in blood ; meaning that of the Earl of Warwick. The fifteenth year of the king, there was a great plague both in London and in divers parts of the