Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/162

154 discovered and imprisoned. Both master and follower underwent many examinations: and it was suggested to each, that reward would follow their giving countenance to a tale of midnight murder. Tirrel was indignant at the proposal; Dighton, on the contrary—a needy, bad man—while he told the story so as to gloss his own conduct, was very ready to inculpate his master; and it grew finely under his fosterage. Henry saw that without Tirrel's connivance he could not authenticate any account; but he gave all the weight he could to these reports. Few persons believed them, yet it served to confuse and complicate events; and, while people argued, some at least would take his side of the question, and these would be interested to spread their belief abroad;—Duke Richard must be the loser in every way.

The spies, the traitor-emissaries of the fear-struck monarch, were all busy; there was a whole army of them dispersed in England and Flanders—none could know the false man from the true. To obviate every suspicion, he caused his own hirelings to be proclaimed traitors, and cursed at St. Paul's cross.

The priests, ever his friends, were impiously permitted to violate the sacrament of confession; and thus several unsuspecting men betrayed their lives, while they fancied that they performed a religious duty. A few names still escaped him—he tampered with Clifford and Frion for them: the former was not yet quite a villain; the latter found that he enjoyed more credit, honour, and power as the duke's secretary than he could do as Henry's spy; besides, his vanity was hurt—he wished to revenge himself on the master who had discarded him.

In nothing did Henry succeed better than in throwing an impenetrable veil over his manoeuvres. Most people thought, so tranquil and unconcerned he seemed, that he did not suspect the existence of an actual conspiracy, fostered in England itself, containing many influential persons among its numbers. All were sure that he was entirely ignorant of their names and actual purposes. The many months which intervened while he waited patiently, corroborated this belief, and the conspirators slept in security. The winter passed, and they continued to scheme, apparently unobserved; spring came—they prepared for York's landing—for a general rising—for a sudden seizing on many walled towns and fortresses—for the occupation of London itself. A few brief weeks, and Henry's prosperity would be shaken to its centre—his power uprooted—he and his children would wander exiles in a foreign land; and another king, the gallant descendant of the true Plantagenets, reign in his stead.

Thus occupied, thus prepared, were the Yorkists in England;