therefore sailed with his scholar into Ireland, where the affection to the house of York was most in height. The King had been a little improvident in the matters of Ireland, and had not removed officers and counsellors, and put in their places, or at least intermingled, persons of whom he stood assured, as he should have done, since he knew the strong bent of that country towards the house of York; and that it was a ticklish and unsettled state, more easy to receive distempers and mutations than England was. But trusting to the reputation of his victories and successes in England, he thought he should have time enough to extend his cares afterwards to that second kingdom.

Wherefore through this neglect, upon the coming of Simon with his pretended Plantagenet into Ireland, all things were prepared for revolt and sedition, almost as if they had been set and plotted beforehand. Simon's first address was to the lord Thomas Fitz-Gerard, earl of Kildare, and deputy of Ireland; before whose eyes he did cast such a mist, by his own insinuation, and by the carriage of his youth, that expressed a natural princely behaviour, as joined perhaps with some inward vapours of ambition and affection in the earl's own mind, left him fully possessed, that it was the true Plantagenet. The earl presently communicated the matter with some of the nobles, and others there, at the first secretly; but finding them of like affection to himself, he suffered it of purpose to vent and pass abroad; because they thought it not safe to resolve, till they had a taste of the people's inclination. But if the great ones were in forwardness, the people were in fury, entertaining this airy body or phantasm with incredible affection; partly, out of their great devotion to the house of York; partly, out of a proud humour in the nation, to give a King to the realm of England. Neither did the party, in this heat of affection, much trouble themselves with the attainder of George, duke of Clarence; having newly learned by the King's example, that attainders do not interrupt the conveying of title to the crown, And as for the daughters of King Ed

ward the fourth, they thought King Richard had said enough for them; and took them to be but as of the King's party, because they were in his power and at his disposing. So that with marvellous consent and applause, this counterfeit Plantagenet was brought with great solemnity to the castle of Dublin, and there saluted, served, and honoured as King; the boy becoming it well, and doing nothing that did bewray the baseness of his condition. And within a few days after he was proclaimed King in Dublin, by the name of King Edward the sixth; there being not a sword drawn in King Henry his quarrel.

The King was much moved with this unexpected accident when it came to his ears, both because it struck upon that string which ever he most feared, as also because it was stirred in such a place, where he could not with safety transfer his own person to suppress it. For partly through natural valour, and partly through an universal suspicion, not knowing whom to trust, he was ever ready to wait upon all his atchievements in person. The King therefore first called his council together at the charter-house at Shine; which council was held with great secrecy, but the open decrees thereof, which presently came abroad, were three.

The first was, that the Queen dowager, for that she, contrary to her pact and agreement with those that had concluded with her concerning the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth with King Henry, had nevertheless delivered her daughters out of sanctuary into King Richard's hands, should be cloistered in the nunnery of Bermondsey, and forfeit all her lands and goods.

The next was, that Edward Plantagenet, then close prisoner in the Tower, should be, in the most public and notorious manner that could be devised, shewed unto the people: in part to discharge the King of the envy of that opinion and bruit, how he had been put to death privily in the Tower; but chiefly to make the people see the levity and imposture of the proceedings of Ireland, and that their Plantagenet was indeed but a puppit or a counterfeit.

The third was, that there should be again proclaimed

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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 execution. And first, the Queen dowager was put into the monastery of Bermondsey, and all her estates 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 tyrant, after such a distance of time, wherein the King had shewed 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 disclosure 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 distressed 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 dissembling 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 disparagement 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, notwithstanding 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 of the best sex; yet was she, upon dark and unknown reasons, and no less strange pretences, precipitated and banished the world into a nunnery; where it was almost thought dangerous to visit her, or see her; 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 was foundress of Queen's college in Cambridge. For this act the King sustained great obloquy, 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 the principal 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 communication 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. Nevertheless in Ireland, where it was too late to go back, it wrought little or no effect. But contrariwise, they turned the imposture upon the King; and gave out, that the King, to defeat the true inheritor, and to mock the world, and blind the eyes of simple men, had tricked up a boy in the likeness of Edward Plantagenet, and shewed 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 omitted no diligence, in giving strait order for the keeping of the ports, that fugitives, malecontents, or suspected per sons, might not pass over into Ireland and Flanders..

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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 in 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 Edward, and the duke of Clarence, and their lines, having had his hand in both their bloods, to disable their issues upon false and incompetent pretexts; the one of attainder, the other of illegitimation: and to design this gentleman, in case himself 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 corrival unto the other. The earl of Lincoln was induced to participate with the action of Ireland, not lightly upon the strength of the proceedings there, which was but a bubble, but upon letters from the lady Margaret of Burgundy, in whose succours and declaration for the enterprise there seemed to be a more solid foundation, both for reputation and forces. Neither did the earl refrain the business, for that he knew the pretended Plantagenet to be but an idol. But contrariwise, he was more glad it should be the false Plantagenet than the true; because the false being sure to fall away of himself, and the true to be made sure of by the King, it might open and pave a fair and prepared way to his own title. With this resolution he sailed secretly into Flanders, where was a little before arrived the lord Lovel, leaving a correspondence here in England with Sir Thomas Broughton, a man of great power and dependencies in Lancashire. For before this time, when the pretended Plantagenet was first received in Ireland,