and foe, went through the kingdom; and from that hour, instead of saving him, the knowledge of that cruel deed repelled all hearts from him.
For the moment, the nobles, marching forward to rescue the young king, were taken aback: the tyrant had anticipated them; the king they would restore had perished. But the astute Bishop of Ely reminded them that there was Henry of Richmond, descended from John of Gaunt, who might marry Elizabeth of York, and thus, uniting the two rival houses, put an end to the divisions of the nation. This uniting all parties would annihilate the murderer. The idea was seized upon with avidity. Reginald Bray, the steward to the Countess of Richmond, was instructed to open the project to her, who immediately embraced it in favour of her son. Dr. Lewis, a Welsh physician, who attended the queen-dowager in the sanctuary, was made the bearer of the scheme to her. Elizabeth was well prepared by the wrongs heaped upon her, the murder of her brother and her three sons, and her own confinement and degradation, to forget her opposition to the house of Lancaster. She fully agreed to the project, on the condition of Richmond swearing to marry her daughter Elizabeth on his arriving in England. She even borrowed a sum of money and sent him, to aid his enterprise. A messenger was dispatched to Henry in Brittany to inform him of the agreement, and to hasten his arrival, the 18th of October being fixed for the general rising in his favour.
But it was not to be supposed that all these arrangements could escape the suspicious vigilance of Richard. He proceeded from York to Lincolnshire as if he were only attending to the ordinary affairs of the kingdom. But on the 11th of October—a week before the day appointed for the rising of the confederates—he summoned all his adherents to meet him at Leicester. Four days afterwards he proclaimed Buckingham a traitor, and set a reward of £1,000, or of £100 a year in land, on his head. For those of the Marquis of Dorset and of the two bishops he offered 1,000 marks, or 100 marks a year in land each; and for the head of any hostile knight half that sum. He sent at the same time to London for the great seal to authenticate these and similar acts.
On the day fixed, the rising, notwithstanding, took place. The Marquis of Dorset proclaimed Henry VII. at Exeter; the Bishop of Salisbury proclaimed him in that city; the men of Kent at Maidstone; those of Berkshire at Newbury, and the Duke of Buckingham raised his standard at Brecon. Few revolutions ever opened with more favourable auspices. The hearts of the people were with the insurgents; the very followers of the tyrant hated and watched only an opportunity to desert him. But untoward events, which it was not in human foresight to anticipate, made wholly abortive this well-planned and popular attempt. The Duke of Richmond set sail from St. Malo on the 12th of October for England, with a fleet of forty sail, carrying 5,000 men; but tempestuous weather prevented him reaching the coast of Devonshire till the dispersion of his unfortunate allies. He therefore put back. In the meantime, Richard had joined his army at Leicester, and issued a proclamation which reads now-a-days like the ravings of a madman.
To draw off the followers of the confederates, while he offered rewards for the heads of their leaders, he granted free pardons to all who would abandon them. And the elements at this moment fought for Richard. Buckingham set out on his march to unite his forces to those of the other leaders, but there fell such heavy and continuous rains during the whole of his march from Brecon through the Forest of Deane to the Severn, that the bridges were carried away, and all the fords rendered impassable. Such rains and floods had not been known in the memory of man; and the inundation of the Severn was long after remembered as Buckingham's Flood.
The Welsh, struck with a superstitious dread from this circumstance, and pressed by famine, dispersed, and Buckingham turned back to Weebly, the seat of Lord Ferrers. The news of Buckingham's failure confounded all the other confederates, and every man made the best of his way towards a place of safety. Morton, Dorset, Courtenay, the Bishop of Exeter, and others, escaped to Flanders and Brittany. Weebly was closely watched, on one side by Sir Humphrey Stafford, and on the other by the clan of the Vaughans, who were promised the plunder of Brecon if they secured the duke. Buckingham, in disguise, escaped from Weebly, and hid himself near Shrewsbury, in the hut of a fellow of the name of Bannister, an old servant of the duke's family. This wretch, to secure the reward, betrayed his master to John Mitton, the sheriff of Shropshire, who conducted him to Richard at Salisbury, who ordered his head to be instantly struck off in the market-place. Amongst others who shared the same fate, Richard had the satisfaction of thus silencing a witty rhymster, William Collingham, who had dared to say that,
"The rat, the cat, and Lovel the dog,
Ruled all England under the hog."
That is, Catesby, Ratcliffe, and Lord Lovel; the hog being in allusion to Richard's crest, the boar.
Richard, thus rescued, as it were, by a favouring Providence, marched into Devonshire, where he put to death, amongst others, Sir Thomas St. Leger, a knight who had married the Duchess of Exeter, his own sister. He then traversed the southern counties in triumph, and, arriving in London, he ventured to do what hitherto he had not dared, that is, call a Parliament. This assembly, prostrate at the feet of the prosperous despot, did whatever he proposed. They pronounced him "the undoubted King of England, as well by right of consanguinity and inheritance, as by lawful election, consecration, and coronation;" and they entailed the crown on his issue; the Lords, spiritual and temporal, binding themselves to uphold the succession of his son, the Prince of Wales. They attainted his enemies by wholesale, and beyond all precedent. One duke, one marquis, three earls, three bishops, with a whole host of knights and gentlemen, were thus deprived of honour, title, and estate; and their lands, forfeited to the crown, were bestowed by Richard liberally on his northern adherents, who were thus planted in the south to act as spies on the southern nobles and gentry. The Countess of Richmond, though attainted, was permitted to hold her estates for life, or rather, they were thus conceded for that term to her husband, Lord Stanley, to bind him to the usurper.
To avenge himself on the queen-dowager for her acceptance of the proposal to bring over Henry of Richmond and unite him to her daughter, Richard now deprived her
