Cumberland’s fifth voyage—Cruises of Newport and King—White and the quick-silver ships—Cumberland’s sixth expedition--Frobiser at Brest—Death of Frobiser—Cumberland’s seventh expedition—Last expedition of Drake and Hawkyns—Cruise of Preston and Somers—Eighth expeditionof Cumberland—Expodition to Cadiz—Cumberland’s ninth expedition—Spanish designs on Ireland—The voyage to the islands—Fishing difficulties with the French—Cumberland’s tenth expedition—Rapid mobilisation of a fleet—Leveson to the Azores—Attempted Spanish descent on Ireland—Leveson defeats Siriaco—Parker’s privateering cruise—Expeditions of Gosnoll, Mace, and Weymouth—Leveson and Monson on the Spanish coast—Death of Elizabeth.
HENRY VII. loved commerce, and was himself a great trader; he was a miser, and disliked any expenditure which did not appear to him to be absolutely necessary; his title to the throne was bad, and his seat upon it was consequently precarious; and he was a wise man, possessed of marked diplomatic ability. His qualities moulded his policy. His reign was, upon the whole, pacific; and, although he invaded France, he had no insatiate thirst for military glory, and no tyrannous lust of conquest; and he gladly seized the first opportunity for concluding a fairly honourable peace. His only other important foreign expedition, that for the repression of Ravenstein, in 1492, was undertaken in the interests of commerce.
Upon his accession, he appointed John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, to be Lord High Admiral from September 21st, 1485, and this officer held the post until after the king’s death.
It was Henry’s misfortune that the fallen House of York remained for many years popular with the common people of the country, and especially of Ireland, and that the lost cause still had a most powerful and unscrupulous supporter in the person of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, a sister of Edward IV. Her court became the natural headquarters of all conspirators who sought the overthrow of the House of Tudor.
The best possible claimant among the Yorkist princes to the crown was Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence and nephew of Edward IV.; but Warwick was a prisoner in the hands of Henry. As, therefore, Warwick was not available as a tool for the malcontents, a false Warwick was invented in the person of Lambert Simnel, a baker’s son, who appears to have been carefully trained for his part by Richard Simon, a
