Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton | Page 2

said in reality
to have been an English physician named Aylmere. This person,
whatever his real cognomen, assumed the name of Mortimer (with
manifest allusion to the claims of the House of Mortimer to the
succession), and forwarded two papers to the king, entitled "The
Complaint of the Commons of Kent," and "The Requests of the Captain
of the Great Assembly in Kent." Henry replied by despatching a small
force against the rioters. Cade unhesitatingly gave battle to the royal

troops, and having defeated them and killed their leader, Sir Humphrey
Stafford, at Seven Oaks, advanced towards London. Still preserving an
appearance of moderation, he forwarded to the court a plausible list of
grievances, asserting that when these were redressed, and Lord Say, the
treasurer, and Cromer, the sheriff of Kent, had been punished for their
malversations, he and his men would lay down their arms. These
demands were so reasonable that the king's troops, who were far from
loyal, refused to fight against the insurgents; and Henry, finding his
cause desperate, retired for safety to Kenilworth, Lord Scales with a
thousand men remaining to defend the Tower. Hearing of the flight of
his majesty, Cade advanced to Southwark, which he reached on the 1st
of July, and, the citizens offering no resistance, he entered London two
days afterwards. Strict orders had been given to his men to refrain from
pillage, and on the same evening they were led back to Southwark. On
the following day he returned, and having compelled the Lord Mayor
and the people to sit at Guildhall, brought Say and Cromer before them,
and these victims of the popular spite were condemned, after a sham
trial, and were beheaded in Cheapside. This exhibition of personal
ill-will on the part of their chief seemed the signal for the
commencement of outrages by his followers. On the next day the
unruly mob began to plunder, and the citizens, repenting of their
disloyalty, joined with Lord Scales in resisting their re-entry. After a
sturdy fight, the Londoners held the position, and the Kentishmen,
discouraged by their reverse, began to scatter. Cade, not slow to
perceive the danger which threatened him, fled towards Lewis, but was
overtaken by Iden, the sheriff of Kent, who killed him in a garden in
which he had taken shelter. A reward of 1000 marks followed this deed
of bravery. Some of the insurgents were afterwards executed as traitors;
but the majority even of the ringleaders escaped unpunished, for
Henry's seat upon the throne was so unstable, that it was deemed better
to win the people by a manifestation of clemency, rather than to
provoke them by an exhibition of severity.

LAMBERT SIMNEL--THE FALSE EARL OF WARWICK.
After the downfall of the Plantagenet dynasty, and the accession of

Henry VII. to the English throne, the evident favour shown by the king
to the Lancastrian party greatly provoked the adherents of the House of
York, and led some of the malcontents to devise one of the most
extraordinary impostures recorded in history.
An ambitious Oxford priest, named Richard Simon, had among his
pupils a handsome youth, fifteen years of age, named Lambert Simnel.
This lad, who was the son of a baker, and, according to Lord Bacon,
was possessed of "very pregnant parts," was selected to disturb the
usurper's government, by appearing as a pretender to his crown. At first
it was the intention of the conspirators that he should personate Richard,
duke of York, the second son of Edward IV., who was supposed to
have escaped from the assassins of the Tower, and to be concealed
somewhere in England. Accordingly, the monk Simon, who was the
tool of higher persons, carefully instructed young Simnel in the _rôle_
which he was to play, and in a short time had rendered him thoroughly
proficient in his part. But just as the plot was ripe for execution a
rumour spread abroad that Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, and
only male heir of the House of York, had effected his escape from the
Tower, and the plan of the imposture was changed. Simnel was set to
learn another lesson, and in a very brief time had acquired a vast
amount of information respecting the private life of the royal family,
and the adventures of the Earl of Warwick. When he was accounted
thoroughly proficient, he was despatched to Ireland in the company of
Simon--the expectation of the plotters being that the imposition would
be less likely to be detected on the other side of the channel, and that
the English settlers in Ireland, who were known to be attached to the
Yorkist cause, would support his pretensions.
These anticipations were amply fulfilled. On his arrival in the island,
Simnel at once presented himself to the Earl of Kildare, then viceroy,