by certain unpopular
acts of the king. Sir Robert Clifford sailed to Flanders, visited
Margaret's court, and wrote back to England that there was no doubt that
the young man was the Duke of York, whose person he knew as he knew his
own.

While these events were fomenting, secretly and openly, King Henry was
at work, secretly and openly, to disconcert his foes. He set a guard
upon the English ports, that no suspicious person should enter or leave
the kingdom, and then put his wits to task to prove the falsity of the
whole neatly-wrought tale. Two of those concerned in the murder of the
princes were still alive,--Sir James Tirrel and John Dighton. Sir James
claimed to have stood at the stair-foot, while Dighton and another did
the murder, smothering the princes in their bed. To this they both
testified, though the king, for reasons unexplained, did not publish
their testimony.

Henry also sent spies abroad, to search into the truth concerning the
assumed adventurer. These, being well supplied with money, and bidden to
trace every movement of the youth, at length declared that they had
discovered that he was the son of a Flemish merchant, of the city of
Tournay, his name Perkin Warbeck, his knowledge of the language and
manners of England having been derived from the English traders in
Flanders. This information, with much to support it, was set afloat in
England, and the king then demanded of the Archduke Philip, sovereign of
Burgundy, that he should give up this pretender, or banish him from his
court. Philip replied that Burgundy was the domain of the duchess, who
was mistress in her own land. In revenge, Henry closed all commercial
communication between the two countries, taking from Antwerp its
profitable market in English cloth.

Now tragedy followed comedy. Sir Robert Clifford, who had declared the
boy to be undoubtedly the Duke of York, suffered the king to convince
him that he was mistaken, and denounced several noblemen as being
secretly friends to Perkin Warbeck. These were arrested, and three of
them beheaded, one of them, Sir William Stanley, having saved Henry's
life on Bosworth Field. But he was rich, and a seizure of his estate
would swell the royal coffers. With Henry VII. gold weighed heavier than
gratitude.

For three years all was quiet. Perkin Warbeck kept his princely state at
the court of the Duchess of Burgundy, and the merchants of Flanders
suffered heavily from the closure of the trade of An