the rest of the realm and
threatened the stability of Henry's throne. Ireland remained a hot-bed
of Yorkist sympathies, and Ireland was zealously aided by Edward IV.'s
sister, Margaret of Burgundy; she pursued, like a vendetta, the family
quarrel with Henry VII., and earned the title of Henry's Juno by
harassing him as vindictively as the Queen of Heaven vexed the pious
AEneas. Other rulers, with no Yorkist bias, were slow to recognise the
_parvenu_ king and quick to profit by his difficulties. Pretenders to
their rivals' thrones were useful pawns on the royal chess-board; and
though the princes of Europe had no reason to desire a Yorkist
restoration, they thought that a little judicious backing of Yorkist
claimants would be amply repaid by the restriction of Henry's energies
to domestic affairs. Seven months after the battle of Bosworth there
was a rising in the West under the Staffords, and in the North under
Lovell; and Henry himself was nearly captured while celebrating at
York the feast of St. George. A year later a youth of obscure origin,
Lambert Simnel,[23] claimed to be first the Duke of York and then the
Earl of Warwick. The former was son, and the latter was nephew, of
Edward IV. Lambert was crowned king at Dublin amid the acclamations of
the Irish people. Not a voice was raised in Henry's favour; Kildare,
the practical ruler of Ireland, earls and archbishops, bishops and
barons, and great officers of State, from Lord Chancellor downwards,
swore fealty to the reputed son of an Oxford tradesman. Ireland was
only the volcano which gave vent to the subterranean flood; (p. 010)
treason in England and intrigue abroad were working in secret concert
with open rebellion across St. George's Channel. The Queen Dowager was
secluded in Bermondsey Abbey and deprived of her jointure lands. John
de la Pole, who, as eldest son of Edward IV.'s sister, had been named
his successor by Richard III., fled to Burgundy; thence his aunt
Margaret sent Martin Schwartz and two thousand mercenaries to co-operate
with the Irish invasion. But, at East Stoke, De la Pole and Lovell,
Martin Schwartz and his merry men were slain; and the most serious of
the revolts against Henry ended in the consignment of Simnel to the
royal scullery and of his tutor to the Tower.

[Footnote 23: See the present writer in _D.N.B._,
lii., 261.]

Lambert, however, was barely initiated in his new duties when the son