whatever manner he pleased, and Clarence, who was a great lover of good liquor,, chose to be drowned in a hogshead of wine. 5. Edward the Fourth died in 1483. He left two young children, the eldest of whom now became King Edward the Fifth.. But these poor children had a wicked uncle for a guardian,, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, from his deformity, was called Crookback, and be determined to make himself king. 6. The Tower of London was then a royal palace, and before they were crowned, the kings usually resided there. One night, while the king and his little brother were asleep in each other's arms, some ruffians were sent by their uncle, who smothered them with the bolsters of the bed, and them buried them at the foot of a staircase, where some bones, supposed to be those of the murdered princes, were discovered two hundred years afterwards. 7. Thus crookbacked Richard became King of England. He committed other dreadful crimes for the sake of getting the crown, but he did not keep it long. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, was now the only remaining heir of King Henry the Sixth. The French supplied him with the means of making war against Richard; he landed in England when Richard had been king about two years, and gained a victory at Bosworth. 8. When the soldiers of Richmond examined the dead bodies that lay in heaps on the battle-field, they found King Richard amongst them, with the crown upon his head. They put it on the head of Richmond, and hailed him King Henry the Seventh. 9. The new king married a daughter of Edward the Fourth, and at their wedding, they each wore a red rose intertwined with a white one; for by their marriage, the rival houses of York and Lancaster were united, and the wars of the roses were now ended. QUESTIONS. 1. How long did the wars of the roses last? What -2. When was Edward IV. made king? -3. What was he called ? How was he of the Earl of Warwick? What did Warwick do? killed? When did the party of the white rose flourish again?4. What of Edward IV.? What of Henry VI. and his son? How did he treat his brother?-5. When did he die ? What children did he leave? What of the Duke of Gloucester? What crime did he commit? Did he become king? -7. Who gained the battle of Bosworth - -8. How was Richard found? Who did Henry VII. marry? Why did they wear white and red roses ? CHAPTER CXL. EUROPE continued. Tudor. -The House of 1. HENRY the Seventh began his reign in 1485. He was a crafty king, and cared much more for his own power and wealth than for the happiness of his subjects. But, for his own sake, he desired to reign peaceably, without foreign wars or civil commotions. One 2. During his reign, two impostors appeared in England, each of whom pretended to be a person who had a better right to the crown than Henry the Seventh had. was Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker; but he called himself a nephew of Edward the Fourth. The other, Perkin Warbeck, asserted that he was the Duke of York, the brother of Edward the Fifth, and had made his escape from the Tower, instead of having been murdered, as was generally supposed. 3. Many knights and noblemen of England were led into rebellion by each of these impostors, but finally they were both taken prisoners. Perkin Warbeck was hanged, and Lambert Simnel was made a scullion in the king's kitchen. 4 Henry the Seventh died in 1509. He had been a great lover of money, and put all that he could lay his hands on into his own purse.. A sum equal to five millions of money at the present day, was found in his palace, after his death. 5. His son, Henry the Eighth, began to reign at the age of eighteen. He was a haughty, stern, hard-hearted, and tyrannical king. He had six wives; one died a natural death, he was divorced from two, had two others beheaded, and one outlived him. 6. The reign of Henry the Eighth was chiefly remarkable on account of the Reformation in England; by which is meant the substitution of the Protestant for the corrupt Roman Catholic church. Until this period, the pope of Rome had claimed authority over England, and in the early part of his reign Henry wrote a book in favour of the pope, from whom in return he received the title of Defender of the Faith, which is still used by the sovereign, though happily in a very different sense. 7. He died in 1547, at the age of fifty-six. One of his last acts was to cause his brother-in-law, the Earl of Surrey, to be beheaded; the earl's father, the Duke of Norfolk, would also have fallen a sacrifice, though the only offence they had given was, that a portion of their coat of arms, which they had borne without offence for many years, resembled the royal arms, but the king himself died on the day intended for the execution, and thus the duke was saved. The celebrated reformers, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, lived during his reign. 8. His son, Edward the Sixth, was but nine years old when he ascended the throne. He seemed likely to be a very different king from his father, but lived only to the age of sixteen. 9. Edward was succeeded, in 1553, by his sister Mary, who bears the dreadful title of Bloody Queen Mary. Being a Roman Catholic, she caused persons to be burnt alive who denied the authority of the pope, and many bishops and godly ministers thus perished at the stake. Lady Jane Grey and her father, and her husband and his father, were also put to death by her. 10. But her victims were happier than the Bloody |