ELIZABETH OF YORK. 243 ing tanned leather as a substitute for armor, and giving the command of them to Jasper, Duke of Bedford, dispatched them with instructions to their leader to fight or pardon, as might seem best. The offer of pardon had a good effect. Lord Lovell fled, the rebels laid down their arms, and Stafford took refuge at Colnham, near Abingdon, until then supposed to be invested with the privileges of a sanctuary. Its claims to this distinction being examined in the -King's Bench, were pro- nounced to be unavailing in cases of open rebellion, and the Staffords were forcibly taken from it and transmitted to the Tower; whence, shortly after, Sir Humphrey was removed to Tyburn, where he was executed ; his brother Thomas, being deemed less culpable, received the royal pardon. The next interruption to public peace in England was the imposition practiced of passing Lambert Simnel for Edward, Earl of Warwick, then a prisoner in the Tower. To defeat the plot, the real Warwick was brought forth through the city and shown to the people. Nevertheless, the counterfeit one continued to retain many supporters, especially in Ireland, where he was not only acknowledged king, but absolutely crowned. Henry defeated this conspiracy as well as the former one, and among the prisoners taken was Lambert Simnel, the pre- tended Earl of Warwick. Questioned why he had lent him- self to the conspiracy, the young man confessed his low birth, and owned that he had yielded to the wishes of others ; on which Henry pardoned him, and with an affected generosity assigned him the office of turnspit in the royal kitchen — an office than "which," as Speed quaintly writes, quoting from Polydore Virgil, "if his wit and spirit had answered to his titles, he would have chosen much rather to have been turned from the ladder by an hangman." Henry's policy in thus de- riding and degrading the pretender to his throne betrayed that knowledge of mankind which was conspicuous in his charac- ter; for nothing tends more to crush an enemy in the eyes of his partisans than to make light of him, and expose him to ridicule, while the exercise of severity towards him gives him importance and excites sympathy in his favor. So jealous was Henry of establishing his own separate right to the throne, independent of that of his amiable and gentle spouse, that he did not have her crowned until 1487, which proves that he conferred the crown on her as his wife. Indeed
