Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/167

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HERMAN DE FARO.
159

herself to his cell. She came, and the result of her visit was to bring Monina again before her.

Such were the agents still at work for York in London. Such the materials Clifford strove to mould into a purpose of his own. There was no reason, so many of the White Rose thought, to forego all their plans because one had come to a fatal end. Still Richard might land in England, and make head against Tudor. On a smaller scale, with lessened hopes and diminished ardour, a scheme of this kind was canvassed. Clifford appeared its chief abettor, and encouraged it by every means in his power; none were averse. It was not an enterprise of such high expectation as the discovered one; but, undertaken with speed, and prosecuted with energy, it might turn out as well. England was by no means tranquil; the metropolis itself was the scene of tumults: these were raised to a ferment by the embargo Henry had found it necessary to place on all communication with Holland—a measure fraught with ruin to many of the richest merchants in London.

At this time, towards the end of the summer, the king came up from his palace at Shene, and held a court at Westminster. One of the immediate subjects that brought him up, was a tumult in the city, to which the embargo had given rise. A vast number of apprentices and journeymen belonging to the ruined merchants were out of employ, while the traders from Hans, and other free German towns, who went among us by the name of the Easterlings, got the commerce into their own. hands, and grew rich upon it. The sight of their prosperity was, to the starving Londoners, as the pressed rowel of a spur in a horse's side; with the usual barbarism of the untaught and rude, they visited on these men the fault of their governors—the discontent augmented till it became loud, furious, and armed. Multitudes of those deprived of their usual means, met, and, in a moment of rage, proceeded from words to acts. They endeavoured to force and rifle the warehouses of the Easterlings, who repulsed them with difficulty; nor did they disperse, till the mayor arrived with men and weapons, from whom they fled like a flock of sheep. When tidings of this event were brought to Henry, he, who saw in all things the multiplied image of the abhorred White Rose, believed the Yorkists to be its secret cause. The day after his arrival he gave audience to the mayor, who reported that, from every examination made, none appeared to have a part in it, except servants and apprentices, nearly a hundred of whom were imprisoned in the Tower.

In giving a detail of this circumstance, the mayor related that