dead. A fortnight later the funeral
procession wended its way from Sheen to St. Paul's, where the illustrious
John Fisher, cardinal and martyr, preached the _eloge_. Thence it (p. 044)
passed down the Strand, between hedges and willows clad in the fresh
green of spring, to

That acre sown indeed
With the richest, royallest seed
That the earth did e'er drink in.

There, in the vault beneath the chapel in Westminster Abbey, which
bears his name and testifies to his magnificence in building, Henry
VII. was laid to rest beside his Queen; dwelling, says Bacon, "more
richly dead in the monument of his tomb than he did alive in Richmond
or any of his palaces". For years before and after, Torrigiano, the
rival of Buonarotti, wrought at its "matchless altar," not a stone of
which survived the Puritan fury of the civil war.

[Footnote 78: _Sp. Cal._, ii., 4.]

On the day of his father's death, or the next, the new King removed
from Richmond Palace to the Tower, whence, on 23rd April, was dated
the first official act of his reign. He confirmed in ampler form the
general pardon granted a few days before by Henry VII.; but the ampler
form was no bar to the exemption of fourscore offenders from the act
of grace.[79] Foremost among them were the three brothers De la Pole,
Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. The exclusion of Empson and
Dudley from the pardon was more popular than the pardon itself. If
anything could have enhanced Henry's favour with his subjects, it was
the condign punishment of the tools of his father's extortion. Their
death was none the less welcome for being unjust. They were not merely
refused pardon and brought to the block; a more costly concession was
made when their bonds for the payment of loans were cancelled.[80]
Their victims, so runs the official record, had been "without (p. 045)
any ground or matter of truth, by the undue means of certain of the
council of our said late father, thereunto driven contrary to law,
reason and good conscience, to the manifest charge and peril of the
soul of our said late father".

[Footnote 79: _L. and P._, i., 2, 12.]

[Footnote 80: _Cf. L. and P._, i., 1004.]

If filial piety demanded the delivery of his father's soul from peril,
it counselled no less the fulfilment of his dying requests, and the
arrangements for Catherine's marriage were hurried on with an almost
indecent haste. The insta