hould break forth a counterfeit Earl
of Warwick, a cordwainer's son, whose name was Ralph Wilford; a young man
taught and set on by an Augustin friar, called Patrick. They both from
the parts from Suffolk came forward into Kent, where they did not only
privily and underhand give out that this Wilford was the true Earl of
Warwick, but also the friar, finding some light credence in the people,
took the boldness in the pulpit to declare as much, and to incite
the people to come in to his aid. Whereupon they were both presently
apprehended, and the young fellow executed, and the friar condemned to
perpetual imprisonment.

This also happening so opportunely, to represent the danger to the King's
estate from the Earl of Warwick, and thereby to color the King's severity
that followed; together with the madness of the friar so vainly and
desperately to divulge a treason before it had gotten any manner of
strength; and the saving of the friar's life, which nevertheless was,
indeed, but the privilege of his order; and the pity in the common
people, which, if it run in a strong stream, doth ever cast up scandal
and envy, made it generally rather talked than believed that all was
but the King's device. But howsoever it were, hereupon Perkin, that had
offended against grace now the third time, was at last proceeded with,
and by commissioners of oyer and determiner, arraigned at Westminster
upon divers treasons committed and perpetrated after his coming on
land within this kingdom, for so the judges advised, for that he was a
foreigner, and condemned, and a few days after executed at Tyburn; where
he did again openly read his confession, and take it upon his death to be
true. This was the end of this little cockatrice of a king that was able
to destroy those that did not espy him first. It was one of the longest
plays of that kind that had been in memory, and might perhaps have had
another end if he had not met with a king wise, stout, and fortunate.

[Footnote 1: Sister to Edward IV, and widow of Charles _le Temeraire_,
Duke of Burgundy.]

[Footnote 2: Bernard Andre, the poet laureate of Henry VII, states in his
manuscript life of his patron, that Perkin, when a boy, was "_servant_ in
England to a Jew named Edward, who was baptized, and adopted as godson by
Edward IV, and was on terms of intimacy with the King and his family."
Speed, mistranslating Andre's words, makes Perkin the _son_ of the Jew,
instead of the servant; and Bacon