ign, was undoubtedly
carefully planning the bloodstained steps by which he himself should
reach the throne.

Acute in intelligence, distorted in form and in character, this Richard
was a monster of iniquity. The hapless boy left heir to the throne
upon the death of Edward IV., his father, was placed under the
guardianship of his misshapen uncle, who until the majority of the
young King, Edward V., was to reign under the title of Protector.

How this "Protector" protected his nephews all know. The two boys
(Edward V. and Richard, Duke of York) were carried to the Tower. The
world has been reluctant to believe that they were really smothered, as
has been said; but the finding, nearly two hundred years later, of the
skeletons of two children which had been buried or concealed at the
foot of the stairs leading to their place of confinement, seems to
confirm it beyond a doubt.

Retribution came swiftly. Two years {71} later Richard fell at the
battle of Bosworth Field, and the crown won by numberless crimes,
rolled under a hawthorn bush. It was picked up and placed upon a
worthier head.

Henry Tudor, an offshoot of the House of Lancaster, was proclaimed King
Henry VII., and his marriage with Princess Elizabeth of York (sister of
the princes murdered in the Tower) forever blended the White and the
Red Rose in peaceful union.

During all this time, while Kings came and Kings went, the people
viewed these changes from afar. But if they had no longer any share in
the government, a great expansion was going on in their inner life.
Caxton had set up his printing press, and the "art preservative of all
arts," was bringing streams of new knowledge into thousands of homes.
Copernicus had discovered a new Heaven, and Columbus a new Earth. The
sun no longer circled around the Earth, nor was the Earth a flat plain.
There was a revival of classic learning at Oxford, and Erasmus, the
great preacher, was founding schools and preparing the minds of the
{72} people for the impending change, which was soon to be wrought by
that Monk in Germany, whose soul was at this time beginning to be
stirred to its mighty effort at reform.

{73}

CHAPTER VI

When in the year 1509 a handsome youth of eighteen came to the throne,
the hopes of England ran high. His intelligence, his frank, genial
manners, his sympathy with the "new learning," won all classes.
Erasmus in his hopes of purifying the Church, and Sir Thomas More in
his "