. The management, indeed, of these
arts of chicanery, was the great secret of the king's administration.
While he depressed the nobility, he exalted, and honored, and caressed
the lawyers; and by that means both bestowed authority on the laws, and
was enabled, whenever he pleased, to pervert them to his own advantage.
His government was oppressive; but it was so much the less burdensome,
as, by his extending royal authority, and curbing the nobles, he became
in reality the sole oppressor in his kingdom.

As Perkin found that the king's authority daily gained ground among the
people, and that his own pretensions were becoming obsolete, he resolved
to attempt something which might revive the hopes and expectations of
his partisans. Having collected a band of outlaws, pirates, robbers, and
necessitous persons of all nations, to the number of six hundred men,
he put to sea, with a resolution of making a descent in England, and of
exciting the common people to arms, since all his correspondence with
the nobility was cut off by Henry vigilance and severity. Information
being brought him that the king had made a progress to the north, he
cast anchor on the coast of Kent, and sent some of his retainers ashore,
who invited the country to join him. The gentlemen of Kent assembled
some troops to oppose him; but they purposed to do more essential
service than by repelling the invasion: they carried the semblance of
friendship to Perkin, and invited him to come himself ashore, in order
to take the command over them. But the wary youth, observing that they
had more order and regularity in their movements than could be supposed
in new levied forces who had taken arms against established authority,
refused to intrust himself into their hands; and the Kentish troops,
despairing of success in their stratagem, fell upon such of his
retainers as were already landed; and besides some whom they slew, they
took a hundred and fifty prisoners. These were tried and condemned and
all of them executed, by orders from the king, who was resolved to use
no lenity towards men of such desperate fortunes.[*]

* Polyd. Virg. p. 595.

This year a parliament was summoned in England, and another in Ireland;
and some remarkable laws were passed in both countries. The English
parliament enacted, that no person who should by arms, or otherwise
assist the king for the time being, should ever afterwards, either by
course of law or act of parliament, be at