sistance of all his subjects in expelling the usurper, whose tyranny
and maladministration, whose depression of the nobility by the
elevation of mean persons, whose oppression of the people by multiplied
impositions and vexations, had justly, he said, rendered him odious
to all men. But Perkin's pretensions, attended with repeated
disappointments, were now become stale in the eyes even of the populace;
and the hostile dispositions which subsisted between the kingdoms,
rendered a prince supported by the Scots but an unwelcome present to the
English nation. The ravages also committed by the borderers, accustomed
to license and disorder, struck a terror into all men, and made the
people prepare rather for repelling the invaders than for joining them.
Perkin, that he might support his pretensions to royal birth, feigned
great compassion for the misery of his plundered subjects, and publicly
remonstrated with his ally against the depredations exercised by the
Scottish army;[*] but James told him, that he doubted his concern was
employed only in behalf of an enemy, and that he was anxious to preserve
what never should belong to him. That prince now began to perceive that
his attempt would be fruitless; and hearing of an army which was on its
march to attack him, he thought proper to retreat into his own country.

* Polyd. Virg. p. 598.

The king discovered little anxiety to procure either reparation or
vengeance for this insult committed on him by the Scottish nation: his
chief concern was to draw advantage from it, by the pretence which it
might afford him to levy impositions on his own subjects. He summoned a
parliament, to whom he made bitter complaints against the irruption of
the Scots, the absurd imposture countenanced by that nation, the cruel
devastations committed in the northern counties, and the multiplied
insults thus offered both to the king and kingdom of England. The
parliament made the expected return to this discourse, by granting
a subsidy to the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds,
together with two fifteenths. After making this grant, they were
dismissed.

{1497.} The vote of parliament for imposing the tax was without much
difficulty procured by the authority of Henry but he found it not
so easy to levy the money upon his subjects. The people, who were
acquainted with the immense treasures which he had amassed, could ill
brook the new impositions raised on every slight occasion; and it