uthwark. On the following day he
returned, and having compelled the Lord Mayor and the people to sit at
Guildhall, brought Say and Cromer before them, and these victims of
the popular spite were condemned, after a sham trial, and were
beheaded in Cheapside. This exhibition of personal ill-will on the
part of their chief seemed the signal for the commencement of outrages
by his followers. On the next day the unruly mob began to plunder, and
the citizens, repenting of their disloyalty, joined with Lord Scales
in resisting their re-entry. After a sturdy fight, the Londoners held
the position, and the Kentishmen, discouraged by their reverse, began
to scatter. Cade, not slow to perceive the danger which threatened
him, fled towards Lewis, but was overtaken by Iden, the sheriff of
Kent, who killed him in a garden in which he had taken shelter. A
reward of 1000 marks followed this deed of bravery. Some of the
insurgents were afterwards executed as traitors; but the majority even
of the ringleaders escaped unpunished, for Henry's seat upon the
throne was so unstable, that it was deemed better to win the people by
a manifestation of clemency, rather than to provoke them by an
exhibition of severity.

LAMBERT SIMNEL--THE FALSE EARL OF WARWICK.

After the downfall of the Plantagenet dynasty, and the accession of
Henry VII. to the English throne, the evident favour shown by the king
to the Lancastrian party greatly provoked the adherents of the House
of York, and led some of the malcontents to devise one of the most
extraordinary impostures recorded in history.

An ambitious Oxford priest, named Richard Simon, had among his pupils
a handsome youth, fifteen years of age, named Lambert Simnel. This
lad, who was the son of a baker, and, according to Lord Bacon, was
possessed of "very pregnant parts," was selected to disturb the
usurper's government, by appearing as a pretender to his crown. At
first it was the intention of the conspirators that he should
personate Richard, duke of York, the second son of Edward IV., who was
supposed to have escaped from the assassins of the Tower, and to be
concealed somewhere in England. Accordingly, the monk Simon, who was
the tool of higher persons, carefully instructed young Simnel in the
_role_ which he was to play, and in a short time had rendered him
thoroughly proficient in his part. But just as the plot was ripe for
execution a rumour spread abroad that Edward Plantagenet, earl of