of the boys left
their sister Elizabeth, who had taken sanctuary at Westminster with her
mother, the heiress of Edward the Fourth; and the scheme of Morton was to
unite the discontented Yorkists with what remained of the Lancastrian
party by the marriage of Elizabeth with Henry Tudor. The queen-mother and
her kindred gave their consent to this plan, and a wide revolt was
organized under Buckingham's leadership. In October 1483 the Woodvilles
and their adherents rose in Wiltshire, Kent, and Berkshire, the Courtenays
in Devon, while Buckingham marched to their support from Wales. Troubles
in Britanny had at this moment freed Henry Tudor, and on the news of the
rising he sailed with a strong fleet and five thousand soldiers on board.
A proclamation of the new pretender announced to the nation what seems as
yet to have been carefully hidden, the death of the princes in the Tower.
But, whether the story was believed or no, the duration of the revolt was
too short for it to tell upon public opinion. Henry's fleet was driven
back by a storm, Buckingham was delayed by a flood in the Severn, and the
smaller outbreaks were quickly put down. Richard showed little inclination
to deal roughly with the insurgents. Buckingham indeed was beheaded, but
the bulk of his followers were pardoned, and the overthrow of her hopes
reconciled the queen-mother to the king. She quitted the sanctuary with
Elizabeth, and thus broke up the league on which Henry's hopes hung. But
Richard was too wary a statesman to trust for safety to mere force of
arms. He resolved to enlist the nation on his side. During his brother's
reign he had watched the upgrowth of public discontent as the new policy
of the monarchy developed itself, and he now appealed to England as the
restorer of its ancient liberties. "We be determined," said the citizens
of London in a petition to the king, "rather to adventure and to commit us
to the peril of our lives and jeopardy of death than to live in such
thraldom and bondage as we have lived some time heretofore, oppressed and
injured by extortions and new impositions against the laws of God and man
and the liberty and laws of this realm wherein every Englishman is
inherited." Richard met the appeal by convoking Parliament in January
1484, and by sweeping measures of reform. The practice of extorting money
by benevolences was declared illegal, while grants of pardons and
remissions of forfeitures reversed in some measure the policy