Henry now felt quite mortified that he could not produce the evidence of the murder of the two sons of Edward IV., so as to settle this gay young pretender; but he did not succeed in finding the remains, though they were afterwards discovered under the staircase of the White Tower, and buried in Westminster Abbey, where the floor is now paved with epitaphs, and where economy and grief are better combined, perhaps, than elsewhere in the world, the floor and tombstone being happily united, thus, as it were, killing two birds with one stone.

But how sad it is to-day to contemplate the situation occupied by Henry, forced thus to rummage the kingdom for the dust of two murdered princes, that he might, by unearthing a most wicked crime, prevent the success of a young pretender, and yet fearing to do so lest he might call the attention of the police to the royal record of homicide, regicide, fratricide, and germicide!

Most cruel of all this sad history, perhaps, was the execution of Stanley, the king’s best friend in the past, who had saved his life in battle and crowned him at Bosworth.  In an unguarded moment he had said that were he sure the young man was as he claimed, King Edward’s son, he—­Stanley—­would not fight against him.  For this purely unpartisan remark he yielded up his noble life in 1495.

Warbeck for some time went about trying to organize cheap insurrections, with poor success until he reached Scotland, where James IV. endorsed him, and told him to have his luggage sent up to the castle.  James also presented his sister Catherine as a spouse to the giddy young scion of the Flemish calico counter.  James also assisted Perkin, his new brother-in-law, in an invasion of England, which failed, after which the pretender gave himself up.  He was hanged amid great applause at Tyburn, and the Earl of Warwick, with whom he had planned to escape, was beheaded at Tower Hill.  Thus, in 1499, perished the last of the Plantagenets of the male kind.

Henry hated war, not because of its cruelty and horrors, but because it was expensive.  He was one of the most parsimonious of kings, and often averted war in order to prevent the wear and tear on the cannon.  He managed to acquire two million pounds sterling from the reluctant tax-payer, yet no monarch ever received such a universal consent when he desired to pass away.  If any regret was felt anywhere, it was so deftly concealed that his death, to all appearance, gave general and complete satisfaction.

[Illustration:  A RELUCTANT TAX-PAYER.]

After a reign of twenty-four years he was succeeded by his second son,
Henry, in 1509, the elder son, Arthur, having died previously.

It was during the reign of Henry VII. that John and Sebastian Cabot were fitted out and discovered North America in 1497, which paved the way for the subsequent depopulation of Africa, Italy, and Ireland.  South America had been discovered the year before by Columbus.  Henry VII. was also the father of the English navy.