attainder one day, and reversed them almost on the next.  Neither life nor property was safe.  Men armed themselves first in self-defence, and then in lawlessness; and a thoughtful mind might trace to the evil state of morals, caused by a long period of desolating domestic warfare, that fatal indifference to religion which must have permeated the people, before they could have departed as a nation from the faith of their fathers, at the mere suggestion of a profligate monarch.  The English power in Ireland was reduced at this time to the lowest degree of weakness.  This power had never been other than nominal beyond the Pale; within its precincts it was on the whole all-powerful.  But now a few archers and spearmen were its only defence; and had the Irish combined under a competent leader, there can be little doubt that the result would have been fatal to the colony.  It would appear as if Henry VII. hoped to propitiate the Yorkists in Ireland, as he allowed the Earl of Kildare to hold the office of Lord Deputy; his brother, Thomas FitzGerald, that of Chancellor; and his father-in-law, FitzEustace, that of Lord Treasurer.  After a short time, however, he restored the Earl of Ormonde to the family honours and estates, and thus a Lancastrian influence was secured.  The most important events of this reign, as far as Ireland is concerned, are the plots of Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, and the enactments of Poyning’s Parliament.  A contemporary Irish chronicler says:  “The son of a Welshman, by whom the battle of Bosworth field was fought, was made King; and there lived not of the royal blood, at that time, but one youth, who came the next year (1486) in exile to Ireland."[371]

The native Irish appear not to have had the least doubt that Simnel was what he represented himself to be.  The Anglo-Irish nobles were nearly all devoted to the House of York; but it is impossible now to determine whether they were really deceived, or if they only made the youth a pretext for rebellion.  His appearance is admitted by all parties to have been in his favour; but the King asserted that the real Earl of Warwick was then confined in the Tower, and paraded him through London[372] as soon as the pseudo-noble was crowned in Ireland.  Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, was the great promoter of the scheme.  She despatched Martin Swart, a famous soldier, of noble birth, to Ireland, with 2,000 men.  The expedition was fitted out at her own expense.  The English Yorkists joined his party, and the little army landed at Dublin, in May, 1487.  On Whit-Sunday, the 24th of that month, Lambert Simnel was crowned in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.  After the ceremony he was borne in state, on the shoulders of tall men to the Castle.  One of his bearers, a gigantic Anglo-Irishman, was called Great Darcy.  Coins were now struck, proclamations issued, and all the writs and public acts of the colony executed in the name of Edward VI.