During the reign of Edward IV, the plague frequently broke out in England, and carried off immense numbers of the people. It was particularly fatal in London, and in all other places where many houses were huddled closely together, with imperfect means of cleaning and ventilation. It was calculated that the disease, on one occasion in this reign, destroyed as many lives as the fifteen years’ war. The plague did not cease to occur in England, as well as in other European countries, until considerable improvements had taken place in the habits of the people, especially in point of cleanliness.
EDWARD V, the eldest son of Edward IV, was a boy of eleven years when he succeeded to the crown. His uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a wicked and deformed wretch, soon after contrived to obtain the chief power, and also to cause the murder of the young king and his still younger brother in the Tower. He then mounted the throne under the title of RICHARD III. For two years, this disgrace to humanity continued to reign, though universally abhorred by his people. At length, in 1485, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a connexion rather than a descendant of the Lancaster family, resolved to make an attempt upon the English crown. Having landed with about 2000 followers at Milford Haven, he advanced into the country, and speedily gained such accession of force as enabled him to meet and overthrow Richard at Bosworth Field, where the tyrant was slain, and the victorious Richmond was immediately proclaimed king, under the title of HENRY VII. The new monarch soon after sought to strengthen his title by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of Edward IV, by which it was said the families of York and Lancaster were united.
Under Henry VII the country revived from the evils of a long civil war, in the course of which the chief nobility had been broken down, and the industry and commerce of the land interrupted. It was remarkable, nevertheless, that, during the past period, England was upon the whole an improving country. The evils of war had fallen chiefly on those who made it; the government, however disturbed by various claimants of the throne, was mild and equitable――at least as compared with that of other countries; and the people at large throve under a system in which their own consent, by the voice of the House of Commons, was necessary to the making of every new law, and the laying on of every tax. The reign of Henry VII was much disturbed by insurrections, in consequence of his imperfect title. A baker’s boy, named Lambert Symnel, and a Jew’s son, named Perkin Warbeck, were successively set up by the York party――the one as a son of the late Duke of Clarence, and the other as the younger brother of Edward V, but were both defeated. Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn in 1499; and nearly about the same time, Henry procured, by forms of law, the death of the Earl of Warwick, the real son of the late Duke of Clarence, a poor idiot boy, whom he had kept fifteen years in confinement, and whose title to the throne, being superior to his own, rendered him uneasy.