The king had too much sense and sagacity to refuse to understand the symptoms of discontent which had manifested themselves by this revolt; he knew that he had incensed the Yorkists by the jealous obscurity in which he kept the queen, and he resolved to grant her the honour of coronation, which had hitherto in vain been claimed for her; on the 20th of November, Elizabeth of York was solemnly crowned at Westminster, while her husband, hidden behind a carved screen, contemplated the ceremony at which he was not willing to be present.
For more than two years past. King Henry VII. had concentrated all his efforts upon the internal pacification of his kingdom, without making himself uneasy about the troubles of the Continent; but scarcely had he gained the victory of Stoke, when he saw an embassy arrive in England from the King of France, Charles VIII. While Henry VII. had been repulsing the pretentions to the throne of an impostor supported by rebels, his old protector, the King of France, had attacked a still older friend of his, the Duke Francis of Brittany, who had given shelter to the Duke of Orleans, subsequently Louis XII., accused of having conspired against his cousin. { 129} The French army had entered Brittany, summoned by a certain number of Breton noblemen dissatisfied with the influence which the Duke of Orleans had assumed over their duke, and it had reaped important advantages, when the ambassadors of Charles VIII., fearing an English intervention in favour of the Duke of Brittany, came to expound to the wise Henry VII. the legitimacy of a war which they qualified as defensive. None made allusion to the probable annexation of the duchy of Brittany to France, either by conquest or by the marriage of the young king with the heiress of the Duke Francis; Henry VII. asked no indiscreet questions, and when the Bretons appeared, in their turn, at his court, begging assistance in men and money, the King of England piously offered his mediation "in order to acquit himself before God and men of all his duties of gratitude towards the king and the duke, for whom he was even disposed to go upon a pilgrimage." The French asked for nothing more, their army pursued the course of its victories, but the coming and going of the English negotiators from London to Paris and from Paris to Rennes, did not satisfy the Bretons, who saw themselves closely pressed. Sir Edward Woodville, one of the uncles of the queen, attempted, at his risk and peril, a little expedition in favour of the Duke Francis; but King Henry forbade any demonstration of this kind. His envoys who were then in Paris, were in great danger, it was said, at the news of the succour sent to the Bretons by the English.