but his master's, and he must regretfully decline the proposed method of
arbitrament. He advanced over the border, making some captures and doing
considerable damage; but after a week, commissariat difficulties made him
retire in turn. In September Perkin's Cornish rising collapsed, and a seven
years' treaty was entered upon between the two countries.

[Sidenote: The end of Perkin Warbeck 1497-99]

Towards the pretender and his followers, the King behaved with his usual
leniency. A few leaders only were put to death; other penalties were
reserved. Warbeck was compelled publicly to read at Exeter and later in
London a confession of the true story of his own origin and that of the
conspiracy; and was then relegated to not very strict confinement under
surveillance. His supporters were allowed to purchase their pardon by heavy
fines, which satisfactorily aided in the replenishment of the royal
treasury.

The end of the pretender's story may be told in anticipation. It was
ignominious and less creditable in its accompanying circumstances to Henry.
In the summer of the next year, 1498, Perkin tried to escape, was promptly
recaptured, set in the stocks, and required to read his confession publicly
both in Westminster and London. He was then placed in strict confinement in
the Tower, where the luckless Warwick had been kept a prisoner for thirteen
years. The son of Clarence, still little more than a boy, was the only
figure-head left for Yorkist malcontents. Another attempt to impersonate
him by a youth named Ralph Wilford was nipped in the bud at the beginning
of 1499; but Henry's nerve seems to have been seriously shaken by it, and
probably he now began to make up his mind to get rid of his kinsman. Then
some kind of conspiracy was concocted, in which both Warbeck and Warwick
were involved; on 23rd November, 1499, Perkin was hanged, and five days