Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/113

A.D. 1496.] open. Warbeck, after being received by Desmond and Kildare, sent Edward Ormond as his envoy to the Scottish Court, where he was cordially received by James; and in 1494 the Duchess of Burgundy announced to James that the Prince of England was about to visit Scotland, and James made preparations for his reception in Stirling.

From all these circumstances, which are attested by the "Treasurer's Accounts," and other records of Scotland, it is manifest that James was intimately informed of everything which could be known about Warbeck. There could be no mistake made by James in his reception of that personage, when, in November 1495, he presented himself at the palace of Stirling. Whatever James did he did with his eyes wide open and his mind fully made up. Yet from the very first he received him apparently with the most undoubting faith as to his being the true Plantagenet.

Events, indeed, had recently occurred which might have cooled a less sincere or less incensed man than James. Henry VII. had undoubtedly been kept well informed by his emissaries of what was passing both at the Scottish and Burgundian Courts. In Scotland, Henry had nobles in pay; in Brussels, besides others, the banished Lord Ramsay of Bothwell was his fee'd agent, and Clifford had proceeded to England and revealed the whole plot. It was probably the policy of the Yorkists to astonish and overwhelm Henry by a simultaneous rising in England, Scotland, and Ireland. For this purpose, in 1494, O'Donnel, Prince of Tyrconnol, one of the most powerful chiefs of Ireland, had gone over to the Scottish Court. But Clifford's treason disconcerted the whole scheme, and instead of James marching down upon England in the north while Warbeck invaded it in the south, and Ireland was ready to succour either force, the adventurer was repulsed both from England and Ireland, and came rather like a hopeless fugitive than a rising prince to Scotland. Yet not the less did James welcome him with all the honours of royalty, or the warmth of a zealous partisan.

Warbeck was welcomed into Scotland with much state and rejoicing as the veritable Duke of York. James addressed him as "cousin," and celebrated tournaments and other courtly gaieties in his honour. The reputed prince, by his noble appearance, the simple dignity of his manners, and the romance of his story and supposed misfortunes, everywhere excited the highest admiration. James made a grand progress with him through his dominions, and beheld him wherever he appeared produce the most favourable impression. If James did not himself really believe Warbeck to be the Duke of York before he came to Scotland, his conduct during his abode there seems to have convinced him of it. At no time was he known to express a doubt of it, and on all occasions he spoke and acted as if morally certain of it. Nothing could be more convincing than his giving him to wife one of the most beautiful and high-born women of Scotland, the Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, and grand-daughter of James I.

James now mustered his forces for the grand expedition which he hoped would drive Henry from the throne of England, and establish there the son of Edward IV., in the person of Warbeck. He was accompanied by this extraordinary pretender, who seemed to have united in him all the graces and accomplishments of a true prince. As the army was about to march there arrived a supply of arms, harness, crossbows, and military stores from the Duchess of Burgundy; and from Charles of France came the Count do Concressault, an old and intimate friend of Warbeck's, as ambassador. Publicly, Concressault professed to exert himself, by command of his master, to promote peace betwixt James and Henry; privately, he urged zealously the invasion of England, to counteract the subtle proceedings of Henry, who had knit up a confederacy betwixt Spain, Flanders, and some of the Italian states, to held in check the French designs beyond the Alps.

These apparently auspicious circumstances wore rendered more flattering by the arrival at the Scottish camp, as adherents of the reputed Duke of York, of numbers of the chiefs from the English side of the borders; Nevilles, Dacres, Skeltons, Levels, Herons, &c. The appearance of these barons inspired the most exhilarating persuasion that Warbeck had only to show himself in England to be universally supported.

Meantime, Henry VII was diligently at work at his favourite plans of bribing and undermining. He had an active agent in Ramsay Lord Bothwell, whom James had weakly permitted to return to Scotland. By his means Henry had won over the king's brothers, the Duke of Ross, the Earl of Buchan, and the Bishop of Moray. These traitors engaged to do everything in their power to defeat the expedition. The Duke of Ross promised to put himself under the protection of the King of England the moment his brother crossed the borders. Nor did the plot stop there. Again there was a scheme to seize James at night in his tent, suggested by Henry, and entered into by Bothwell, Buchan, and Wyat, an English emissary. This disgraceful plot was defeated by the vigilance of the royal guard, but not the less actively did the paid spies of Henry Tudor, including some of the most powerful barons in Scotland, labour to defeat the success of the enterprise. They accompanied the army only with the hope of betraying it, while their efforts were essentially aided by the remonstrances of more honest counsellors, who doubted the wisdom of the expedition, and did all they could to dissuade James from it.

But James, burning with resentment at the base and insidious attempts of Henry to disturb the security of his government, and to seize upon his person, and coveting the glory of restoring the last noble scion of a great race to the throne of his ancestors, was deaf alike to warnings of secret treason or more public danger. He made his last muster of his forces at Ellam Kirk, near the English border, and, proclaiming war on Henry, marched forward. Warbeck, as Richard Duke of York, at the same time issued a proclamation calling upon all true Englishmen to assemble beneath the banner of the time inheritor of the crown. He denounced Henry Tudor as a usurper, and the murderer of Sir William Stanley, Sir Simon Montfort, and others of the ancient nobility; of having invaded the liberties and the franchises of both church and people; and of having plundered the subjects by heavy and illegal impositions. He pledged himself to remedy all those abuses; to restore and defend the rights and privileges of the church, the nobles, the corporations,