Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/552

532 in their homes. 'Worldly men say that all this came by misorcler and fortune,' said Knox; 'but whoever has the least spunk of the knowledge of God, may as evidently see the work of his hand in this discomfiture as ever was seen in any of the battles left to us in register by the Holy Ghost.' The folly of venturing such an expedition without order or leader may account for the failure; but who shall account for the folly? The unlucky King was given over to believe a lie. 'The Cardinal had promised heaven for the destruction of England;' and the Cardinal had mistaken wholly the intentions of Heaven upon the matter. In the dead of the night stragglers dropped into Lochmaben, with their tale of calamity. The King had not slept. He had sat still, watching for news; and when the tidings came they were his deathblow. With a long, bitter cry, he exclaimed, 'Oh! fled Oliver! Is Oliver taken? Oh! fled Oliver!' And, muttering the same miserable words, he returned to Edinburgh, half paralyzed with shame and sorrow. There other ominous news were waiting for him. An English herald had been at the Court for a fortnight, with a message from Henry, to which he expected a reply. The invasion was the answer which James intended, and on the fatal night of the march the herald was dismissed. On the road to Dunbar, two of the northern refugees who had been out in the rebellion overtook and murdered him. A crime for which the King was but indirectly responsible need not have added much to the weight of the lost battle; but one of the murderers had been