Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/248

240 and every thing; he imagined that he was tired of existence—vain ideas! Sanguine, confiding, full to the very brim of that spirit of life which is the happiness of the young, he sprang up a fresh Antæus, each time that Fortune with Herculean power had thrown him to the earth. And now he congratulated himself even on every misery, every reverse, every sentiment of despondency that he experienced: they were so many links of the chain that made him what he was—the friend of James, the husband of Katherine. It was this best attribute of sunny-hearted youth, this greenness of the soul, that made Richard so frank, so noble, so generous; care and time had laboured in vain—no wrinkle, no deforming line marked his mind, or, that mind's interpreter, his open, candid brow.

With the spring the Scottish troops drew together, and encamped near Edinburgh. The occasion seemed seasonable; for news arrived of disturbances which had taken place in England, and which had caused Henry the Seventh to recall the earl of Surrey (who was conducting an army northward to oppose the expected attack from Scotland), to check and defeat enemies which had arisen in the west of his kingdom. The inhabitants of Cornwall, vexed by increasing taxes, had long been in a state of turbulence; and now, instigated by two ringleaders from among themselves, combined together, and rose in open and regulated rebellion—sedition, it might have been called; and had perhaps been easily crushed, but for the interference of one, who acted from designs and views which at first had made no part of the projects of the insurgents.

Lord Audley had not forgotten the White Rose. On his return westward, however, he found all so quiet, that no effort of his could rouse the rich and satisfied men of Devon, from their inglorious repose. His imprudence attracted attention; he had notice of the danger of an arrest, and suddenly resolved to quit the post he had chosen, and to join the duke of York in Ireland. He came too late; the English squadron had sailed; and he, changeful as the winds and as impetuous, despising a danger now remote, resolved to return to England, and to Devonshire. His voyage from Cork to Bristol was sufficiently disastrous; contrary and violent winds drove him from his course into the Atlantic; here he beat about for several days, till the wind, shifting a point or two to the west, he began to make what sail he could in the opposite direction. Still the weather was tempestuous, and his skiff laboured frightfully amidst the stormy waves; not far from them, during the greatest fury of the gale, was a larger vessel, if such might be called the helmless, dismasted hull, tossed by the billows, the sport of the winds, as it rose and