CHAPTER LX.

LONDON IN 1488.

"Sir John got on a bonny brown beast To Scotland for to ride--a; A brown buff coat upon his back, A short sword by his side--a; Alas! young man, we sucklings can Pull down the Scottish pride--a." _Sir John Mennis_, 1639.

Saint Swithin's Day in 1488--fortunately a fair and sunny one--was the busiest ever witnessed in the good city of London, if not since the English capital had a name, at least since the mayoralty of the loyal and wealthy Sir William Horne, whom King Henry VII. had knighted in the preceding year at Hornsey Park; and from its countless wooden thoroughfares--bricks were only beginning to be used about thirty years before--she poured forth her thousands, to witness the departure of a gallant admiral against the Scots.

"The first article of an Englishman's political creed," saith my Lord Halifax, "must be that he believeth in the sea!"--and a very good article it is.

Hence Henry VII. was so deeply concerned by the humiliation of Howard, that he summoned the most expert and experienced mariners in his kingdom, "and after exhorting them to purge away the stain east upon the English name," he offered the then handsome pension of a thousand pounds yearly, to any man who would undertake to bring before him, dead or alive, Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, though it was now a time of truce, and actually of treaty between the two nations; but such were the anomalies of an age when no man was particular about anything but the length of his sword and the trim of his beard--if he had one.

In this new project Henry had many difficulties to encounter, for at that time, England was almost destitute of a navy. "Before the reign of Queen Elizabeth," says Fuller, "the ships-royal were so few that they deserved not the name of a fleet, and our kings hired vessels from Hamburg, Lubeck, yea, from Genoa itself." The _Great Harry_, his first ship, cost him one hundred and fourteen thousand pounds; before this, he used to seize or press merchant vessels for warlike purposes when he required them.

The celebrity for skill and valour enjoyed by Sir Andrew Wood, caused him to be so much dreaded by the English, Dutch, and Portuguese, that some time elapsed before a volunteer was found. At last Sir Stephen Bull, a naval captain of known talent and well-tried courage, offered his sword and services to the King, who accepted them with joy; and three vessels, the largest and strongest that England could furnish, well-manned by chosen men, and mounted with heavy cannon, were placed at his disposal by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who was Lord High Admiral of England from the year 1485 to 1512, and who spared no pains to fit out this half chivalric and wholly vindictive enterprize,--for to their glory be it said, the English nobles--unlike the Scottish--have always been distinguished by a high degree of patriotism and love of the honour and interests of their native country; identifying themselves with both in all ages.

The chief of these three ships was the _Unicorn_--the caravel of the late Sir Andrew Barton.

Sir Stephen had been a merchant-trader of London, and was well known at Staple Inn, where the dealers of those days exposed their samples of wool, cloth, and other commodities for sale; and no vote had more influence than his at Aldermanbury, where the Guildhall was then situated, and where the council met; but fired by a laudable and honourable desire for upholding the glory of "Old England," he had buckled on his armour, and left his buxom dame and comfortable mansion with its _glazed_ windows--then no ordinary luxury--at the corner of Fenchurch-street, near the Aldgate, to wage battle against "the hot and termagant Scots."

To the great, or uneducated mass of the English people, even in the present age, Scotland is a country of which but little is known. _Then_ it was deemed a distant and remote, as well as hated land, and all expeditions against it, were fraught with danger and death.

In those "good old times" there were no electric telegraphs; no mails, rails, or "own correspondents," and no resident ambassadors or consuls. Every Scot entering England became a prisoner; every Englishman entering Scotland might be lawfully killed or captured by whoever could catch him. These were pleasant times withal; and thus, though it was a season of peace between the two countries, Henry, after wisely considering the recent convulsion in Scotland, and the new King's extreme youth--thought he might risk a little to punish the bold Scottish mariner, in the same fashion in which he had overwhelmed Sir Andrew Barton; and if war was declared by Scotland thereanent, he might easily contrive to repudiate the whole affair as a military quarrel between two rival knights--a passage of arms upon the sea.

Sir Stephen Bull had hoisted his flag on board the captured _Unicorn_, and he had spared no pains or expense in fitting her up; thus, not content with all the King gave him, he had borrowed largely from the opulent money-lenders in Lombard-street.

Edmund Howard was his captain.

The second ship was commanded by Miles le Furnival, son of the Lord of Farnham in Bucks--an ancient house, whose tenure it was to find the King of England a right-hand glove on his Coronation day, and to support his right arm when he held the sceptre. Their town residence, still known as Furnival's Inn, stood on the north side of Holborn.

The third ship was under the orders of the wealthy Fulke, Lord of Fulkeshall (now better known as Vauxhall), who is said to have been an ancestor of Guy of notorious memory.

Immense quantities of iron balls and stone shot--the latter from the royal quarries at Maidstone in Kent--had been put on board of these vessels, and they were crowded by the best marksmen of the ancient Fraternity of Artillery, or Gunners of the Tower; and the chief of these was our old friend, tall Dick Selby, the best cudgel-player that ever broke a head at Moorfields, or tossed the bar at Finsbury, and who, moreover, was the blithest toper that ever tossed off a horn, as the bluff host of the Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill was ready to testify.

Many brave volunteers accompanied Bull; these were all members of noble families--some of them gay fellows, whose white feathers and laced mantles would long be missed by many a bright blue eye in Paul's Walk, as the aisle of the great cathedral was named, being the favourite place of the Londoners for gossip and promenades; many, too, would prance no more among the horsemen at the Smoothfield, on Friday, or lounge at the Priory of St. John, at Clerkenwell, where the Sacred Mysteries were performed in the fine summer evenings.

Thus, the three ships were manned by mariners of tried skill, and soldiers of proved courage; but among them were not a few desperadoes from that sanctuary of miscreants, St. Martin's-le-Grand.

"Bring ye back my daughter, Captain Howard," cried old Abel Eyre, the stout fishmonger of Knightrider-street, as he came off to the _Unicorn_ in a wherry, from the Old Swan Stairs; "bring her back to me, from yonder distant country, and I will give thee a pair of the best gold spurs Giltspur-street can furnish."

"Restore my niece, Rose," added Peter Puddle, of Puddle-wharf, "for, by my troth, I would rather she had turned cut-purse, or wedded the greasiest scullion of Pie-corner, than become the wife of a rough-footed Scot."

"If I ever return, good citizens," said Howard, through his open helmet, as he looked over the buckler-ports of the _Unicorn_; "thy daughter will be by my side. I took her away with me, and it is but fair I should restore her, if I can. Farewell, sirs, and remember me at vespers to-night," he added, with a sadness that chilled the hearts of the two portly citizens; "for sorely my mind misgives me, I shall never hear the English curfew bell again!"

Never had the banks of Thames seen a sight so gay or so busy, since London Stone was first placed by the verge of the old Prætorian-road!

In a gorgeous barge, covered by an awning, decorated by pennons and rowed by men in the royal livery, Henry VII. was on the river, accompanied by the Lord Mayor and commonalty, all in smaller barges, garnished with streamers and surrounded by a swarm of lesser boats, crowded by knights, courtiers, citizens, and beautiful women, all wearing the gayest of colours.

He wore his royal robes--a kirtle and surcoat, with his furred hood and mantle, and the George upon his breast. A smile of gratification lit up his usually grave face from time to time, as he caressed his chief favourite--an abominable monkey.

As he stood up in the barge to bow in return to the people, whose shouts rent the sunny air, his tall thin figure was conspicuous above his courtiers, "among whom we observed," as the newspapers would have said had there been one in this year of grace, 1488, Sir William Stanley, Lord Chamberlain of England, wearing his gold key of office; Robert Lord Brook, Knight of the Garter, and Lord Steward of the Household; Sir Richard Crofts, the King's Treasurer, and Sir Richard Edgecumbe, his comptroller, each bearing a white wand; Berkely, the Earl Marshal; Lord Dinham, the Treasurer of England; and Gerald, Earl of Kildare, the newly appointed Governor of Henry's lordship of Ireland, all attired in gorgeous costumes, while the fifty Yeomen of the Guard--a body established only two years before--clad in scarlet coats and black velvet caps, and armed with partisans and swords, were in the king's great barge, with their captain, Sir Charles Somerset, afterwards Earl of Worcester.

It was quite a gala day in London. The beautiful cross in Cheapside, and the Conduit, recently built by the Sheriff, Thomas Ilam, were covered with garlands of flowers; all the bells were tolling, and the houses which faced the river had their windows crowded with heads, and their _horn_ lattices open,--for glass was not common in England until the middle of the sixteenth century, and even in 1558, when "the proud Earl of Northumberland" left Alnwick Castle for a time, the glass windows were carefully taken out, and thriftily replaced by plain wooden boards.

The culverins and bombardes of the Tower thundered out their farewell salute as the ships got under way; flags were displayed on the old Church of St. Katharine, where now the Docks are; and all the foreign argosies and the corn traders from the Cinque Ports, which in those days were compelled to land their cargoes at Queen-hithe, the rival of Billingsgate, were bedecked with banners and streamers, while many a broad piece of tapestry floated from the keep of the Tower, and from Baynard Castle, which had been rebuilt about sixty years before by the Duke of Gloucester.

The roofs and windows of quaint Old London Bridge, through the narrow arches of which the ebb tide was rushing, displayed a thousand faces and waving caps. It had then a grotesque row of houses and shops, forming a narrow street across the river, with a gothic Chapel of St. Thomas à Becket; an embattled drawbridge-tower, on which Hentzner, one fine morning, counted no less than thirty human heads, all of which had been carefully cooked and parboiled, according to act of parliament, in the kitchen of the said tower.

At last the topsails were sheeted home, and while their ordnance, amid clouds of smoke replied to the farewell salutes of the Tower and the deafening cheers of the people, St. George's red cross was thrice lowered in adieu to the king, and the vessels began to drop down the river, while a fry of wherries pulled by barefooted and barelegged watermen shot after them, their occupants cheering with delight at the anticipation of pelting with the mud of the then unpaved streets "the rough-footed Scots" of Andrew Wood; for those of Andrew Barton, when marched in chains through the thoroughfares of London, obtained some weighty marks of the goodwill borne by the citizens to foreigners in general, and the abhorred Scots in particular. In the days of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., we are told the London streets "were very foul, and full of pits and sloughs," and thus, plenty of muddy ammunition lay always at hand.

On board the ship of Miles Furnival sailed Hew Borthwick, bound to Scotland on another mission of infamy.

A deadly and subtle poison had been prepared by a certain Master Kraft, an herbalist whom Henry VII. patronised, and who was a brother of Quentin the Notary. This personage kept an apothecary's booth in Bucklersbury, a street which, from a very early period, until the great fire of 1666, was inhabited solely, or nearly so, by renders of simples, medicines, cosmetics, and deleterious drugs.

This poison had been delivered by Henry's agents to Borthwick, who was to leave nothing untried, by its means, to remove Margaret Drummond for ever from the path of Margaret Tudor.

Thus Hew Borthwick had embarked on board the caravel of Miles Furnival, being too wary to show himself near Captain Howard, who he knew would indubitably fling him overboard, without mercy or remedy.

Cheer after cheer continued to be interchanged as the vessels dropped down Thames with the ebbing tide, and with their white sails and silken streamers shining in the sunny evening light. The bank near East Smithfield, known as the Red Cliff, which gave a name to the ancient village of Ratcliffe Highway, was crowded by spectators, who waved their adieux to the tall and stately caravels--the hope of so many hearts.

The sun was sinking now, and soon the merry chimes of St. Clement Danes, and the deep ding-dong of the Bow-bell in the spire of St. Mary de Arcubus, with the smoke and steeples of London, the din of its streets with the voices of their assembled thousands, and the huge square tower of old St. Paul's, lessened and faded together in the distance, as the vessels stood down the widening and winding river, on their bold expedition to intercept Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, on his return from Sluys.