CHAPTER LXV.

THE ENGLISH PRISONERS.

"Sir Stephen, who was prisoner made With ships and sailors all, Unto King James Sir Andrew took, Before his feet to fall." SIR ANDREW WOOD.--_Old Ballad_.

The tidings of this victory, notwithstanding the slaughter by which it was gained, caused the greatest rejoicings over all Scotland, for her people were proud of their country, and were then sensitively jealous of her honour; thus, the excitement in Dundee, on the day after the battle, was tremendous.

Sir Andrew Wood took Sir Stephen Bull, and all the officers and English gentlemen volunteers ashore, to present them to King James IV. When the barge of this fine old Scottish mariner left the ships, the seamen of the _Yellow Frigate_ and _Flower_ swarmed up the rigging, manned the yards, and gave him three hearty cheers.

"God bless ye, my brave callants," said the good admiral, as he stood up in the boat, bowed his silvery head, and waved his blue bonnet.

A similar greeting awaited him at the rock of St. Nicholas, and in the streets of Dundee, where, giving his arm in token of amity to his late adversary, the haughty and resentful Stephen Bull, and followed by the principal prisoners, and surrounded by Falconer's arquebussiers, to guard them from insult, he went straight to the little palace of St. Margaret, where the young king, who had been apprised of his coming, awaited him. Vast crowds followed the vanquished and the victors; the lances of the Provost guarded them, and in front rode the Laird of Blackness, bearing the banner of the Burgh, argent, with a pot of lilies, or--the emblem of the Virgin--supported by two green dragons, with enormous twisted tails; and many an unsophisticated Englishman, who had never seen a Scot before, gazed about him with emotions of wonder and hostility; for the towns and dresses of the Lowlanders were very different from those of the English, to whom the architecture of the Scottish streets and houses has still a strange and foreign aspect. In those days, the peasantry of the Lowlands all wore rough brogues of deerskin, with the hair outwards; hence they were named rough-footed Scots by the people of England, where the peasantry were all barefooted, and even bare-legged, as some writers of the time of James IV. say.

Accompanied by the venerable Duke of Montrose-Crawford, the young Lord Lindesay, in his scarlet mantle, and his tall mother, the Duchess, by Robert Lord Lyle, and many other friends of his unhappy father, mingled with a few of the Angus faction, James IV., with his half-acknowledged queen by his side, received the victorious admiral and his bold prisoners in one of the finest chambers of this old country palace.

The walls were hung with green and gold arras; the oak ceiling was divided into square compartments, and in the centre of each was a royal or heraldic device, the arms of the house of Stuart, of their alliances with foreign reigning families, and their many ennobled descendants. Above the carved stone fireplace hung that celebrated picture of the murdered James III., with his queen, in which he is represented in a lilac-coloured robe, trimmed with ermine, and wearing a vest of cloth of gold; Margaret of Oldenburg is attired in a blue robe, with a Scottish kirtle of cloth of gold, and a head-dress blazing with jewels. This picture, which now hangs in Kensington, is probably one of the many valuable portraits of which the avaricious James VI. stripped the Scottish palaces, on his succession to the English crown in 1603.

Crestfallen and silent, the proud and brave English captain stood within this noble apartment.

James frankly and kindly shook the hand of the vanquished mariner, and complimented him on his bravery, in terms similar to those with which he favoured Wood.

"Sir Stephen," he added, "I will restore to you and to your followers your swords, arms, and armour, your ships, and liberty, because I ever love brave men who fight--not for gain--but for glory. Go, sirs, you are free; but I trust that never again you will trouble the Scottish seas with your presence or your piracies, else another fate may await you."

Before presenting his own officers and shipmates to their young sovereign, Sir Andrew courteously introduced Miles de Furnival, John o'Lynne, and all those Englishmen who had distinguished themselves most in the recent battle; he also deplored the death of Captain Edmund Howard; "for," said he, "he was a brave man, and a true English seaman, whom I respected, though his brother, the admiral, slew my old shipmate, Barton, on that day of sorrow in the Downs--but woe is for women, and masses are for monks--the gunner to his lintstock, and the steersman to his helm, say I."

Margaret Drummond heard these tidings with a pang, for the noble and gentle Howard had won her whole esteem, though he could win nothing more.

"Thou art so rich in honour, and, men say, in money too, Robert Barton," said the king, "that I am sorely puzzled how to reward thy bright career of faithful service; but thou shalt be the captain of my _Great Michael_, as soon as that stately ship is launched and fit for sea. And as for thee, my honest Davie Falconer, the gentle and the brave," he added, taking both Sir David's hands in his, "what shall I say to thee? As an earliest of better things, let me hang this gold medal, the gift of our Holy Father Innocent VIII., to the golden chain my father gave thee, when last we were all under this old rooftree together. May the good God bless thee, Davie Falconer; for, on the last day of that poor father's life, thou didst fight nobly by his side, where I too should have been, but for evil fortune and most accursed counsel!"

Falconer's heart swelled with mingled joy and sadness as the young king attached the medal to his chain, and he gazed imploringly at Margaret Drummond, with an expression that seemed to say, "Oh, speak for us--for Sybilla and for me--you know our secret well;" but terror of her father, on whose face there was a scornful smile, repressed any such thought in her mind.

"I have ever done my duty as a subject and a leal Scotsman," said Falconer; "but in this presence I dare not say all I think, or all I feel, lest the Lord Drummond and others deem me bold; for other inheritance than my sword and an honest name, have I none."

"Nay, by my soul, David Falconer, Drummond will never deem thee over-bold," said the old lord, with a sudden emotion of generosity, "for the sword is ever the Scotsman's best, and often his _last_ inheritance, as many a foreign field can show; and well I know, that it was not when treading on a silken carpet you won the spurs you wear."

These were the first kind words the father of Sybilla had ever addressed to him, and they raised in his warm heart a glow of hope and gratitude.

That evening there was a grand banquet served up amid a flourish of trumpets; Sir Stephen Bull sat on the king's right hand, the Laird of Largo on his left; and the English and Scots, oblivious of yesterday's strife and slaughter, pushed the stoups of Malmsey and Rochelle, Canary and Bordeaux, as busily as of late they had plied cannon and arquebuss, eghisarma and hand-gun. Sir John Carmichael of Netherton and Hyndford--the same who, with Swinton of Dalswinton, slew the Duke of Clarence at the Battle of Verneuil--was chief carver; the Laird of Southesk was cup-bearer, and the kirk bells of "the Blessed Virgin Mary-in-the-fields" rang their matin-chime before the carousers drank the voidée, or parting-cup--the signal for retiring.

The dead were buried in two large graves, within the old cemetery of St. Paul's Church, between the Sea Gate and the Murray Gate of Dundee. Sir Fulke of Fulkeshall was interred alone; and his remains, with a large sword with the blade full of notches, and several silver coins (which the Scots always interred with the dead--a strange remnant of paganry) were found in a large stone coffin, when the foundations of the East Church of Dundee were being dug in 1842; but poor Howard had found a grave among the waves that dash upon the shoals of the Buddon-ness.

In less than a week the English ships were refitted, and began to drop down the Tay, to sail for London.

On Blue Peter being displayed at the masthead by Sir Stephen Bull, and the fore-topsails being cast loose--announcing that they were about to depart--the crews of all the Scottish war-ships, about fifteen or twenty of which had now mustered near Dundee--manned the yards, and gave them a parting cheer, while the Laird of Balgillo saluted St. George's cross by a salvo of guns from the battlements of Broughty; and thus they separated--those hostile ships--with farewell compliments and mutual expressions of amity and good-will.

Bull had on board the Montrose Herald and Garioch Pursuivant, who were the bearers of a letter to King Henry.

This document demanded the immediate release of the Bishop of Dunblane, and begged Henry to accept of his own ships back again as presents, and enjoined him to reward nobly the brave men who had fought them so skilfully and well; and also recommended him to remember for the future, "that Scotland could boast of warlike sons by sea as well as land, and that he--King James--trusted the piratical shipmen of England would disturb his coasts no more, for it micht be, they would not be so weel entertained, nor loup hame so dryshod."

King Henry (add Buchanan and Lindesay) dissembled his anger and mortification, saying that he "accepted the kindness of the young King of Scotland, and could not but applaud the greatness and the chivalry of his soul."

The Nethertoun of Largo was bestowed by James upon the Admiral, together with the Green Ribbon of the Thistle, an Order in which the death of the loyal Glencairn at Sauchieburn had made a vacancy; for this naval victory, on which innumerable ballads were made, was of infinite consequence to Scotland, as it spread abroad the terror of her name by sea, at a time when the warlike skippers of France, England, Portugal, and Spain, when sailing in their lumbering argosies, with their cumbrous tops and gigantic poop-lanterns, were not over-particular in distinguishing friends from foes, when they met each other, far from human aid or justice, on the broad and open arena of the ocean.