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.