TEMPTATION
To England, if you will.
SHAKSPEARE.
A thousand recollections and forgotten thoughts revived in Richard's
bosom when he saw his childhood's friend, the Lady Brampton. He was
reminded of his sufferings in the Tower, of his noble cousin Lincoln, of
her maternal tenderness, when under her care he quitted the gloomy
fortress, his brother Edward's tomb. His mother's last embrace again
thrilled through his frame, and Lovel's parting blessing; what sad
changes had chanced since last he saw her! Sad in all, but that he, then
a boy, had sprung up into the riper age of youthful prowess.
Even with the banished prince we must recur to the state of affairs in
the north of Europe. The French king, Charles the Eighth, had directed
all his attempts to the subjugation of Britany, which was now under the
dominion of the youthful Anne, its orphan duchess. The English nation
espoused her cause, watched with jealousy and indignation the progress
of the French arms, and clamoured loudly for war in her support. Henry,
on the contrary, was obstinately bent upon peace, though he took
advantage of his subjects' appetite for war, to foist subsidies upon
them, which were no sooner collected than his armaments were disbanded,
and an ambassador, sent on a mission of peace, was substituted for the
herald ready apparelled for defiance. This could not last for ever.
French policy triumphed in the marriage of Charles the Eighth with Anne
of Britany; and that duchy became finally annexed to the crown of
France. England was roused to indignation; the king, forced to listen to
their murmurs, promised to invade the rival kingdom the following
spring; a benevolence was granted him; all his acts tended to the
formation of an expedition, which was the best hope of York.
Lord Barry was urgent against delay, while the English partisans wished
that Richard's landing in Ireland, and Henry's in France, should be
consentaneous. Nay, they had deeper views. Ireland, since Simnel's
defeat, appeared but a forlorn hope, and they fostered the expectation
of being able to make England itself the scene of their first attempt,
so soon as its king should be fairly engaged in hostilities on the other
side of the Channel. The duke himself, eager as he was to begin his
career, warmly supported this project; communication with the North was
slow meanwhile, and months wore away--not fruitlessly. Richard gained
in every way by the delay; his knowledge of English affairs grew
clearer; his judgment formed; his strength, weakened by the events of
the summer, was restored during the repose and salubrious coolness of
the winter months.
Accident furthered their designs; a visitor arrived from England, who
brought with him accounts so encouraging, that hope blossomed into
certainty in the hearts of the warm-hearted followers of York. But ere
we introduce this new and seemingly important personage, we must return
awhile to England, to speak of Henry's suspicions, his fears, his artful
policy.
All that Frion had achieved through his abortive attempt, had been but
to ascertain the existence of the duke of York, and to spread still
wider the momentous secret; so that Henry, suspicious and irritated,
received him on his return with anger, resenting his failure as the
result of treachery. Frion had been dismissed; and now years passed
over, without the occurrence of any circumstances that spoke of the
orphan heir of the English crown. The king brooded over the secret, but
spoke of it to no one. The royal youth grew to his imagination, as in
reality he did, passing from boyhood to almost man's estate. Yet, when
Henry reflected on the undisturbed state he had enjoyed for years, on
the firmness with which he was seated on the throne, and the strong hold
he had acquired through the lapse of time on his subjects' minds, he
sometimes thought that even Richard's friends would advise him to
continue in an obscurity, which was, at least, void of danger.
Nevertheless, whenever there had been a question of attacking France,
the feeling that his rival was ready to come forward, and that, instead
of a war of invasion, he might have to fight for his own crown,
increased his unwillingness to enter on the contest.
Now rumours were afloat--none knew whence they came, from France or
Ireland--of the existence of King Edward's younger son, and that he
would speedily appear to claim his succession. Henry, who was accustomed
to tamper with spies and informers, was yet the last to hear of a
circumstance so nearly affecting his interests. The name of Lady
Brampton at length reached him, as being abroad on a secret and
momentous expedition. This name had made a considerable figure in
Richard Simon's confessions; it was connected with Lincoln, Lovel, the
dowager queen, all whom the Tudor feared and hated. Yet he paused before
he acted; his smallest movement might rouse a torpid foe; he only
increased his vigilance; and, from past experience knowing that to be
the weak point, he dispatched emissaries to Ireland, to learn if any
commotion was threatened, any tale rife there, that required his
interference. As the time approached when it was expected that the
English prince would declare himself, the policy of his friends greatly
changed; and, far from maintaining their former mysterious silence, the
circumstance of his abode in Spain, and the expectation of his speedy
appearance in Ireland, made, during the winter of 1491-92, a principal
topic among such of the native nobility as the earl of Desmond had
interested in his cause. Henry's spies brought him tidings beyond his
fears; and he saw that the struggle was at hand, unless he could arrest
the progress of events. Meanwhile, he continued to defer his war with
France; he felt that would be the signal for his enemy's attack.
As he reflected on these things, a scheme developed itself in his mind,
on which he resolved to act. The enemy was distant, obscure, almost
unknown; were it possible to seize upon his person where he then was, to
prevent his proposed journey to Ireland, to prepare for him an
unsuspected but secure prison--no cloud would remain to mar his
prospect; and, as to the boy himself, he could hope for nothing better
than his cousin Warwick's fate, unless he had preferred, to the
hazardous endeavour of dethroning his rival, a private and innocuous
life in the distant clime where chance had thrown him. This was to be
thought of no more: already he was preparing for the bound, but ere he
made it, he must be crushed for ever.
In those times, when recent civil war had exasperated the minds of men
one against the other, it was no difficult thing for a Lancastrian king
to find an instrument willing and fitting to work injury against a
Yorkist. During Henry's exile in Brittany, he had become acquainted with
a man, who had resorted to him there for the sole purpose of exciting
him against Richard the Third! he had been a favourite page of Henry the
Sixth, he had waited on his son, Edward, prince of Wales, that noble
youth whose early years promised every talent and virtue; he had
idolized the heroic and unhappy Queen Margaret. Henry died a foul death
in the Tower; the gracious Edward was stabbed at Tewkesbury; the royal
Margaret had given place to the widow Woodville; while, through the
broad lands of England, the sons of York rioted in the full possession
of her wealth. Meiler Trangmar felt every success of theirs as a
poisoned arrow in his flesh--he hated them, as the mother may hate the
tiger whose tusks are red with the life-blood of her first-born--he
hated them, not with the measured aversion of a warlike foe, but the
dark frantic vehemence of a wild beast deprived of its young. He had
been the father of three sons; the first had died at Prince Edward's
feet, ere he was taken prisoner; another lost his head on the scaffold;
the third--the boy had been nurtured in hate, bred amid dire curses and
bitter imprecations, all levelled against Edward the Fourth and his
brothers--his mind had become distorted by the ill food that nurtured
it--he brooded over the crimes of these men, till he believed that he
should do a good deed in immolating them to the ghosts of the murdered
Lancastrians. He attempted the life of the king--was seized--tortured
to discover his accomplices: he was tortured, and the father heard his
cries beneath the dread instrument, to which death came as a sweet
release. Real madness for a time possessed the unhappy man, and when
reason returned, it was only the dawn of a tempestuous day, which rises
on the wrecks of a gallant fleet and its crew, strewn on the dashing
waves of a stormy sea. He dedicated himself to revenge; he had sought
Henry in Brittany; he had fought at Bosworth, and at Stoke. The success
of his cause, and the peace that followed, was at first a triumph, at
last almost a pain to him. He was haunted by memories which pursued him
like the hell-born Eumenides; often he uttered piercing shrieks, as the
scenes, so pregnant with horror, recurred too vividly to his mind. The
priests, to whom he had recourse as his soul's physicians, counselled
him the church's discipline; he assumed the Franciscan habit, but found
sackcloth and ashes no refuge from the greater torture of his mind. This
man, in various ways, had been recalled to Henry's mind, and now he
selected him to effect his purpose.
To any other he would have feared to intrust the whole secret; but the
knowledge that the destined victim was the son and rightful heir of King
Edward, would add to his zealous endeavours to crush him. Besides that
Trangmar had a knowledge of the fact, from having been before employed
to extract in his priestly character this secret from a Yorkist, Sir
George Neville, who had been intrusted by Sir Thomas Broughton. Everything
yielded in this wretch's mind to his hatred of York; and he scrupled not
to hazard his soul, and betray the secrets of the confessional. Neville
fortunately was informed in time of the danger that menaced him, and had
fled; while Trangmar, thunderstruck by the magnitude of his discovery,
hastened to reveal it to the king. It were long to detail each act of
the crafty sovereign, and his scarcely human tool. By his order, the
friar introduced himself to the dowager queen, at Bermondsey, with a
plausible tale, to which she, in spite of her caution, was induced to
give ear, and intrusted a message by him, as he said that he was on his
way to Spain, to seek and exhort to action the dilatory prince. He then
departed. Henry had rather to restrain than urge his furious zeal. The
scheme projected was, that Richard should be entrapped on board a
vessel, and brought with secrecy and speed to England, where he might be
immured for life in some obscure castle in Wales. Trangmar promised that
either he would accomplish this, or that the boy should find a still
more secret prison, whence he could never emerge to disturb the reign of
Henry, or put in jeopardy the inheritance of his son.
Such was the man who, in the month of April, 1492, following Lady
Brampton's steps, arrived at Lisbon, and found to his wish the prince
there also, and easy access afforded him to his most secret counsels. He
brought letters from the dowager queen, and some forged ones from other
partisans of York, inviting the prince, without application to any
foreign sovereigns, or aid from distant provinces, at once to repair to
England, and to set up his standard in the midst of his native land,
where, so these letters asserted, the earl of Surrey and many other
powerful lords anxiously awaited him. All this accorded too well with
the wishes of the little conclave not to insure assent; nay, more, when
Trangmar urged the inexpediency of the duke's being accompanied by such
notorious Yorkists as Plantagenet and Lady Brampton, it was suddenly
agreed that Richard should embark on board a merchantman, to sail with
the next fair wind for England, while his friends dispersed themselves
variously for his benefit. De Faro, in his caravel, was to convey Lord
Barry to Cork. Plantagenet resolved to visit the duchess of Burgundy, at
Brussels. Lady Brampton departed for the court of France, to engage the
king at once to admit young Richard's claim, and aid him to make it
good. "You, sweet, will bear me company;" and Monina, her whole
soul--and her eyes expressed that soul's devotion to Richard's
success--remembered, starting, that the result of these consultations
was to separate her from her childhood's companion, perhaps, for ever.
As if she had tottered on the brink of a precipice, she shuddered; but
all was well again. It was not to be divided from the prince, to remain
with Lady Brampton, to proceed to Paris with her; on his earliest
triumph to make a part of it, and to join his court in London. All these
words, king, victory, and court, wove a golden tissue before the ardent
girl's eyes; she had not yet
"Lifted the painted veil which men call life;"
as a child who chases the glories of the west, she knew not that night
was falling upon her, while still she fancied that she advanced towards
the ever-retreating splendour of the sky.
Lady Brampton and Plantagenet trembled, as they committed their beloved
charge to other hands; they importuned Trangmar with their
injunctions--their entreaties, their thousand last words of care and
love--the friar heard, and smiled assent to all. Monina had need of all
her courage for the hour, which she knew not that she dreaded till it
came. He was going; the truth flashed suddenly upon her--he, from whom
since childhood she had scarcely been absent for a day. So blind had she
been to her own sensations, that it was not until he leaped into the
boat, and put off from shore, that she became aware of the overwhelming
tide of grief, disquiet, almost of despair, that inundated her heart.
Where was her gaiety, her light, ethereal spirit flown? Why lagged the
hours thus? Why did ceaseless reverie seem her only refuge from
intolerable wretchedness?
She had one other solace; she was still with his friends, whose whole
thoughts were spent upon him; his name enriched their discourse; the
chances of his voyage occupied their attention. Little knew they the
strange and tragic drama that was acting on board the skiff that bore
afar the idol of their hopes.