TIDINGS FROM IRELAND
Yet noble friends, his mixture with our blood,
Even with our own, shall no way interrupt
A general peace.
FORD.
Pedro D'Ayala was ambassador from Ferdinand and Isabella to the king of
England. There was something congenial in the craft and gravity of this
man with the cautious policy of Henry. When the latter complained of the
vexation occasioned him by the counterfeit Plantagenet, and the favour
he met with in Scotland, D'Ayala offered to use his influence and
counsel to terminate these feuds. He found James out of humour with
York's ill success among the English, weary of a siege, where
impregnable stone walls were his only enemies, uneasy at the advance of
Surrey; pliable, therefore, to all his arguments. A week after D'Ayala's
arrival, the Scots had recrossed the Tweed, the king and his nobles had
returned to Edinburgh, and York to Katherine.
Richard's northern sun was set, and but for this fair star he had been
left darkling. When the English general in his turn crossed the Tweed,
and ravaged Scotland, _he_ was looked on by its inhabitants as the cause
of their disasters; and, but that some loving friends were still true to
him, he had been deserted in the land which so lately was a temple of
refuge to him. The earl of Huntley exerted himself to prevent his
falling into too deep disgrace in the eyes of Scotland, and was present
at the consultations of the exiles to urge some new attempt in some
other part of King Henry's dominions. York was anxious to wash out the
memory of his overthrow; so that this check, which seemed so final to
his hopes, but operated as an incentive to further exertions. Yet
whither should he go? the whole earth was closed upon him. The territory
of Burgundy, which had so long been his home, was forbidden.
France--Concressault, who was his attached friend, dissuaded him from
encountering a mortifying repulse there. Even his own Spain would refuse
to receive him, now that D'Ayala had shown himself his enemy; but, no,
he was not so far reduced to beg a refuge at the limits of civilization;
still he had his sword, his cause, his friends.
A stranger came, an unexpected visitant from over the sea, to decide his
vacillating counsels. The man was aged and silver-haired, smooth in his
manners, soft-voiced, yet with quick grey eyes and compressed lips,
indications of talent and resolution and subtlety. Frion saw him first,
and, deceived by his almost fawning manners into an idea of his
insignificance, asked his purpose and name. The stranger with the utmost
gentleness refused to disclose his object to any but the prince; and
Frion, with great show of insolence, refused to introduce him to his
presence. "Then without thy leave, sir knave," said the old man calmly,
"I must force my way."
Astley, the poor scrivener of Canterbury, was present. This honest,
simple-hearted fellow, had shown so much worth, so much zeal, so much
humbleness with such fidelity, that he had become a favourite in York's
court, and principally with the Lady Katherine. Frion hated him, for he
was his opposite, but pretended to despise him, and to use him as an
underling. Astley meekly submitted, and at last gained a kind of favour
in the Frenchman's eyes by the deference and respect of his manner. The
stranger, with the readiness of one accustomed to select agents for his
will, addressed him, bidding him announce to his highness a gentleman
from Ireland. "And be assured," he said, "the duke will ill-requite any
tardiness on thy part."
An angry burst from Frion interrupted him. This man, rarely off his
guard, but roused now by recent mortifications, forgot himself in the
violence he displayed, which strangely contrasted with the soft
tranquillity of the stranger, and Astley's modest, but very determined
annunciation of his resolve to convey the message to the prince. Frion,
from loud words, was about to proceed to acts, when Lord Barry
entered--Barry, who felt Scotland as a limbo of despair, who was for
ever urging Richard to visit Ireland, to whom the court life of the
English was something like a trim-fenced park to a new caught lion.
Barry saw the stranger--his eyes lighted up, nay, danced with sudden
joy: with no gentle hand he thrust Frion away, and then bent his knee,
asking a blessing of the prior of Kilmainham; and in the same breath
eagerly demanded what had brought the venerable man from Buttevant
across the dangerous seas.
Keating's presence gave new life to York's councils: he brought an
invitation from Maurice of Desmond to the duke. The earl had, since
Richard's departure, been occupied in training troops, and so fortifying
himself as to enable him to rise against Poynings, whose regular
government, and above all, whose predilection for the Butlers, caused
him to be detested by the Geraldines. Hurried on by hatred and revenge,
Desmond resolved to do that which would be most dreaded and abhorred of
Henry--to assume the badge of the White Rose, and to set up the
pretensions of young Richard. The tidings were that York was a loved and
honoured guest in Edinburgh; and the impetuous Desmond feared that he
would hardly be induced to abandon King James's powerful alliance, for
the friendship of a wild Irish chieftain. The very invitation must be
committed to no mean or witless hands: the difficulties appeared so
great, that the measure was on the point of being abandoned, when the
prior of Kilmainham, who, in the extreme of age, awoke to fresh life at
a prospect of regaining his lost consequence, offered himself to
undertake the arduous task. His views went far beyond the earl's: he
hoped to make the king of Scotland an active party in his plots, and to
contrive a simultaneous invasion of England from the north and from the
west. Already his turbulent and grasping spirit saw Irish and Scotch
meeting midway in England, and with conjoined forces dethroning Tudor,
and dictating terms to his successor. He came too late: he came to find
a peace nearly concluded between James and Henry; the White Rose fallen
into disregard; and his arrival looked, upon as the best hope, the last
refuge of his fallen party.
Richard on the instant accepted his invitation. To a generous heart the
feeling of enforced kindness succeeding to spontaneous affection, is
intolerable. The very generosity of his own disposition made him recoil
from exacting a reluctant boon from his sometime friend. To live a
pensioner among the turbulent, arrogant Scots, was not to be thought of.
The earl of Huntley, in fond expectation of his daughter's greatness,
would have despised him had he remained inactive. Even Katherine was
solicitous to leave Scotland--she knew her countrymen; and, ready as
she was to give up every exalted aim, and to make her husband's
happiness in the retired quiet of private life, she knew that insult and
feud would attend his further tarrying among the Scotch.
York had been for nearly a year the guest of King James; twelve months,
in all their long-drawn train of weeks and days, had paced over the wide
earth, marking it with change: each one had left its trace in the soul
of Richard. There is something frightful, to a spirit partly tired of
the world, to find that their life is to be acquainted with no durable
prosperity; that happiness is but a modification of a train of events,
which, like the fleeting birth of flowers, varies the year with
different hues. But York was still too young to be aweary even of
disappointment; he met the winter of his fortunes with cheerful
fortitude, so that a kind of shame visited James, inspired by the
respect his injured friend so well merited.
The capricious, but really noble heart of the Scottish king was at this
time put to a hard trial. One of the preliminaries of peace, most
insisted upon by Henry, was, that his rival should be given up to
him:--this was, at the word, refused. But even to dismiss him from his
kingdom, seemed so dastardly an act towards one allied to him by his own
choice, that the swelling heart of the cavalier could not yet tame
itself to the statesman's necessity. Some of his subjects, meanwhile,
were ready enough to cut the Gordian knot by which he was entangled.
Tudor had many emissaries in Edinburgh; and Lord Moray, Lord Buchan, and
the dark Both well, whose enmity had become fierce personal hate, were
still egged on by various letters and messages from England to some deed
of sanguinary violence.
Sir John Ramsay was sought out by Frion. That goodly diplomatist must
have entertained a high opinion of his mollifying eloquence, when he
dared encounter the hot temper of him he had dishonoured in the eyes of
the English prince, and of his own countryman Hamilton. But Frion knew
that in offering revenge he bought pardon: he was of little mark in
Ramsay's eyes, while the man he had injured, and whom he consequently
detested beyond every other, survived to tell the grating tale of the
defeated villany of the assassin, and the godlike magnanimity of him who
pardoned.
Frion's own feelings, which had vacillated, were now fixed to betray the
prince. He had wavered, because he had a kind of personal affection for
the noble adventurer. Somehow he managed to fancy him a creature of his
own: he had worked so long, and at one time so well for him, that he had
fostered the vain belief that his dearest hopes, and best pretensions,
would vanish like morning mist, if he blew unkindly on them. It was not
so: James had been his friend; Huntley had given him his daughter
without his interference; and the Irish project, with Keating at its
head, who treated Frion with galling contempt, filled up the measure of
his discontents. If anything else had been needed, the Lady Katherine's
favour to Astley, and some offices of trust, in which York himself had
used him, sufficed to add the last sting to malice. "If they will not let
me make, they shall rue the day when I shall mar; learn shall they, that
Frion can clip an eagle's wings even in its pride of flight."
It is common to say that there is honour among thieves and villains. It
is not honour; but an acknowledged loss of shame and conscience, and a
mutual trust in the instinctive hatred the bad must bear the good, which
strongly unites them. In spite of the Frenchman's former treachery,
Balmayne felt that he could now confide, that his guilt would stretch
far enough to encircle in its embrace the very act he desired; and he
again trusted, and used him as the chief agent of his plots.
The earl of Surrey was ravaging Scotland; and King James, with the
chivalrous spirit of the times, challenged him to single combat. The
earl, in answer, refused to place his master's interests at the hazard
of his single prowess, though ready for any other cause to accept the
honour tendered him. The herald that brought this reply, Frion reported
to Richard to be charged with a letter to him. Its purpose was to
declare, that though, while aided and comforted by the enemies of
England, the earl warred against him, yet the Howard remembered the
ancient attachments of his house; and that, if the White Rose, wholly
renouncing the Scotch, would trust to the honour of the representative
of a race of nobles, the army now in the field to his detriment should
be turned to an engine of advantage. "Time pressed," the letter
concluded by saying--"and if the duke of York were willing to give his
sails to the favouring wind, let him repair with a small company to
Greenock, where he would find zealous and powerful friends."
At first this intimation filled the prince with exultation and delight.
The time was at last come when he should lead the native nobility of
England to the field, and meet his enemy in worthy guise. There was but
one check; he could not join Surrey, while Surrey was in arms against
his once generous friend; so that, by a strange shifting of events, he
now became anxious for peace between Scotland and England; eager that
the seal should be set that destroyed the alliance and amity which had
so lately been the sole hope of his life. Neville and Plantagenet
entered into his views; and while, seemingly at the bottom of Fortune's
scale, a new spirit of gladness animated this little knot of Englishmen.
For one thing young Richard was not prepared: the preliminaries of peace
he knew were arranged, and he was aware that its conclusion would take
the sword out of James's hand. They had rarely met lately; and this,
while it lessened the familiarity, rather added to the apparent kindness
of their interviews. There was in both these young princes a genuine
warmth of heart, and brightness of spirit, that drew them close whenever
they did meet. James honoured the integrity and the unconquered soul of
the outcast monarch, while his own genius, his vivacity, and polished
courtesy, in spite of his caprice and late falling off, spread a charm
around that forced admiration and affection even from him he injured. It
was at this period, that, notwithstanding their real disunion, Richard
felt it as strange to find his royal host confused in manner, and
backward of speech. They had been at a hunting party, where Lord Moray's
haughty glance of triumph, and the sneer that curled the earl of
Buchan's lip, would have disclosed some victory gained by them, had York
deigned to regard their aspects. At length, after much hesitation, while
riding apart from his peers, James asked--"If there were any news from
the Lady Margaret of Burgundy?"
"Sir Roderick Lalayne returned to her a month ago," replied York, "and
with him went my dear and zealous Lady Brampton, to urge fresh succour
for one, to whom fortune has so long shown a wintry face, that methinks
spring must at last be nigh at hand, herald of bright, blossoming
summer."
"What promises then my lady duchess?" said the king, eagerly.
"Alas! her promises are as blank as her power," replied Richard. "Even
when the old dukes of Burgundy were as emperors in Christendom, they
were but as provosts and city-magistrates in the free towns of Flanders;
and these towns resolve on peace with England."
"It is the cry of the world," said James, with a sigh; "this Tudor is a
mighty man. Why, even I, a Scot, a warrior, and a king, am forced to
join the universal voice, and exclaim, 'Peace with England,' even though
my honour is the sacrifice."
"Your majesty imparts no strange truth to me," said York. "I have long
known that this must be; but surely you speak in soreness of spirit,
when you speak of the sacrifice of honour. I thought the terms agreed on
were favourable to Scotland?"
"King Henry demanded, in the first place, the delivery of your highness
into his hands." James blushed deeply as he said these words.
"Or he will come seize me," rejoined the duke, with a laugh. "In good
hour I will deliver myself, if he will walk through the bristling
lances, and set at naught the wide-mouthed cannon that will bellow in
his path."
"Have you then new hopes?" cried the king; "oh! say but so; and half my
shame, and all my sorrow vanishes. Say that you have hope of speedy good
in some other country; for I have sworn, ere April wear into May,
Scotland shall be made poor by your highness's absence."
A long pause followed these words. James felt as if he had given words
to his own concealed dishonour, and struck his iron-girdled side with
the bitter thought. "O! spirit of my father, this may not atone; but I
must pay also in shame and torturous self-contempt for my heavy guilt."
A sudden blow, a precipitous fall when unaware his feet had reached the
crumbling brink of a beetling precipice, would not have made such
commotion in Richard's heart, as the forced and frightful conviction
that the friend he had trusted heaped this insult on him. For the first
time in his life, perhaps, pride conquered every other feeling; for
reproach had been more _friendly_, than the spirit that impelled him, with
a placid voice, and a glance of haughty condescension, to reply:--"Now
that your majesty dismisses me, I find it fittest season to thank you
heartily for your many favours. That you deny me to the suit of your new
ally, and send me forth scathless from your kingdom, is the very least
of these. Shall I forget that, when, a wanderer and a stranger, I came
hither, you were a brother to me? That when an outcast from the world,
Scotland became a home of smiles, and its king my dearest friend? These
are lesser favours; for your love was of more value to me than your
power, though you used it for my benefit; and, when you gave me the Lady
Katherine, I incurred such a debt of gratitude, that it were
uncancelled, though you cast me, bound hand and foot, at Tudor's
footstool. That I am bankrupt even in thanks, is my worst misery; yet,
if the eye of favour, which I believe Fortune is now opening on me,
brighten into noon-day splendour, let James of Scotland ask, and, when
England shall be added to his now barren name, Richard will give, though
it were himself."
"Gentle cousin," replied the king, "you gloss with horrid words a bitter
pill to both; for though the scath seem yours, mine is the punishment. I
lose what I can ill spare, a kinsman and a friend."
"Never!" cried York; "Scotland bids a realmless monarch, a beggar
prince, depart: the king of Scotland, moved by strong state necessity,
is no longer the ally of the disinherited orphan of Edward the Fourth:
but James is Richard's friend; he will rejoice, when he sees him, borne
with the flowing tide, rise from lowness to the highest top at which he
aims. And now, dear my lord, grant me one other boon. I am about to
depart, even of my own will; dismiss then every rankling feeling; lay no
more to your generous, wounded heart, a need, which is even more mine
than yours; but let smiles and love attend your kinsman to the end,
unalloyed by a deeper regret, than that fate wills it, and we must
separate."