Henry on a visit to his mother at Latham House, in Lancashire, Warbeck and a few hundred followers made a descent in July on the coast of Kent, near Deal. It was hoped that Henry's severity would have made numbers ready to join them. The people, indeed, assembled under the guidance of some gentlemen of property, and, professing to favour Warbeck, invited him to come on shore. But he, or those about him, observing that the forces collected had nothing of that tumultuous impetuosity about them which usually characterises insurgents in earnest, kept aloof, and the men of Kent perceiving that they could not draw Warbeck into the snare, fell on his followers already on land, and, besides killing many of them, took 169 prisoners. The rest managed to get on board again, and Warbeck, seeing what sort of a reception England gave him, sailed back with all speed to Flanders. The prisoners were tied together like teams of cattle, and driven to London, where they were all condemned and executed to a man, in various places, some at London and Wapping, some on the coasts of Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Norfolk, where they were gibbeted, as a warning to any fresh adventurers who might appear on those shores.
Flanders was now become no durable place of sojourn for Perkin and his party. The Flemings would no longer submit to the interruption of their trade; and the archduke entered into a treaty with Henry, which contained a stipulation that Philip should restrain the Duchess Margaret from harbouring any of the king's enemies, and that the two princes should expel from their territories all the enemies of each other. This treaty was ratified on the 24th of February, 1496, and thereupon Warbeck betook himself to Ireland. But there he found a sensible change had taken place since his former visit. The king had sent over Sir Edward Poynings as lord-deputy, who had taken such measures that the people were much satisfied. The Earls of Desmond and Kildare had been pardoned, and the same grace had been accorded to all the other malcontents, except Lord Barry and O'Water. On landing at Cork, therefore, the Irish refused to recognise their late idol, and from Cork he sailed away to Scotland. There a new and surprising turn of fortune awaited him. For a long time his interest had been on the decline. In Flanders the public had grown weary of him; in England they had endeavoured to entrap him; from Ireland they had repulsed him. He is said to have presented letters of recommendation from Charles VIII. of France, and from his great patroness the Duchess-Dowager of Burgundy; and James IV. of Scotland received him with open arms.
To understand this enthusiastic reception in Scotland we must take a short review of events there. We have already seen the position in which James III. and his nobility stood to each other. The attachment of James to men of letters and of artistic taste, and his undisguised contempt of the rude and ignorant nobles of his time, had led to revolt, and to the hanging of Cochrane and his other ministers over the bridge of Lauder in 1482. Since that time James, taught wisdom by these events, had roused himself to more exertion in the affairs of his kingdom. He had attached to his interests some of the wisest of the dignified clergy, and won over some of the most powerful of his nobles. He had put down the faction of Albany and Douglas, and knit up a strong bond of union with France, Flanders, and the northern courts of Europe. He was seeking to unite himself closely with Henry of England by marrying the queen-dowager, and securing for two of his sons two of her daughters. But this very wisdom and sound policy, as they were rapidly augmenting his power, alarmed those who had formerly risen against him; and to prevent falling into his hands, they exerted themselves, as had frequently been the case in Scotland before, to secure the interest of the heir-apparent, and turn him as their instrument against his father.
James, his eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, was a youth of only fifteen at the time, and they succeeded in inflaming his mind against his father, and flattering him by the hope of placing him immediately on the seat of supreme power. The marriage of the king with the English princess had been delayed by his refusing to comply with Henry's demand that the surrender of Berwick should make an item of the contract; and it is supposed that the disaffected barons had found in Henry a willing listener to their views.
In 1487 the barons, with Prince James at their head, took arms against their king, and Henry of England, vexed at the resistance of James III. to the surrender of Berwick, did not hesitate to treat with them, and with the revolted son as King of Scots, and to give passports to their ambassadors to his Court. James took the field against the rebels with an army of 30,000 men; and had he proceeded with the firmness of an indignant monarch rather than the tenderness of a father, he would speedily have dispersed and destroyed his enemies. But, like another David with another Absalom, he was more anxious to treat and to forgive than to fight and subdue. Having succeeded, as he supposed, in coming to terms with the rebellious son and subjects, the unwary king disbanded his army and returned to Edinburgh. But the ungrateful insurgents kept their forces together, and the abused king found himself obliged again to draw out against them near Stirling, one mile only from the celebrated field of Bannockburn, at a place called Little Canglar.
The king was mounted on a large grey charger which had been presented to him by Lord Lindsay of the Byres, with these ominous words, "If your grace will only sit well, his speed will outdo all I have ever seen, either to flee or follow."
The battle was fiercely contested; the unnatural son was posted at the head of the insurgent host, opposite to the too kind father. The lords surrounding the king, fearing danger to the royal person, most fatally advised him to withdraw from the conflict, and let them fight it out. The king rode off towards Bannockburn—thus, in the most effectual manner, disheartening his troops, who were soon after put to the rout. But before this took place, the unfortunate king, while crossing the Bannock, at the hamlet of Miltoun, came suddenly upon a woman filling a pitcher of water. The woman, seeing an armed horseman just upon her, let drop the pitcher on the stones in affright; the king's horse, startled at the noise, and probably at the woman's gestures of alarm, shied and threw the monarch, who, falling in his heavy armour, was stunned and fainted. He was soon carried into the
