Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/164

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HERMAN DE FARO

vengeance. We are lost; the cause is lost; our friends; the good Lord Fitzwater. I would have hid his name in the bowels of the earth!"

Already the festal hall was deserted; already the guests were dispersed, to learn how wide the destruction had spread. By the prince's orders, the messenger from England was introduced before himself and his principal friends: it was Adam Floyer, Sir Simon Mountford's chaplain; escaped himself, he was the bearer of a frightful tale. On one day, almost at the same hour, the Yorkist conspirators were arrested. Lord Fitzwater, Sir Simon Mountford, Sir Thomas Thwaites, Robert Ratcliffe, William Daubeny, Thomas Cressenor, Thomas Astwood, two dominicans, by name William Richford and Thomas Poyns, Doctor William Sutton, Worseley the dean of Saint Paul's, Bobert Langborne, and Sir William Lessey, were all seized and cast into prison. Others had escaped: young Gilbert Daubeny, brother of Wilham, and Sir Edward Lisle, had arrived in Flanders. Others made good speed and had fled to Ireland.

CHAPTER XXII.

HERMAN DE FARO.


Oh, Clifford! but bethink thee once again,
And in thy thought o'errun my former time,
And if thou canst for blushing, view this face!

Shakspeare.


"Where is the traitor?" Neville's question resounded through Flanders, and was re-echoed in groans from the English shores. Each man feared the other, and saw the mark of Henry's malice on the brow of all. It was a worse scene in England: executions followed imprisonment; the scaffolds flowed with blood; and suspicion was still greedy of prey. Among the papers seized by the king there was found a letter from Clifford to Lord Fitzwater, containing these words: "I do protest, my lord, that the proof of York's truth is most pertinent. You know this; and yet he who cut the crooked rose-bush to the roots still doubts;