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CHAPTER XXXVI.
TIDINGS FROM IRELAND.
Yet noble friends, his mixture with our blood,
Even with our own, shall no way interrupt
A general peace.
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 encoun-
