In this temper of the Scottish King, nothing could come more opportunely than such a person as Perkin Warbeck. James had, from the first moment of mounting his throne, been careful to strengthen his alliances with the whole European continent. With France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Flanders, his intercourse, both official and mercantile, was active and constant. Of course, James was kept in full information of all that was agitating England. With the Duchess of Burgundy, the inveterate enemy of Henry, it is clearly provable that James was in secret correspondence only five months after his accession. In 1488, even, there were busy messengers and heralds passing to and fro betwixt Flanders, Ireland, and Scotland.
From these circumstances, which are attested by the "Treasurer's Accounts," and other records of Scotland, it is manifest that James was intimately informed of everything which could be known about Warbeck. There could be no mistake made by James in his reception of that personage, when, in November, 1495, he presented himself at the palace of Stirling. Whatever James did he did with his eyes wide open and his mind fully made up. Yet from the very first he received him apparently with the most undoubting faith as to his being the true Plantagenet.
Warbeck was welcomed into Scotland with much state and rejoicing as the veritable Duke of York. James addressed him as "cousin," and celebrated tournaments and other courtly gaieties in his honour. The reputed prince, by his noble appearance, the simple dignity of his manners, and the romance of his story and supposed misfortunes, everywhere excited the highest admiration. James made a grand progress with him through his dominions, and beheld him wherever he appeared produce the most favourable impression. If James did not himself really believe Warbeck to be the Duke of York before he came to Scotland, his conduct during his abode there seems to have convinced him of it. At no time was he known to express a doubt of it, and on all occasions he spoke and acted as if morally certain of it. Nothing could be more convincing than his giving him to wife one of the most beautiful and high-born women of Scotland, Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, and grand-daughter of James I. James now mustered his forces for the grand expedition which he hoped would drive Henry from the throne of England, and establish there the son of Edward IV., in the person of Warbeck.
STIRLING CASTLE.
(From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co., Aberdeen.)
Meantime, Henry VII. was diligently at work at his favourite plans of bribing and undermining. He had an active agent in Lord Bothwell, whom James had weakly forgiven for his numerous conspiracies. By his means Henry had won over the king's brothers, the Duke of Ross, the Earl of Buchan, and the Bishop of Moray. These traitors engaged to do everything in their power to defeat the expedition. The Duke of Ross promised to put himself under the protection of the King of England the moment his brother crossed the borders. Nor did the plot stop there. Again there was a scheme to seize James at night in his tent, suggested by Henry, and entered into by Bothwell, Buchan, and Wyat, an English emissary. This disgraceful plot was defeated by the vigilance of the royal guard, but not the less actively did the paid spies of Henry Tudor, including some of the most powerful barons in Scotland, labour to defeat the success of the enterprise. They accompanied the army only with the hope of betraying it, while their efforts were essentially aided by the remonstrances of more honest counsellors, who doubted the wisdom of the expedition, and did all they could to dissuade James from it.
Burning with resentment at the base and insidious attempts of Henry to disturb the security of his government, and to seize upon his person, and coveting the glory of restoring the last noble scion of a great race to the throne of his ancestors, James was deaf alike to warnings of secret treason or more public danger. He made his last muster of his forces at Ellam Kirk, near the English border and, proclaiming war on Henry, marched forward. Warbeck, as Richard Duke of York, at the same time issued a proclamation calling upon all true Englishmen to assemble beneath the banner of the true inheritor of the crown. He denounced Henry Tudor as a usurper, and as the murderer of Sir William Stanley, Sir Simon Montfort, and others of the ancient nobility; he charged him with having invaded the liberties and the franchises of both Church and people; and with having plundered the subjects by heavy and illegal impositions. He pledged himself to remedy all these abuses; to restore and defend the rights and privileges of the Church, the nobles, the corporations, and the commerce and manufactures of the country. He related the dangers through which he had passed since his escape from the Tower to this moment, and he set a price of a thousand pounds in money, and land to the value of a hundred marks per annum, for the capture or destruction of Henry Tudor.
But however judiciously the proclamation was drawn up, James was confounded as he advanced to see that it produced not the slightest effect. In vain had it been protested in the proclamation that James came only as the friend of the rightful King of England; that he sought no advantage to himself—though he had really bargained for the restoration of Berwick, and was to be paid 1,000 marks for the expenses of the war—and that he would retire the moment a sufficient English force appeared in the field. No such force was likely to present itself. If Warbeck had met with no success when supported by Englishmen, it was not to be expected when followed by an army of the hereditary foes of the kingdom—Scots and French, backed by Germans, Flemings, and other foreigners.
When James saw that, instead of being welcomed as deliverers, they were avoided, and that the expedition was altogether hopeless, he gave way to his wrath, and began to plunder the country, or to permit his troops to do it. Warbeck remonstrated against the devastations committed on the English with all the ardour of a true prince, declaring that he would rather lose the throne than gain it by the sufferings of his people. But James replied that his cousin of York was too considerate of the welfare of a nation that hesitated to acknowledge him either as king or subject. All this time the diligent Bothwell was duly informing Henry of the state of the Scottish camp, and of everything said and done in it. He now assured him that the Scottish army would soon beat a retreat, for that the inhabitants, in expectation of the visit, had driven off all their cattle, and removed their stores; so that the army was on the point of starvation. This was soon verified. The Scots, finding no supporters, about the end of the year retreated into their own country.