The tidings of this victory, notwithstanding the slaughter by which it was gained, caused the greatest rejoicings over all Scotland, for her people were proud of their country, and were then sensitively jealous of her honour; thus, the excitement in Dundee, on the day after the battle, was tremendous.
Sir Andrew Wood took Sir Stephen Bull, and all the officers and English gentlemen volunteers ashore, to present them to King James IV. When the barge of this fine old Scottish mariner left the ships, the seamen of the Yellow Frigate and Flower swarmed up the rigging, manned the yards, and gave him three hearty cheers.
"God bless ye, my brave callants," said the good admiral, as he stood up in the boat, bowed his silvery head, and waved his blue bonnet.
A similar greeting awaited him at the rock of St. Nicholas, and in the streets of Dundee, where, giving his arm in token of amity to his late adversary, the haughty and resentful Stephen Bull, and followed by the principal prisoners, and surrounded by Falconer's arquebussiers, to guard them from insult, he went straight to the little palace of St. Margaret, where the young king, who had been apprised of his coming, awaited him. Vast crowds followed the vanquished and the victors; the lances of the Provost guarded them, and in front rode the Laird of Blackness, bearing the banner of the Burgh, argent, with a pot of lilies, or—the emblem of the Virgin—supported by two green dragons, with enormous twisted tails; and many an unsophisticated Englishman, who had never seen a Scot before, gazed about him with emotions of wonder and hostility; for the towns and dresses of the Lowlanders were very different from those of the English, to whom the architecture of the Scottish streets and houses has still a strange and foreign aspect. In those days, the peasantry of the Lowlands all wore rough brogues of deerskin, with the hair outwards; hence they were named rough-footed Scots by the people of England, where the peasantry were all barefooted, and even bare-legged, as some writers of the time of James IV. say.
Accompanied by the venerable Duke of Montrose-Crawford, the young Lord Lindesay, in his scarlet mantle, and his tall mother, the Duchess, by Robert Lord Lyle, and many other friends of his unhappy father, mingled with a few of the Angus faction, James IV., with his half-acknowledged queen by his side, received the victorious admiral and his bold prisoners in one of the finest chambers of this old country palace.
The walls were hung with green and gold arras; the oak ceiling was divided into square compartments, and in the centre of each was a royal or heraldic device, the arms of the house of Stuart, of their alliances with foreign reigning families, and their many ennobled descendants. Above the carved stone fireplace hung that celebrated picture of the murdered James III., with his queen, in which he is represented in a lilac-coloured robe, trimmed with ermine, and wearing a vest of cloth of gold; Margaret of Oldenburg is attired in a blue robe, with a Scottish kirtle of cloth of gold, and a head-dress blazing with jewels. This picture, which now hangs in Kensington, is probably one of the many valuable portraits of which the avaricious James VI. stripped the Scottish palaces, on his succession to the English crown in 1603.
Crestfallen and silent, the proud and brave English captain stood within this noble apartment.
James frankly and kindly shook the hand of the vanquished mariner, and complimented him on his bravery, in terms similar to those with which he favoured Wood.
"Sir Stephen," he added, "I will restore to you and to your followers your swords, arms, and armour, your ships, and liberty, because I ever love brave men who fight—not for gain—but for glory. Go, sirs, you are free; but I trust that never again you will trouble the Scottish seas with your presence or your piracies, else another fate may await you."
Before presenting his own officers and shipmates to their young sovereign, Sir Andrew courteously introduced Miles de Furnival, John o'Lynne, and all those Englishmen who had distinguished themselves most in the recent battle; he also deplored the death of Captain Edmund Howard; "for," said he, "he was a brave man, and a true English seaman, whom I respected, though his brother, the admiral, slew my old shipmate, Barton, on that day of sorrow in the Downs—but woe is for women, and masses are for monks—the gunner to his lintstock, and the steersman to his helm, say I."