ot there; but in the
distance he descried a vessel. Hiring a fisherman to take him on board,
to his grief, on hailing it, he discovered that it was not the French
vessel charged with his Arabella. In despair and confusion, he found
another ship from Newcastle, which for a good sum altered its course,
and landed him in Flanders. In the meanwhile, the escape of Arabella was
first known to government; and the hot alarm which spread may seem
ludicrous to us. The political consequences attached to the union and
the flight of these two doves from their cotes, shook with consternation
the grey owls of the cabinet, more particularly the Scotch party, who,
in their terror, paralleled it with the gunpowder treason; and some
political danger must have impended, at least in their imagination, for
Prince Henry partook of this cabinet panic.

Confusion and alarm prevailed at court; couriers were despatched swifter
than the winds wafted the unhappy Arabella, and all was hurry in the
seaports. They sent to the Tower to warn the lieutenant to be doubly
vigilant over Seymour, who, to his surprise, discovered that his
prisoner had ceased to be so for several hours. James at first was for
issuing a proclamation in a style so angry and vindictive, that it
required the moderation of Cecil to preserve the dignity while he
concealed the terror of his majesty. By the admiral's detail of his
impetuous movements, he seemed in pursuit of an enemy's fleet; for the
courier is urged, and the post-masters are roused by a superscription,
which warned them of the eventful despatch: "Haste, haste, post haste!
Haste for your life, your life!"[338] The family of the Seymours were in
a state of distraction; and a letter from Mr. Francis Seymour to his
grandfather, the Earl of Hertford, residing then at his seat far remote
from the capital, to acquaint him of the escape of his brother and the
lady, still bears to posterity a remarkable evidence of the trepidation
and consternation of the old earl; it arrived in the middle of the
night, accompanied by a summons to attend the privy council. In the
perusal of a letter written in a small hand, and filling more than two
folio pages, such was his agitation, that in holding the taper he must
have burnt what he probably had not read; the letter is scorched, and
the flame has perforated it in so critical a part, that the poor old
earl journeyed to town in a state of uncertainty and confusion. Nor was
his terror so un