en already executed. Stafford, with thirty Englishmen and one
Frenchman, had surprised Scarborough Castle, and sent his
proclamations through Yorkshire. He was come, he said, to deliver his
country from foreign tyranny. He had sure evidence that an army of
Spaniards was about to land, and that Philip intended to seize the
crown by force. The queen, by her marriage with a stranger, had
forfeited her own rights; and he himself, as the protector of English
liberty, intended to bestow the crown on the next rightful heir, and
to restore all such acts, laws, liberties, and customs as were
established in the time of that most prudent prince, King Henry VIII.
"He did not mind," he thought it necessary to add, "to work his own
advancement touching possession of the crown, but to restore the blood
and house of the Staffords to its pristine estate, which had been
wrongfully suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey."[599]

[Footnote 599: Proclamation of Thomas Stafford, son
to the Lord Henry, rightful Duke of
Buckingham.--Strype's _Memorials_, vol. vi. p.
515.]

{p.287} The landing of Edward IV., at Ravenspurg, had made any wild
enterprise seem feasible, and Stafford had counted on the notorious
hatred of the people for the queen.

But if the Spaniards meditated a descent upon England, it was not by
adventurers like the refugees that their coming would be either
prevented or avenged; and the good sense of the country had determined
once for all to give no countenance to revolution supported by France.
The occupation of Scarborough lasted two days, at the end of which
Stafford and his whole party were taken by the Earl of Westmoreland.
Thirty-two prisoners were sent to London; thirty-one were put to
death; and the council reluctantly withdrew their opposition to the
war. A hundred and forty thousand pounds were in the exchequer, being
part of the subsidy granted by parliament to pay the crown debts.[600]
With this the court prepared to commence, trusting to fortune for the
future. War was to be declared on the 7th of June, and, while seven
thousand men were to cross the Channel and join Pembroke in the Low
Countries,[601] Howard was to cruise with the fleet in the Channel to
use his discretion in annoying the enemy, and, if possible, to destroy
the French ships at Dieppe.[602]

[Footnote 600: Exchequer Accounts: _MS. Mary,
Dom