f declaring Lincoln his successor. The Lord
Lovel, too, a bitter enemy of the reigning prince, who had fled to the
court of Burgundy beforetime for protection, was entrusted with a
command in the expedition. To these were joined the Earl of Kildare,
the king's deputy for Ireland, with several others of the nobility
from the sister kingdom. The countenance thus unexpectedly given to
the rebellion by persons of the highest rank, and the great accession
of military force from abroad, raised the courage and exultation of
the Irish to such a pitch that they threatened to overrun England,
nothing doubting but their restless and disaffected spirit would be
fully met by a similar disposition on the part of those whom they
invaded. In supposing that the inhabitants in the north of England,
and especially in Lancashire, would immediately join their standard,
they had not calculated wisely. The king, in crushing the hopes of the
Yorkists, had made himself, at that period, too popular in the
county; the reluctance, too, which it may be supposed that Englishmen
would feel in identifying themselves with a troop of foreign
adventurers, as well as their general animosity against the Irish, to
whom the "northerns" never bore any good-will, being too near
neighbours to agree,--these circumstances taken into account, the
ultimate failure of the expedition might have been easily
prognosticated. Sir Thomas Broughton, a gentleman of some note in
Furness, was the only person of weight and influence in the county who
joined their standard, and he soon found himself a loser by his
defection.

This brief preliminary statement we have thought essential to the
right understanding and development of our plot.

The evening was dark and lowering, the sky broken into wild irregular
masses of red and angry clouds. The sun, after throwing one fierce
look over the broad and troubled sea, had sunk behind a hard, huge
battlement of cloud, on the round waving edges of which ran a bright
burning rim, that looked like a train of fire ignited by the glowing
luminary behind.

The beach round the little island of Fouldrey is mostly covered with
pebbles thrown up by the tide, occasionally intermingled with rock and
patches of dark verdure. A few boats may be seen with their
equipments, and two or three straggling nets upon the shore. A distant
sail occasionally glides across the horizon; but the usual aspect is
that of solitude, still and uninterrupted, the a