Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter V · CALAIS.

Among the exiles at the court of Paris, the most distinguished by birth, if not by ability, was Sir Thomas Stafford, Lord Stafford's second son, and grandson of the Duke of Buckingham, who was put to death under Henry VIII. On the 27th of April, Wotton sent notice to the queen that Stafford had sailed from the mouth of the Seine with two vessels well manned and appointed. His destination was unknown; but it was understood that he intended to take some fortress on the English coast, and that the refugees, in a body, intended to follow him. Before Wotton's letter arrived, the scheme, such as it was, had been 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]