reached Blackwall, where a boat and servants were waiting.  The watermen were at first ordered to Woolwich; there they were desired to push on to Gravesend; then to Tilbury, where, complaining of fatigue, they landed to refresh; but, tempted by their freight, they reached Lee.  At the break of morn, they discovered a French vessel riding there to receive the lady; but as Seymour had not yet arrived, Arabella was desirous to lie at anchor for her lord, conscious that he would not fail to his appointment.  If he indeed had been prevented in his escape, she herself cared not to preserve the freedom she now possessed; but her attendants, aware of the danger of being overtaken by a king’s ship, overruled her wishes, and hoisted sail, which occasioned so fatal a termination to this romantic adventure.  Seymour indeed had escaped from the Tower; he had left his servant watching at the door, to warn all visitors not to disturb his master, who lay ill of a raging toothache, while Seymour in disguise stole away alone, following a cart which had brought wood to his apartment.  He passed the warders; he reached the wharf, and found his confidential man waiting with a boat; and he arrived at Lee.  The time pressed; the waves were rising; Arabella was not 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,