The cardinal now returned to Edinburgh, and took the regent with him. He was perfectly satisfied with his campaign, and was meditating fresh exploits of the same kind, when, at the very moment of his saying ‘Peace and security,’ a fleet appeared at sea. Messengers came suddenly to announce to the regent and the cardinal that a multitude of vessels were entering the Firth of Forth, and were making for Leith and Edinburgh. ‘It is the English,’ said most people, ‘and it is greatly to be feared that they will land.’ The cardinal dissembled his anxiety, affected to smile and to jest, and said, with a contemptuous air, ‘It is but the island fleet; they are come to make us a show and to put us in fear. I shall lodge the men-of-war in my eye that shall land in Scotland.’[323] Then he went to his dinner-table, and talked with every one as though no danger were threatening. All Edinburgh was eager to gaze on the wonderful vessels, and great crowds assembled for that purpose on the castle hill and on the heights near the town. ‘But what then can it all mean?’ people said to one another. By a little after six o’clock in the evening more than two hundred ships had cast anchor in Leith roads. The admiral had a ship’s boat launched, which began carefully to take soundings from Granton craigs to East Leith. All sensible men understood what it meant, but if any one of them uttered what he thought, the clerics shrugged their shoulders. All men went to bed, just as if those ships had brought their broadsides to bear for the defence of the sleepers. At daybreak on Sunday, May 4, Lord Lisle, who was in command of the fleet, ordered the disembarkation. The pinnaces and other small vessels approached as near as they could to the shore, while the larger vessels discharged their men into the long-boats, and so they got to land. By ten o’clock the operation was completed, and the spectators from Edinburgh beheld, to their great astonishment, more than ten thousand men under arms. The cardinal and the regent, dropping their false show of calmness, appeared now very much alarmed, and, forgetting their ridiculous bluster and bragging, jumped into a carriage and fled as fast as their horses could carry them. They did not halt till they had put twenty miles of country between them and the danger which frightened them. Before starting they had given orders, for the purpose of pacifying the English, that the earl of Angus, Sir George Douglas, and two other lords, advocates of the English alliance, who had been cast into prison at Blackness, should be set at liberty. This was done that night, and Sir George said, merrily, ‘I thank King Henry and my gentle masters of England.’[324]