The captain, seeing that he had no hopes of getting possession of London, resolved to march westward and meet Edward. By this time, it is probable that he understood what had happened. He therefore ordered his fleet to await him in the Mersey, and marched as far as Kingston-upon-Thames. It is a strange, incongruous story. All his friends were dead: their cause was hopeless: why should he attempt a thing impossible? Because it was Warwick's order? Perhaps, however, he did not think it impossible. At Kingston he was met by Lord Scales and Nicolas Fanute, Mayor of Canterbury, who persuaded him 'by fair words' to return. Accordingly, he marched back to Blackheath, where he dismissed his men, ordering them to go home peaceably. As for himself, with a company of 600--his sailors, one supposes--he rejoined his fleet at Chatham, and took his ships round the coast to Sandwich. Here he waited till Edward came there. He handed over to the King fifty-six ships great and small. The King pardoned him, knighted him, and made him Vice-Admiral of the Fleet. This was in May. Alas! in September we hear that he was taken prisoner at Southampton, carried to Middleham, in Yorkshire, and beheaded, and his head put upon London Bridge. Why? nobody knows. Holinshed suggests that he had been 'roving,' _i.e._ practising as a pirate. But would the Vice-Admiral of the English fleet go off 'roving'? Surely not. I take it as only one more of the thousand murders, perjuries, and treacheries of the worst fifty years that ever stained the history of the country. There was but one complete way of safety for Edward--the death of every man, noble or simple, who might take up arms against him. So the Bastard--this fool who had trusted the King and given him a fleet--was beheaded like all the rest. CHAPTER VIII THE PILGRIMS The town was full of those who carried in their hats the pilgrim's signs. Besides the ordinary insignia of pilgrimage, every shrine had its special signs, which the pilgrim on his return bore conspicuously upon his hat or scrip or hanging round his neck (see Skeat, _Notes to Piers Plowman_) in token that he had accomplished that particular pilgrimage. Thus the ampullæ were the signs of Canterbury; the scallop shell that of St. James of Compostella; the cross keys and the vernicle of Rome--the vernicle was a copy of the handkerchief of St. Veronica, which was miraculously impressed with the face of our Lord. These shrines were cast in lead in the most part. Thus in the supplement to the _Canterbury Tales_, Then as manere and custom is, signes there they bought, For men of contre should know whom they had sought; Eche man set his silver in such thing as they liked, And in the meanwhile the miller had y-piked His barns full of signes of Canterbury brought.