CHAPTER I. THE WHITE LION OF MARCH SHAKES HIS MANE.
“And what news?” asked
Hastings, as he found himself amidst the king’s
squires; while yet was heard the laugh of the tymbesteres,
and yet gliding through the trees might be seen the
retreating form of Sibyll.
“My lord, the king needs you
instantly. A courier has just arrived from the
North. The Lords St. John, Rivers, De Fulke, and
Scales are already with his highness.”
“Where?”
“In the great council chamber.”
To that memorable room [it was from
this room that Hastings was hurried to execution,
June 13, 1483] in the White Tower, in which the visitor,
on entrance, is first reminded of the name and fate
of Hastings, strode the unprophetic lord.
He found Edward not reclining on cushions
and carpets, not womanlike in loose robes, not with
his lazy smile upon his sleek beauty. The king
had doffed his gown, and stood erect in the tight
tunic, which gave in full perfection the splendid
proportions of a frame unsurpassed in activity and
strength. Before him, on the long table, lay two
or three open letters, beside the dagger with which
Edward had cut the silk that bound them. Around
him gravely sat Lord Rivers, Anthony Woodville, Lord
St. John, Raoul de Fulke, the young and valiant D’Eyncourt,
and many other of the principal lords. Hastings
saw at once that something of pith and moment had
occurred; and by the fire in the king’s eye,
the dilation of his nostril, the cheerful and almost
joyous pride of his mien and brow, the experienced
courtier read the signs of war.
“Welcome, brave Hastings,”
said Edward, in a voice wholly changed from its wonted
soft affectation, loud, clear, and thrilling
as it went through the marrow and heart of all who
heard its stirring and trumpet accent, “welcome
now to the field as ever to the banquet! We have
news from the North that bids us brace on the burgonet
and buckle-to the brand, a revolt that
requires a king’s arm to quell. In Yorkshire
fifteen thousand men are in arms, under a leader they
call Robin of Redesdale, the pretext, a
thrave of corn demanded by the Hospital of St. Leonard’s,
the true design that of treason to our realm.
At the same time, we hear from our brother of Gloucester,
now on the Border, that the Scotch have lifted the
Lancaster Rose. There is peril if these two armies
meet. No time to lose, they are saddling
our war-steeds; we hasten to the van of our royal
force. We shall have warm work, my lords.
But who is worthy of a throne that cannot guard it?”
“This is sad tidings indeed,
sire,” said Hastings, gravely.
“Sad! Say it not, Hastings!
War is the chase of kings! Sir Raoul de Fulke,
why lookest thou so brooding and sorrowful?”
“Sire, I but thought that had
Earl Warwick been in England, this ”
“Ha!” interrupted Edward,
haughtily and hastily, “and is Warwick the sun
of heaven that no cloud can darken where his face may
shine? The rebels shall need no foe, my realm
no regent, while I, the heir of the Plantagenets,
have the sword for one, the sceptre for the other.
We depart this evening ere the sun be set.”
“My liege,” said the Lord
St. John, gravely, “on what forces do you count
to meet so formidable an array?”
“All England, Lord of St. John!”
“Alack! my liege, may you not
deceive yourself! But in this crisis it is right
that your leal and trusty subjects should speak out,
and plainly. It seems that these insurgents clamour
not against yourself, but against the queen’s
relations, yes, my Lord Rivers, against
you and your House, and I fear me that
the hearts of England are with them here.”
“It is true, sire,” put
in Raoul de Fulke, boldly; “and if these new
men are to head your armies, the warriors of Towton
will stand aloof, Raoul de Fulke serves
no Woodville’s banner. Frown not, Lord de
Scales! it is the griping avarice of you and yours
that has brought this evil on the king. For you
the commons have been pillaged; for you the daughters
of peers have been forced into monstrous marriages,
at war with birth and with nature herself; for you,
the princely Warwick, near to the throne in blood,
and front and pillar of our time-honoured order of
seigneur and of knight, has been thrust from our suzerain’s
favour. And if now ye are to march at the van
of war, you to be avengers of the strife
of which ye are the cause, I say that the
soldiers will lack heart, and the provinces ye pass
through will be the country of a foe!”
“Vain man!” began Anthony
Woodville, when Hastings laid his hand on his arm,
while Edward, amazed at this outburst from two of the
supporters on whom he principally counted, had the
prudence to suppress his resentment, and remained
silent, but with the aspect of one resolved
to command obedience, when he once deemed it right
to interfere.
“Hold, Sir Anthony!” said
Hastings, who, the moment he found himself with men,
woke to all the manly spirit and profound wisdom that
had rendered his name illustrious “hold,
and let me have the word; my Lords St. John and De
Fulke, your charges are more against me than against
these gentlemen, for I am a new man, a squire
by birth, and proud to derive mine honours from the
same origin as all true nobility, I mean
the grace of a noble liege and the happy fortune of
a soldier’s sword. It may be” (and
here the artful favourite, the most beloved of the
whole court, inclined himself meekly) “it
may be that I have not borne those honours so mildly
as to disarm blame. In the war to be, let me atone.
My liege, hear your servant: give me no command, let
me be a simple soldier, fighting by your side.
My example who will not follow? proud to
ride but as a man of arms along the track which the
sword of his sovereign shall cut through the ranks
of battle! Not you, Lord de Scales, redoubtable
and invincible with lance and axe; let us new men
soothe envy by our deeds; and you, Lords St. John and
De Fulke, you shall teach us how your fathers led
warriors who did not fight more gallantly than we
will. And when rebellion is at rest, when we meet
again in our suzerain’s hall, accuse us new men,
if you can find us faulty, and we will answer you
as we best may.”
This address, which could have come
from no man with such effect as from Hastings, touched
all present. And though the Woodvilles, father
and son, saw in it much to gall their pride, and half
believed it a snare for their humiliation, they made
no opposition. Raoul de Fulke, ever generous
as fiery, stretched forth his hand, and said,
“Lord Hastings, you have spoken
well. Be it as the king wills.”
“My lords,” returned Edward,
gayly, “my will is that ye be friends while
a foe is in the field. Hasten, then, I beseech
you, one and all, to raise your vassals, and join
our standard at Fotheringay. I will find ye posts
that shall content the bravest.”
The king made a sign to break up the
conference, and dismissing even the Woodvilles, was
left alone with Hastings.
“Thou hast served me at need,
Will;” said the king. “But I shall
remember” (and his eye flashed a tiger’s
fire) “the mouthing of those mock-pieces of
the lords at Runnymede. I am no John, to be bearded
by my vassals. Enough of them now. Think
you Warwick can have abetted this revolt?”
“A revolt of peasants and yeomen!
No, sire. If he did so, farewell forever to the
love the barons bear him.”
“Um! and yet Montagu, whom I
dismissed ten days since to the Borders, hearing of
disaffection, hath done nought to check it. But
come what may, his must be a bold lance that shivers
against a king’s mail. And now one kiss
of my lady Bessee, one cup of the bright canary, and
then God and Saint George for the White Rose!”
CHAPTER II. THE CAMP AT OLNEY.
It was some weeks after the citizens
of London had seen their gallant king, at the head
of such forces as were collected in haste in the metropolis,
depart from their walls to the encounter of the rebels.
Surprising and disastrous had been the tidings in the
interim. At first, indeed, there were hopes that
the insurrection had been put down by Montagu, who
had defeated the troops of Robin of Redesdale, near
the city of York, and was said to have beheaded their
leader. But the spirit of discontent was only
fanned by an adverse wind. The popular hatred
to the Woodvilles was so great, that in proportion
as Edward advanced to the scene of action, the country
rose in arms, as Raoul de Fulke had predicted.
Leaders of lordly birth now headed the rebellion; the
sons of the Lords Latimer and Fitzhugh (near kinsmen
of the House of Nevile) lent their names to the cause
and Sir John Coniers, an experienced soldier, whose
claims had been disregarded by Edward, gave to the
insurgents the aid of a formidable capacity for war.
In every mouth was the story of the Duchess of Bedford’s
witchcraft; and the waxen figure of the earl did more
to rouse the people than perhaps the earl himself
could have done in person. As yet,
however, language of the insurgents was tempered with
all personal respect to the king; they declared in
their manifestoes that they desired only the banishment
of the Woodvilles and the recall of Warwick, whose
name they used unscrupulously, and whom they declared
they were on their way to meet. As soon as it
was known that the kinsmen of the beloved earl were
in the revolt, and naturally supposed that the earl
himself must countenance the enterprise, the tumultuous
camp swelled every hour, while knight after knight,
veteran after veteran, abandoned the royal standard.
The Lord d’Eyncourt (one of the few lords of
the highest birth and greatest following over whom
the Neviles had no influence, and who bore the Woodvilles
no grudge) had, in his way to Lincolnshire, where
his personal aid was necessary to rouse his vassals,
infected by the common sedition, been attacked
and wounded by a body of marauders, and thus Edward’s
camp lost one of its greatest leaders. Fierce
dispute broke out in the king’s councils; and
when the witch Jacquetta’s practices against
the earl travelled from the hostile into the royal
camp, Raoul de Fulke, St. John, and others, seized
with pious horror, positively declared they would
throw down their arms and retire to their castles,
unless the Woodvilles were dismissed from the camp
and the Earl of Warwick was recalled to England.
To the first demand the king was constrained to yield;
with the second he temporized. He marched from
Fotheringay to Newark; but the signs of disaffection,
though they could not dismay him as a soldier, altered
his plans as a captain of singular military acuteness;
he fell back on Nottingham, and despatched, with his
own hands, letters to Clarence, the Archbishop of
York, and Warwick. To the last he wrote touchingly.
“We do not believe” (said
the letter) “that ye should be of any such disposition
towards us as the rumour here runneth, considering
the trust and affection we bear you, and
cousin, we think ye shall be to us welcome.”
[Pastón Letters, ccxcviii. (Knight’s edition),
vol. ii. . See also Lingard, vol.
iii. (4to edition), note 43, for the proper
date to be assigned to Edward’s letter to Warwick,
etc.]
But ere these letters reached their
destination, the crown seemed well-nigh lost.
At Edgecote the Earl of Pembroke was defeated and slain,
and five thousand royalists were left on the field.
Earl Rivers and his son, Sir John Woodville, [This
Sir John Woodville was the most obnoxious of the queen’s
brothers, and infamous for the avarice which had led
him to marry the old Duchess of Norfolk, an act which
according to the old laws of chivalry would have disabled
him from entering the lists of knighthood, for the
ancient code disqualified and degraded any knight
who should marry any old woman for her money!
Lord Rivers was the more odious to the people at the
time of the insurrection because, in his capacity
of treasurer, he had lately tampered with the coin
and circulation.] who in obedience to the royal order
had retired to the earl’s country seat of Grafton,
were taken prisoners, and beheaded by the vengeance
of the insurgents. The same lamentable fate befell
the Lord Stafford, on whom Edward relied as one of
his most puissant leaders; and London heard with dismay
that the king, with but a handful of troops, and those
lukewarm and disaffected, was begirt on all sides
by hostile and marching thousands.
From Nottingham, however, Edward made
good his retreat to a village called Olney, which
chanced at that time to be partially fortified with
a wall and a strong gate. Here the rebels pursued
him; and Edward, hearing that Sir Anthony Woodville,
who conceived that the fate of his father and brother
cancelled all motive for longer absence from the contest,
was busy in collecting a force in the neighbourhood
of Coventry, while other assistance might be daily
expected from London, strengthened the fortifications
as well as the time would permit, and awaited the
assault of the insurgents.
It was at this crisis, and while throughout
all England reigned terror and commotion, that one
day, towards the end of July, a small troop of horsemen
were seen riding rapidly towards the neighbourhood
of Olney. As the village came in view of the
cavalcade, with the spire of its church and its gray
stone gateway, so also they beheld, on the pastures
that stretched around wide and far, a moving forest
of pikes and plumes.
“Holy Mother!” said one
of the foremost riders, “good the knight and
strong man though Edward be, it were sharp work to
cut his way from that hamlet through yonder fields!
Brother, we were more welcome, had we brought more
bills and bows at our backs!”
“Archbishop,” answered
the stately personage thus addressed, “we bring
what alone raises armies and disbands them, a
name that a People honours! From the moment
the White Bear is seen on yonder archway side by side
with the king’s banner, that army will vanish
as smoke before the wind.”
“Heaven grant it, Warwick!”
said the Duke of Clarence; “for though Edward
hath used us sorely, it chafes me as Plantagenet and
as prince to see how peasants and varlets can
hem round a king.”
“Peasants and varlets are
pawns in the chessboard, cousin George,” said
the prelate; “and knight and bishop find them
mighty useful when pushing forward to an attack.
Now knight and bishop appear themselves and take up
the game. Warwick,” added the prelate, in
a whisper, unheard by Clarence, “forget not,
while appeasing rebellion, that the king is in your
power.”
“For shame, George! I think
not now of the unkind king; I think only of the brave
boy I dandled on my knee, and whose sword I girded
on at Towton. How his lion heart must chafe,
condemned to see a foe whom his skill as captain tells
him it were madness to confront!”
“Ay, Richard Nevile, ay,”
said the prelate, with a slight sneer, “play
the Paladin, and become the dupe; release the prince,
and betray the people!”
“No! I can be true to both.
Tush! brother, your craft is slight to the plain wisdom
of bold honesty. You slacken your steeds, sirs;
on! on! see the march of the rebels! On, for
an Edward and a Warwick!” and, spurring to full
speed, the little company arrived at the gates.
The loud bugle of the new comers was answered by the
cheerful note of the joyous warder, while dark, slow,
and solemn over the meadows crept on the mighty crowd
of the rebel army.
“We have forestalled the insurgents!”
said the earl, throwing himself from his black steed.
“Marmaduke Nevile, advance our banner; heralds,
announce the Duke of Clarence, the Archbishop of York,
and the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick.”
Through the anxious town, along the
crowded walls and housetops, into the hall of an old
mansion (that then adjoined the church), where the
king, in complete armour, stood at bay, with stubborn
and disaffected officers, rolled the thunder cry,
“A Warwick! a Warwick! all saved! a Warwick!”
Sharply, as he heard the clamour,
the king turned upon his startled council. “Lords
and captains!” said he, with that inexpressible
majesty which he could command in his happier hours,
“God and our Patron Saint have sent us at least
one man who has the heart to fight fifty times the
odds of yon miscreant rabble, by his king’s side,
and for the honour of loyalty and knighthood!”
“And who says, sire,”
answered Raoul de Fulke, “that we, your lords
and captains, would not risk blood and life for our
king and our knighthood in a just cause? But
we will not butcher our countrymen for echoing our
own complaint, and praying your Grace that a grasping
and ambitious family which you have raised to power
may no longer degrade your nobles and oppress your
commons. We shall see if the Earl of Warwick blame
us or approve.”
“And I answer,” said Edward,
loftily, “that whether Warwick approve or blame,
come as friend or foe, I will sooner ride alone through
yonder archway, and carve out a soldier’s grave
amongst the ranks of rebellious war, than be the puppet
of my subjects, and serve their will by compulsion.
Free am I free ever will I be, while the
crown of the Plantagenet is mine, to raise those whom
I love, to defy the threats of those sworn to obey
me. And were I but Earl of March, instead of king
of England, this hall should have swum with the blood
of those who have insulted the friends of my youth,
the wife of my bosom. Off, Hastings! I
need no mediator with my servants. Nor here, nor
anywhere in broad England, have I my equal, and the
king forgives or scorns construe it as
ye will, my lords what the simple gentleman
would avenge.”
It were in vain to describe the sensation
that this speech produced. There is ever something
in courage and in will that awes numbers, though brave
themselves. And what with the unquestioned valour
of Edward; what with the effect of his splendid person,
towering above all present by the head, and moving
lightly, with each impulse, through the mass of a
mail that few there could have borne unsinking, this
assertion of absolute power in the midst of mutiny an
army marching to the gates imposed an unwilling
reverence and sullen silence mixed with anger, that,
while it chafed, admired. They who in peace had
despised the voluptuous monarch, feasting in his palace,
and reclining on the lap of harlot-beauty, felt that
in war all Mars seemed living in his person.
Then, indeed, he was a king; and had the foe, now darkening
the landscape, been the noblest chivalry of France,
not a man there but had died for a smile from that
haughty lip. But the barons were knit heart in
heart with the popular outbreak, and to put down the
revolt seemed to them but to raise the Woodvilles.
The silence was still unbroken, save where the persuasive
whisper of Lord Hastings might be faintly heard in
remonstrance with the more powerful or the more stubborn
of the chiefs, when the tread of steps resounded without,
and, unarmed, bareheaded, the only form in Christendom
grander and statelier than the king’s strode
into the hall.
Edward, as yet unaware what course
Warwick would pursue, and half doubtful whether a
revolt that had borrowed his name and was led by his
kinsmen might not originate in his consent, surrounded
by those to whom the earl was especially dear, and
aware that if Warwick were against him all was lost,
still relaxed not the dignity of his mien; and leaning
on his large two-handed sword, with such inward resolves
as brave kings and gallant gentlemen form, if the
worst should befall, he watched the majestic strides
of his great kinsman, and said, as the earl approached,
and the mutinous captains louted low,
“Cousin, you are welcome! for
truly do I know that when you have aught whereof to
complain, you take not the moment of danger and disaster.
And whatever has chanced to alienate your heart from
me, the sound of the rebel’s trumpet chases
all difference, and marries your faith to mine.”
“Oh, Edward, my king, why did
you so misjudge me in the prosperous hour!”
said Warwick, simply, but with affecting earnestness:
“since in the adverse hour you arede me well?”
As he spoke, he bowed his head, and,
bending his knee, kissed the hand held out to him.
Edward’s face grew radiant,
and, raising the earl, he glanced proudly at the barons,
who stood round, surprised and mute.
“Yes, my lords and sirs, see, it
is not the Earl of Warwick, next to our royal brethren
the nearest subject to the throne, who would desert
me in the day of peril!”
“Nor do we, sire,” retorted
Raoul de Fulke; “you wrong us before our mighty
comrade if you so misthink us. We will fight for
the king, but not for the queen’s kindred; and
this alone brings on us your anger.”
“The gates shall be opened to
ye. Go! Warwick and I are men enough for
the rabble yonder.”
The earl’s quick eye and profound
experience of his time saw at once the dissension
and its causes. Nor, however generous, was he
willing to forego the present occasion for permanently
destroying an influence which he knew hostile to himself
and hurtful to the realm. His was not the generosity
of a boy, but of a statesman. Accordingly, as
Raoul de Fulke ceased, he took up the word.
“My liege, we have yet an hour
good ere the foe can reach the gates. Your brother
and mine accompany me. See, they enter! Please
you, a few minutes to confer with them; and suffer
me, meanwhile, to reason with these noble captains.”
Edward paused; but before the open
brow of the earl fled whatever suspicion might have
crossed the king’s mind.
“Be it so, cousin; but remember
this, to councillors who can menace me
with desertion at such an hour, I concede nothing.”
Turning hastily away, he met Clarence
and the prelate midway in the hall, threw his arm
caressingly over his brother’s shoulder, and,
taking the archbishop by the hand, walked with them
towards the battlements.
“Well, my friends,” said
Warwick, “and what would you of the king?”
“The dismissal of all the Woodvilles,
except the queen; the revocation of the grants and
land accorded to them, to the despoiling the ancient
noble; and, but for your presence, we had demanded
your recall.”
“And, failing these, what your resolve?”
“To depart, and leave Edward
to his fate. These granted, we doubt little but
that the insurgents will disband. These not granted,
we but waste our lives against a multitude whose cause
we must approve.”
“The cause! But ye know
not the real cause,” answered Warwick. “I
know it; for the sons of the North are familiar to
me, and their rising hath deeper meaning than ye deem.
What! have they not decoyed to their head my kinsmen,
the heirs of Latimer and Fitzhugh, and bold Coniers,
whose steel calque should have circled a wiser brain?
Have they not taken my name as their battle-cry?
And do ye think this falsehood veils nothing but the
simple truth of just complaint?”
“Was their rising, then,”
asked St. John, in evident surprise, “wholly
unauthorized by you?”
“So help me Heaven! if I would
resort to arms to redress a wrong, think not that
I myself would be absent from the field! No, my
lords, friends, and captains, time presses; a few
words must suffice to explain what as yet may be dark
to you. I have letters from Montagu and others,
which reached me the same day as the king’s,
and which clear up the purpose of our misguided countrymen.
Ye know well that ever in England, but especially
since the reign of Edward iii., strange, wild
notions of some kind of liberty other than that we
enjoy have floated loose through the land. Among
the commons, a half-conscious recollection that the
nobles are a different race from themselves feeds
a secret rancour and mislike, which, at any fair occasion
for riot, shows itself bitter and ruthless, as
in the outbreak of Cade and others. And if the
harvest fail, or a tax gall, there are never wanting
men to turn the popular distress to the ends of private
ambition or state design. Such a man has been
the true head and front of this commotion.”
“Speak you of Robin of Redesdale,
now dead?” asked one of the captains.
“He is not dead. [The fate of
Robin of Redesdale has been as obscure as most of
the incidents in this most perplexed part of English
history. While some of the chroniclers finish
his career according to the report mentioned in the
text, Fabyan not only more charitably prolongs his
life, but rewards him with the king’s pardon;
and according to the annals of his ancient and distinguished
family (who will pardon, we trust, a license with
one of their ancestry equally allowed by history and
romance), as referred to in Wotton’s “English
Baronetage” (Art. “Hilyard"), and
which probably rests upon the authority of the life
of Richard iii., in Stowe’s “Annals,”
he is represented as still living in the reign of
that king. But the whole account of this famous
demagogue in Wotton is, it must be owned, full of
historical mistakes.] Montagu informs me that the
report was false. He was defeated off York, and
retired for some days into the woods; but it is he
who has enticed the sons of Latimer and Fitzhugh into
the revolt, and resigned his own command to the martial
cunning of Sir John Coniers. This Robin of Redesdale
is no common man. He hath had a clerkly education,
he hath travelled among the Free Towns of Italy, he
hath deep purpose in all he doth; and among his projects
is the destruction of the nobles here, as it was whilome
effected in Florence, the depriving us of all offices
and posts, with other changes, wild to think of and
long to name.”
“And we would have suffered
this man to triumph!” exclaimed De Fulke:
“we have been to blame.”
“Under fair pretence he has
gathered numbers, and now wields an army. I have
reason to know that, had he succeeded in estranging
ye from Edward, and had the king fallen, dead or alive,
into his hands, his object would have been to restore
Henry of Windsor, but on conditions that would have
left king and baron little more than pageants in the
state. I knew this man years ago. I have
watched him since; and, strange though it may seem
to you, he hath much in him that I admire as a subject
and should fear were I a king. Brief, thus runs
my counsel: For our sake and the realm’s
safety, we must see this armed multitude disbanded;
that done, we must see the grievances they with truth
complain of fairly redressed. Think not, my lords,
I avenge my own wrongs alone, when I go with you in
your resolve to banish from the king’s councils
the baleful influence of the queen’s kin.
Till that be compassed, no peace for England.
As a leprosy, their avarice crawls over the nobler
parts of the state, and devours while it sullies.
Leave this to me; and, though we will redress ourselves,
let us now assist our king!”
With one voice the unruly officers
clamoured their assent to all the earl urged, and
expressed their readiness to sally at once from the
gates, and attack the rebels.
“But,” observed an old
veteran, “what are we amongst so many? Here
a handful there an army!”
“Fear not, reverend sir,”
answered Warwick, with an assured smile; “is
not this army in part gathered from my own province
of Yorkshire? Is it not formed of men who have
eaten of my bread and drunk of my cup? Let me
see the man who will discharge one arrow at the walls
which contain Richard Nevile of Warwick. Now
each to your posts, I to the king.”
Like the pouring of new blood into
a decrepit body seemed the arrival, at that feeble
garrison, of the Earl of Warwick. From despair
into the certainty of triumph leaped every heart.
Already at the sight of his banner floating by the
side of Edward’s, the gunner had repaired to
his bombard, the archer had taken up his bow; the
village itself, before disaffected, poured all its
scanty population women, and age, and children to
the walls. And when the earl joined the king upon
the ramparts, he found that able general sanguine
and elated, and pointing out to Clarence the natural
defences of the place. Meanwhile, the rebels,
no doubt apprised by their scouts of the new aid, had
already halted in their march, and the dark swarm
might be seen indistinctly undulating, as bees ere
they settle, amidst the verdure of the plain.
“Well, cousin,” said the
king, “have ye brought these Hotspurs to their
allegiance?”
“Sire, yes,” said Warwick,
gravely; “but we have here no force to resist
yon army.”
“Bring you not succours?”
said the king, astonished. “You must have
passed through London. Have you left no troops
upon the road?”
“I had no time, sire; and London
is well-nigh palsied with dismay. Had I waited
to collect troops, I might have found a king’s
head blackening over those gates.”
“Well,” returned Edward,
carelessly, “few or many, one gentleman is more
worth than a hundred varlets. ‘We are
eno’ for glory,’ as Henry said at
Agincourt.”
“No, sire; you are too skilful
and too wise to believe your boast. These men
we cannot conquer, we must disperse them.”
“By what spell?”
“By their king’s word to redress their
complaints.”
“And banish my queen?”
“Heaven forbid that man should
part those whom God has joined,” returned Warwick.
“Not my lady, your queen, but my lady’s
kindred.”
“Rivers is dead, and gallant
John,” said Edward, sadly; “is not that
enough for revenge?”
“It is not revenge that we require,
but pledges for the land’s safety,” answered
Warwick. “And to be plain, without such
a promise these walls may be your tomb.”
Edward walked apart, strongly debating
within himself. In his character were great contrasts:
no man was more frank in common, no man more false
when it suited; no man had more levity in wanton love,
or more firm affection for those he once thoroughly
took to his heart. He was the reverse of grateful
for service yielded, yet he was warm in protecting
those on whom service was conferred. He was resolved
not to give up the Woodvilles, and after a short self-commune,
he equally determined not to risk his crown and life
by persevering in resistance to the demand for their
downfall. Inly obstinate, outwardly yielding,
he concealed his falsehood with his usual soldierly
grace.
“Warwick,” he said, returning
to the earl’s side, “you cannot advise
me to what is misbeseeming, and therefore in this strait
I resign my conduct to your hands. I will not
unsay to yon mutinous gentlemen what I have already
said; but what you judge it right to promise in my
name to them or to the insurgents, I will not suppose
that mime honour will refuse to concede. But
go not hence, O noblest friend that ever stood by
a king’s throne! go not hence till
the grasp of your hand assures me that all past unkindness
is gone and buried; yea, and by this hand, and while
its pressure is warm in mine, bear not too hard on
thy king’s affection for his lady’s kindred.”
“Sire,” said Warwick,
though his generous nature well-nigh melted into weakness,
and it was with an effort that he adhered to his purpose, “sire,
if dismissed for a while, they shall not be degraded.
And if it be, on consideration, wise to recall from
the family of Woodville your grants of lands and lordships,
take from your Warwick who, rich in his
king’s love, hath eno’ to spare take
the double of what you would recall. Oh, be frank
with me, be true, be steadfast, Edward, and dispose
of my lands, whenever you would content a favourite.”
“Not to impoverish thee, my
Warwick,” answered Edward, smiling, “did
I call thee to my aid; for the rest, my revenues as
Duke of York are at least mine to bestow. Go
now to the hostile camp, go as sole minister
and captain-general of this realm; go with all powers
and honours a king can give; and when these districts
are at peace, depart to our Welsh provinces, as chief
justiciary of that principality. Pembroke’s
mournful death leaves that high post in my gift.
It cannot add to your greatness, but it proves to
England your sovereign’s trust.”
“And while that trust is given,”
said Warwick, with tears in his eyes, “may Heaven
strengthen my arm in battle, and sharpen my brain in
council! But I play the laggard. The sun
wanes westward; it should not go down while a hostile
army menaces the son of Richard of York.”
The earl rode rapidly away, reached
the broad space where his followers still stood, dismounted,
but beside their steeds,
“Trumpets advance, pursuivants
and heralds go before! Marmaduke, mount!
The rest I need not. We ride to the insurgent
camp.”
CHAPTER III. THE CAMP OF THE REBELS.
The rebels had halted about a mile
from the town, and were already pitching their tents
for the night. It was a tumultuous, clamorous,
but not altogether undisciplined array; for Coniers
was a leader of singular practice in reducing men
into the machinery of war, and where his skill might
have failed, the prodigious influence and energy of
Robin of Redesdale ruled the passions and united the
discordant elements. This last was, indeed, in
much worthy the respect in which Warwick held his
name. In times more ripe for him, he would have
been a mighty demagogue and a successful regenerator.
His birth was known but to few; his education and
imperious temper made him vulgarly supposed of noble
origin; but had he descended from a king’s loins,
Robert Hilyard had still been the son of the Saxon
people. Warwick overrated, perhaps, Hilyard’s
wisdom; for, despite his Italian experience, his ideas
were far from embracing any clear and definite system
of democracy. He had much of the frantic levelism
and jacquerie of his age and land, and could probably
not have explained to himself all the changes he desired
to effect; but, coupled with his hatred to the nobles,
his deep and passionate sympathy with the poor, his
heated and fanatical chimeras of a republic, half-political
and half-religious, he had, with no uncommon inconsistency,
linked the cause of a dethroned king. For as the
Covenanters linked with the Stuarts against the succeeding
and more tolerant dynasty, never relinquishing their
own anti-monarchic theories; as in our time, the extreme
party on the popular side has leagued with the extreme
of the aristocratic, in order to crush the medium policy,
as a common foe, so the bold leveller united
with his zeal for Margaret the very cause which the
House of Lancaster might be supposed the least to
favour. He expected to obtain from a sovereign
dependent upon a popular reaction for restoration,
great popular privileges. And as the Church had
deserted the Red Rose for the White, he sought to persuade
many of the Lollards, ever ready to show their discontent,
that Margaret (in revenge on the hierarchy) would
extend the protection they had never found in the
previous sway of her husband and Henry V. Possessed
of extraordinary craft, and even cunning in secular
intrigues, energetic, versatile, bold, indefatigable,
and, above all, marvellously gifted with the arts
that inflame, stir up, and guide the physical force
of masses, Robert Hilyard had been, indeed, the soul
and life of the present revolt; and his prudent moderation
in resigning the nominal command to those whose military
skill and high birth raised a riot into the dignity
of rebellion, had given that consistency and method
to the rising which popular movements never attain
without aristocratic aid.
In the principal tent of the encampment
the leaders of the insurrection were assembled.
There was Sir John Coniers, who had
married one of the Neviles, the daughter of Fauconberg,
Lord High Admiral, but who had profited little by
this remote connection with Warwick; for, with all
his merit, he was a greedy, grasping man, and he had
angered the hot earl in pressing his claims too imperiously.
This renowned knight was a tall, gaunt man, whose
iron frame sixty winters had not bowed. There
were the young heirs of Latimer and Fitzhugh, in gay
gilded armour and scarlet mantelines; and there, in
a plain cuirass, trebly welded, and of immense weight,
but the lower limbs left free and unincumbered in
thick leathern hose, stood Robin of Redesdale.
Other captains there were, whom different motives
had led to the common confederacy. There might
be seen the secret Lollard, hating either Rose, stern
and sour, and acknowledging no leader but Hilyard,
whom he knew as a Lollard’s son; there might
be seen the ruined spendthrift, discontented with
fortune, and regarding civil war as the cast of a
die, death for the forfeiture, lordships
for the gain; there, the sturdy Saxon squire, oppressed
by the little baron of his province, and rather hopeful
to abase a neighbour than dethrone a king of whom
he knew little, and for whom he cared still less; and
there, chiefly distinguished from the rest by grizzled
beard, upturned mustache, erect mien, and grave, not
thoughtful aspect, were the men of a former period, the
soldiers who had fought against the Maid of Are, now
without place, station, or hope in peaceful times,
already half robbers by profession, and decoyed to
any standard that promised action, pay, or plunder.
The conclave were in high and warm debate.
“If this be true,” said
Coniers, who stood at the head of the table, his helmet,
axe, truncheon, and a rough map of the walls of Olney
before him “if this be true, if our
scouts are not deceived, if the Earl of Warwick is
in the village, and if his banner float beside King
Edward’s, I say, bluntly, as soldiers
should speak, that I have been deceived and juggled!”
“And by whom, Sir Knight and
cousin?” said the heir of Fitzhugh, reddening.
“By you, young kinsman, and
this hot-mouthed dare-devil, Robin of Redesdale!
Ye assured me, both, that the earl approved the rising;
that he permitted the levying yon troops in his name;
that he knew well the time was come to declare against
the Woodvilles, and that no sooner was an army mustered
than he would place himself at its bead; and I say,
if this be not true, you have brought these gray hairs
into dishonour!”
“And what, Sir John Coniers,”
exclaimed Robin, rudely, “what honour had your
gray hairs till the steel cap covered them? What
honour, I say, under lewd Edward and his lusty revellers?
You were thrown aside, like a broken scythe, Sir John
Coniers! You were forsaken in your rust!
Warwick himself, your wife’s great kinsman,
could do nought in your favour! You stand now,
leader of thousands, lord of life and death, master
of Edward and the throne! We have done this for
you, and you reproach us!”
“And,” began the heir
of Fitzhugh, encouraged by the boldness of Hilyard,
“we had all reason to believe my noble uncle,
the Earl of Warwick, approved our emprise. When
this brave fellow (pointing to Robin) came to inform
me that, with his own eyes, he had seen the waxen
effigies of my great kinsman, the hellish misdeed
of the queen’s witch-dam, I repaired to my Lord
Montagu; and though that prudent courtier refused
to declare openly, he let me see that war with the
Woodvilles was not unwelcome to him.”
“Yet this same Montagu,”
observed one of the ringleaders, “when Hilyard
was well-nigh at the gates of York, sallied out and
defeated him, sans ruth, sans ceremony.”
“Yes, but he spared my life,
and beheaded the dead body of poor Hugh Withers in
my stead: for John Nevile is cunning, and he picks
his nuts from the brennen without lesing his
own paw. It was not the hour for him to join
us, so he beat us civilly, and with discretion.
But what hath he done since? He stands aloof
while our army swells, while the bull of the Neviles
and the ragged staff of the earl are the ensigns of
our war, and while Edward gnaws out his fierce heart
in yon walls of Olney. How say ye, then, that
Warwick, even if now in person with the king, is in
heart against us? Nay, he may have entered Olney
but to capture the tyrant.”
“If so,” said Coniers,
“all is as it should be: but if Earl Warwick,
who, though he hath treated me ill, is a stour carle,
and to be feared if not loved, join the king, I break
this wand, and ye will seek out another captain.”
“And a captain shall be found!”
cried Robin. “Are we so poor in valour,
that when one man leaves us we are headless and undone?
What if Warwick so betray us and himself, he
brings no forces. And never, by God’s blessing,
should we separate till we have redressed the wrongs
of our countrymen!”
“Good!” said the Saxon
squire, winking, and looking wise, “not
till we have burned to the ground the Baron of Bullstock’s
castle!”
“Not,” said a Lollard,
sternly, “till we have shortened the purple gown
of the churchman; not till abbot and bishop have felt
on their backs the whip wherewith they have scourged
the godly believer and the humble saint.”
“Not,” added Robin, “till
we have assured bread to the poor man, and the filling
of the flesh-pot, and the law to the weak, and the
scaffold to the evil-doer.”
“All this is mighty well,”
said, bluntly, Sir Geoffrey Gates, the leader of the
mercenaries, a skilful soldier, but a predatory and
lawless bravo; “but who is to pay me and my
tall fellows?”
At this pertinent question, there
was a general hush of displeasure and disgust.
“For, look you, my masters,”
continued Sir Geoffrey, “as long as I and my
comrades here believed that the rich earl, who hath
half England for his provant, was at the head or the
tail of this matter, we were contented to wait a while;
but devil a groat hath yet gone into my gipsire; and
as for pillage, what is a farm or a homestead? an’
it were a church or a castle there might be pickings.”
“There is much plate of silver,
and a sack or so of marks and royals, in the
stronghold of the Baron of Bullstock,” quoth
the Saxon squire, doggedly hounding on to his revenge.
“You see, my friends,”
said Coniers, with a smile, and shrugging his shoulders,
“that men cannot gird a kingdom with ropes of
sand. Suppose we conquer and take captive nay,
or slay King Edward, what then?”
“The Duke of Clarence, male
heir to the throne,” said the heir of Latimer,
“is Lord Warwick’s son-in-law, and therefore
akin to you, Sir John.”
“That is true,” observed Coniers, musingly.
“Not ill thought of, sir,”
said Sir Geoffrey Gates; “and my advice is to
proclaim Clarence king and Warwick lord protector.
We have some chance of the angels then.”
“Besides,” said the heir
of Fitzhugh, “our purpose once made clear, it
will be hard either for Warwick or Clarence to go against
us, harder still for the country not to
believe them with us. Bold measures are our wisest
councillors.”
“Um!” said the Lollard,
“Lord Warwick is a good man, and has never,
though his brother be a bishop, abetted the Church
tyrannies. But as for George of Clarence ”
“As for Clarence,” said
Hilyard, who saw with dismay and alarm that the rebellion
he designed to turn at the fitting hour to the service
of Lancaster, might now only help to shift from one
shoulder to the other the hated dynasty of York “as
for Clarence, he hath Edward’s vices without
his manhood.” He paused, and seeing that
the crisis had ripened the hour for declaring himself,
his bold temper pushed at once to its object.
“No!” he continued, folding his arms, raising
his head, and comprehending the whole council in his
keen and steady gaze, “no! lords
and gentlemen, since speak I must in this emergency,
hear me calmly. Nothing has prospered in England
since we abandoned our lawful king. If we rid
ourselves of Edward, let it not be to sink from a harlot-monger
to a drunkard. In the Tower pines our true lord,
already honoured as a saint. Hear me, I say, hear
me out! On the frontiers an army that keeps Gloucester
at bay hath declared for Henry and Margaret. Let
us, after seizing Olney, march thither at once, and
unite forces. Margaret is already prepared to
embark for England. I have friends in London who
will attack the Tower, and deliver Henry. To you,
Sir John Coniers, in the queen’s name, I promise
an earldom and the garter; to you, the heirs of Latimer
and Fitzhugh, the high posts that beseem your birth;
to all of you, knights and captains, just share and
allotment in the confiscated lands of the Woodvilles
and the Yorkists; to you, brethren,” and addressing
the Lollards, his voice softened into a meaning accent
that, compelled to worship in secret, they yet understood,
“shelter from your foes and mild laws; and to
you, brave soldiers, that pay which a king’s
coffers alone can supply. Wherefore I say, down
with all subject-banners! up with the Red Rose and
the Antelope, and long live Henry the Sixth!”
This address, however subtle in its
adaptation to the various passions of those assembled,
however aided by the voice, spirit, and energy of
the speaker, took too much by surprise those present
to produce at once its effect.
The Lollards remembered the fires
lighted for their martyrs by the House of Lancaster;
and though blindly confident in Hilyard, were not yet
prepared to respond to his call. The young heir
of Fitzhugh, who had, in truth, but taken arms to
avenge the supposed wrongs of Warwick, whom he idolized,
saw no object gained in the rise of Warwick’s
enemy, Queen Margaret. The mercenaries called
to mind the woful state of Henry’s exchequer
in the former time. The Saxon squire muttered
to himself, “And what the devil is to become
of the castle of Bullstock?” But Sir Henry Nevile
(Lord Latimer’s son), who belonged to that branch
of his House which had espoused the Lancaster cause,
and who was in the secret councils of Hilyard, caught
up the cry, and said, “Hilyard doth not exceed
his powers; and he who strikes for the Red Rose shall
carve out his own lordship from the manors of every
Yorkist that he slays.” Sir John Coniers
hesitated: poor, long neglected, ever enterprising
and ambitious, he was dazzled by the proffered bribe;
but age is slow to act, and he expressed himself with
the measured caution of gray hairs.
“A king’s name,”
said he, “is a tower of strength, especially
when marching against a king; but this is a matter
for general assent and grave forethought.”
Before any other (for ideas did not
rush at once to words in those days) found his tongue,
a mighty uproar was heard without. It did not
syllable itself into distinct sound; it uttered no
name; it was such a shout as numbers alone could raise;
and to such a shout would some martial leader have
rejoiced to charge to battle, so full of depth and
fervour, and enthusiasm and good heart, it seemed,
leaping from rank to rank, from breast to breast,
from earth to heaven. With one accord the startled
captains made to the entrance of the tent, and there
they saw, in the broad space before them, inclosed
by the tents which were grouped in a wide semicircle, for
the mass of the hardy rebel army slept in the open
air, and the tents were but for leaders, they
saw, we say, in that broad space, a multitude kneeling,
and in the midst, upon his good steed Saladin, bending
graciously down, the martial countenance, the lofty
stature, of the Earl of Warwick. Those among the
captains who knew him not personally recognized him
by the popular description, by the black
war-horse, whose legendary fame had been hymned by
every minstrel; by the sensation his appearance had
created; by the armourial insignia of his heralds,
grouped behind him, and whose gorgeous tabards
blazed with his cognizance and quarterings in azure,
or, and argent. The sun was slowly setting, and
poured its rays upon the bare head of the mighty noble,
gathering round it in the hazy atmosphere like a halo.
The homage of the crowd to that single form, unarmed,
and scarce attended, struck a death-knell to the hopes
of Hilyard, struck awe into all his comrades!
The presence of that one man seemed to ravish from
them, as by magic, a vast army; power, and state,
and command left them suddenly to be absorbed in him!
Captains, they were troopless, the wielder
of men’s hearts was amongst them, and from his
barb assumed reign, as from his throne!
“Gads my life!” said Coniers,
turning to his comrades, “we have now, with
a truth, the earl amongst us; but unless he come to
lead us on to Olney, I would as lief see the king’s
provost at my shoulder.”
“The crowd separates, he rides
this way!” said the heir of Fitzhugh. “Shall
we go forth to meet him?”
“Not so!” exclaimed Hilyard,
“we are still the leaders of this army; let
him find us deliberating on the siege of Olney!”
“Right!” said Coniers;
“and if there come dispute, let not the rabble
hear it.”
The captains re-entered the tent,
and in grave silence awaited the earl’s coming;
nor was this suspense long. Warwick, leaving the
multitude in the rear, and taking only one of the subaltern
officers in the rebel camp as his guide and usher,
arrived at the tent, and was admitted into the council.
The captains, Hilyard alone excepted,
bowed with great reverence as the earl entered.
“Welcome, puissant sir and illustrious
kinsman!” said Coniers, who had decided on the
line to be adopted; “you are come at last to
take the command of the troops raised in your name,
and into your hands I resign this truncheon.”
“I accept it, Sir John Coniers,”
answered Warwick, taking the place of dignity; “and
since you thus constitute me your commander, I proceed
at once to my stern duties. How happens it, knights
and gentlemen, that in my absence ye have dared to
make my name the pretext of rebellion? Speak
thou, my sister’s son!”
“Cousin and lord,” said
the heir of Fitzhugh, reddening but not abashed, “we
could not believe but what you would smile on those
who have risen to assert your wrongs and defend your
life.” And he then briefly related the
tale of the Duchess of Bedford’s waxen effigies,
and pointed to Hilyard as the eye-witness.
“And,” began Sir Henry
Nevile, “you, meanwhile, were banished, seemingly,
from the king’s court; the dissensions between
you and Edward sufficiently the land’s talk,
the king’s vices the land’s shame!
“Nor did we act without at least
revealing our intentions to my uncle and your brother,
the Lord Montagu,” added the heir of Fitzhugh.
“Meanwhile,” said Robin
of Redesdale, “the commons were oppressed, the
people discontented, the Woodvilles plundering, and
the king wasting our substance on concubines and minions.
We have had cause eno’ for our rising!”
The earl listened to each speaker in stern silence.
“For all this,” he said
at last, “you have, without my leave or sanction,
levied armed men in my name, and would have made Richard
Nevile seem to Europe a traitor, without the courage
to be a rebel! Your lives are in my power, and
those lives are forfeit to the laws.”
“If we have incurred your disfavour
from our over-zeal for you,” said the son of
Lord Fitzhugh, touchingly, “take our lives, for
they are of little worth.” And the young
nobleman unbuckled his sword, and laid it on the table.
“But,” resumed Warwick,
not seeming to heed his nephew’s humility, “I,
who have ever loved the people of England, and before
king and parliament have ever pleaded their cause, I,
as captain-general and first officer of these realms,
here declare, that whatever motives of ambition or
interest may have misled men of mark and birth, I believe
that the commons at least never rise in arms without
some excuse for their error. Speak out then,
you, their leaders; and, putting aside all that relates
to me as the one man, say what are the grievances of
which the many would complain.”
And now there was silence, for the
knights and gentlemen knew little of the complaints
of the populace; the Lollards did not dare to expose
their oppressed faith, and the squires and franklins
were too uneducated to detail the grievances they
had felt. But then the immense superiority of
the man of the people at once asserted itself; and
Hilyard, whose eye the earl had hitherto shunned,
lifted his deep voice. With clear precision,
in indignant but not declamatory eloquence, he painted
the disorders of the time, the insolent
exactions of the hospitals and abbeys, the lawless
violence of each petty baron, the weakness of the
royal authority in restraining oppression, its terrible
power in aiding the oppressor. He accumulated
instance on instance of misrule; he showed the insecurity
of property, the adulteration of the coin, the burden
of the imposts; he spoke of wives and maidens violated,
of industry defrauded, of houses forcibly entered,
of barns and granaries despoiled, of the impunity
of all offenders, if high-born, of the punishment of
all complaints, if poor and lowly. “Tell
us not,” he said, “that this is the necessary
evil of the times, the hard condition of mankind.
It was otherwise, Lord Warwick, when Edward first
swayed; for you then made yourself dear to the people
by your justice. Still men talk, hereabouts,
of the golden rule of Earl Warwick; but since you have
been, though great in office, powerless in deed, absent
in Calais, or idle at Middleham, England hath been
but the plaything of the Woodvilles, and the king’s
ears have been stuffed with flattery as with wool.
And,” continued Hilyard, warming with his subject,
and, to the surprise of the Lollards, entering boldly
on their master-grievance “and this
is not all. When Edward ascended the throne,
there was, if not justice, at least repose, for the
persecuted believers who hold that God’s word
was given to man to read, study, and digest into godly
deeds. I speak plainly. I speak of that
faith which your great father Salisbury and many of
the House of York were believed to favour, that
faith which is called the Lollard, and the oppression
of which, more than aught else, lost to Lancaster
the hearts of England. But of late, the Church,
assuming the power it ever grasps the most under the
most licentious kings (for the sinner prince hath
ever the tyrant priest!), hath put in vigour old laws
for the wronging man’s thought and conscience;
[The Lollards had greatly contributed to seat Edward
on the throne; and much of the subsequent discontent,
no doubt, arose from their disappointment, when, as
Sharon Turner well expresses it, “his indolence
allied him to the Church,” and he became “hereticorum
severissimus hostis.” Croyl.,
.] and we sit at our doors under the shade, not
of the vine-tree, but the gibbet. For all these
things we have drawn the sword; and if now, you, taking
advantage of the love borne to you by the sons of
England, push that sword back into the sheath, you,
generous, great, and princely though you be, well
deserve the fate that I foresee and can foretell.
Yes!” cried the speaker, extending his arms,
and gazing fixedly on the proud face of the earl,
which was not inexpressive of emotion “yes!
I see you, having deserted the people, deserted by
them also in your need; I see you, the dupe of an
ungrateful king, stripped of power and honour, an
exile and an outlaw; and when you call in vain upon
the people, in whose hearts you now reign, remember,
O fallen star, son of the morning! that in the hour
of their might you struck down the people’s
right arm, and paralyzed their power. And now,
if you will, let your friends and England’s
champions glut the scaffolds of your woman-king!”
He ceased. A murmur went round
the conclave; every breast breathed hard, every eye
turned to Warwick. That mighty statesman mastered
the effect which the thrilling voice of the popular
pleader produced on him; but at that moment he had
need of all his frank and honourable loyalty to remind
him that he was there but to fulfil a promise and discharge
a trust, that he was the king’s delegate,
not the king’s judge.
“You have spoken, bold men,”
said he, “as, in an hour when the rights of
princes are weighed in one scale, the subject’s
sword in the other, I, were I king, would wish free
men to speak. And now you, Robert Hilyard, and
you, gentlemen, hear me, as envoy to King Edward iv.
To all of you I promise complete amnesty and entire
pardon. His highness believes you misled, not
criminal, and your late deeds will not be remembered
in your future services. So much for the leaders.
Now for the commons. My liege the king is pleased
to recall me to the high powers I once exercised,
and to increase rather than to lessen them. In
his name, I pledge myself to full and strict inquiry
into all the grievances Robin of Redesdale hath set
forth, with a view to speedy and complete redress.
Nor is this all. His highness, laying aside his
purpose of war with France, will have less need of
impost on his subjects, and the burdens and taxes will
be reduced. Lastly, his grace, ever anxious to
content his people, hath most benignly empowered me
to promise that, whether or not ye rightly judge the
queen’s kindred, they will no longer have part
or weight in the king’s councils. The Duchess
of Bedford, as beseems a lady so sorrowfully widowed,
will retire to her own home; and the Lord Scales will
fulfil a mission to the court of Spain. Thus,
then, assenting to all reasonable demands, promising
to heal all true grievances, proffering you gracious
pardon, I discharge my duty to king and to people.
I pray that these unhappy sores may be healed evermore,
under the blessing of God and our patron saint; and
in the name of Edward iv., Lord Suzerain of England
and of France, I break up this truncheon and disband
this army!”
Among those present, this moderate
and wise address produced a general sensation of relief;
for the earl’s disavowal of the revolt took away
all hope of its success. But the common approbation
was not shared by Hilyard. He sprang upon the
table, and, seizing the broken fragments of the truncheon,
which the earl had snapped as a willow twig, exclaimed,
“And thus, in the name of the people, I seize
the command that ye unworthily resign! Oh, yes,
what fools were yonder drudges of the hard hand and
the grimed brow and the leathern jerkin, to expect
succour from knight and noble!”
So saying, he bounded from the tent,
and rushed towards the multitude at the distance.
“Ye knights and lords, men of
blood and birth, were but the tools of a manlier and
wiser Cade!” said Warwick, calmly. “Follow
me.”
The earl strode from the tent, sprang
upon his steed, and was in the midst of the troops
with his heralds by his side, ere Hilyard had been
enabled to begin the harangue he had intended.
Warwick’s trumpets sounded to silence; and the
earl himself, in his loud clear voice, briefly addressed
the immense audience. Master, scarcely less than
Hilyard, of the popular kind of eloquence, which short,
plain, generous, and simple cuts its way
at once through the feelings to the policy, Warwick
briefly but forcibly recapitulated to the commons the
promises he had made to the captains; and as soon as
they heard of taxes removed, the coinage reformed,
the corn thrave abolished, the Woodvilles dismissed,
and the earl recalled to power, the rebellion was at
an end. They answered with a joyous shout his
order to disperse and retire to their homes forthwith.
But the indomitable Hilyard, ascending a small eminence,
began his counter-agitation. The earl saw his
robust form and waving hand, he saw the crowd sway
towards him; and too well acquainted with mankind
to suffer his address, he spurred to the spot, and
turning to Marmaduke, said, in a loud voice, “Marmaduke
Nevile, arrest that man in the king’s name!”
Marmaduke sprang from his steed, and
laid his hand on Hilyard’s shoulder. Not
one of the multitude stirred on behalf of their demagogue.
As before the sun recede the stars, all lesser lights
had died in the blaze of Warwick’s beloved name.
Hilyard griped his dagger, and struggled an instant;
but when he saw the awe and apathy of the armed mob,
a withering expression of disdain passed over his hardy
face.
“Do ye suffer this?” he
said. “Do ye suffer me, who have placed
swords in your hands, to go forth in bonds, and to
the death?”
“The stout earl wrongs no man,”
said a single voice, and the populace echoed the word.
“Sir, then, I care not for life,
since liberty is gone. I yield myself your prisoner.”
“A horse for my captive!”
said Warwick, laughing; “and hear me promise
you, that he shall go unscathed in goods and in limbs.
God wot, when Warwick and the people meet, no victim
should be sacrificed! Hurrah for King Edward
and fair England!”
He waved his plumed cap as he spoke,
and within the walls of Olney was heard the shout
that answered.
Slowly the earl and his scanty troop
turned the rein; as he receded, the multitude broke
up rapidly, and when the moon rose, that camp was a
solitude. [The dispersion of the rebels at Olney is
forcibly narrated by a few sentences, graphic from
their brief simplicity, in the “Pictorial History
of England,” Book V, . “They
(Warwick, etc.) repaired in a very friendly manner
to Olney, where they found Edward in a most unhappy
condition; his friends were dead or scattered, flying
for their lives, or hiding themselves in remote places:
the insurgents were almost upon him. A word from
Warwick sent the insurgents quietly back to the North.”]
Such for our nature is
ever grander in the individual than the mass such
is the power of man above mankind!
CHAPTER IV. THE NORMAN EARL AND THE SAXON DEMAGOGUE CONFER.
On leaving the camp, Warwick rode
in advance of his train, and his countenance was serious
and full of thought. At length, as a turn in the
road hid the little band from the view of the rebels,
the earl motioned to Marmaduke to advance with his
prisoner. The young Nevile then fell back, and
Robin and Warwick rode breast to breast out of hearing
of the rest.
“Master Hilyard, I am well content
that my brother, when you fell into his hands, spared
your life out of gratitude for the favour you once
showed to mine.”
“Your noble brother, my lord,”
answered Robin, dryly, “is, perhaps, not aware
of the service I once rendered you. Methinks he
spared me rather, because, without me, an enterprise
which has shaken the Woodvilles from their roots around
the throne, and given back England to the Neviles,
had been nipped in the bud! Your brother
is a deep thinker!”
“I grieve to hear thee speak
thus of the Lord Montagu. I know that he hath
wilier devices than become, in my eyes, a well-born
knight and a sincere man; but he loves his king, and
his ends are juster than his means. Master Hilyard,
enough of the past evil. Some months after the
field of Hexham, I chanced to fall, when alone, amongst
a band of roving and fierce Lancastrian outlaws.
Thou, their leader, recognizing the crest on my helm,
and mindful of some slight indulgence once shown to
thy strange notions of republican liberty, didst save
me from the swords of thy followers: from that
time I have sought in vain to mend thy fortunes.
Thou hast rejected all mine offers, and I know well
that thou hast lent thy service to the fatal cause
of Lancaster. Many a time I might have given
thee to the law; but gratitude for thy aid in the
needful strait, and to speak sooth, my disdain of all
individual efforts to restore a fallen House, made
me turn my eyes from transgressions which, once made
known to the king, had placed thee beyond pardon.
I see now that thou art a man of head and arm to bring
great danger upon nations; and though this time Warwick
bids thee escape and live, if once more thou offend,
know me only as the king’s minister. The
debt between us is now cancelled. Yonder lies
the path that conducts to the forest. Farewell.
Yet stay! poverty may have led thee into
treason?”
“Poverty,” interrupted
Hilyard, “poverty, Lord Warwick, leads
men to sympathize with the poor, and therefore I have
done with riches.” He paused, and his breast
heaved. “Yet,” he added sadly, “now
that I have seen the cowardice and ingratitude of
men, my calling seems over, and my spirit crushed.”
“Alas!” said Warwick,
“whether man be rich or poor, ingratitude is
the vice of men; and you, who have felt it from the
mob, menace me with it from the king. But each
must carve out his own way through this earth, without
over care for applause or blame; and the tomb is the
sole judge of mortal memory.”
Robin looked hard at the earl’s
face, which was dark and gloomy, as he thus spoke,
and approaching nearer, he said, “Lord Warwick,
I take from you liberty and life the more willingly,
because a voice I cannot mistake tells me, and hath
long told, that, sooner or later, time will bind us
to each other. Unlike other nobles, you have owed
your power not so much to lordship, land, and birth,
and a king’s smile, as to the love you have
nobly won; you alone, true knight and princely Christian, you
alone, in war, have spared the humble; you alone, stalwart
and resistless champion, have directed your lance
against your equals, and your order hath gone forth
to the fierce of heart, ’Never smite the commons!’
In peace, you alone have stood up in your haughty parliament
for just law or for gentle mercy; your castle hath
had a board for the hungry and a shelter for the houseless;
your pride, which hath bearded kings and humbled upstarts,
hath never had a taunt for the lowly; and therefore
I son of the people in the people’s
name, bless you living, and sigh to ask whether a
people’s gratitude will mourn you dead!
Beware Edward’s false smile, beware Clarence’s
fickle faith, beware Gloucester’s inscrutable
wile! Mark, the sun sets! and while
we speak, yon dark cloud gathers over your plumed
head.”
He pointed to the heavens as he ceased,
and a low roll of gathering thunder seemed to answer
his ominous warning. Without tarrying for the
earl’s answer, Hilyard shook the reins of his
steed, and disappeared in the winding of the lane
through which he took his way.
CHAPTER V. WHAT FAITH EDWARD IV. PURPOSETH TO KEEP WITH EARL AND PEOPLE.
Edward received his triumphant envoy
with open arms and profuse expressions of gratitude.
He exerted himself to the utmost in the banquet that
crowned the day, not only to conciliate the illustrious
new comers, but to remove from the minds of Raoul
de Fulke and his officers all memory of their past
disaffection. No gift is rarer or more successful
in the intrigues of life than that which Edward eminently
possessed, namely, the hypocrisy of frankness.
Dissimulation is often humble, often polished, often
grave, sleek, smooth, decorous; but it is rarely gay
and jovial, a hearty laughter, a merry, cordial, boon
companion. Such, however, was the felicitous craft
of Edward iv.; and, indeed, his spirits were
naturally so high, his good humour so flowing, that
this joyous hypocrisy cost him no effort. Elated
at the dispersion of his foes, at the prospect of
his return to his ordinary life of pleasure, there
was something so kindly and so winning in his mirth,
that he subjugated entirely the fiery temper of Raoul
de Fulke and the steadier suspicions of the more thoughtful
St. John. Clarence, wholly reconciled to Edward,
gazed on him with eyes swimming with affection, and
soon drank himself into uproarious joviality.
The archbishop, more reserved, still animated the
society by the dry and epigrammatic wit not uncommon
to his learned and subtle mind. But Warwick in
vain endeavoured to shake off an uneasy, ominous gloom.
He was not satisfied with Edward’s avoidance
of discussion upon the grave matters involved in the
earl’s promise to the insurgents, and his masculine
spirit regarded with some disdain, and more suspicion,
a levity that he considered ill-suited to the emergence.
The banquet was over, and Edward,
having dismissed his other attendants, was in his
chamber with Lord Hastings, whose office always admitted
him to the wardrobe of the king.
Edward’s smile had now left
his lip; he paced the room with a hasty stride, and
then suddenly opening the casement, pointed to the
landscape without, which lay calm and suffused in
moonlight.
“Hastings,” said he, abruptly,
“a few hours since and the earth grew spears!
Behold the landscape now!”
“So vanish all the king’s enemies!”
“Ay, man, ay, if
at the king’s word, or before the king’s
battle-axe; but at a subject’s command No,
I am not a king while another scatters armies in my
realm at his bare will. ’Fore Heaven, this
shall not last!”
Hastings regarded the countenance
of Edward, changed from affable beauty into terrible
fierceness, with reflections suggested by his profound
and mournful wisdom. “How little a man’s
virtues profit him in the eyes of men!” thought
he. “The subject saves the crown, and the
crown’s wearer never pardons the presumption!”
“You do not speak, sir!”
exclaimed Edward, irritated and impatient. “Why
gaze you thus on me?”
“Beau sire,” returned
the favourite, calmly, “I was seeking to discover
if your pride spoke, or your nobler nature.”
“Tush!” said the king,
petulantly, “the noblest part of a king’s
nature is his pride as king!” Again he strode
the chamber, and again halted. “But the
earl hath fallen into his own snare, he
hath promised in my name what I will not perform.
Let the people learn that their idol hath deceived
them. He asks me to dismiss from the court the
queen’s mother and kindred!”
Hastings, who in this went thoroughly
with the earl and the popular feeling, and whose only
enemies in England were the Woodvilles, replied simply,
“These are cheap terms, sire,
for a king’s life and the crown of England.”
Edward started, and his eyes flashed
that cold, cruel fire, which makes eyes of a light
colouring so far more expressive of terrible passions
than the quicker and warmer heat of dark orbs.
“Think you so, sir? By God’s blood,
he who proffered them shall repent it in every vein
of his body! Hark ye, William Hastings de Hastings,
I know you to be a deep and ambitious man; but better
for you had you covered that learned brain under the
cowl of a mendicant friar than lent one thought to
the counsels of the Earl of Warwick.”
Hastings, who felt even to fondness
the affection which Edward generally inspired in those
about his person, and who, far from sympathizing,
except in hate of the Woodvilles, with the earl, saw
that beneath that mighty tree no new plants could
push into their fullest foliage, reddened with anger
at this imperious menace.
“My liege,” said he, with
becoming dignity and spirit, “if you can thus
address your most tried confidant and your lealest
friend, your most dangerous enemy is yourself.”
“Stay, man,” said the
king, softening. “I was over warm, but the
wild beast within me is chafed. Would Gloucester
were here!”
“I can tell you what would be
the counsels of that wise young prince, for I know
his mind,” answered Hastings.
“Ay, he and you love each other well. Speak
out.”
“Prince Richard is a great reader
of Italian lere. He saith that those small States
are treasuries of all experience. From that lere
Prince Richard would say to you, ’Where a subject
is so great as to be feared, and too much beloved
to be destroyed, the king must remember how Tarpeia
was crushed.”
“I remember naught of Tarpeia, and I detest
parables.”
“Tarpeia, sire (it is a story
of old Rome), was crushed under the weight of presents.
Oh, my liege,” continued Hastings, warming with
that interest which an able man feels in his own superior
art, “were I king for a year, by the end of
it Warwick should be the most unpopular (and therefore
the weakest) lord in England!”
“And how, O wise in thine own conceit?”
“Beau sire,” resumed Hastings,
not heeding the rebuke and strangely enough
he proceeded to point out, as the means of destroying
the earl’s influence, the very method that the
archbishop had detailed to Montagu as that which would
make the influence irresistible and permanent “Beau
sire,” resumed Hastings, “Lord Warwick
is beloved by the people, because they consider him
maltreated; he is esteemed by the people, because they
consider him above all bribe; he is venerated by the
people, because they believe that in all their complaints
and struggles he is independent (he alone) of the
king. Instead of love, I would raise envy; for
instead of cold countenance I would heap him with grace.
Instead of esteem and veneration I would raise suspicion;
for I would so knit him to your House, that he could
not stir hand or foot against you; I would make his
heirs your brothers. The Duke of Clarence hath
married one daughter, wed the other to
Lord Richard. Betroth your young princess to
Montagu’s son, the representative of all the
Neviles. The earl’s immense possessions
must thus ultimately pass to your own kindred.
The earl himself will be no longer a power apart from
the throne, but a part of it. The barons will
chafe against one who half ceases to be of their order,
and yet monopolizes their dignities; the people will
no longer see in the earl their champion, but a king’s
favourite and deputy. Neither barons nor people
will flock to his banner.”
“All this is well and wise,”
said Edward, musing; “but meanwhile my queen’s
blood? Am I to reign in a solitude? for
look you, Hastings, you know well that, uxorious as
fools have deemed me, I had purpose and design in
the elevation of new families; I wished to raise a
fresh nobility to counteract the pride of the old,
and only upon new nobles can a new dynasty rely.”
“My Lord, I will not anger you
again; but still, for a while, the queen’s relations
will do well to retire.”
“Good night, Hastings,”
interrupted Edward, abruptly, “my pillow in this
shall be my counsellor.”
Whatever the purpose solitude and
reflection might ripen in the king’s mind, he
was saved from immediate decision by news, the next
morning, of fresh outbreaks. The commons had
risen in Lincolnshire and the county of Warwick; and
Anthony Woodville wrote word that, if the king would
but show himself among the forces he had raised near
Coventry, all the gentry around would rise against
the rebellious rabble. Seizing advantage of these
tidings, borne to him by his own couriers, and eager
to escape from the uncertain soldiery quartered at
Olney, Edward, without waiting to consult even with
the earl, sprang to horse, and his trumpets were the
first signal of departure that he deigned to any one.
This want of ceremony displeased the
pride of Warwick; but he made no complaint, and took
his place by the king’s side, when Edward said
shortly,
“Dear cousin, this is a time
that needs all our energies. I ride towards Coventry,
to give head and heart to the raw recruits I shall
find there; but I pray you and the archbishop to use
all means, in this immediate district, to raise fresh
troops; for at your name armed men spring up from
pasture and glebe, dyke and hedge. Join what troops
you can collect in three days with mine at Coventry,
and, ere the sickle is in the harvest, England shall
be at peace. God speed you! Ho! there, gentlemen,
away! a franc étrier!”
Without pausing for reply, for
he wished to avoid all questioning, lest Warwick might
discover that it was to a Woodville that he was bound, the
king put spurs to his horse, and, while his men were
yet hurrying to and fro, rode on almost alone, and
was a good mile out of the town before the force led
by St. John and Raoul de Fulke, and followed by Hastings,
who held no command, overtook him.
“I misthink the king,”
said Warwick, gloomily; “but my word is pledged
to the people, and it shall be kept.”
“A man’s word is best
kept when his arm is the strongest,” said the
sententious archbishop; “yesterday, you dispersed
an army; to-day, raise one!”
Warwick answered not, but, after a
moment’s thought, beckoned to Marmaduke.
“Kinsman,” said he, “spur
on, with ten of my little company, to join the king.
Report to me if any of the Woodvilles be in his camp
near Coventry.”
“Whither shall I send the report?”
“To my castle of Warwick.”
Marmaduke bowed his head, and, accustomed
to the brevity of the earl’s speech, proceeded
to the task enjoined him. Warwick next summoned
his second squire.
“My lady and her children,”
said he, “are on their way to Middleham.
This paper will instruct you of their progress.
Join them with all the rest of my troop, except my
heralds and trumpeters; and say that I shall meet
them ere long at Middleham.”
“It is a strange way to raise
an army,” said the archbishop, dryly, “to
begin by getting rid of all the force one possesses!”
“Brother,” answered the
earl, “I would fain show my son-in-law, who may
be the father of a line of kings, that a general may
be helpless at the head of thousands, but that a man
may stand alone who has the love of a nation.”
“May Clarence profit by the
lesson! Where is he all this while?”
“Abed,” said the stout
earl, with a slight accent of disdain; and then, in
a softer voice, he added, “youth is ever luxurious.
Better the slow man than the false one.”
Leaving Warwick to discharge the duty
enjoined him, we follow the dissimulating king.
CHAPTER VI. WHAT BEFALLS KING EDWARD ON HIS ESCAPE FROM OLNEY.
As soon as Edward was out of sight
of the spire of Olney, he slackened his speed, and
beckoned Hastings to his side.
“Dear Will,” said the
king, “I have thought over thy counsel, and will
find the occasion to make experiment thereof.
But, methinks, thou wilt agree with me that concessions
come best from a king who has an army of his own.
’Fore Heaven, in the camp of a Warwick I have
less power than a lieutenant! Now mark me.
I go to head some recruits raised in haste near Coventry.
The scene of contest must be in the northern counties.
Wilt thou, for love of me, ride night and day, thorough
brake, thorough briar, to Gloucester on the Borders?
Bid him march, if the Scot will let him, back to York;
and if he cannot himself quit the Borders, let him
send what men can be spared under thy banner.
Failing this, raise through Yorkshire all the men-at-arms
thou canst collect. But, above all, see Montagu.
Him and his army secure at all hazards. If he
demur, tell him his son shall marry his king’s
daughter, and wear the coronal of a duke. Ha,
ha! a large bait for so large a fish! I see this
is no casual outbreak, but a general convulsion of
the realm; and the Earl of Warwick must not be the
only man to smile or to frown back the angry elements.”
“In this, beau sire,”
answered Hastings, “you speak as a king and
a warrior should, and I will do my best to assert your
royal motto, ’Modus et ordo.’
If I can but promise that your Highness has for a
while dismissed the Woodville lords, rely upon it that
ere two months I will place under your truncheon an
army worthy of the liege lord of hardy England.”
“Go, dear Hastings, I trust
all to thee!” answered the king. The nobleman
kissed his sovereign’s extended hand, closed
his visor, and, motioning to his body-squire to follow
him, disappeared down a green lane, avoiding such
broader thoroughfares as might bring him in contact
with the officers left at Olney.
In a small village near Coventry Sir
Anthony Woodville had collected about two thousand
men, chiefly composed of the tenants and vassals of
the new nobility, who regarded the brilliant Anthony
as their head. The leaders were gallant and ambitious
gentlemen, as they who arrive at fortunes above their
birth mostly are; but their vassals were little to
be trusted. For in that day clanship was still
strong, and these followers had been bred in allegiance
to Lancastrian lords, whose confiscated estates were
granted to the Yorkist favourites. The shout
that welcomed the arrival of the king was therefore
feeble and lukewarm; and, disconcerted by so chilling
a reception, he dismounted, in less elevated spirits
than those in which he had left Olney, at the pavilion
of his brother-in-law.
The mourning-dress of Anthony, his
countenance saddened by the barbarous execution of
his father and brother, did not tend to cheer the king.
But Woodville’s account of the
queen’s grief and horror at the afflictions
of her House, and of Jacquetta’s indignation
at the foul language which the report of her practices
put into the popular mouth, served to endear to the
king’s mind the family that he considered unduly
persecuted. Even in the coldest breasts affection
is fanned by opposition, and the more the queen’s
kindred were assailed, the more obstinately Edward
clung to them. By suiting his humour, by winking
at his gallantries, by a submissive sweetness of temper,
which soothed his own hasty moods, and contrasted
with the rough pride of Warwick and the peevish fickleness
of Clarence, Elizabeth had completely wound herself
into the king’s heart. And the charming
graces, the elegant accomplishments, of Anthony Woodville
were too harmonious with the character of Edward,
who in all except truth and honour was
the perfect model of the gay gentilhomme
of the time, not to have become almost a necessary
companionship. Indolent natures may be easily
ruled, but they grow stubborn when their comforts
and habits are interfered with. And the whole
current of Edward’s merry, easy life seemed to
him to lose flow and sparkle if the faces he loved
best were banished, or even clouded.
He was yet conversing with Woodville,
and yet assuring him that, however he might temporize,
he would never abandon the interests of his queen’s
kindred, when a gentleman entered aghast, to report
that the Lords St. John and de Fulke, on hearing that
Sir Anthony Woodville was in command of the forces,
had, without even dismounting, left the camp, and carried
with them their retainers, amounting to more than half
of the little troop that rode from Olney.
“Let them go,” said Edward,
frowning; “a day shall dawn upon their headless
trunks!”
“Oh, my king,” said Anthony,
now Earl of Rivers, who, by far the least
selfish of his House, was struck with remorse at the
penalty Edward paid for his love marriage, “now
that your Highness can relieve me of my command, let
me retire from the camp. I would fain go a pilgrim
to the shrine of Compostella to pray for my father’s
sins and my sovereign’s weal.”
“Let us first see what forces
arrive from London,” answered the king.
“Richard ere long will be on the march from the
frontiers, and whatever Warwick resolves, Montagu,
whose heart I hold in my hand, will bring his army
to my side. Let us wait.”
But the next day brought no reinforcements,
nor the next; and the king retired betimes to his
tent, in much irritation and perplexity; when at the
dead of the night he was startled from slumber by the
tramp of horses, the sound of horns, the challenge
of the sentinels, and, as he sprang from his couch,
and hurried on his armour in alarm, the Earl of Warwick
abruptly entered. The earl’s face was stern,
but calm and sad; and Edward’s brave heart beat
loud as he gazed on his formidable subject.
“King Edward,” said Warwick,
slowly and mournfully, “you have deceived me!
I promised to the commons the banishment of the Woodvilles,
and to a Woodville you have flown.”
“Your promise was given to rebels,
with whom no faith can be held; and I passed from
a den of mutiny to the camp of a loyal soldier.”
“We will not now waste words,
king,” answered Warwick. “Please you
to mount and ride northward. The Scotch have
gained great advantages on the marches. The Duke
of Gloucester is driven backwards. All the Lancastrians
in the North have risen. Margaret of Anjou is
on the coast of Normandy, [at this time Margaret was
at Harfleur Will. Wyre] ready to set
sail at the first decisive victory of her adherents.”
“I am with you,” answered
Edward; “and I rejoice to think that at last
I may meet a foe. Hitherto it seems as if I had
been chased by shadows. Now may I hope to grasp
the form and substance of danger and of battle.”
“A steed prepared for your Grace awaits you.”
“Whither ride we first?”
“To my castle of Warwick, hard
by. At noon to-morrow all will be ready for our
northward march.”
Edward, by this time having armed
himself, strode from the tent into the open air.
The scene was striking: the moon was extremely
bright and the sky serene, but around the tent stood
a troop of torch-bearers, and the red glare shone
luridly upon the steel of the serried horsemen and
the banners of the earl, in which the grim white bear
was wrought upon an ebon ground, quartered with the
dun bull, and crested in gold with the eagle of the
Monthermers. Far as the king’s eye could
reach, he saw but the spears of Warwick; while a confused
hum in his own encampment told that the troops Anthony
Woodville had collected were not yet marshalled into
order. Edward drew back.
“And the Lord Anthony of Scales
and Rivers?” said he, hesitatingly.
“Choose, king, between the Lord
Anthony of Scales and Rivers and Richard Nevile!”
answered Warwick, in a stern whisper.
Edward paused, and at that moment
Anthony himself emerged from his tent (which adjoined
the king’s) in company with the Archbishop of
York, who had rode thither in Warwick’s train.
“My liege,” said that
gallant knight, putting his knee to the ground, “I
have heard from the archbishop the new perils that
await your Highness, and I grieve sorely that, in
this strait, your councillors deem it meet to forbid
me the glory of fighting or falling by your side!
I know too well the unhappy odium attached to my House
and name in the northern parts, to dispute the policy
which ordains my absence from your armies. Till
these feuds are over, I crave your royal leave to quit
England, and perform my pilgrimage to the sainted
shrine of Compostella.”
A burning flush passed over the king’s
face as he raised his brother-in-law, and clasped
him to his bosom.
“Go or stay, as you will, Anthony!”
said he; “but let these proud men know that
neither time nor absence can tear you from your king’s
heart. But envy must have its hour Lord Warwick,
I attend you; but it seems rather as your prisoner
than your liege.”
Warwick made no answer: the king
mounted, and waved his hand to Anthony. The torches
tossed to and fro, the horns sounded, and in a silence
moody and resentful on either part Edward and his
terrible subject rode on to the towers of Warwick.
The next day the king beheld with
astonishment the immense force that, in a time so
brief, the earl had collected round his standard.
From his casement, which commanded
that lovely slope on which so many a tourist now gazes
with an eye that seeks to call back the stormy and
chivalric past, Edward beheld the earl on his renowned
black charger, reviewing the thousands that, file
on file and rank on rank, lifted pike and lance in
the cloudless sun.
“After all,” muttered
the king, “I can never make a new noble a great
baron! And if in peace a great baron overshadows
the throne, in time of war a great baron is a throne’s
bulwark! Gramercy, I had been mad to cast away
such an army, an army fit for a king to
lead! They serve Warwick now; but Warwick is
less skilful in the martial art than I, and soldiers,
like hounds, love best the most dexterous huntsman!”
CHAPTER VII. HOW KING EDWARD ARRIVES AT THE CASTLE OF MIDDLEHAM.
On the ramparts of feudal Middleham,
in the same place where Anne had confessed to Isabel
the romance of her childish love, again the sisters
stood, awaiting the coming of their father and the
king. They had only, with their mother, reached
Middleham two days before, and the preceding night
an advanced guard had arrived at the castle to announce
the approach of the earl with his royal comrade and
visitor. From the heights, already they beheld
the long array winding in glorious order towards the
mighty pile.
“Look!” exclaimed Isabel,
“look! already methinks I see the white steed
of Clarence. Yes! it is he! it is my George, my
husband! The banner borne before shows his device.”
“Ah, happy Isabel!” said
Anne, sighing; “what rapture to await the coming
of him one loves!”
“My sweet Anne,” returned
Isabel, passing her arm tenderly round her sister’s
slender waist, “when thou hast conquered the
vain folly of thy childhood, thou wilt find a Clarence
of thine own. And yet,” added the young
duchess, smiling, “it must be the opposite of
a Clarence to be to thy heart what a Clarence is to
mine. I love George’s gay humour, thou
lovest a melancholy brow. I love that charming
weakness which supples to my woman will, thou
lovest a proud nature that may command thine own.
I do not respect George less, because I know my mind
stronger than his own; but thou (like my gentle mother)
wouldst have thy mate lord and chief in all things,
and live from his life as the shadow from the sun.
But where left you our mother?”
“In the oratory, at prayer.”
“She has been sad of late.”
“The dark times darken her;
and she ever fears the king’s falseness or caprice
will stir the earl up to some rash emprise. My
father’s letter, brought last night to her,
contains something that made her couch sleepless.”
“Ha!” exclaimed the duchess,
eagerly, “my mother confides in thee more than
me. Saw you the letter?”
“No.”
“Edward will make himself unfit
to reign,” said Isabel, abruptly. “The
barons will call on him to resign; and then and
then, Anne sister Anne, Warwick’s
daughters cannot be born to be simple subjects!”
“Isabel, God temper your ambition!
Oh, curb it, crush it down! Abuse not your influence
with Clarence. Let not the brother aspire to the
brother’s crown.”
“Sister, a king’s diadem
covers all the sins schemed in the head that wins
it!”
As the duchess spoke, her eyes flashed
and her form dilated. Her beauty seemed almost
terrible.
The gentle Anne gazed and shuddered;
but ere she found words to rebuke, the lovely shape
of the countess-mother was seen moving slowly towards
them. She was dressed in her robes of state to
receive her kingly guest; the vest fitting high to
the throat, where it joined the ermine tippet, and
thickly sown with jewels; the sleeves tight, with the
second or over sleeves, that, loose and large, hung
pendent and sweeping even to the ground; and the gown,
velvet of cramousin, trimmed with ermine, made
a costume not less graceful than magnificent, and
which, where compressed, set off the exquisite symmetry
of a form still youthful, and where flowing added
majesty to a beauty naturally rather soft and feminine
than proud and stately. As she approached her
children, she looked rather like their sister than
their mother, as if Time, at least, shrunk from visiting
harshly one for whom such sorrows were reserved.
The face of the countess was so sad
in its aspect of calm and sweet resignation that even
the proud Isabel was touched; and kissing her mother’s
hand, she asked if any ill tidings preceded her father’s
coming.
“Alas, my Isabel, the times
themselves are bad tidings! Your youth scarcely
remembers the days when brother fought against brother,
and the son’s sword rose against the father’s
breast. But I, recalling them, tremble to hear
the faintest murmur that threatens a civil war.”
She paused, and forcing a smile to her lips, added,
“Our woman fears must not, however, sadden our
lords with an unwelcome countenance; for men returning
to their hearths have a right to a wife’s smile;
and so, Isabel, thou and I, wives both, must forget
the morrow in to-day. Hark! the trumpets sound
near and nearer! let us to the hall.”
Before, however, they had reached
the castle, a shrill blast rang at the outer gate.
The portcullis was raised; the young Duke of Clarence,
with a bridegroom’s impatience, spurred alone
through the gloomy arch, and Isabel, catching sight
of his countenance lifted towards the ramparts, uttered
a cry, and waved her hand. Clarence beard and
saw, leaped from his steed, and had clasped Isabel
to his breast, almost before Anne or the countess
had recognized the new comer.
Isabel, however, always stately, recovered
in an instant from the joy she felt at her lord’s
return, and gently escaping his embrace, she glanced
with a blush towards the battlements crowded with retainers;
Clarence caught and interpreted the look.
“Well, belle mere,” he
said, turning to the countess, “and if yon faithful
followers do witness with what glee a fair bride inspires
a returning bridegroom, is there cause for shame in
this cheek of damascene?”
“Is the king still with my father?”
asked Isabel, hastily, and interrupting the countess’s
reply.
“Surely, yes; and hard at hand.
And pardon me that I forgot, dear lady, to say that
my royal brother has announced his intention of addressing
the principal officers of the army in Middleham Hall.
This news gave me fair excuse for hastening to you
and Isabel.”
“All is prepared for his highness,”
said the countess, “save our own homage.
We must quicken our steps; come, Anne.”
The countess took the arm of the younger sister, while
the duchess made a sign to Clarence. He lingered
behind, and Isabel, drawing him aside, asked,
“Is my father reconciled to Edward?”
“No, nor Edward to him.”
“Good! The king has no soldiers of his
own amidst yon armed train?”
“Save a few of Anthony Woodville’s
recruits, none. Raoul de Fulke and St. John have
retired to their towers in sullen dudgeon. But
have you no softer questions for my return, bella
mia?”
“Pardon me, many my king.”
“King!”
“What other name should the successor of Edward
iv. bear?”
“Isabel,” said Clarence,
in great emotion, “what is it you would tempt
me to? Edward iv. spares the life of Henry
vi., and shall Edward iv.’s brother
conspire against his own?”
“Saints forefend!” exclaimed
Isabel; “can you so wrong my honest meaning?
O George! can you conceive that your wife Warwick’s
daughter harbours the thought of murder?
No! surely the career before you seems plain and spotless!
Can Edward reign? Deserted by the barons, and
wearing away even my father’s long-credulous
love; odious! except in luxurious and unwarlike London,
to all the commons how reign? What
other choice left? none, save Henry of Lancaster
or George of York.”
“Were it so!” said the
weak duke; and yet be added falteringly, “believe
me, Warwick meditates no such changes in my favour.”
“Time is a rapid ripener,”
answered Isabel; “but hark! they are lowering
the drawbridge for our guests.”
CHAPTER VIII. THE ANCIENTS RIGHTLY GAVE TO THE GODDESS OF ELOQUENCE A
CROWN.
The lady of Warwick stood at the threshold
of the porch, which, in the inner side of the broad
quadrangle, admitted to the apartments used by the
family; and, heading the mighty train that, line after
line, emerged through the grim jaws of the arch, came
the earl on his black destrier, and the
young king.
Even where she stood, the anxious
chatelaine beheld the moody and gloomy air with which
Edward glanced around the strong walls of the fortress,
and up to the battlements that bristled with the pikes
and sallets of armed men, who looked on the pomp below,
in the silence of military discipline.
“Oh, Anne!” she whispered
to her youngest daughter, who stood beside her, “what
are women worth in the strife of men? Would that
our smiles could heal the wounds which a taunt can
make in a proud man’s heart!”
Anne, affected and interested by her
mother’s words, and with a secret curiosity
to gaze upon the man who ruled on the throne of the
prince she loved, came nearer and more in front; and
suddenly, as he turned his head, the king’s
regard rested upon her intent eyes and blooming face.
“Who is that fair donzell, cousin of Warwick?”
he asked.
“My daughter, sire.”
“Ah, your youngest! I have not seen
her since she was a child.”
Edward reined in his charger, and
the earl threw himself from his selle, and held the
king’s stirrup to dismount. But he did so
with a haughty and unsmiling visage. “I
would be the first, sire,” said he, with a slight
emphasis, and as if excusing to himself his condescension,
“to welcome to Middleham the son of Duke Richard.”
“And your suzerain, my lord
earl,” added Edward, with no less proud a meaning,
and leaning his hand lightly on Warwick’s shoulder,
he dismounted slowly. “Rise, lady,”
he said, raising the countess, who knelt at the porch,
“and you too, fair demoiselle. Pardieu,
we envy the knee that hath knelt to you.”
So saying, with royal graciousness, he took the countess’s
hand, and they entered the hall as the musicians, in
the gallery raised above, rolled forth their stormy
welcome.
The archbishop, who had followed close
to Warwick and the king, whispered now to his brother,
“Why would Edward address the captains?”
“I know not.”
“He hath made himself familiar with many in
the march.”
“Familiarity with a steel casque
better becomes a king than waisall with a greasy flat-cap.”
“You do not fear lest he seduce from the White
Bear its retainers?”
“As well fear that he can call
the stars from their courses around the sun.”
While these words were interchanged,
the countess conducted the king to a throne-chair
raised upon the dais, by the side of which were placed
two seats of state, and, from the dais, at the same
time, advanced the Duke and Duchess of Clarence.
The king prevented their kneeling, and kissed Isabel
slightly and gravely on the forehead. “Thus,
noble lady, I greet the entrance of the Duchess of
Clarence into the royalty of England.”
Without pausing for reply, he passed
on and seated himself on the throne, while Isabel
and her husband took possession of the state chairs
on either hand. At a gesture of the king’s
the countess and Anne placed themselves on seats less
raised, but still upon the dais. But now as Edward
sat, the hall grew gradually full of lords and knights
who commanded in Warwick’s train, while the
earl and the archbishop stood mute in the centre,
the one armed cap-a-pie, leaning on his sword, the
other with his arms folded in his long robes.
The king’s eye, clear, steady,
and majestic, roved round that martial audience, worthy
to be a monarch’s war-council, and not one of
whom marched under a monarch’s banner!
Their silence, their discipline, the splendour of
their arms, the greater splendour of their noble names,
contrasted painfully with the little mutinous camp
of Olney, and the surly, untried recruits of Anthony
Woodville. But Edward, whose step, whose form,
whose aspect, proclaimed the man conscious of his rights
to be lord of all, betrayed not to those around him
the kingly pride, the lofty grief, that swelled within
his heart. Still seated, he raised his left hand
to command silence; with the right he replaced his
plumed cap upon his brow.
“Lords and gentlemen,”
he said (arrogating to himself at once, as a thing
of course, that gorgeous following), “we have
craved leave of our host to address to you some words, words
which it pleases a king to utter, and which may not
be harsh to the ears of a loyal subject. Nor
will we, at this great current of unsteady fortune,
make excuse, noble ladies, to you, that we speak of
war to knighthood, which is ever the sworn defender
of the daughter and the wife, the daughters
and the wife of our cousin Warwick have too much of
hero-blood in their blue veins to grow pale at the
sight of heroes. Comrades in arms! thus far towards
our foe upon the frontier we have marched, without
a sword drawn or an arrow launched from an archer’s
bow. We believe that a blessing settles on the
head of a true king, and that the trumpet of a good
angel goes before his path, announcing the victory
which awaits him. Here, in the hall of the Earl
of Warwick, our captain-general, we thank you for your
cheerful countenance and your loyal service; and here,
as befits a king, we promise to you those honours
a king alone worthily can bestow.” He paused,
and his keen eye glanced from chief to chief as he
resumed: “We are informed that certain
misguided and traitor lords have joined the Rose of
Lancaster. Whoever so doth is attainted, life
and line, evermore! His lands and dignities are
forfeit to enrich and to ennoble the men who strike
for me. Heaven grant I may have foes eno’
to reward all my friends! To every baron who
owns Edward iv. king (ay, and not king in name,
king in banquet and in bower, but leader and captain
in the war), I trust to give a new barony, to every
knight a new knight’s fee, to every yeoman a
hyde of land, to every soldier a year’s pay.
What more I can do, let it be free for any one to
suggest, for my domains of York are broad,
and my heart is larger still!”
A murmur of applause and reverence
went round. Vowed, as those warriors were, to
the earl, they felt that A monarch was amongst
them.
“What say you, then? We
are ripe for glory. Three days will we halt at
Middleham, guest to our noble subject.”
“Three days, sire!” repeated
Warwick, in a voice of surprise.
“Yes; and this, fair cousin,
and ye, lords and gentlemen, is my reason for the
delay. I have despatched Sir William, Lord de
Hastings, to the Duke of Gloucester, with command
to join us here (the archbishop started, but instantly
resumed his earnest, placid aspect); to the Lord Montagu,
Earl of Northumberland, to muster all the vassals of
our shire of York. As three streams that dash
into the ocean, shall our triple army meet and rush
to the war. Not even, gentlemen, not even to the
great Earl of Warwick will Edward iv. be so beholden
for roiaulme and renown, as to march but a companion
to the conquest. If ye were raised in Warwick’s
name, not mine, why, be it so! I envy
him such friends; but I will have an army of mine
own, to show mine English soldiery how a Plantagenet
battles for his crown. Gentlemen, ye are dismissed
to your repose. In three days we march! and if
any of you know in these fair realms the man, be he
of York or of Lancaster, more fit to command brave
subjects than he who now addresses you, I say to that
man, turn rein, and leave us! Let tyrants and
cowards enforce reluctant service, my crown
was won by the hearts of my people! Girded by
those hearts, let me reign, or, mourned by them, let
me fall! So God and Saint George favour me as
I speak the truth!”
And as the king ceased, he uncovered
his head, and kissed the cross of his sword.
A thrill went through the audience. Many were
there, disaffected to his person, and whom Warwick’s
influence alone could have roused to arms; but at
the close of an address spirited and loyal in itself,
and borrowing thousand-fold effect by the voice and
mien of the speaker, no feeling but that of enthusiastic
loyalty, of almost tearful admiration, was left in
those steel-clad breasts.
As the king lifted on high the cross
of his sword, every blade leaped from its scabbard,
and glittered in the air; and the dusty banners in
the hall waved, as to a mighty blast, when, amidst
the rattle of armour, burst forth the universal cry,
“Long live Edward iv.! Long live the
king!”
The sweet countess, even amidst the
excitement, kept her eyes anxiously fixed on Warwick,
whose countenance, however shaded by the black plumes
of his casque, though the visor was raised, revealed
nothing of his mind. Her daughters were more
powerfully affected; for Isabel’s intellect
was not so blinded by her ambition but that the kingliness
of Edward forced itself upon her with a might and solemn
weight, which crushed, for the moment, her aspiring
hopes.
Was this the man unfit to reign?
This the man voluntarily to resign a crown? This
the man whom George of Clarence, without fratricide,
could succeed? No! there spoke the
soul of the First and the Third Edward! There
shook the mane and there glowed the eye of the indomitable
lion of the august Plantagenets! And the same
conviction, rousing softer and holier sorrow, sat
on the heart of Anne; she saw, as for the first time,
clearly before her the awful foe with whom her ill-omened
and beloved prince had to struggle for his throne.
In contrast beside that form, in the prime of manly
youth a giant in its strength, a god in
its beauty rose the delicate shape of the
melancholy boy who, afar in exile, coupled in his
dreams, the sceptre and the bride! By one of those
mysteries which magnetism seeks to explain, in the
strong intensity of her emotions, in the tremor of
her shaken nerves, fear seemed to grow prophetic.
A stream as of blood rose up from the dizzy floors.
The image of her young prince, bound and friendless,
stood before the throne of that warrior-king.
In the waving glitter of the countless swords raised
on high, she saw the murderous blade against the boy-heir
of Lancaster descend descend! Her
passion, her terror, at the spectre which fancy thus
evoked, seized and overcame her; and ere the last hurrah
sent its hollow echo to the raftered roof, she sank
from her chair to the ground, hueless and insensible
as the dead.
The king had not without design permitted
the unwonted presence of the women in this warlike
audience, partly because he was not unaware
of the ambitious spirit of Isabel, partly because he
counted on the affection shown to his boyhood by the
countess, who was said to have singular influence
over her lord, but principally because in such a presence
he trusted to avoid all discussion and all questioning,
and to leave the effect of his eloquence, in which
he excelled all his contemporaries, Gloucester alone
excepted, single and unimpaired; and therefore, as
he rose, and returned with a majestic bend the acclamation
of the warriors, his eye now turned towards the chairs
where the ladies sat, and he was the first to perceive
the swoon of the fair Anne.
With the tender grace that always
characterized his service to women, he descended promptly
from his throne, and raised the lifeless form in his
stalwart arms; and Anne, as he bent over her, looked
so strangely lovely in her marble stillness, that
even in that hour a sudden thrill shot through a heart
always susceptible to beauty as the harp-string to
the breeze.
“It is but the heat, lady,”
said he, to the alarmed countess, “and let me
hope that interest which my fair kinswoman may take
in the fortunes of Warwick and of York, hitherto linked
together ”
“May they ever be so!”
said Warwick, who, on seeing his daughter’s
state, had advanced hastily to the dais; and, moved
by the king’s words, his late speech, the evils
that surrounded his throne, the gentleness shown to
the beloved Anne, forgetting resentment and ceremony
alike, he held out his mailed hand. The king,
as he resigned Anne to her mother’s arms, grasped
with soldierly frankness, and with the ready wit of
the cold intellect which reigned beneath the warm
manner, the hand thus extended, and holding still
that iron gauntlet in his own ungloved and jewelled
fingers, he advanced to the verge of the dais, to which,
in the confusion occasioned by Anne’s swoon,
the principal officers had crowded, and cried aloud,
“Behold! Warwick and Edward
thus hand in hand, as they stood when the clarions
sounded the charge at Towton! and that link what swords
forged on a mortal’s anvil can rend or
sever?”
In an instant every knee there knelt;
and Edward exultingly beheld that what before had
been allegiance to the earl was now only homage to
the king.
CHAPTER IX. WEDDED CONFIDENCE AND LOVE—THE EARL AND
THE PRELATE—THE PRELATE AND THE KING—SCHEMES—WILES—AND THE BIRTH OF A DARK
THOUGHT DESTINED TO ECLIPSE A SUN
While, preparatory to the banquet,
Edward, as was then the daily classic custom, relaxed
his fatigues, mental or bodily, in the hospitable bath,
the archbishop sought the closet of the earl.
“Brother,” said he, throwing
himself with some petulance into the only chair the
room, otherwise splendid, contained, “when you
left me to seek Edward in the camp of Anthony Woodville,
what was the understanding between us?”
“I know of none,” answered
the earl, who having doffed his armour, and dismissed
his squires, leaned thoughtfully against the wall,
dressed for the banquet, with the exception of the
short surcoat, which lay glittering on the tabouret.
“You know of none? Reflect!
Have you brought hither Edward as a guest or as a
prisoner?”
The earl knit his brows “A prisoner,
archbishop?”
The prelate regarded him with a cold smile.
“Warwick, you, who would deceive
no other man, now seek to deceive yourself.”
The earl drew back, and his hardy countenance grew
a shade paler. The prelate resumed: “You
have carried Edward from his camp, and severed him
from his troops; you have placed him in the midst of
your own followers; you have led him, chafing and
resentful all the way, to this impregnable keep; and
you now pause, amazed by the grandeur of your captive, a
man who leads to his home a tiger, a spider who has
entangled a hornet in its web!”
“Nay, reverend brother,”
said the earl, calmly, “ye churchmen never know
what passes in the hearts of those who feel and do
not scheme. When I learned that the king had
fled to the Woodvilles, that he was bent upon violating
the pledge given in his name to the insurgent commons,
I vowed that he should redeem my honour and his own,
or that forever I would quit his service. And
here, within these walls which sheltered his childhood,
I trusted, and trust still, to make one last appeal
to his better reason.”
“For all that, men now, and
history hereafter, will consider Edward as your captive.”
“To living men my words and
deeds can clear themselves; and as for history, let
clerks and scholars fool themselves in the lies of
parchment! He who has acted history, despises
the gownsmen who sit in cloistered ease, and write
about what they know not.” The earl paused,
and then continued: “I confess, however,
that I have had a scheme. I have wished to convince
the king how little his mushroom lords can bestead
him in the storm; and that he holds his crown only
from his barons and his people.”
“That is, from the Lord Warwick!”
“Perhaps I am the personation
of both seignorie and people; but I design this solely
for his welfare. Ah, the gallant prince how
well he bore himself to-day!”
“Ay, when stealing all hearts from thee to him.”
“And, Vive Dieu, I never loved
him so well as when he did! Methinks it was for
a day like this that I reared his youth and achieved
his crown. Oh, priest, priest, thou mistakest
me. I am rash, hot, haughty, hasty; and I love
not to bow my knees to a man because they call him
king, if his life be vicious and his word be false.
But could Edward be ever as to-day, then indeed should
I hail a sovereign whom a baron may reverence and
a soldier serve!”
Before the archbishop could reply,
the door gently opened, and the countess appeared.
Warwick seemed glad of the interruption; he turned
quickly “And how fares my child?”
“Recovered from her strange
swoon, and ready to smile at thy return. Oh,
Warwick, thou art reconciled to the king?”
“That glads thee, sister?” said the archbishop.
“Surely. Is it not for my lord’s
honour?”
“May he find it so!” said the prelate,
and he left the room.
“My priest-brother is chafed,”
said the earl, smiling. “Pity he was not
born a trader, he would have made a shrewd hard bargain.
Verily, our priests burn the Jews out of envy!
Ah, m’amie, how fair thou art to-day! Methinks
even Isabel’s cheek less blooming.”
And the warrior drew the lady towards him, and smoothed
her hair, and tenderly kissed her brow. “My
letter vexed thee, I know, for thou lovest Edward,
and blamest me not for my love to him. It is
true that he hath paltered with me, and that I had
stern resolves, not against his crown, but to leave
him to his fate, and in these halls to resign my charge.
But while he spoke, and while he looked, methought
I saw his mother’s face, and heard his dear
father’s tone, and the past rushed over me, and
all wrath was gone. Sonless myself, why would
he not be my son?” The earl’s voice trembled,
and the tears stood in his dark eyes.
“Speak thus, dear lord, to Isabel, for I fear
her overvaulting spirit ”
“Ah, had Isabel been his wife!”
he paused and moved away. Then, as if impatient
to escape the thoughts that tended to an ungracious
recollection, he added, “And now, sweetheart,
these slight fingers have ofttimes buckled on my mail;
let them place on my breast this badge of St. George’s
chivalry; and, if angry thoughts return, it shall remind
me that the day on which I wore it first, Richard
of York said to his young Edward, ’Look to that
star, boy, if ever, in cloud and trouble, thou wouldst
learn what safety dwells in the heart which never knew
deceit.’”
During the banquet, the king, at whose
table sat only the Duke of Clarence and the earl’s
family, was gracious as day to all, but especially
to the Lady Anne, attributing her sudden illness to
some cause not unflattering to himself; her beauty,
which somewhat resembled that of the queen, save that
it had more advantage of expression and of youth,
was precisely of the character he most admired.
Even her timidity, and the reserve with which she
answered him, had their charms; for, like many men,
themselves of imperious nature and fiery will, he
preferred even imbecility in a woman to whatever was
energetic or determined; and hence perhaps his indifference
to the more dazzling beauty of Isabel. After
the feast, the numerous demoiselles, high-born
and fair, who swelled the more than regal train of
the countess, were assembled in the long gallery,
which was placed in the third story of the castle
and served for the principal state apartment.
The dance began; but Isabel excused herself from the
pavón, and the king led out the reluctant and
melancholy Anne. The proud Isabel, who had never
forgiven Edward’s slight to herself, resented
deeply his evident admiration of her sister, and conversed
apart with the archbishop, whose subtle craft easily
drew from her lips confessions of an ambition higher
even than his own. He neither encouraged nor dissuaded;
he thought there were things more impossible than
the accession of Clarence to the throne, but he was
one who never plotted, save for himself
and for the Church.
As the revel waned, the prelate approached
the earl, who, with that remarkable courtesy which
charmed those below his rank and contrasted with his
haughtiness to his peers, had well played amongst his
knights the part of host, and said, in a whisper,
“Edward is in a happy mood let us
lose it not. Will you trust me to settle all differences
ere he sleep? Two proud men never can agree without
a third of a gentler temper.”
“You are right,” said
Warwick, smiling; “yet the danger is that I should
rather concede too much than be too stubborn.
But look you, all I demand is satisfaction to mine
own honour and faith to the army I disbanded in the
king’s name.”
“All!” muttered the archbishop,
as he turned away, “but that call is everything
to provoke quarrel for you, and nothing to bring power
to me!”
The earl and the archbishop attended
the king to his chamber, and after Edward was served
with the parting refection, or livery, the earl said,
with his most open smile, “Sire, there are yet
affairs between us; whom will you confer with, me
or the archbishop?”
“Oh, the archbishop, by all
means, fair cousin,” cried Edward, no less frankly;
“for if you and I are left alone, the Saints
help both of us! when flint and steel meet,
fire flies, and the house may burn.”
The earl half smiled at the candour,
half sighed at the levity, of the royal answer, and
silently left the room. The king, drawing round
him his loose dressing-robe, threw himself upon the
gorgeous coverlid of the bed, and lying at lazy length,
motioned to the prelate to seat himself at the foot.
The archbishop obeyed. Edward raised himself on
his elbow, and, by the light of seven gigantic tapers,
set in sconces of massive silver, the priest and the
king gravely gazed on each other without speaking.
At last Edward, bursting into his
hale, clear, silvery laugh, said, “Confess,
dear sir and cousin, confess that we are
like two skilful masters of Italian fence, each fearing
to lay himself open by commencing the attack.”
“Certes,” quoth the archbishop,
“your Grace over-estimates my vanity, in opining
that I deemed myself equal to so grand a duello.
If there were dispute between us, I should only win
by baring my bosom.”
The king’s bow-like lip curved
with a slight sneer, quickly replaced by a serious
and earnest expression. “Let us leave word-making,
and to the point, George. Warwick is displeased
because I will not abandon my wife’s kindred;
you, with more reason, because I have taken from your
hands the chancellor’s great seal ”
“For myself, I humbly answer
that your Grace errs. I never coveted other honours
than those of the Church.”
“Ay,” said Edward, keenly
examining the young prelate’s smooth face, “is
it so? Yes, now I begin to comprehend thee.
What offence have I given to the Church? Have
I suffered the law too much to sleep against the Lollards.
If so, blame Warwick.”
“On the contrary, sire, unlike
other priests, I have ever deemed that persecution
heals no schism. Blow not dying embers. Rather
do I think of late that too much severity hath helped
to aid, by Lollard bows and pikes, the late rising.
My lady, the queen’s mother, unjustly accused
of witchcraft, hath sought to clear herself, and perhaps
too zealously, in exciting your Grace against that
invisible giant yclept heresy.”
“Pass on,” said Edward.
“It is not then indifference to the ecclesia
that you complain of. Is it neglect of the ecclesiastic?
Ha, ha! you and I, though young, know the colours
that make up the patchwork world. Archbishop,
I love an easy life; if your brother and his friends
will but give me that, let them take all else.
Again, I say, to the point, I cannot banish
my lady’s kindred, but I will bind your House
still more to mine. I have a daughter, failing
male issue, the heiress to my crown. I will betroth
her to your nephew, my beloved Montagu’s son.
They are children yet, but their ages not unsuited.
And when I return to London, young Nevile shall be
Duke of Bedford, a title hitherto reserved to the
royal race. [And indeed there was but one Yorkist duke
then in England out of the royal family, namely,
the young boy Buckingham, who afterwards vainly sought
to bend the Ulysses bow of Warwick against Richard
iii.] Let that be a pledge of peace between the
queen’s mother, bearing the same honours, and
the House of Nevile, to which they pass.”
The cheek of the archbishop flushed
with proud pleasure; he bowed his head, and Edward,
ere he could answer, went on: “Warwick is
already so high that, pardie, I have no other step
to give him, save my throne itself, and, God’s
truth, I would rather be Lord Warwick than King of
England! But for you listen our
only English cardinal is old and sickly; whenever
he pass to Abraham’s bosom, who but you should
have the suffrage of the holy college? Thou knowest
that I am somewhat in the good favour of the sovereign
pontiff. Command me to the utmost. Now,
George, are we friends?” The archbishop kissed
the gracious hand extended to him, and, surprised
to find, as by magic, all his schemes frustrated by
sudden acquiescence in the objects of them all, his
voice faltered with real emotion as he gave vent to
his gratitude. But abruptly he checked himself,
his brow lowered, and with a bitter remembrance of
his brother’s plain, blunt sense of honour, he
said, “Yet, alas! my liege, in all this there
is nought to satisfy our stubborn host.”
“By dear Saint George and my
father’s head!” exclaimed Edward, reddening,
and starting to his feet, “what would the man
have?”
“You know,” answered the
archbishop, “that Warwick’s pride is only
roused when he deems his honour harmed. Unhappily,
as he thinks, by your Grace’s full consent,
he pledged himself to the insurgents of Olney to the
honourable dismissal of the lords of the Woodville
race. And unless this be conceded, I fear me
that all else he will reject, and the love between
ye can be but hollow!”
Edward took but three strides across
the chamber, and then halted opposite the archbishop,
and lay both hands on his shoulders, as, looking him
full in the face, he said, “Answer me frankly,
am I a prisoner in these towers or not?”
“Not, sire.”
“You palter with me, priest.
I have been led hither against my will. I am
almost without an armed retinue. I am at the earl’s
mercy. This chamber might be my grave, and this
couch my bed of death.”
“Holy Mother! Can you think
so of Warwick? Sire, you freeze my blood.”
“Well, then, if I refuse to
satisfy Warwick’s pride, and disdain to give
up loyal servants to rebel insolence, what will Warwick
do? Speak out, archbishop.”
“I fear me, sire, that he will
resign all office, whether of peace or war. I
fear me that the goodly army now at sleep within and
around these walls will vanish into air, and that
your Highness will stand alone amidst new men, and
against the disaffection of the whole land!”
Edward’s firm hand trembled.
The prelate continued, with a dry, caustic smile,
“Sire, Sir Anthony Woodville,
now Lord Rivers, has relieved you of all embarrassment;
no doubt, my Lord Dorset and his kinsmen will be chevaliers
enough to do the same. The Duchess of Bedford
will but suit the decorous usage to retire a while
into privacy, to mourn her widowhood. And when
a year is told, if these noble persons reappear at
court, your word and the earl’s will at least
have been kept.”
“I understand thee,” said
the king, half laughing; “but I have my pride
as well as Warwick. To concede this point is to
humble the conceder.”
“I have thought how to soothe
all things, and without humbling either party.
Your Grace’s mother is dearly beloved by Warwick
and revered by all. Since your marriage she hath
lived secluded from all state affairs. As so
nearly akin to Warwick, so deeply interested in your
Grace, she is a fitting mediator in all disputes.
Be they left to her to arbitrate.”
“Ah, cunning prelate, thou knowest
how my proud mother hates the Woodvilles; thou knowest
how her judgment will decide.”
“Perhaps so; but at least your
Grace will be spared all pain and all abasement.”
“Will Warwick consent to this?”
“I trust so.”
“Learn, and report to me.
Enough for to-night’s conference.”
Edward was left alone, and his mind ran rapidly over
the field of action open to him.
“I have half won the earl’s
army,” he thought; “but it would be to
lose all hold in their hearts again, if they knew that
these unhappy Woodvilles were the cause of a second
breach between us. Certes, the Lancastrians are
making strong head! Certes, the times must be
played with and appeased! And yet these poor
gentlemen love me after my own fashion, and not with
the bear’s hug of that intolerable earl.
How came the grim man by so fair a daughter?
Sweet Anne! I caught her eye often fixed on me,
and with a soft fear which my heart beat loud to read
aright. Verily, this is the fourth week I have
passed without hearing a woman’s sigh!
What marvel that so fair a face enamours me! Would
that Warwick made her his ambassador; and yet it were
all over with the Woodvilles if he did! These
men know not how to manage me, and well-a-day, that
task is easy eno’ to women!” He laughed
gayly to himself as he thus concluded his soliloquy,
and extinguished the tapers. But rest did not
come to his pillow; and after tossing to and fro for
some time in vain search for sleep, he rose and opened
his casement to cool the air which the tapers had
overheated. In a single casement, in a broad
turret, projecting from an angle in the building, below
the tower in which his chamber was placed, the king
saw a solitary light burning steadily. A sight
so unusual at such an hour surprised him. “Peradventure,
the wily prelate,” thought he. “Cunning
never sleeps.” But a second look showed
him the very form that chased his slumbers. Beside
the casement, which was partially open, he saw the
soft profile of the Lady Anne; it was bent downwards;
and what with the clear moonlight, and the lamp within
her chamber, he could see distinctly that she was
weeping. “Ah, Anne,” muttered the
amorous king, “would that I were by to kiss
away those tears!” While yet the unholy wish
murmured on his lips, the lady rose. The fair
hand, that seemed almost transparent in the moonlight,
closed the casement; and though the light lingered
for some minutes ere it left the dark walls of the
castle without other sign of life than the step of
the sentry, Anne was visible no more.
“Madness! madness! madness!”
again murmured the king. “These Neviles
are fatal to me in all ways, in hatred
or in love!”