FOOTNOTES[6]Queen Mary had, so the story runs, shown overmuch favour to the Duke of Somerset. He openly boasted of his success in love, and the Queen was ever after his deadly enemy.[7]The famous story of the robber and Queen Margaret, placed by so many writers after the battle of Hexham, seems quite impossible. If the incident took place at all, it happened on the other side of the Channel.
FOOTNOTES
[6]Queen Mary had, so the story runs, shown overmuch favour to the Duke of Somerset. He openly boasted of his success in love, and the Queen was ever after his deadly enemy.
[6]Queen Mary had, so the story runs, shown overmuch favour to the Duke of Somerset. He openly boasted of his success in love, and the Queen was ever after his deadly enemy.
[7]The famous story of the robber and Queen Margaret, placed by so many writers after the battle of Hexham, seems quite impossible. If the incident took place at all, it happened on the other side of the Channel.
[7]The famous story of the robber and Queen Margaret, placed by so many writers after the battle of Hexham, seems quite impossible. If the incident took place at all, it happened on the other side of the Channel.
CHAPTER XIII
THE QUARREL OF WARWICK AND KING EDWARD
With Hedgeley Moor and Hexham and the final surrender of the Northumbrian castles ended the last desperate attempt of the Lancastrians to hold their own in the North. The few surviving leaders who had escaped the fate of Somerset and Hungerford left Scotland and fled over-sea. Philip de Commines soon after met the chief of them in the streets of Ghent "reduced to such extremity of want and poverty that no common beggar could have been poorer. The Duke of Exeter was seen (though he concealed his name) following the Duke of Burgundy's train begging his bread from door to door, till at last he had a small pension allowed him in pity for his subsistence." With him were some of the Somersets, John and Edmund, brothers of the Duke who had just been beheaded. Jasper of Pembroke made his way to Wales and wandered in the hills from county to county, finding friends nowhere. No one could have guessed that the cause of Lancaster would ever raise its head again.
The times of war were at length over, and Warwick, like the rest of Englishmen, might begin to busy himself about other things than battles and sieges. InJuly he was at last free, and was able to think of turning southward to seek for more than a passing visit the Midland estates of which he had seen so little for the last five years. After a short interval of leisure, we find him in September sitting in the King's Council, and urging on two measures which he held necessary for the final pacification of the realm. The first was the conclusion of a definite treaty of peace with France. It was from King Louis that the Lancastrians had been accustomed to draw their supplies of ships and money, and while England and France were still at war it was certain that King Edward's enemies would continue to obtain shelter and succour across the Channel. Accordingly the Earl urged on the conclusion of a treaty, and finally procured the appointment of himself and his friend and follower Wenlock as ambassadors to Louis. The second point of his schemes was connected with the first. It was high time, as all England had for some time been saying, that the King should marry.[8]Edward was now in his twenty-fourth year, "and men marvelled that he abode so long without any wife, and feared that he was not over chaste of his living." Those, indeed, who were about the King's person knew that some scandal had already been caused by his attempts, successful and unsuccessful, on the honour of several ladies about the Court. Rumour had for some time been coupling Edward's name with that of various princesses of amarriageable age among foreign royal families. Some had said that he was about to marry Mary of Gueldres, the Queen Dowager of Scotland, and others had speculated on his opening negotiations for the hand of Isabel of Castile, sister of the reigning Spanish King. But there had been no truth in these reports. Warwick's scheme was to cement the peace with France by a marriage with a French princess, and in the preliminary inquiries which the King permitted him to send to Louis the marriage question was distinctly mentioned. Louis' sisters were all married, and his daughters were mere children, so that their names were not brought forward, for King Edward required a wife of suitable years, "to raise him goodly lineage such as his father had reared." The lady whom Warwick proposed to the King was Bona of Savoy, sister to Charlotte Queen of France, a princess who dwelt at her brother-in-law King Louis' Court and in whose veins ran the blood both of the Kings of France and the Dukes of Burgundy.
King Edward made no open opposition to Warwick's plans. The project was mooted to King Louis, safe conducts for the English Embassy were obtained, and Warwick and Wenlock were expected at St. Omer about October 3rd or 4th. But at the last moment, when Warwick attended at Reading on September 28th to receive his master's final instructions, a most astounding announcement was made to him. We have an account of the scene which bears some marks of truth.
The Council met for the formal purpose of approving the marriage negotiations. A speaker, probably Warwick, laid before the King the hope and expectation of his subjects that he would deign to give them a Queen.
Then the King answered that of a truth he wished to marry, but that perchance his choice might not be to the liking of all present. Then those of his Council asked to know of his intent, and would be told to what house he would go. To which the King replied in right merry guise that he would take to wife Dame Elizabeth Grey, the daughter of Lord Rivers. But they answered him that she was not his match, however good and however fair she might be, and that he must know well that she was no wife for such a high prince as himself; for she was not the daughter of a duke or earl, but her mother the Duchess of Bedford had married a simple knight, so that though she was the child of a duchess and the niece of the Count of St. Pol, still she was no wife for him. When King Edward heard these sayings of the lords of his blood and his Council, which it seemed good to them to lay before him, he answered that he should have no other wife and that such was his good pleasure.
Then the King answered that of a truth he wished to marry, but that perchance his choice might not be to the liking of all present. Then those of his Council asked to know of his intent, and would be told to what house he would go. To which the King replied in right merry guise that he would take to wife Dame Elizabeth Grey, the daughter of Lord Rivers. But they answered him that she was not his match, however good and however fair she might be, and that he must know well that she was no wife for such a high prince as himself; for she was not the daughter of a duke or earl, but her mother the Duchess of Bedford had married a simple knight, so that though she was the child of a duchess and the niece of the Count of St. Pol, still she was no wife for him. When King Edward heard these sayings of the lords of his blood and his Council, which it seemed good to them to lay before him, he answered that he should have no other wife and that such was his good pleasure.
Then came the clinching blow; no other wife could he have—for he was married to Dame Elizabeth already!
In fact, five months before, on May 1st, when he ought to have been far on his way to the North, King Edward had secretly ridden over from Stony Stratford to Grafton in Northamptonshire, and wedded the lady. No one had suspected the marriage, for the King had had but a short and slight acquaintance with Elizabeth Grey, who had been living a retired life ever since her husband, a Lancastrian knight, fell in the moment of victory at the second battle of St. Albans. Edward had casually met her, had been conquered by her fair face, and had made hot love to her. Elizabeth was clever and cautious; she would hear of nothing but a formal offer of marriage, and the young King, perfectly infatuated by his passion, had wedded her in secret at Grafton in the presence of no one save her mother andtwo other witnesses. This was the urgent private business which had kept him from appearing to open his Parliament at York.
The marriage was a most surprising event. Lord Rivers, the lady's father, had been a keen Lancastrian. He it was who had been captured at Sandwich in 1460, and brought before Warwick and Edward to undergo that curious scolding which we have elsewhere recorded. And now this "made lord, who had won his fortune by his marriage," had become the King's father-in-law. Dame Elizabeth herself was seven years older than her new husband, and was the mother of children twelve and thirteen years of age. The public was so astonished at the match that it was often said that the Queen's mother, the old Duchess of Bedford, must have given King Edward a love philtre, for in no other way could the thing be explained.
Warwick and the rest of the lords of the Council were no less vexed than astonished by this sudden announcement. The Earl had broached the subject of the French marriage to King Louis, and was expected to appear within a few days to submit the proposal for acceptance. The King, knowing all the time that the scheme was impossible, had allowed him to commit himself to it, and now left him to explain to King Louis that he had been duped in the most egregious way, and had been excluded from his master's confidence all along. Very naturally the Earl let the embassy drop; he could not dare to appear before the French King to ask for peace, when the bond of union which he had promised to cement it was no longer possible.
But vexed and angered though he must have been at the way in which he had been treated, Warwick was too loyal a servant of the house of York to withdraw from his master's Council. He bowed to necessity, and acquiesced in what he could not approve. Accordingly Warwick attended next day to hear the King make public announcement of his marriage in Reading Abbey on the feast of St. Michael, and he himself, in company with George of Clarence the King's brother, led Dame Elizabeth up to the seat prepared for her beside her husband, and bowed the knee to her as Queen.
For a few months it seemed as if the King's marriage had been a single freak of youthful passion, and the domination of the house of Neville in the royal Councils appeared unshaken. As if to make amends for his late treatment of Warwick, Edward raised his brother George Neville the Chancellor to the vacant Archbishopric of York, and in token of confidence sent the Earl as his representative to prorogue a Parliament summoned to meet on November 4th.
But these marks of regard were not destined to continue. The favours of the King, though there was as yet no open breach between him and his great Minister, were for the future bestowed in another quarter. The house of Rivers was almost as prolific as the house of Neville; the Queen had three brothers, five sisters, and two sons, and for them the royal influence was utilised in the most extraordinary way during the next two years. Nor was it merely inordinate affection for his wife that led King Edward to squander his wealth and misuse his power for thebenefit of her relatives. It soon became evident that he had resolved to build up with the aid of the Queen's family one of those great allied groups of noble houses whose strength the fifteenth century knew so well—a group that should make him independent of the control of the Nevilles. A few days after the acknowledgment of the Queen, began a series of marriages in the Rivers family, which did not cease for two years. In October 1464, immediately after the scene at Reading, the Queen's sister Margaret was married to Thomas Lord Maltravers, the heir of the wealthy Earl of Arundel. In January 1465 John Woodville, the youngest of her brothers, wedded the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. This was a disgraceful match: the bridegroom was just of age, the bride quite old enough to be his grandmother; but she was a great heiress, and the King persuaded her to marry the sordid young man. Within eighteen months more, nearly the whole of the family had been married off: Anne Woodville to the heir of Bourchier Earl of Essex; Mary Woodville to the eldest son of Lord Herbert, the King's most intimate counsellor after Warwick in his earlier years; Eleanor Woodville to George Grey heir of the Earl of Kent; and Catherine Woodville, most fortunate of all, to the young Duke of Buckingham, grandson of the old Duke who had fallen at Northampton. To end the tale of the alliances of this most fortunate family, it is only necessary to add that even before Queen Elizabeth's marriage her eldest brother Anthony had secured the hand of Elizabeth, heiress of the Lord Scales who was slain on the Thames in 1460. Truly the Woodville marriages may compare not unfavourably with those of the Nevilles!
While the King was heaping his favours on the house of Rivers, Warwick was still employed from time to time in the service of the Crown. But he could no longer feel that he had the chief part in guiding his monarch's policy. Indeed, the King seems to have even gone out of his way to carry out every scheme on a different principle from that which the Earl adopted. In the spring of 1465, at the time of the Queen's formal coronation in May—a ceremony which he was glad enough to escape—Warwick went over-sea to conduct negotiations with the French and Burgundians. He met the Burgundian ambassadors at Boulogne, and those of France at Calais. It was a critical time for both France and Burgundy, for the War of the Public Weal had just broken out, and each party was anxious to secure the friendship, or at least the neutrality of England. With the Burgundians, whom Warwick met first, no agreement could be made, for the Count of Charolois, who had now got the upper hand of his aged father Duke Philip, refused to make any pledges against helping the Lancastrians. He was at this very time pensioning the exiled Somersets and Exeter, and almost reckoned himself a Lancastrian prince, because his mother, Isabel of Portugal, was a grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. Warwick and Charles of Charolois were quite unable to agree. Each of them was too much accustomed to have his own way, and though they held high feasts together at Boulogne, and were long in council, they parted in wrath. There would seem to have been something more than a mere difference of opinion between them, for ever afterwards they regarded each other as personal enemies. King Louis, whoseambassadors met Warwick a month later, proved far more accommodating than the hot-headed Burgundian prince. He consented to forget the matter of the marriage, and agreed to the conclusion of a truce for eighteen months, during which he engaged to give no help to Queen Margaret, while Warwick covenanted that England should refrain from aiding the Dukes of Burgundy and Bretagne, now in full rebellion against their sovereign.
Late in the summer of 1465 Warwick returned home just in time to hear of a new stroke of fortune which had befallen his master. Henry the Sixth had just been captured in Lancashire. The ex-king had wandered down from his retreat in Scotland, and was moving about in an aimless way from one Lancastrian household to another, accompanied by no one but a couple of priests. One of Henry's entertainers betrayed him, and he was seized by John Talbot of Basshall as he sat at meat in Waddington Hall, and forwarded under guard to London. At Islington Warwick rode forth to meet his late sovereign, and by the King's orders led him publicly through the city, with his feet bound by leather straps to his stirrups. Why this indignity was inflicted on the unfortunate Henry it is hard to say; there cannot possibly have been any fear of a rescue, and Warwick might well have spared his late master the shame of bonds. Henry was led along Cheapside and Cornhill to the Tower, where he was placed in honourable custody, and permitted to receive the visits of all who wished to see him.
That Warwick was not yet altogether out of favour with King Edward was shown by the fact that he wasasked to be godfather to the Queen's first child, the Princess Elizabeth, in the February of the following year 1466. But immediately afterwards came the succession of events which marked the final breach between the King and the Nevilles. In March Edward suddenly dismissed from the office of Treasurer Lord Mountjoy, a friend of Warwick's, and gave the post to his wife's father Lord Rivers, whom he soon created an earl. The removal of his friend was highly displeasing to Warwick; but worse was to follow. Warwick's nephew George Neville, the heir of his brother John, had been affianced to Anne heiress of the exiled Duke of Exeter; but the Queen gave the Duchess of Exeter four thousand marks to break off the match, and the young lady was wedded to Thomas Grey, Elizabeth's eldest son by her first marriage. This blow struck the Nevilles in their tenderest point; even the marriages which had made their good fortune were for the future to be frustrated by royal influence.
The next slight which Warwick received at the hands of his sovereign touched him even more closely. His eldest daughter Isabel, who had been born in 1451, was now in her sixteenth year, and already thoughts about her marriage had begun to trouble her father's brain. The Earl counted her worthy of the highest match that could be found in the realm, for there was destined to go with her hand such an accumulation of estates as no subject had ever before possessed—half of the lands of Neville, Montacute, Despenser, and Beauchamp. The husband whom Warwick had hoped to secure for his child was George Duke of Clarence, the King's next brother, a young man of eighteen years.Clarence was sounded, and liked the prospect well enough, for the young lady was fair as well as rich. But they had not reckoned with the King. After a long visit which Clarence and his younger brother Richard of Gloucester had paid to Warwick in the end of 1466, Edward got wind of the proposed marriage. "When the King knew that his brothers had returned from their visit to the Earl at Cambridge, he asked them why they had left his Court, and who had given them counsel to visit the Earl. Then they answered that none had been the cause save they themselves. And the King asked whether there had been any talk of affiancing them to their cousins, the Earl's daughters; and the Duke of Clarence"—always prompt at a lie—"answered that there was not. But the King, who had been fully informed of all, waxed wroth, and sent them from his presence." Edward strictly forbade the marriage, and for the present there was no more talk of it; but Clarence and Warwick understood each other, and were always in communication, much to the King's displeasure. It did not please him to find his heir presumptive and his most powerful subject on too good terms.
The King waited a few months more, and then proceeded to put a far worse insult on his old friends and followers. In May 1467 he sent Warwick over-sea, with a commission to visit the King of France, and turn the eighteen months truce made in 1465 into a permanent peace on the best terms possible. The errand seemed both useful and honourable, and Warwick went forth in good spirits; but it was devised in reality merely to get him out of the kingdom, at a time whenthe King was about to cross all his most cherished plans.
Louis was quite as desirous as Warwick himself to conclude a permanent peace. It was all-important to him that England should not be on the side of Burgundy, and he was ready to make the Earl's task easy. The reception which he prepared for Warwick was such as might have been given to a crowned head. He went five leagues down the Seine to receive the English embassy, and feasted Warwick royally on the river bank. When Rouen was reached "the King gave the Earl most honourable greeting; for there came out to meet him the priests of every parish in the town in their copes, with crosses and banners and holy water, and so he was conducted to Notre Dame de Rouen, where he made his offering. And he was well lodged at the Jacobins in the said town of Rouen. Afterward the Queen and her daughters came to the said town that he might see them. And the King abode with Warwick for the space of twelve days communing with him, after which the Earl departed back into England." And with him went as Ambassadors from France the Archbishop of Narbonne, the Bastard of Bourbon (Admiral of France), the Bishop of Bayeux, Master Jean de Poupencourt, and William Monipenny, a Scotch agent in whom the King placed much confidence.
Warwick and the French Ambassadors landed at Sandwich, where they had a hearty reception; for the people of Sandwich, like all the men of Kent, were great supporters of the Earl. Posts were sent forward to notify their arrival to the King, and the party then set out to ride up to London. As they drew near the citythe Earl was somewhat vexed to find that no one came forth to welcome them on the King's behalf; but presently the Duke of Clarence came riding alone to meet him, and brought him intelligence which turned his satisfaction at the success of the French negotiations into bitter vexation of spirit.
When Warwick had got well over-sea, the King had proceeded to work out his own plans, secure that he would not be interrupted. He had really determined to make alliance with Burgundy and not with France; and the moment that the coast was clear a Burgundian emissary appeared in London. Antony "the Grand Bastard," the trusted agent of the Court of Charolois, ascended the Thames at the very moment that Warwick was ascending the Seine. Ostensibly he came on a chivalrous errand, to joust with the Queen's brother Lord Scales in honour of all the ladies of Burgundy. The passage of arms was duly held, to the huge delight of the populace of London, and the English chroniclers give us all its details—instead of relating the important political events of the year. But the real object of the Bastard's visit was to negotiate an English alliance for his brother; and he was so successful that he returned to Flanders authorised to promise the hand of the King's sister Margaret to the Count of Charolois.
But Warwick had not merely to learn that the King had stultified his negotiations with France by making an agreement with Burgundy behind his back. He was now informed that, only two days before his arrival, Edward had gone, without notice given or cause assigned, to his brother the Archbishop of York, who lay ill at his house by Westminster Barrs, and suddenly dismissed himfrom the Chancellorship and taken the great seal from him. Open war had been declared on the house of Neville.[9]
But bitterly vexed though he was at his sovereign's double dealing, Warwick proceeded to carry out the forms of his duty. He called on the King immediately on his arrival, announced the success of his embassy, and craved for a day of audience for the French Ambassadors. "When the Earl spoke of all the good cheer that King Louis had made him, and how he had sent him the keys of every castle and town that he passed through, he perceived from the King's countenance that he was paying no attention at all to what he was saying, so he betook himself home, sore displeased."
Next day the French had the audience. The King received them in state, surrounded by Rivers, Scales, John Woodville, and Lord Hastings. "The Ambassadors were much abashed to see him, for he showed himself a prince of a haughty bearing." Warwick then introduced them, and Master Jean de Poupencourt, as spokesman for the rest, laid the proposals of Louis before the King. Edward briefly answered that he had pressing business, and could not communicate with them himself; they might say their say to certain lords whom he would appoint for the purpose. Then they were ushered out of his presence. It was clear that he would do nothing for them; indeed the whole business hadonly been concocted to get Warwick out of the way. It was abortive, and had been intended to be so.
The Earl on leaving the palace was bursting with rage; his ordinary caution and affability were gone, and he broke out in angry words even before the foreigners. "As they rowed home in their barge the Frenchmen had many discourses with each other. But Warwick was so wroth that he could not contain himself, and he said to the Admiral of France, 'Have you not seen what traitors there are about the King's person?' But the Admiral answered, 'My Lord, I pray you grow not hot; for some day you shall be well avenged.' But the Earl said, 'Know that those very traitors were the men who have had my brother displaced from the office of Chancellor, and made the King take the seal from him.'"
Edward went to Windsor next day, taking no further heed of the Ambassadors. He appointed no one to treat with them, and they remained six weeks without hearing from him, seeing no one but Warwick, who did his best to entertain them, and Warwick's new ally the Duke of Clarence. At last they betook themselves home, having accomplished absolutely nothing. On the eve of their departure the King sent them a beggarly present of hunting-horns, leather bottles, and mastiffs, in return for the golden hanaps and bowls and the rich jewellery which they had brought from France.
Warwick would have nothing more to do with his master. He saw the Ambassadors back as far as Sandwich, and then went off in high dudgeon to Middleham. There he held much deep discourse with his brothers, George the dispossessed Chancellor, and John of Montagu the Earl of Northumberland. At Christmas theKing summoned him to Court; he sent back the reply that "never would he come again to Council while all his mortal enemies, who were about the King's person, namely, Lord Rivers the Treasurer, and Lord Scales and Lord Herbert and Sir John Woodville, remained there present." The breach between Warwick and his master was now complete.
FOOTNOTES[8]There seems to be no foundation for the theory that Warwick wished the King to marry his daughter Isabel. The Earl moved strongly in favour of the French marriage, and his daughter was too young, being only thirteen years of age, for a king desirous of raising up heirs to his crown.[9]It seems impossible to work out to any purpose the statement of Polidore Vergil and others that Warwick's final breach with the King was caused by Edward's offering violence to a lady of the house of Neville. Lord Lytton, of course, was justified in using this hint for his romance, but the historian finds it too vague and untrustworthy.
FOOTNOTES
[8]There seems to be no foundation for the theory that Warwick wished the King to marry his daughter Isabel. The Earl moved strongly in favour of the French marriage, and his daughter was too young, being only thirteen years of age, for a king desirous of raising up heirs to his crown.
[8]There seems to be no foundation for the theory that Warwick wished the King to marry his daughter Isabel. The Earl moved strongly in favour of the French marriage, and his daughter was too young, being only thirteen years of age, for a king desirous of raising up heirs to his crown.
[9]It seems impossible to work out to any purpose the statement of Polidore Vergil and others that Warwick's final breach with the King was caused by Edward's offering violence to a lady of the house of Neville. Lord Lytton, of course, was justified in using this hint for his romance, but the historian finds it too vague and untrustworthy.
[9]It seems impossible to work out to any purpose the statement of Polidore Vergil and others that Warwick's final breach with the King was caused by Edward's offering violence to a lady of the house of Neville. Lord Lytton, of course, was justified in using this hint for his romance, but the historian finds it too vague and untrustworthy.
CHAPTER XIV
PLAYING WITH TREASON
Great ministers who have been accustomed to sway the destinies of kingdoms, and who suddenly find themselves disgraced at their master's caprice, have seldom been wont to sit down in resignation and accept their fall with equanimity. Such a line of conduct requires a self-denial and a high-flown loyalty to principle which are seldom found in the practical statesman. If the fallen minister is well stricken in years, and the fire has gone out of him, he may confine himself to sermons on the ingratitude of kings. If his greatness has been purely official, and his power entirely dependent on the authority entrusted to him by his master, his discontent may not be dangerous. But Warwick was now in the very prime of his life,—he was just forty,—and he was moreover by far the most powerful subject within the four seas. It was sheer madness in King Edward to goad such a man to desperation by a series of deliberate insults.
This was no mere case of ordinary ingratitude. If ever one man had made another, Richard Neville had made Edward Plantagenet. He had taken charge of him, a raw lad of eighteen, at the moment of thedisastrous rout of Ludford, and trained him in arms and statecraft with unceasing care. Twice had he saved the lost cause of York, in 1459 and in 1461. He had spent five years in harness, in one long series of battles and sieges, that his cousin might wear his crown in peace. He had compassed sea and land in embassies that Edward might be safe from foreign as well as from domestic foes. He had seen his father and his brother fall by the axe and the sword in the cause of York. He had seen his mother and his wife fugitives on the face of the earth, his castles burnt, his manors wasted, his tenants slain, all that the son of Richard Plantagenet might sit on the throne that was his father's due.
Warwick then might well be cut to the heart at his master's ingratitude. It was no marvel if, after the King's last treachery to him in the matter of the French embassy, he retired from Court and sent a bitter answer to Edward's next summons. After the open breach there were now two courses open to him: the first to abandon all his schemes, and betake himself in silent bitterness to the management of his vast estates; the second was to endeavour to win his way back to power by the ways which medieval England knew only too well—the way which had served Simon de Montfort, and Thomas of Lancaster, and Richard of York; the way that had led Simon and Thomas and Richard to their bloody graves. The first alternative was no doubt the one that the perfect man, the ideally loyal and unselfish knight, should have chosen. But Richard Neville was no perfect man; he was a practical statesman—"the cleverest man of his time," says one who had observed him closely; and his long tenure ofpower had made him look upon the first place in the Council of the King as his right and due. His enemies the Woodvilles and Herberts had driven him from his well-earned precedence by the weapons that they could use—intrigue and misrepresentation; what more natural than that he should repay them by the weapon that he could best employ, the iron hand of armed force?
Hitherto the career of Warwick had been singularly straightforward and consistent. Through thick and thin he had supported the cause of York and never wavered in his allegiance to it. It must not be supposed that he changed his whole policy when his quarrel with the King came to a head. As his conduct in 1469, when his ungrateful master was in his power, was destined to show, he had no further design than to reconquer for himself the place in the royal Council which had been his from 1461 to 1464. Later events developed his plans further than he had himself expected, but it is evident that at first his sole design was to clear away the Woodvilles. The only element in his programme which threatened to lead to deeper and more treasonable plans was his connection with his would-be son-in-law George of Clarence. The handsome youth who professed such a devotion to him, followed his advice with such docility, and took his part so warmly in the quarrel with the King, seems from the first to have obtained a place in his affections greater than Edward had ever won. But Clarence had his ambitions; what they were and how far they extended the Earl had not as yet discovered.
Warwick had now the will to play his master's new ministers an ill turn; that he had also the power to doso none knew better than himself. The lands of Neville and Montacute, Beauchamp and Despenser united could send into the field a powerful army. Moreover, his neighbours, in most of the counties where his influence prevailed, had bound themselves to him by taking his livery; barons as well as knights were eager to be of his "Privy Council," to wear his Ragged Staff and ride in his array. The very aspect of his household seemed to show the state of a petty king. Every one has read Hollingshead's famous description, which tells how the little army of followers which constituted his ordinary retinue eat six oxen daily for breakfast.
Nor was it only in the strength of his own retainers that Warwick trusted; he knew that he himself was the most popular man in the kingdom. Men called him ever the friend of the Commons, and "his open kitchen persuaded the meaner sort as much as the justice of his cause." His adversaries, on the other hand, were unmistakably disliked by the people. The old partisans of York still looked on the Woodvilles as Lancastrian renegades, and the grasping avarice of Rivers and his family was stirring up popular demonstration against them even before Warwick's breach with the King. A great mob in Kent had sacked one of Rivers' manors and killed his deer in the autumn of 1467, and trouble was brewing against him in other quarters. A word of summons from Warwick would call rioters out of the ground in half the shires of England. Already in January 1468 a French ambassador reports: "In one county more than three hundred archers were in arms, and had made themselves a captain named Robin, and sent to the Earl of Warwick to know if it was time to be busy, andto say that all their neighbours were ready. But my Lord answered, bidding them go home, for it was not yet time to be stirring. If the time should come, he would let them know."[10]
It was not only discontented Yorkists that had taken the news of the quarrel between Warwick and his master as a signal for moving. The tidings had stirred the exiled Lancastrians to a sudden burst of activity of which we should hardly have thought them capable. Queen Margaret borrowed ships and money from Louis, and lay in force at Harfleur. Sir Henry Courtney, heir of the late Earl of Devon, and Thomas Hungerford, son of the lord who fell at Hexham, tried to raise an insurrection in the South-West; but they were caught by Lord Stafford of Southwick and beheaded at Salisbury. As a reward the King gave Stafford his victim's title of Earl of Devon. In Wales the long-wandering Jasper Tudor suddenly appeared, at the head of two thousand men, supported by a small French fleet. He took Harlech Castle and sacked Denbigh; but a few weeks later Warwick's enemy, Lord Herbert, fell upon him at the head of the Yorkists of the March, routed his tumultuary army, retook Harlech, and forced him again to seek refuge in the hills. Herbert, like Lord Stafford, was rewarded with the title of the foe he had vanquished, and became Earl of Pembroke. While these risings were on foot, Lancastrian emissaries were busy all over England; but their activity only resulted in a seriesof executions. Two gentlemen of the Duke of Norfolk's retinue were beheaded for holding secret communication with the Beauforts while they were in Flanders, following the train which escorted the Princess Margaret at her marriage with Charles of Charolois, who had now become Duke of Burgundy. In London more executions took place, and Sir Thomas Cooke, late Lord Mayor, had all his goods confiscated for misprision of treason. Two of the Lancastrian emissaries alleged, under torture, the one, that Warwick had promised aid to the rising, the other that Lord Wenlock, Warwick's friend and supporter, had guilty knowledge of the scheme; but in each case the King himself acknowledged that the accusation was frivolous—the random imagining of men on the rack, forced to say something to save their own bones. It was not likely that Warwick would play the game of Queen Margaret, the slayer of his father and brother, and the instigator of attempts on his own life.
Startled by the sudden revival of Lancastrian energy, but encouraged by the easy way in which he had mastered it, King Edward determined to give the war-like impulses of his subjects vent by undertaking in the next year a great expedition against France. He had the example of Henry the Fifth before his eyes, and hoped to stifle treason at home by foreign war. Among his preparations for leaving home was a determined attempt to open negotiations with Warwick for a reconciliation. The King won over the Archbishop of York to plead his cause, by restoring to him some estates which he had seized in 1467; and about Easter George Neville induced his brother to meet the King at Coventry.Warwick came, but it is to be feared that he came fully resolved to have his revenge at his own time, with his heart quite unsoftened toward his master; yet he spoke the King fair, and even consented to be reconciled to Lord Herbert, though he would have nothing to say to the Woodvilles. He was also induced to join the company which escorted the Princess Margaret to the coast, on her way to her marriage in Flanders. After this Warwick paid a short visit to London, where he sat among the judges who in July tried the Lancastrian conspirators of the city. Clarence accompanied him, and sat on the same bench. He had spent the last few months in moving the Pope to grant him a disposition to marry Isabel Neville,[11]for they were within the prohibited degrees; but under pressure from King Edward the Curia had delayed the consideration of his request.
The autumn of 1468 and the spring of 1469 passed away quietly. Warwick made no movement, for he was still perfecting his plans. He saw with secret pleasure that the French, with whom peace would have been made long ago if his advice had been followed, kept the King fully employed. It must have given him peculiar gratification when his enemy Anthony Woodville, placed at the head of a large fleet, made two most inglorious expeditions to the French coast, and returned crestfallen without having even seen the enemy.
Meanwhile the Earl had been quietly measuring his resources. He had spoken to all his kinsmen, and secured the full co-operation of the majority of them. George the Archbishop of York, Henry Neville heir toWarwick's aged uncle Lord Latimer, Sir John Coniers of Hornby, husband of his niece Alice Neville, his cousin Lord Fitzhugh, and Thomas "the bastard of Fauconbridge," natural son to the deceased peer who had fought so well at Towton, were his chief reliance. His brother John of Montagu, the Earl of Northumberland, could not make up his mind; he did not reveal Warwick's plans to the King, but he would not promise any aid. William Neville of Abergavenny was now too old to be taken into account. The rest of Warwick's uncles and brothers were by this time dead.
By April 1469 the preparations were complete. Every district where the name of Neville was great had been carefully prepared for trouble. Kent, Yorkshire, and South Wales were ready for insurrection, and yet all had been done so quietly that the King, who ever since he had thrown off the Earl's influence had been sinking deeper and deeper into habits of careless evil-living and debauchery, suspected nothing.
In April Warwick took his wife and daughters across to Calais, apparently to get them out of harm's way. He himself, professing a great wish to see his cousin Margaret, the newly-married Duchess of Burgundy, went on to St. Omer. He there visited Duke Charles, and was reconciled to him in spite of the evil memories of their last meeting at Boulogne. To judge from his conduct, the Earl was bent on nothing but a harmless tour; but, as a matter of fact, his movements were but a blind destined to deceive King Edward. While he was feasting at St. Omer he had sent orders over-sea for the commencement of an insurrection. In a few days it was timed to break out. Meanwhile Warwick returned toCalais, and lodged with Wenlock, who was in charge of the great fortress.
His orders had had their effect. In the end of June grave riots broke out in the neighbourhood of York. Ostensibly they were connected with the maladministration of the estates of St. Leonard's hospital in that city; but they were in reality political and not agrarian. Within a few days fifteen thousand men were at the gates of York, clamorously setting forth a string of grievances, which were evidently founded on Cade's manifesto of 1450. Once more we hear of heavy taxation, maladministration of the law, the alienation of the royal estates to upstart favourites, the exclusion from the royal Councils of the great lords of the royal blood. Once more a demand is made for the punishment of evil counsellors, and the introduction of economy into the royal household, and the application of the revenue to the defence of the realm. The first leader of the rioters was Robert Huldyard, known as Robin of Redesdale, no doubt the same Robin whom the Earl had bidden in 1468 to keep quiet and wait the appointed time. John Neville the Earl of Northumberland lay at York with a large body of men-at-arms, for he was still Lieutenant of the North. Many expected that he would join the rioters; but, either because he had not quite recognised the insurrection to be his brother's work, or because he had resolved to adhere loyally to Edward, Montagu surprised the world by attacking the band which beset York. He routed its vanguard, captured Huldyard, and had him beheaded.
But this engagement was far from checking the rising. In a week the whole of Yorkshire, from Teesto Humber, was up, and it soon became evident in whose interest the movement was working. New leaders appeared. Sir John Coniers, the husband of Warwick's niece, and one of the most influential Yorkists of the North, replaced Huldyard, and assumed his name of Robin of Redesdale, while with him were Henry Neville of Latimer and Lord Fitzhugh. Instead of lingering at the gates of York, the great body of insurgents—rumour made it more than thirty thousand strong—rolled southward into the Midlands. They were coming, they said, to lay their grievances before the King; and in every place that they passed they hung their articles, obviously the work of some old political hand, on the church doors.
King Edward seems to have been taken quite unawares by this dangerous insurrection. He had kept his eye on Warwick alone, and when Warwick was over-sea he thought himself safe. At the end of June he had been making a progress in Norfolk, with no force at his back save two hundred archers, a bodyguard whom he had raised in 1468 and kept always around him. Hearing of the stir in Yorkshire, he rode north-ward to Nottingham, calling in such force as could be gathered by the way. As he went, news reached him which suddenly revealed the whole scope of the insurrection.
The moment that his brother's attention was drawn off by the Northern rising, the Duke of Clarence had quietly slipped over to Calais, and with him went George Neville the Archbishop of York. This looked suspicious, and the King at once wrote to Clarence, Warwick, and the Archbishop, bidding them all come to him withoutdelay. Long before his orders can have reached them, the tale of treason was out. Within twelve hours of Clarence's arrival at Calais the long-projected marriage between him and Isabel Neville had been celebrated, in full defiance of the King. Warwick and Clarence kept holiday but for one day; the marriage took place on the 11th, and by the 12th they were in Kent with a strong party of the garrison of Calais as their escort.
The unruly Kentishmen rose in a body in Warwick's favour, as eagerly as when they had mustered to his banner in 1460 before the battle of Northampton. The Earl and the Duke came to Canterbury with several thousand men at their back. There they revealed their treasonable intent, for they published a declaration that they considered the articles of Robin of Redesdale just and salutary, and would do their best to bring them to the King's notice. How the King was to be persuaded was indicated clearly enough, by a proclamation which summoned out the whole shire of Kent to join the Earl's banner. Warwick and his son-in-law then marched on London, which promptly threw open its gates. The King was thus caught between two fires—the open rebels lay to the north of him, his brother and cousin with their armed persuasion to the south.
Even before Warwick's treason had been known, the King had recognised the danger of the northern rising, and sent commissions of array all over England. Two considerable forces were soon in arms in his behalf. Herbert, the new Earl of Pembroke, raised fourteen thousand Welsh and Marchmen at Brecon and Ludlow, and set out eastward. Stafford, the new Earl of Devon, collected six thousand archers in the South-Western Counties, and set out northward. The King lay at Nottingham with Lord Hastings, Lord Mountjoy, and the Woodvilles. He seems to have had nearly fifteen thousand men in his company; but their spirit was bad. "Sire," said Mountjoy to him in full council of war, "no one wishes your person ill, but it would be well to send away my Lord of Rivers and his children when you have done conferring with them." Edward took this advice. Rivers and John Woodville forthwith retired to Chepstow; Scales joined his sister the Queen at Cambridge.
Meanwhile the Northern rebels were pouring south by way of Doncaster and Derby. Their leaders Coniers and Latimer showed considerable military skill, for by a rapid march on to Leicester they got between the King and Lord Herbert's army. Edward, for once out-generalled, had to follow them southward, but the Yorkshiremen were some days ahead of him, and on July 25th reached Daventry. On the same day Herbert and Stafford concentrated their forces at Banbury; but on their first meeting the two new earls fell to hard words on a private quarrel, and, although the enemy was so near, Stafford in a moment of pique drew off his six thousand men to Deddington, ten miles away, leaving Pembroke's fourteen thousand Welsh pikemen altogether unprovided with archery.
Next day all the chief actors in the scene were converging on the same spot in central England—Coniers marching from Daventry on to Banbury, Pembroke from Banbury on Daventry, with Stafford following in his rear, while Warwick and Clarence had left London and were moving by St. Albans on Towcester; theKing, following the Yorkshiremen, was somewhere near Northampton.
Coniers and his colleagues, to whom belong all the honours of generalship in this campaign, once more got ahead of their opponents. Moving rapidly on Banbury on the 26th, they found Pembroke's army approaching them on a common named Danesmoor, near Edgecott Park, six miles north of Banbury. The Welsh took up a position covered by a small stream and offered battle, though they were greatly inferior in numbers. The Northerners promptly attacked them, and though one of their three leaders, Henry Neville of Latimer, fell in the first onset, gained a complete victory; "by force of archery they forced the Welsh to descend from the hill into the valley," though Herbert and his brothers did all that brave knights could to save the battle. The King was only a few hours' march away; indeed, his vanguard under Sir Geoffrey Gate and Thomas Clapham actually reached the field, but both were old officers of Warwick, and instead of falling on the rebels' rear, proceeded to join them, and led the final attack on Herbert's position.
Thunderstruck at the deep demoralisation among his troops which this desertion showed, the King fell back on Olney, abandoning Northampton to the rebels. Next day—it was July 27th—the brave Earl of Pembroke and his brother Richard Herbert, both of whom had been taken prisoners, were beheaded in the market-place by Coniers' command without sentence or trial. Their blood lies without doubt on Warwick's head, for though neither he nor Clarence was present, the rebels were obviously acting on his orders, and ifhe had instructed them to keep all their captives safe, they would never have presumed to slay them. Several chroniclers indeed say that Warwick and Clarence had expressly doomed Herbert for death. This slaughter was perfectly inexcusable, for Herbert had never descended to the acts of the Woodvilles; he was an honourable enemy, and Warwick had actually been reconciled to him only a year before.[12]The execution of the Herberts was not the only token of the fact that the great Earl's hand was pulling the strings all over England. His special aversions, Rivers and John Woodville, were seized a week later at Chepstow by a band of rioters—probably retainers from the Despenser estates by the Severn—and forwarded to Coventry, where they were put to death early in August. Even if Pembroke's execution was the unauthorised work of Coniers and Fitzhugh, this slaying of the Woodvilles must certainly have been Warwick's own deed. Stafford the Earl of Devon, whose desertion of the Welsh had been the principal cause of the defeat at Edgecott, fared no better than the colleague he had betrayed. He disbanded his army and fled homeward; but at Bridgewater he was seized by insurgents, retainers of the late Earl of Devon whom he had beheaded a year before, and promptly put to death.
It only remains to relate King Edward's fortunes. When the news of Edgecott fight reached his army, it disbanded for the most part, and he was left, with no great following, at Olney, whither he had fallen back on July 27th. Meanwhile Warwick and Clarence,marching from London on Northampton along the Roman road, were not far off. The news of the King's position reached their army, and George Neville the Archbishop of York, who was with the vanguard, resolved on a daring stroke. Riding up by night with a great body of horse he surrounded Olney; the King's sentinels kept bad watch, and at midnight Edward was roused by the clash of arms at his door. He found the streets full of Warwick's men, and the Archbishop waiting in his ante-chamber. The smooth prelate entered and requested him to rise and dress himself. "Then the King said he would not, for he had not yet had his rest; but the Archbishop, that false and disloyal priest, said to him a second time, 'Sire, you must rise and come to see my brother of Warwick, nor do I think that you can refuse me.' So the King, fearing worse might come to him, rose and rode off to meet his cousin of Warwick."
The Earl meanwhile had passed on to Northampton, where he met the Northern rebels on July 29th, and thanked them for the good service they had done England. There he dismissed the Kentish levies which had followed him from London, and moved on to Coventry escorted by the Yorkshiremen, many of whom must have been his own tenants. At Coventry the Archbishop, and his unwilling companion the King, overtook them. The details of the meeting of Warwick and Clarence with their captive master have not come down to us. But apparently Edward repaid the Earl's guile of the past year by an equally deceptive mask of good humour. He made no reproaches about the death of his adherents, signed everything that was required of him, and did notattempt to escape. The first batch of privy seals issued under Warwick's influence are dated from Coventry on August 2nd.
The great Earl's treacherous plans had been crowned with complete success. He had shown that half England would rise at his word; his enemies were dead; his master was in his power. Yet he found that his troubles were now beginning, instead of reaching their end. It was not merely that the whole kingdom had been thrown into a state of disturbance, and that men had commenced everywhere to settle old quarrels with the sword—the Duke of Norfolk, for example, was besieging the Paston's castle of Caistor, and the Commons of Northumberland were up in arms demanding the restoration of the Percies to their heritage. These troubles might be put down by the strong arm of Warwick; but the problem of real difficulty was to arrange amodus vivendiwith the King. Edward was no coward or weakling to be frightened into good behaviour by a rising such as had just occurred. How could he help resenting with all his passionate nature the violence of which he had been the victim? His wife, too, would always be at his side; and though natural affection was not Elizabeth Woodville's strong point,[13]still she was far too ambitious and vindictive to pardon the deaths of her father and brother. Warwick knew Edward well enough to realise that for the future there could never be true confidence between them again, and that for the rest of his life he must guard his head well against his master's sword.
But the Earl was proud and self-reliant; he determined to face the danger and release the King. No other alternative was before him, save, indeed, to slay Edward and proclaim his own son-in-law, Clarence, for King. But the memory of old days spent in Edward's cause was too strong. Clarence, too, though he may have been willing enough to supplant his brother, made no open proposals to extinguish him.
Edward was over a month in his cousin's hands. Part of the time he was kept at Warwick and Coventry, but the last three weeks were spent in the Earl's northern stronghold of Middleham. The few accounts which we have of the time seem to show that the King was all smoothness and fair promises; the Earl and the Archbishop, on the other hand, were careful to make his detention as little like captivity as could be managed. He was allowed free access to every one, and permitted to go hunting three or four miles away from the castle in company with a handful of the Earl's servants. Warwick at the same time gave earnest of his adherence to the Yorkist cause by putting down two Lancastrian risings, the one in favour of the Percies, led by Robin of Holderness, the other raised by his own second-cousin, Sir Humphrey Neville, one of the elder branch, who was taken and beheaded at York.
Before releasing the King, Warwick exacted a few securities from him. The first was a general pardon to himself, Clarence, and all who had been engaged in the rising of Robin of Redesdale. The second was a grant to himself of the chamberlainship of South Wales, and the right to name the governors of Caermarthen and the other South Welsh castles. These offices had been in Herbert's hands, and the Earl had found that theycramped his own power in Glamorganshire and the South Marches. The third was the appointment as Treasurer of Sir John Langstrother, the Prior of the Hospitallers of England; he was evidently chosen as Rivers' successor, because two years before he had been elected to his place as prior in opposition to John Woodville, whom the King had endeavoured to foist on the order. The chancellorship, however, was still left in the hands of Bishop Stillington, against whom no one had a grudge; George Neville did not claim his old preferment.
By October the King was back in London, which he entered in great state, escorted by Montagu, the Archbishop, Richard of Gloucester, and the Earls of Essex and Arundel. "The King himself," writes one of the Pastons that day, "hath good language of my Lords of Clarence, Warwick, and York, saying they be his best friends; but his household have other language, so that what shall hastily fall I can not say." No more, we may add, could any man in England, the King and Warwick included.