# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 2/Chapter 1

CASSELL’S
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND
VOLUME II.
Louis XI. and the Herald.(See page 10)
CHAPTER I.
REIGN OF EDWARD IV.—(Continued).
THE mock restoration of Henry VI. was not destined to be of of long continuance. The ups and downs of royalty at this period were as rapid and strange as the shifting scenes of a theatre. There is no part of our history where we are left so much in the dark as to the real moving causes. It is difficult to see how Warwick, with his vast popularity, should, in the course of a single winter, become so unpopular as to render his fail and the success of Edward so easy. We can well conceive that Edward—cruel and licentious at home, not even respected by his own brother-in-law of Burgundy, and sincerely hated by Louis of France, whom he had so deeply insulted by the rejection of his queen's sister in marriage—should sit on ​an unstable throne. But how Warwick, so warmly hailed in the autumn, and carried on the shoulders of the Lancastrian party and the people at large to the pinnacle of power, should in the spring be as readily abandoned, is by no means clear. Had he closed that great source of his popularity, his kitchen? Did the necessity for maintaining a great force, the demands of gifts, estates, and favours by his followers in his enterprise to put down Edward; and his repayment of the advances to the King of France, compel him to contract that lavish hospitality which daily feasted 30,000 people at his palaces and castles? Probably some such causes were at work, for Warwick does not seem to have exercised any great severity in his triumph, or to have used his power haughtily. Nevertheless, his popularity appeared to thaw and flow away with the snows and frosts of winter. It must be remembered, however, that there was a terrible secret schism in his camp and party. Clarence was only waiting to seize a good opportunity to overthrow his father-in-law, Warwick, and climb the throne himself. Though he was a very weak and by no means high-principled young man, Clarence was not so weak as to build any future hopes on Warwick's having given him the succession in case of the issue of the Prince of Wales failing. Warwick had married another of his daughters to the prince, and it was his strongest interest to maintain that line on the throne.
There can be little doubt that these things were kept alive in Clarence's bosom by the same clever female agency which was employed at Calais. It is fully clear, by the immediately following conduct of the Marquis of Montacute, that there was an understanding between him and Clarence. Here was another blow to the power of Warwick, while Burgundy, however little disposed to esteem Edward, naturally preferred seeing him as his brother-in-law upon the throne of England, than as an exile and a beggar, and his great rival, Louis of France, strengthened by the alliance of Warwick and Margaret.
All these causes undoubtedly co-operated to produce what soon followed. Burgundy determined to assist Edward to regain his throne, and thus destroy the ascendancy of Warwick. While, therefore, issuing a proclamation forbidding any of his subjects to follow Edward in his expedition, he privately sent to him the cross of St. Andrew; and an aid of 50,000 florins furnished him with four large ships, which were fitted up and stored for him at Vere, in Walcheren. Besides these, he hired for him fourteen ships from the merchants of the Hanse Towns, to transport his troops from Flushing to England. These transactions could leave no question in the minds of the subjects of Burgundy which way lay the real feelings of their sovereign. At the same time, the amount of troops embarking with Edward was not such as to give to the enterprise a Burgundian appearance. The soldiers furnished ham were only 2,000. Edward undoubtedly relied on information sent him from England as to the forces there ready to join him.
The fleet of Edward steered for the Suffolk coast. It was in the south that the Yorkists' influence lay, and Clarence was posted in that quarter at the head of a considerable force. But Warwick's preparations were too strong in that quarter; an active body of troops, under a brother of the Earl of Oxford, deterred the invaders from any attempt at landing. They proceeded northward, finding no opportunity of successfully getting on shore till they reached the little port of Ravenspur, in Yorkshire—singularly enough, the very place where Henry IV. landed when he deposed Richard II. From this same port now issued the force which was to terminate his line. At first, however, the undertaking were anything but a promising aspect. The north was the very stronghold of the Lancastrian faction; and openly was displayed the hostility of the inhabitants towards the returned Yorkist monarch. But Edward, with that ready dishonesty which is considered defensible in the strife for crowns, solemnly declared that he had abandoned for himself all claims on the throne; that he saw and acknowledged the right of Henry VI. and his line, and for himself only desired the happy security of a private station. His real and most patriotic design, he gave out, was to put down the turbulent and overbearing power of Warwick, and thus give permanent tranquility to the country, which never could exist so long as Warwick lived. He exhibited a forged safe-conduct from the Earl of Northumberland; he declared that he sought for himself nothing but the possessions of the Duke of York, his father; he mounted in his bonnet an ostrich feather, the device of the Prince of Wales, and ordered his followers to shout "Long live King Henry!" in every place through which they passed.
These exhibitions of his untruth—called by politicians expediency, by men of honour lies—were too barefaced to deceive any one. The people still stood aloof, and on reaching the gates of York, Edward found them closed against him. But by the boldest use of the same lying policy, Edward managed to prevail on the mayor and aldermen to admit him. He swore the most solemn oath that he abjured the crown forever, and would do all in his power to maintain Henry and his issue upon it. Not satisfied with this, the clergy demanded that he should repeat this oath most emphatically before the high altar in the cathedral. Edward assented with alacrity, and would undoubtedly have sworn anything and any number of oaths to the same effect. He then marched in with that bold precipitance which was the secret of his success, and which, as in the case of Napoleon in our times, always threw his enemies into consternation and confusion. At Pontefract lay the Marquis of Montacute, Warwick's brother, with a force superior to that of Edward, and all the world looked to see him throw himself across the path of the invader, and to set battle against him. Nothing of the kind; Montacute lay still in the fortress, and Edward, marching within four miles of this commander, went on his way without any check from him. This must have convinced every one that there was more beneath the surface of affairs than met the eye. It was not the first time that Montacute had played this equivocal part. Edward had formerly stripped him of the earldom of Northumberland, for alleged conspiracy with Clarence, and that he was now in league with Clarence, for Edward, and against Warwick, was sufficiently clear.
As Edward approached the midland counties, and especially when he had crossed the Trent, the scene changed rapidly in his favour. He had left the Lancastrian districts behind, and reached those where Yorkists prevailed. People now flocked to his standard. At Nottingham the Lord Stanley, Sir Thomas Parr, Sir James Harrington, ​Sir Thomas Montgomery, and several other gentlemen, came in with reinforcements. Edward felt himself strong enough to throw off the mask: he assumed the title of king, and marched towards Coventry, where lay Warwick and Clarence with a force sufficient to punish this odious perjury. But a fresh turn of the royal kaleidoscope was here to astonish the public. Edward challenged the united army of Warwick and Clarence on the 29th of March, 1471. In the night, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, paid a visit to his brother Clarence. The two brothers flew into each other's arms with a transport which, if not that of genuine affection, was at least that of successful conspiracy. The morning beheld the army of Clarence, amounting to 12,000 men, arrayed, not on the part of Warwick, but of Edward; the soldiers wearing, not the red, but the white rose over their gorgets.
Here, then, was fully disclosed the secret which had induced Edward to march on so confidently through hostile districts, and people standing aloof from his banners. Not Montacute only, but Clarence had been won. Clarence, whether in weak simplicity, or under the influence of others, sent to Warwick to apologise for his breach of his most solemn oaths, and offered to become mediator betwixt him, his father-in-law, and Edward his brother. Warwick rejected the offer with disdain, refusing all further intercourse with the perjured Clarence; but he was now too weak to engage him and Edward, and the Yorkist king then boldly advanced towards the capital. The gates of the city, like those of York, he found closed against him, but he possessed sufficient means to unlock the one as he had done the other. There were upwards of 2,000 persons of rank and influence, including no less than 400 knights and gentlemen, crowded into the various sanctuaries of London and Westminster, who were ready not only to declare, but to operate in his favour. The ladies, who were charmed with the gay and gallant disposition of Edward, wore all avowed his zealous friends; and, perhaps, still more persuasive was the fact that the jovial monarch owed large sums to the merchants, who saw in his return their only chance of payment. Edward even succeeded in securing the Archbishop of York, who was, in his brother Warwick's absence, the custodian of the city and the person of King Henry. All regard to oaths, and all fidelity to principle or party, seemed to have disappeared at this epoch. By permission of the archbishop, Edward was admitted on Thursday, April 2nd, by a postern into the bishop's palace, where he found the poor and helpless King Henry, and immediately sent him to the Tower.
Warwick hastened after Edward and Clarence, intending to risk an engagement rather than allow them to gain the capital. What was as strange as anything which had gone before, was that Montacute was now marching in conjunction with Warwick. Had Edward shown any distrust of the traitor, or did he mean, like Clarence, to go completely over to the Yorkists, when they came face to face? Both suppositions were entertained by different parties. Which was true never was determined; but there was Montacute.
So confident now was Edward of victory, that he disdained to shelter himself within the walls of the city, but marched out against the enemy. The hostile armies met near Barnet. Here again the weak Clarence made another offer of mediation. No doubt his wife, who was the daughter of Warwick, and her sister the wife of the Prince of Wales, was anxious enough to avert the danger of her father, and, if possible, unite contending relations. But Warwick was too much enraged both against Edward and Clarence to listen to any proposals of reconciliation. The leaders on both sides were now too much embittered against each other, guilty of too many changes and acts of perfidy, ever again to put reliance in each other, much less to cement a genuine friendship. Warwick said indignantly to Clarence's messenger, "Go, and tell your master that Warwick, true to his oath, is a better man than the false and perjured Clarence." Nothing but blood could wash out the enmity of these infuriated parties.
It was late on Easter Eve when the two armies met on Barnet common. Both had made long marches, Edward having left London that day. Warwick, being first on the ground, had chosen his position. Edward, who came later, had to make his arrangements in the dark, the consequence of which was, that he committed a great error. His right wing, instead of confronting the left wing of Warwick, was opposed to his centre, and the left wing of Edward consequently had no opponents, but stretched far away to the west. Daylight must have discovered this error, and most probably fatally for Edward; but day came accompanied by a dense fog, believed at that day to have been raised by a celebrated magician, Friar Bungy. The left wing of each army advancing through the obscurity of the fog, and finding no enemy, wheeled in the direction of the main body. By this movement the left wing of Warwick trampled down the right wing of Edward, and defeating it, pursued the flying Yorkists through Barnet on the way to London.
Meantime, the left wing of the Yorkists, instead of encountering the right of the Lancastrians, came up so as to strengthen their own centre, where Edward and Warwick were contending with all their might against each other. Both chiefs were in the very front of the battle, which was raging with the utmost fury. Warwick, contrary to his custom, had been persuaded by his brother Montacute to dismount, send away his horse, and fight on foot. Was this an act of bravery on the part of Montacute, or of treason? Such was the ambiguous conduct of this nobleman, that his contemporaries and the historians were again divided on the point. If it were treason, and he meant to take the opportunity of Warwick's personal engagement, in the thick of the melée to draw off to the other side, he paid the penalty of it, for he was speedily slain.
The battle commenced at four o'clock in the morning, and lasted till ten. The rage of the combatants was terrible, and the slaughter was proportionate, for Edward, exasperated at the Commons, who had shown such favour to Warwick on all occasions, had determined no longer to issue orders to spare them, as was his wont, and to kill all the leaders, if possible. It was terminated by a singular mistake. The device of the Earl of Oxford, who was fighting for Warwick, was a star with rays, emblazoned both on the front and back of his soldiers' coats. The device of Edward's own soldiers on this occasion was a sun with rays. Oxford had beaten his opponents in the field, and was returning to assist Warwick, when Warwick's troops, mistaking through the mist the stars ​of Oxford for the sun of Edward, fell upon Oxford's followers, supposing them to be Yorkists, and put them to flight. Oxford fled with 800 of his soldiers, supposing himself the object of some fatal treachery, while on the other hand, Warwick, weakened by the apparent defection of Oxford, and his troops thrown into confusion, rushed desperately into the thickest of the enemy, trusting thus to revive the courage of his troops, and was thus slain, fighting.
No sooner was the body of Warwick, stripped of its armour and covered with wounds, discovered on the field, than his forces gave way, and fled amain. Thus fell the great king-maker, who so long had kept alive the spirit of contention, placing the crown first on one head and then on another. With him perished the power of his faction and the prosperity of his family. On the field with him lay all the great lords who fought on his side, except the Earl of Oxford and the Duke of Somerset, who escaped into Wales, and joined Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, who was in arms for Henry. The Duke of Exeter was taken up for dead, but being found to be alive, he was conveyed by his servants secretly to the sanctuary at Westminster; but the holiness of the sanctuary does not appear to have proved any defence against the lawless vengeance of Edward, for, some months after, his dead body was found floating in the sea near Dover. On the side of Edward fell the Lords Say and Cromwell, Sir John Lisle, the son of Lord Berners, and many other squires and gentlemen. The soldiers who fell on both sides have been variously stated at from 1,000 to 10,000; the number more commonly credited is about 1,500. The dead were buried on the field, and a chapel erected near the spot for the repose of their souls. The spot is supposed to be at the present time actually marked by a stone column. The bodies of Warwick and Montacute were exposed for three days, naked, on the floor of St. Paul's Church, as a striking warning against subjects interfering with kings and crowns. They were then conveyed to the burial-place of their family in the abbey of Bilsam, in Berkshire.
In the fall of Warwick Edward might justly suppose that he saw the only real obstacle to the permanency of his own power; but Margaret was still alive. She was no longer, however, the elastic and indomitable Margaret who had led her forces up to the battles of St. Alban's, Northampton, Wakefield, Towton, and Hexham. Her astonishing exertions, her severe hardships, and awful reverses had told on her spirit and constitution. Years of reflection in the midst of obscurity and poverty had led her to perceive more clearly the formidable difficulties in the way to a peaceable possession of the throne—the mental condition of her husband, the youth of her son, the power of Warwick—formerly her great enemy, and now her doubtful friend, for he had secured his hold on the throne by the marriage of two of his daughters. There was the ominous clause in the treaty with her and France, that if the issue of her son failed, the throne went to Clarence, the brother of Edward. Heaven and the elements, ever since this unnatural contract, had appeared to oppose her. As "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," they appeared now to fight against her. All the winter she had been struggling to cross the Channel with her son and her followers, and tempest after tempest had driven her back. Could she have been present with the Lancastrian armies, with the Prince of Wales, thousands would have flocked to the Lancastrian standard who were doubtful of the loyalty of Warwick. But the day that she landed at Weymouth, imagining that she had now nothing to do but to march in triumph to London, and resume with her husband their vacant throne, was the very day of the fatal battle of Barnet. The first news she received was of the total overthrow of her party and the death of Warwick. The life of the great king-maker might have created her future troubles; his fall was her total ruin. Confounded by the tidings, her once lofty spirit abandoned her; she sank on the ground in a death-like swoon.
On recovering her consciousness, Margaret bitterly bewailed her fortunes. She cursed the miserable times in which she lived, and declared that she had rather die than live in so much and so perpetual trouble. She was then in the abbey of Cerne, and with her were her son, now about eighteen years of age; his new bride, the daughter of Warwick; Sir John Fortescue, who had adhered to her through all her exile; Sir Henry Rous, and some others. With these and the rest of her followers she fled to the famous sanctuary of Beaulieu, in the New Forest, where she registered herself and all her attendants as privileged persons. Probably the presence of the Countess of Warwick might make her resort to Beaulieu. The now widowed countess embarked at Harfleur at the same time with the queen, had landed at Portsmouth, and proceeded to Southampton. Here she was met by the news of her husband's death at Barnet, and she fled instantly to Beaulieu.
The moment it was known that Margaret and the prince were at Beaulieu, the Duke of Somerset, the Earls of Devonshire and Oxford, the Lords Wenlock and Beaufort, with many knights and gentlemen, flocked thither, and bade her not despair, for that the Earl of Pembroke was at the head of a strong force in Wales, and her followers were still of good heart. Margaret replied that, for herself, she would remain and do everything possible to turn the tide of victory; but she begged that her son might be allowed to return to France and there await the issue in safety. To this the prince refused to listen, and was unanimously supported in that resolution by the leaders. The forebodings of Margaret were borne down by his zealous opposition, and she said, "Well, be it so."
It was the plan of her generals to hasten to Pembroke; and, having effected a junction with him, to proceed to Cheshire, to render the army effective by a good body of archers. But Edward, always rapid in his movements, allowed them no time for so formidable a combination. He left London on the 19th of April, and reached Tewkesbury on the 3rd of May. Margaret and her company set out from Bath, and prepared to cross the Severn at Gloucester, to join Pembroke and Jasper Tudor. But the people of Gloucester had fortified the bridge, and neither threats nor bribes could induce them to let her pass. She then marched on to Tewkesbury, near which they found Edward already awaiting them.
The troops being worn down by the fatigue of a long and fearful march, Margaret was in the utmost anxiety to avoid an engagement, and to press on to their friends in Wales. But Somerset represented that such a thing was ​utterly impossible. For a night and a day the foot-soldiers had been plunging along for six-and-thirty miles through a foul country—all lanes, and stony ways, betwixt woods, and having no proper refreshment. To move farther in the face of the enemy was out of the question. he must pitch his camp in the park, and take such fortune as God should send.
The queen, as well as the most experienced officers of the army, were greatly averse to this, but the duke either could not or would not move, and Edward presented himself in readiness for battle. Thus compelled to give up the cheering hope of a junction with the Welsh army, Margaret and her son did all in their power to inspire the soldiers with courage for this most eventful conflict. The next morning, being the 4th of May, the forces were drawn out in order. The Duke of Somerset took the charge of the main body. The Prince of Wales commanded the second division, under the direction of Lord Wenlock and the Prior of St. John's. The Earl of Devonshire brought up the rear. The Lancastrian army was entrenched in a particularly strong position on the banks of the Severn; having, both in front and on the flanks, a country so deeply intersected with lanes, hedges, and ditches, that there was scarcely any approaching it. This grand advantage, however, was completely lost by the folly and impetuosity of the Duke of Somerset, who, not content to defend himself against the superior forces and heavier artillery of Edward, rushed out beyond the entrenchments, where he was speedily taken in flank by a body of 200 spearsmen, and thrown into confusion. His men fled for their lives, and the duke regaining the camp, and seeing Lord Wenlock sitting quietly at the head of his division, instead of following and supporting him, as he thought he ought to have done, he rode furiously up to him, and exclaiming, "Traitor!" cleft his skull with his battle-axe.
At the sight of this, the soldiers of Wenlock's division fled in terror, and the banner of the Duke of Gloucester, followed speedily by that of Edward himself, being seen floating inside of the entrenchments, all became confusion. The queen, on seeing the breaking-up of the host, became frantic, and would have rushed into the midst of the mêlée, to endeavour to call back the soldiers to the conflict. But her attendants forced her away, and escaped with her to a small religious house in the neighbourhood, where her daughter-in-law, Ann of Warwick, the Countess of Devonshire, and Lady Catherine Vaux, also took refuge. Three days later, the queen and these ladies were seized and conveyed captives to the Yorkist camp. In the meantime Margaret's son, the Prince of Wales, had been taken on the field of battle, and, being conducted into the presence of Edward by his captor Sir Richard Crofts, the Yorkist king demanded of the princely boy, "How he dared so presumptuously to enter his realm with banners displayed against him?" and the stripling replied, undauntedly, "To recover my father's crown and mine own inheritance." Edward, incensed at this reply, struck in a most dastardly manner the royal youth in the face, with the back of his gauntlet, and Gloucester and Clarence, or perhaps their attendants, followed up the base blow, and dispatched him with their swords. Stowe says simply, "The king smote him on the face with his gauntlet, and after, his servants slew him." Other writers only assert that he was slain on the field; and no doubt this royal murder took place in the field, and while the victors were in the hot blood of battle.
No fate can be conceived more consummately wretched than that of Margaret now—her cause utterly ruined, her only son slain, her husband and herself the captives of their haughty enemies. They who had thus barbarously shed tho blood of the prince might, with a little cunning, shed that of her husband and herself; No such good fortune awaited Margaret. She was doomed to hear such news of her imprisoned consort, and to be left to long years of grief over the utter wreck of crown, husband, child, and friends, a great and distinguished band.
The Duke of Somerset, tho Prior of St. John's, six knights—Sir Gervais Clifton, Sir Humphry Audely, Sir William Gainsby, Sir Willam Cary, Sir Henry Rose, Sir Thomas Tresham—and seven esquires had fled to a church at Tewkesbury. They always themselves respected the rights of sanctuary, and probably on that account deemed themselves safe. To this Edward was indebted for the life of his queen, his children, and of thousands of his friends and adherents. During his absence Elizabeth had fled from the Tower to the sanctuary of Westminster, with her mother, the old Duchess Jacquetta, and her three daughters. There she was delivered of a son, the unfortunate Edward V., destined to perish in his boyhood in the gloomy fortress which his mother had just quitted. But, forgetting all this, he broke, sword in hand, into the church, and would have killed them. A priest, bearing the sacrament, withstood him, and would not permit him to pass till he promised to pardon all who had fled thither. Edward readily promised, but, two days after they were dragged thence, brought before the Dukes of Gloucester and Northumberland, condemned, and beheaded. This deadly quarrel betwixt the houses of York and Lancaster had now occasioned twelve battles; the deaths in these battles and on the block of no loss than sixty princes of these two families, above half of the nobles and powerful gentlemen, and above 100,000 of the common people. Such were the direct consequences of the usurpation of Henry IV. The stream of blood ceased in a great measure during the remainder of the present reign, but only to burst forth again with fresh violence under Richard of Gloucester.
Edward returned to London triumphant over all his enemies, and the next morning Henry VI. was found dead in the Tower. It was given out that he died of grief and melancholy, but nobody at that day doubted that he was murdered, and it was generally attributed to Richard of Gloucester. The continuator of the chronicles of Croyland, a most credible contemporary, prays that the doer of the deed, whoever he were, may have time for repentance, and declares that it was done by "an agent of the tyrant" and a subject of the murdered king. Who was this? The chronicler in Leland points it out plainly. "That night," he says, "King Henry was put to death in the Tower, the Duke of Gloucester and divers of his men being there." Fabyan, also a contemporary, says, "Divers tales were told, but the most common fame went that he was sticked with a dagger by the hands of the Duke Gloucester."
Edward, Prince of Wales, Son of Henry VI., and Edward IV.(See page 5)
Queen Elizabeth Wydville, with her children, taking Sanctuary at Westminster.(See page 5)
Henry's reputation for holiness during his life, and his tragical death, occasioned such a resort to his tomb, that Gloucester, in mounting the throne as Richard III., caused the remains of the poor king to be removed, it was said to Windsor. Afterwards, when Henry VII. wished to convey them to Westminster, they could not be found, having been carefully concealed from public attention.
Margaret, who was conveyed to the Tower the very night on which her husband was murdered there, was at first rigorously treated. There had been an attempt on the part of the Bastard of Falconberg, who was vice-admiral under Warwick, to liberate Henry, during the absence of Edward and Gloucester, at the battle of Tewkesbury. He landed at Blackwall with a body of marines, and, calling on the people of Essex and Kent to aid him, made two desperate attempts to penetrate to the Tower, burning Bishopsgate, but was repulsed, and on the approach of Edward, retreated. To prevent any similar attempt in favour of Margaret, she was successively removed to Windsor, and lastly to Wallingford. She remained a prisoner for five years, when at the entreaty of her father, King Roné, she was ransomed by Louis of France, and retired to the castle of Reculée, near Angers. She died at the château of Damprièrre, near Saumur, in 1482, in the fifty-first year of her age. No time is said to have brought resignation to her stormy and passionate nature. She continued the victim of griefs and regrets for her bereavements so intense, that, adding their force to that of the toils, excitements, and agonies that she had passed through, she was consumed by a loathsome leprosy, and from one of the most beautiful women in the world, became an object of appalling terror.
The Lancastrian party appeared now broken up for ever: those leaders who had not fallen, fled; and some of them lived till times were auspicious to them. We have noticed the death of the Duke of Exeter. He was married to the sister of Edward; but that lady, instead of obtaining his pardon, obtained a divorce from him, and married Sir Thomas St. Leger. The next year poor Exeter's body was found, as we have related, out at sea. Vere, Earl of Oxford, made his escape into France. He returned with a small fleet; surprised Mount St. Michael in Cornwall, but was compelled to surrender, and was afterwards confined twelve years in the castle of Hamme, in Picardy; while his wife, the sister of the great Warwick, supported herself by her needle. Oxford survived to fight for Henry VII. The Archbishop of York, the only remaining brother of Warwick, having very foolishly, in presence of the king's servants, displayed his wealth since the battle of Barnet, was plundered of all his plate and jewels, stripped of his bishopric, and shut up in prison, partly in England, and partly at Guisnes, till within a few years of his death. The Earl of Pembroke, and his nephew, the Earl of Richmond, escaped into Brittany, where Edward sent to demand their being given up to him. But the Duke of Brittany refused, and there remained the future Henry VII., waiting for the day which came at length, when he should avenge the house of Lancaster, and unite it and that of York for ever. Several of the other fugitive Lancastrians—amongst whom was Sir John Fortescue, who had been tutor to Edward, Prince of Wales, Margaret's son—humbly sued for pardon, and received it.
Thus was the long and sanguinary usurpation of the house of Lancaster apparently put down, and Edward, the representative of the house of York, sat on the throne with scarcely a visible competitor. There were some nearer, however, than he suspected. His two brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, were a couple of men as unprincipled as ever appeared on the face of history. Clarence was weak, but Gloucester was as cunning and daring as he was base. A more unlovable character no country has produced, spite of all the endeavours which have been made by Horace Walpole and other writers, to whitewash into something amiable this real blackamoor of nature. The crimes of murder which are attributed to him, both before and after his seizure of his nephew's throne, no sophistry can rid him of; the odium reeking upon him in his own day still clings to him in ours.
The two rapacious brothers came now, on the first return of peace, to quarrel at the very foot of the throne for the vast property of Warwick. Edward would fain have forgotten everything else in his pleasures. The blood upon his own hands gave him no concern; he was only anxious to devote his leisure hours to Jane Shore, the silversmith's wife, whom he had, like numbers of other ladies, seduced from her duty. But Clarence and Gloucester broke through his gaieties with their wranglings and mutual menaces. "The world seemeth queasy, here," says Sir John Fasten in his Letters; "for the most part that be about the king have sent for their harness, and it is said for certain that the Duke of Clarence maketh him big in that he can, showing as he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester. But the king intendeth, in eschewing all inconvenience, to be as big as them both, and to be a stiffler between them. And some men think, that under this there should be some other thing intended; and some treason conspired, so what shall fall can I not tell."
The fact was, that Clarence having, as we have seen, married Isabella, the eldest daughter, was determined, if possible, to monopolise all the property of Warwick, as if the eldest daughter were sole heiress. But Gloucester, who was always on the look out for his own aggrandisement, now cast his eyes on Anne, the other daughter, who had been married to the Prince of Wales. Clarence, aware that he should have a daring and a lawless rival in Gloucester, in regard to the property, opposed the match with all his might. On this point they rose to high words and much heat. Clarence declared at length that Richard might marry Anne if he pleased, but that he ​should have no share whatever in the property; but only let Richard get the lady, and he would soon possess himself of the lands. The question was debated by the two brothers with such fury, before the council, that civil war was anticipated.
All this time the property was rightfully that of the widow of Warwick, the mother of the two young ladies. Anne, the Countess of Warwick, was the sole heiress of the vast estates of the Despensers and the Beauchamps, Earls of Warwick. Her husband, the king-maker, had entered on the estates and title by his marriage with her. So far, therefore, as all law and right were concerned, no person whatever but herself, during her lifetime, had any claim on those estates. But in that miserable age, laws, right, honour, or natural affection had little or no existence. The widow of Warwick, the mother of the two ladies thus striven for, the rightful possessor of the estates hankered after, was not in the slightest degree regarded. She was retained an actual prisoner in the sanctuary of Beaulien, whither she fled on the death of her husband. A party of soldiers was maintained by Edward, who stood sentinels over the sanctuary, disturbing the devotional quiet of the place, and by their insolent maraudings keeping the whole neighbourhood in terror. The unhappy mother of the two ladies who were thus to be placed, by marriage with the princes of the blood, almost on a level with the throne, in vain petitioned even for her liberty. Two years after the battle of Tewkesbury, the countess petitioned the House of Commons for her liberty. She complained in that petition that she had, within five days of her retreat into the sanctuary, commenced her earnest suit to the king for the restoration of her freedom, and sufficient of her property to maintain her; but her requests had been treated with the utmost indifference. She had then tried the sympathies of the queen, Elizabeth Wydville, but without any success. Elizabeth was a woman who never thought of property without wanting to get it into her own family. She had after that tried Clarence, her son-in-law, the father of her grandchildren, and Gloucester, who wanted to become her son-in-law. In vain. Then she applied to the king's sisters, the Duchesses of Essex and Suffolk, old Jacquetta, the Duchess of Bedford, the queen's mother. To all the great court party, who had once been her friends—as the world calls friendship—and many of them her humble flatterers and admirers, she applied, in the most moving terms, for their kind aid in obtaining a modicum of freedom and support out of her own lands, the most wealthy in England.
But it was not her that the two princes courted, it was her property; and nobody dared or cared to move a finger in favour of the once great Anne of Warwick. The daughter Anne, so far from desiring to marry Richard of Gloucester, detested him. She was said to have had a real affection for her unfortunate husband, the murdered Prince of Wales, and shrunk in horror from the idea of wedding the murderer. Co-operating, therefore, with the wishes and interests of Clarence, she, by his assistance, escaped out of the sanctuary of Beaulieu, where she had been with the countess, her mother, and disappeared. For some time no trace of her could be discovered; but Gloucester had his spies and emissaries everywhere; and, at length, the daughter of Warwick, and the future queen of England, was found in the guise of a cookmaid in London. Gloucester removed her to the sanctuary of St. Martin's-le-Grand. Afterwards, she was allowed to visit her uncle, the Archbishop of York, before his disgrace, and the Queen Margaret in the Tower. All this was probably conceded by Gloucester, in order to win Anne'e favour; but Anne still repelling with disgust his addresses, he refused her those solaces, and procuring the removal of her mother from Beaulieu, sent her, under the escort of Sir John Tyrrell, into the north, where he is said to have kept her confined till his own death, even while she was his mother-in-law. Anne was at length compelled to marry the hated Gloucester; and her hatred appeared to increase from nearer acquaintance, for she was soon after praying for a divorce.
The king was compelled to award to Gloucester a large share of Warwick's property; and the servile Parliament passed an act in 1474, embodying the disgraceful commands of these most unnatural and unprincipled princes. The two daughters were to succeed to the Warwick property, as though their mother, the possessor in her own right, were dead. If either of them should die before her husband, he should continue to retain her estates during his natural life. If a divorce should take place between Richard and Anne, for which Anne was striving, Richard was still to retain her property, provided he married or did his best to marry her to some one else. Thus, by this most iniquitous arrangement, while Richard kept his wife's property, they made it a motive with her to force her into some other alliance, if not so hateful, perhaps more degrading. It is impossible to conceive the tyranny of vice and selfishness carried farther than in these odious transactions. But this was not all. There was living a son of the Marquis of Montacute, Warwick's brother; and to prevent any claim from him as next heir male, all such lands as he might become the claimant of, were tied upon Clarence and Gloucester, and their heirs, so long as there should remain any heirs male of the marquis. By these means did these amiable brothers imagine that they had stepped into the full and perpetual possession of the enormous wealth of the great Warwick. Edward, having rather smoothed over than appeased the jealousies and ambition of his brothers, now turned his ambition to foreign conquest.
In all his contests at home, Edward had shown great military talents. He had fought ten battles, and never lost one; for at the time of the treason of Lord Montacute in 1740, he had not fought at all, but, deserted by his army, had fled to Flanders. He had always entertained a flattering idea that he could emulate the martial glory of the Edwards and of Henry V., and once more recover the lost territories of France, and the lost prestige of the British arms on the Continent. His relations with France and Burgundy were such as encouraged this roseate notion. Louis XL had supported the claims of Henry, and accomplishing the alliance of Margaret and his most formidable enemy Warwick, had sent them to push him from his throne. The time appeared to be arrived for inflicting full retribution. Burgundy was his brother-in-law, and had aided him in recovering his crown. True, the aid of Burgundy had not been prompted by love to him, but by enmity to Warwick and Louis; nor had his reception of him in his day of distress been such as to ​merit much gratitude. But he did not care to probe too deeply into the motives of the prince; the great matter was, that Burgundy was the sworn antagonist of Louis, and their interests were, therefore, the same.
The Duke of Burgundy—called Charles le Téméraire, or the Rash, though sometimes more complimentarily termed the Bold—was no match for the cold and politic Louis XI. He and his ally, the Duke of Brittany, fancied themselves incapable of standing their ground against Louis, and now made an offer of mutual alliance to Edward, for the purpose of enforcing their common claims in France. Nothing could accord more with the desires of Edward than this proposition. He had employed 1473 in settling his disputes with the Hanse Towns, in confirming the truce with Scotland, and renewing his alliances with Portugal and Denmark. His Parliament had granted him large supplies. They voted him a tenth of rents, or two shillings in the pound, calculated to produce at that day £31,460, equal to more than £300,000 of our present money. They then added to this a whole fifteenth, and three-quarters of another. But when Edward entered into the scheme of Burgundy and Brittany for the French conquest, they granted him permission to raise any further moneys by what were called benevolences, or free gifts—a kind of exaction perhaps more irksome than any other, because it was vague, arbitrary, and put the advances of the subjects on the basis of loyalty. Such a mode of fleecing the people had been resorted to under Henry III. and Richard II. Now there was added a clause to the Act of Parliament, providing that the proceeds of the fifteenth should be deposited in religious houses; and if the French campaign should not take place, should be refunded to the people: as if any one had ever heard of taxes, once obtained, ever being refunded to the payers!
Armed with these powers, Edward soon showed what, in his mind, was the idea of a benevolence. He summoned before him the most wealthy citizens, and demanded their liberal contributions to his treasury for his great object, the recovery of France. No one dared to refuse a monarch who had given so many proofs of his ready punishment of those who displeased him. From the pride, the fears, or the shame of the wealthy thus called upon, he amassed, it is declared, far larger sums for the war than any of his predecessors had done. To leave no enemy in the rear, and to prevent any tampering of the subtle Louis with the Scots—the usual policy of France on such occasions—Edward appointed commissioners to award ample indemnity to the merchants and subjects of Scotland who had received any injury from England. Whilst Scotland was in the good humour thus produced, Edward proposed and carried a contract of marriage betwixt the Duke of Rothsay, the son and heir of James of Scotland, and his second daughter, Cecily. The portion of the princess was to be 20,000 marks, but this was to be paid by instalments of 2,000 marks per annum for ten years; thus, by making the Scottish king a kind of pensioner on the English crown, binding him more firmly to the alliance.
All being in readiness, Edward passed over from Sandwich to Calais, where he landed on the 22nd of June, 1475. He had with him 1,500 men-at-arms, and 15,000 archers, an army with which the former Edwards would have made Louis tremble on his throne. He dispatched the Garter king-at-arms with a letter of defiance to Louis, demanding nothing less than the crown of France. The position of Louis was to all appearance most critical. If Burgundy, Brittany, and the Count of St. Pol, the Constable of France, who had entered into the league against him, had acted wisely and faithfully together, the war must have been as dreadful, and the losses of France as severe, as in the past days. But probably Louis was well satisfied of the crumbling character of the coalition. Comines, who was at the time in the service of Louis, has left us ample accounts of these transactions, and according to them, the conduct of the French king was masterly in the extreme. Instead of firing with resentment at the proud demands of the letter, he took the herald politely into his private closet, and there, in the most courteous and familiar manner, told him he was sorry for this misunderstanding with the King of England; that, for his part, he had the highest respect for Edward, and desired to be on amicable terms with him, but that he knew very well that all this was stirred up by the Duke of Burgundy and the Constable of St. Pol, who would be the very first to abandon Edward, if any difficulty arose, or after they had got their own turn served. He put it to the herald how much better it would be for England and France to be on good terms, and gave the greatest weight to his arguments by smilingly placing in Garter's hand a purse of 300 crowns, assuring him that if he used his endeavours effectually to preserve the peace between the two kingdoms, he would add to it a thousand more.
The herald was so completely captivated by the suavity, the sound reasons, and the money of Louis, that he promised to do everything in his power to promote a peace, and advised the king to open a correspondence with the Lords Howard and Stanley, noblemen not only high in the favour of Edward, but secretly averse to this expedition. This being settled, Louis committed Garter king-at-arms to the care of Philip de Comines, telling him to give the herald publicly a piece of crimson velvet, of thirty ells in length, as though it were the only present, and to get him away as soon as he could, with all courtesy, without allowing him to hold any communication with the courtiers. This being done, Louis summoned his great barons and the rest of the courtiers around him, and ordered the letter of defiance to be read aloud, all the time sitting with a look of the greatest tranquility, for he was himself much assured by what he had heard from the herald.
The words of Louis came rapidly to pass as it regarded Edward's allies. Nothing could equal the folly of Burgundy and the treachery of the others. Charles the Rash, instead of coming up punctually with his promised forces, had, in his usual wild way, led them to avenge some affront from the Duke of Lorraine and the princes of Germany, far away from the really important scene of action. When the duke appeared in Edward's camp, with only a small retinue instead of a large army, and there was no prospect of his rendering any effective aid that summer, Edward was highly chagrined. All his officers were eager for the campaign, promising themselves a renewal of the fame and booty which their fathers had won. But when Edward advanced from Peronne, where he lay, to St. Quentin, on the assurances of Burgundy that St. Pol, who held it, would open its gates to him, and ​instead of such surrender, St. Pol fired on his troops from the walls, the king's wrath knew no bounds; he upbraided the duke with his conduct in thus deceiving and making a laughing-stock of him, and Burgundy retired in haste from the English camp. To add to Edward's disgust, Burgundy and his subjects had from the first landing of the English betrayed the utmost reluctance to admit the British forces into any of their towns. Artois and Picardy were shut against them, as if they came not as allies, but as intending conquerors.
Precisely at this juncture, the herald returned with his narrative of his kind reception, and the amiable disposition of Louis. This was by no means unwelcome in the present temper of Edward. It gave him the most direct prospect of punishing his perfidious allies. On the heels of the Garter king-at-arms arrived heralds from Louis, confirming all he had stated, and offering every means of pacification. The king called a council in the camp of Peronne, in which it was resolved to negotiate a peace with France on three grounds—the approach of winter, the absence of all supplies for the army, and the failure of assistance from the allies. For two months, while the terms of this treaty were discussing, the agents and the money of Louis were freely circulating amongst the courtiers and ministers of Edward.
The plenipotentiaries found all their labours wonderfully smoothed by the desire of Louis to see the soil of France as soon as possible freed from an English army. The French King agreed to almost everything proposed, never intending to fulfil a tithe of his contracts. A truce for seven years was concluded at Amiens. The King of France agreed to pay the King of England 75,000 crowns within the next fifteen days; and 50,000 crowns a year during their joint lives, to be paid in London. Apparently prodigal of his money, it was at this time that Louis paid 50,000 crowns for the ransom of Queen Margaret. To bind the alliance still more firmly, Edward proposed that the dauphin should marry his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, which was readily assented to. To testify his great joy in the termination of this treaty, Louis sent 300 cart-loads of the best wines of France into the English camp, and proposed, in order to increase the feeling of friendship between the two monarchs, that they should have a personal interview before Edward's departure.
Perhaps there is nothing more curious in history than this royal meeting. Nothing can possibly show the consciousness in the actors in this scene of the total dearth of all true confidence between those who thus professed friendship. This meeting, let it be remembered, was to promote a feeling of friendship between the two royal personages; but it was conducted with the same caution—a caution not concealed, but paraded—with which two notorious assassins would have approached each other. The meeting was to take place upon a bridge across the Somme at Pioquigny, near Amiens. The very circumstance of its being on a bridge was strongly reminiscent of the famous meeting of Charles VII. and the Duke of Burgundy on the bridge of Montereau, in which Burgundy was murdered. To prevent any such catastrophe on this occasion, the two monarchs were not to meet as those persons did, between barriers, but to have a secure barrier betwixt them. This barrier consisted of lattice-work, with interstice no larger than would admit a man's arm. Through these the two monarchs were to shake hands and converse. Aocordingly, on the 25th of August, the day appointed, the two royalties appeared at the opposite ends of the bridge, and advanced, attended by a few nobles. Louis arrived first at the barrier, followed by the Duke of Bourbon, the Cardinal Bourbon, his brother, and ten other persons of high rank, Edward of England approached, followed by his brother Clarence, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Hastings, the lord chamberlain, the lord chancellor, and several peers.
Edward, as we are told by Comines, who was present, was a prince of a majestic presence, but inclining to corpulence. He was dressed in cloth of gold, and wore a rich cap of black velvet, with a large fleur-de-lis of precious stones. As the two kings came near the barrier, they bowed low to each other, with doffed caps. They then shook hands through the grating, again bowed profoundly, and then professed their great pleasure in seeing each other, and especially on so happy an occasion. Comines says, Edward spoke excellent French, and after conversing pleasantly together, the two monarchs proceeded to swear to the terms of the treaty upon a missal and a crucifix containing a fragment of the true cross. After this ceremony was over, the two kings again chatted merrily, and Louis, to appear extremely cordial, told Edward that he should be delighted to see him in Paris; that he would find the ladies very charming, and that the Cardinal Bourbon, there present, and well known for a very gay and bon-vivant churchman, should be his confessor, and would grant him easy absolution for any little peccadilloes.
To Louis's consternation, Edward replied, that nothing would delight him more than to pay him such a visit. Louis, though inwardly groaning at the very idea, carried off the matter gaily; the two kings once more shook hands, exchanged compliments, and withdrew.
Such were the precautions before these two smiling and embracing monarchs could meet. And yet, after all, had either party been so disposed, there was no real security. A sudden stroke of a sword might have dispatched either of them; and Comines confesses that the English king was greatly exposed, had Louis wished to take advantage of it. Edward and his party had to cross a narrow causeway, across marshes, of two bow-shots in length, to reach the bridge, where a sudden sally, when the English had reached the bridge itself, would have been almost certainly fatal to the English king. "But," adds Comines, "certainly the English do not manage those matters so cleverly as the French."
As Louis rode back to Amiens he was in great inward trouble about Edward's eager acceptance of his feigned invitation. He said, certainly Edward was a fine fellow, but he was so fond of the ladies that he might see some dame in Paris so much to his liking that he might be tempted to return; "and, to tell the truth," he added, "I prefer his acquaintance on the other side of the channel." At supper, Lord Howard, who was appointed to remain at the French court to see the terms cf the treaty carried out, added to Louis's fright by saying, in much glee, to him, that he would certainly find means to induce Edward to come to Paris, and have a merry time with the king. To Louis this was an actual buffet, but he fell to washing his hands very earnestly, and, after a little ​thinking, assumed an air of regret, and said, "It was a thousand pities—it would have been a most charming thing, but, unfortunately, he was afraid it would be very long before it could take place, for he must now proceed to the frontiers to prosecute the necessary resistance to the Duke of Burgundy."
The treaty being signed, Gloucester, and some other of the chief nobility who were averse to the peace, and therefore would not attend the meeting of the kings, now rode into Amiens to pay their court to him, and Louis received them with that air of pleasure which he could so easily put on, entertained them luxuriously, and presented them with rich gifts of plate and horses.
Thus was this singular treaty concluded, and each monarch thought most advantageously to himself. Edward had paid off the Duke of Burgundy for his neglecting to fulfil his agreement as to the campaign, and he now sent the duke word, patronisingly, that if he wished, he would get a similar truce for him; to which Burgundy sent an indignant answer. Edward had, moreover, got a good round sum of money to pay his army, and a yearly income of 50,000 crowns for life. Like Charles II. afterwards, he did not trouble himself about the disgrace and disadvantage of having made himself a pensioner on France. Besides this, he had arranged to set his eldest daughter on the French throne after Louis's decease.
Louis, on his part, was so transported with his management of the affair, that, spite of his habitual caution, he could not avoid laughing and chuckling over it amongst his courtiers. True, he had spent some money, and made some promises. As to the promises, their nature was proverbial; and as to the money, it did not amount to a tithe of what he must have spent in the war, to say nothing of the evil chances which might follow a contention with the English again, and with a king always victorious. That money had cleared France of the English army, broken up the alliance with Burgundy and Brittany, left those princes now very much at his mercy, and, more than all, had tied the hands of the pleasure-loving King of England for life. To make sure work of it, Louis had not only bribed the monarch, but all the influential courtiers round him. He had agreed to pay yearly 16,000 crowns to some of the chief nobility of England. Lord Edward Hastings, Edward's great favourite, was to receive 2,000 crowns annually; the Chancellor 2,000, and the Marquis of Dorset, the Lords Howard and Cheney, Sir Thomas Montgomery, Sir Thomas St. Leger, and a few others, divided amongst them the remaining 12,000 of this really treasonable bounty money. So well aware were they of the odious nature of the payment, that Lord Hastings, though he received it as greedily as the rest, never would commit himself by signing a receipt. Well might that strange monarch, the despicable, truckling, tricky, but cunning Louis, express in private his unbounded contempt of both Edward and his courtiers. He strictly enjoined his own courtiers, however they might laugh at the English dupes in private, they must be careful never to let them perceive any signs of their mockery and derision; and perceiving on one occasion, when his exultation had made him talk too freely, that a boastful Gascon was present, he immediately gave him most advantageous preferment, to bind secrecy, saying, "It is but just that I should pay the penalty of my talkativeness."
The people were very much of the French king's opinion, that their own monarch had been sadly over-reached. The army, which on its return was disbanded, promoted this feeling everywhere. The soldiers camp back disappointed of the plunder of France, and accordingly vented their chagrin on the king and his courtiers, who for their private emolument had sold, they said, the honour of the nation. As to the general terms of the peace, the people had good cause to be satisfied. It was much better for the nation to be left at liberty to pursue its profitable trade, than to be year after year drained of its substance to carry on a useless war. But the real cause of discontent was the annual bribe, which bound the king and his court to wink at any proceedings of France on the Continent, against our allies and commercial connections, and even to suffer intrusions on our own trade and interests, rather than incur the danger of losing the pay of the French king.
Edward endeavoured to silence these murmurs by severity. He sent amongst the people agents who reported any offensive language, and he punished offenders without mercy. At the same time, he extended an equally stern hand towards all disturbers of the peace; the disbanded soldiers having collected into hordes, and spread murder and rapine through several of the counties. Seeing, however, that such was the general discontent, that should some Wat Tyler or Jack Cade arise, the consequences might be terrible, he determined to ease the burdens of the people at the expense of the higher classes. He therefore ordered a rigorous exaction of the customs; laid frequent tenths on the clergy; resumed many of the estates of the crown; and compelled the holders of estates to compound by heavy fines for the omission of any of their duties as feudal tenants. He moreover entered boldly into trade. Instead of permitting his ships to lie rotting in port, as he had no occasion for them as transport vessels, he sent out in them wool, tin, cloth, and other merchandise, and brought back from the ports of the Levant their products. By all these means Edward became the most wealthy monarch of Europe, and while he grew very soon popular with the people, who felt the weight of taxation annually decreasing, he became equally formidable to those who had more reason to complain.
But however generally prosperous was the remainder of Edward's reign, it was to himself filled with the deepest causes of grief and remorse. The part which his brother Clarence had taken, his allying himself to Warwick, with the design to depose Edward and secure the crown to himself, could never be forgotten. He had been named the successor to the Prince of Wales, the son of Henry VI., and, should anything happen to Edward, might assert that claim to the prejudice of his own son. Still further, Clarence had given mortal offence to the queen. Her father and her brother had been put to death in Clarence's name. Her brother Antony, afterwards, had narrowly escaped the same fate from the orders of Clarence. He had been forward in the charge of sorcery against her mother, the Duchess Jacquetta. Scarcely less had he incensed his brother Richard of Gloucester, the vindictive and never-forgiving, by ​opposition to his marriage with Anne of Warwick, and to sharing any of Warwick's property with him. Clarence was immensely rich, from the possession of the bulk of Warwick's vast estates, and he seems to have borne himself haughtily, as if he were another Warwick. He was at the head of a large party of malcontents, those who hated and envied the queen's family, and those who had been made to yield up their valuable grants from the crown under Henry VI. Clarence himself was one of the reluctant parties thus forced to disgorge some of his lands, under the act of resumption, on Edward's return from France. While brooding over this offence, his wife Isabella of Warwick died, on the 22nd of December, 1476, just after the birth of her third child. Clarence, who was so extremely attached to her that he was almost beside himself at the loss, accused, brought to trial, and procured the condemnation of Ankaret Twynhyo, one of her attendants, on the charge of having poisoned her.
Edward V.
Directly after this, January 5th, 1477, the Duke of Burgundy fell at the battle of Nancy, in his vain struggle against the Duke of Lorraine, backed by the valiant Swiss. His splendid domains fell to his only daughter, Mary, who immediately became the object of the most eager desire to numerous princes. Louis of France disdained to sue for her hand for the dauphin, but attacked her territories, and hoped to secure both them and her by conquest. There had been some treaty for her by the Duke Maximilian, of Austria, for his son, during the late duke's life; but now Clarence suddenly aroused himself from his grief for the loss of his wife, and made zealous court, on his own account, to this great heiress. Her mother, Margaret, the sister of Clarence, favoured his suit warmly, but the idea of such an alliance struck Edward with dismay. Clarence already was far too powerful. Should he succeed in placing himself at the head of one of the most powerful states on the Continent, and with his avowed claims on the English crown, and his undisguised enmity to Edward's queen and family, the mischief he might do was incalculable. He might form a coalition with France, most disastrous to England and to him.
​Edward, therefore, lost no time in putting in his most decided opposition. In this cause he was no doubt zealously seconded by Gloucester. But if ever there was a choice of a rival most unfortunate, and even insulting, it was that put forward by Edward against Clarence, in the person of Sir Anthony Wydville, the queen's brother. This match was rejected by the court of Burgundy with disdain, and only heightened the odium of the queen in England—an odium which fell heavily on her in after-years—who now was regarded as a woman who, not content with filling all the great houses of England with her kin, was ambitious enough to aim at filling the highest continental thrones with them. The result was, that Edward succeeded in defeating Clarence, without gaining his own, or rather his wife's object.
From this moment Clarence became at deadly feud with Edward and all his family. The king, the queen, and Gloucester united in a league against him, which, where such men were concerned—men never scrupling to destroy those who opposed them—boded him little good. The conduct of Clarence was calculated to exasperate this enmity, and to expose him to its attacks. He vented his wrath against all the parties who had thwarted him, king, queen, and Gloucester, in the bitterest and most public manner; and on the other side, occasions were found to stimulate him to more disloyal conduct. They began with attacking his friends and members of his household. John Stacey, a priest in his service, was charged with having practised sorcery to procure the death of Lord Beauchamp, and being put to the torture, was brought to confess that Thomas Burdett, a gentleman of Arrow, in Warwickshire, also a gentleman of the duke's household, and greatly beloved by Clarence, was an accomplice. It was well understood why this confession was wrung from the poor priest. Thomas Burdett had a fine white stag in his park, on which he set great value. Edward, in hunting, had shot this stag, and Burdett, in his anger at the deed, had been reported to have said that he wished the horns of the deer were in the stomach of the person who had advised the king to insult him by killing it. This speech, real or imaginary, had been carefully conveyed to the king, and he thus took his revenge. Thomas Burdett was accused of high treason, tried, and, by the servile judges and jury, condemned, and beheaded at Tyburn.
Clarence had exerted himself to save the lives of both these persons in vain. They both died protesting their innocence, and the next day Clarence entered the council, bringing Dr. Goddard, a clergyman, who appeared on various occasions in those times, as a popular agitator. Goddard attested the dying declarations of the sufferers; and Clarence, with an honourable, but imprudent zeal, warmly denounced the destruction of his innocent friends. Edward and the court were at Windsor, and these proceedings were duly carried thither by the enemies of Clarence. Soon it was reported that, having for many days sat sullenly silent at the council-board with folded arms, he had started up and uttered the most disloyal words, accusing the queen of sorcery, which she had learned of her mother; and even implicating the king in the accusation.
The fate of Clarence was sealed. The queen and Gloucester were vehement against him. Edward hurried to Westminster; Clarence was arrested and conducted by the king himself to the Tower. On the 16th of January a Parliament was assembled, and Edward himself appeared as the accuser of his brother at the bar of the Lords. He charged him with a design to dethrone and destroy him and his family. He retorted upon him the charge of sorcery, and of dealing with masters of the black art for this treasonable purpose; that to raise a rebellion he had supplied his servants with vast quantities of money, wine, venison, and provisions, to feast the people, and to fill their minds at such feasts with the belief that Burdett and Stacey had been wrongfully put to death; that Clarence had engaged numbers of people to swear to stand by him and his heirs as rightful claimants of the throne—asserting that Edward was, in truth, a bastard, and had no right whatever to the crown; that to gain the throne, and support himself upon it, he had had constant application to the arts for which his queen and her mother were famous, and had not hesitated to poison and destroy in secret. As for himself—Clarence—he pledged himself to restore all the lands and honours of the Lancastrians, when he gained his own royal rights.
To these monstrous charges Clarence made a vehement reply, but posterity has no means of judging of the truth or force of what he said, for the whole of his defence was omitted in the rolls of Parliament. Not a soul dared to say a word on his behalf. Edward brought forward witnesses to swear to everything he alleged; the duke was condemned to death, and the Commons being summoned to attend, confirmed the sentence. No attempt was made to put the sentence into execution, but about ten days later it was announced that Clarence had died in the Tower. The precise mode of his death has never been clearly ascertained. The generally received account is that of Fabyan, a contemporary, who says that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. All that is known is, that he was found dead with his head hanging over a butt of this wine; but whether he had been drowned in it and thus placed, or had been allowed to kill himself by drinking of it to excess, must ever remain a mystery. It was a fact that since the death of his wife, the defeat of his attempt to obtain Mary of Burgundy, and the subsequent irritations, he had given himself up to desperate drinking. He might have been supplied with his favourite drink, till it had done its work on a mind overwhelmed, in its solitude, with grief, mortification, and despair; or he might have had a gentle hoist over the side of the butt, to facilitate its operations. He was condemned to die; his brothers and their friends resolved that he should die in private—how, will never be known. Gloucester, who has always had the credit of assisting at this as at sundry other Tower murders, could not have officiated personally at it, for he was residing in the North at the time.
The conduct of the court on the occasion was characterised by the utmost heartlessness, and contempt of public decorum. The festival of the next St. George's Day, but about two months afterwards, was celebrated with extraordinary splendour, as though nothing so terrible had lately occurred: the queen taking the lead and wearing the robes of the chief lady of the order. With the characteristic rapacity of the Wydvilles, several of the estates of Clarence were taken, from his children and ​bestowed on the queen's brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers; and as George Neville, the son of the Marquis of Montacute, was next heir to those lands, he was also deprived of the title, as he had previously been of the lands, on pretence that he had no income to support it.
Clarence left two children by the daughter of Warwick, a boy and girl, whose proximity to the throne afterwards proved their destruction also, as we shall see. There was a prophecy floating amongst the people at that time, that the son of Edward IV. should perish by the hand of a person whose name commenced with G. The name of Clarence was George; and much of the ill-will of Edward, who had great faith in fortune-telling, is said to have been directed to Clarence through it, never seeming to reflect that he had another very active G. near him, in the person of Gloucester, the actual future perpetrator of the deed.
The Death of Clarence.
Edward now again gave himself up to his pleasures, and would have been glad, in the midst of his amorous intrigues, to have forgotten public affairs altogether. But for this the times were two much out of joint. It was not in England alone that the elements of faction had been in agitation. Nearly the whole of Europe had witnessed the contentions of overgrown nobles and vassal princes, by which almost every crown had been endangered, and the regal authority in many cases brought into contempt. The changes consequent on the successful usurpation of Henry IV. we have fully detailed; those storms which raged around the throne of France we have partially seen; but similar dissensions betwixt ​the Electors of Germany and the Emperor Sigismund prevailed; the Netherlands were divided against each other; and Spain was equally disturbed by the conspiracies of the nobles against the crown. Edward of England, as if sensible of the weakness of his position, strove anxiously to strengthen it by foreign alliances. Though his children were far too young to contract actual marriages, he made treaties which should place his daughters on a number of the chief thrones. Some of these contracts were entered into almost as soon as those concerned in them were born. Elizabeth, the eldest, was affianced to the Dauphin of France; Cecilia, the second, to the eldest son and heir of the King of Scotland; Anne, to the infant son of Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, and husband of Mary of Burgundy; Catherine, to the heir of the King of Spain. His eldest son was engaged to the eldest daughter of the Duke of Brittany. On the other hand, all these royal negotiators appear to have been equally impressed with the precarious character of Edward's power, and were ready at the first moment to annul the contract.
That subtle monarch, Louis of France, never from the first moment seriously meant to adhere to his engagement; and in a very few years every one of these anxiously-planned marriages were blown away like summer clouds. Edward was not long in suspecting the hollowness of the conduct of Louis XI. Though repeatedly reminded that the time was come to fetch the Princess of England, in order to complete her education in France, preparatory to her occupying the station assigned to her there, Louis took no measures for this purpose; and when Edward remonstrated on the subject, threatened to withdraw the payment of the annual 50,000 crowns. Edward boiled with indignation, and vowed, amongst his immediate courtiers, that he would hunt up the old fox in his own cover if he did not mind. But that wily prince was not so easily dealt with. He saw with chagrin the proposed alliances betwixt Edward and his dangerous neighbours, the Duke of Brittany and Maximilian of Austria, now, through his wife, the ruler of Burgundy. Edward, in his resentment at the threat of Louis to withdraw his annual payment, made offers of closer union with Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, and engaged, on condition that they should pay him the 50,000 crowns which he now had from Louis, to assist them against that monarch. But Louis was not to be out-manœuvred in this manner; he was a profounder master in all the arts of diplomatic stratagem than Edward. He, therefore, made secret and tempting advances to Maximilian and Mary, one article of which devoted the Dauphin to their infant daughter, despite of her engagement to the English heir. At the same time he stirred up sufficient trouble in Scotland to engage the attention of Edward for some time.
The circumstances of Scotland were at this time very favourable to the mischievous interference of Louis. James III. was a monarch far beyond his age. He was of a pacific and philosophic turn. Surrounded by a rude, ignorant, and barbarous nobility, he conceived an infinite contempt for them, and, unfortunately, was not politic enough to conceal it. As he found no pleasure in their society, he did not court, or even tolerate it. They were received at court with coldness and neglect, while they saw there men of science and letters held in the highest esteem, and admitted to the king's most intimate conversation. Amongst these were architects, painters, musicians, and astrologers, who in that age were ranked with men of science, and were much resorted to by the highest classes. Cochrane, an architect, was in great favour with James; and, on the other hand, styled by the nobles "Cochrane the mason." Rogers, a professor of music, and Dr. Ireland, a man of literary accomplishment acquired in France, were also greatly esteemed by him. Besides these, he also encouraged professors of the arts of gunnery, engineering, and defence. He was greatly interested in improving the casting and using of cannon. Artillerymen and skilful artisans were attracted to his service from the Continent.
But what incensed his proud nobles more than all, was to behold his favour to smiths, fencing-masters, and similar low proficients, as they deemed them. To avenge their rude and barbaric dignity, they stirred up the king's two brothers, the Duke of Albany and the Earl of Mar, to rebellion. James, however, showed that, though pacifically disposed, he did not lack energy. He seized Mar and Albany, and confined them; Mar in Craigmillar Castle, and Albany in that of Edinburgh. Albany managed to escape, and made his way, by means of a French vessel, to France. Mar, who was of a vehement temper, was seized in his prison with fever and delirium. He was, therefore, removed from Craigmillar to a house in the Canongate, at Edinburgh, where, having been bled, he is said, on a return of the paroxysm, to have torn off his bandages while in a warm bath, and died from loss of blood. It was one of those incidents that, at the least, are suspicious; but public opinion at the time, for the most part, exonerated the king from the charge of any criminal intention; and even when he was afterwards deposed, no such charge was preferred against him by the hostile faction.
It was at this crisis that Edward, roused to indignation by the conduct of the French king, who neglected to fetch the Princess of England, and withdrew his annual payment of the 50,000 crowns, and still more by tracing Louis' hand in Scottish affairs, invited over Albany from Paris, promising to set him on the throne of Scotland. Albany, smarting with his brother's treatment, was but too ready to accept the proposal. Edward launched reproaches against the King of Scotland for his perfidy in listening to Louis of France, whilst under the closest engagements with himself. Three years payments of the dowry of Edward's daughter Cecilia had already been paid to the Scottish monarch, and yet he had thrown constant obstacles in the way of a marriage agreed upon between the sister of James and the Earl Rivers, the brother-in-law of Edward. In reply to Edward's reproaches, James flung at him the epithet of reiver, or robber, alluding to his seizure of the English crown.
Edward dispatched an army to the borders of Scotland, under his brother Gloucester and Albany. He engaged to place Albany on the throne of James, and, in return, Albany, who was believed already to have two wives, was to marry one of Edward's daughters, for he never entered into a treaty without putting in a daughter as one item. With upwards of 22,000 men Gloucester and ​Albany reached Berwick, which speedily surrendered, though the castle held out.
James, to meet this formidable attack, summoned the whole force of his kingdom to meet him on the Borough Muir, near Edinburgh, and at the head of 50,000 men advanced first to Soutra and thence to Lauder. But sedition was in his camp. Edward and Albany had opened communications with the discontented nobles. Albany, at the treaty of Fotheringay, where the Scottish scheme was made matter of compact, had assumed the title of Alexander, King of Scotland, and the adhesion of the principal chiefs of Scotland was confirmed by the impolicy of James, who had not only given to his favourite Cochrane, the architect, the bulk of the estates, along with the title, of the Earl of Mar, but now placed him in command of the artillery, and permitted him to excite the envy and indignation of the great barons by the splendour of his appointments. He paraded a body-guard of 300 men, clad in gorgeous livery, armed with battle-axes; when in armour, his helmet of polished steel, richly inlaid with gold, was borne before him; when in his civil costume, he wore a riding-suit of black velvet, a massive gold chain round his neck, and a hunting-horn tipped with gold, and richly studded with jewels, was slung from his shoulder. His tent blazoned through the camp the pride of its possessor, being of rich and showy silk, and stretched by gilded chains to its posts.
This foolish, and, as it proved, fatal ostentation, put the climax to the wrath of the nobles. They met in the church at Lauder to consult on the best means of securing the king, and thus fulfilling their pledge to Edward and Albany. It was unanimously agreed that the upstart Cochrane must be first made away with. But who should undertake this dangerous office? who should hang the bell round the neck of their tyrannous enemy the cat? was asked by Lord Grey. "Leave that to me!" exclaimed Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Angus, "I will bell the cat!" a speech which gave him, over after, the cognomen of "Archibald Bell-the-Cat." In the very midst of this discussion Cochrane hearing of this assembly, and anxious to ascertain its object, but unconscious of its terrible design against himself, suddenly appeared before the barred door and knocked loudly. "Who is there?" asked Douglas of Lochleven, who guarded the door. "I, the Earl of Mar," replied Cochrane. "The victim has saved us all trouble," said Angus, and bade Douglas unbar the door. Cochrane stepped into their midst, clad in his usual rich attire, and with his riding-whip in his hand.
Angus snatched the gold chain from Cochrane's neck, exclaiming, "It ill befits thee to wear this collar! And that horn, too, thou hunter of mischief!" he added, plucking it from his side. Cochrane, a man of great firmness and courage, was astonished at this reception, and asked, "Is it jest or earnest?" The next moment told him what it was, for he was seized and bound, and the majority of the conspirators rushed to the royal tent, where they also secured Rogers, the musician, and several of the other favourites. These they hurried away, and hanged in a row with Cochrane, over the parapet of the bridge. Having next secured the royal person, the conspirators disbanded the army, and, leaving the country open to the advance of Albany and Gloucester, they marched back to Edinburgh, and consigned James to the safe keeping of the castle.
Albany and Gloucester quickly followed the conspirators to the Scottish capital, and there appeared now every prospect of the crown being placed on the head of Albany; but this was suddenly prevented by a new movement. The whole body of the Scottish nobles had joined in the destruction of the favourites, but there was a strong party of them who contemplated nothing further. The loyalty of this section of the aristocracy being well known to Angus and his friends, they had not ventured to communicate to them their design of deposing James. The moment that this became known to them, they quitted Edinburgh, collected an army, and planted themselves near Haddington, determined to keep in check any proceedings against the king. At the head of this loyal party were the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, the Bishop of Dunkeld, the Earl of Argyll, and Lord Evandale. They called on all loyal Scots to gather to their standard, and, being posted betwixt Edinburgh and the English border, threw Gloucester and his adherents into considerable anxiety as to their position. Albany, Gloucester, and the insurgent lords were glad to come to an accommodation. It was agreed that James should retain the crown; that Albany should receive a pardon and the restoration of his rank and estates; that the money paid by Edward as part of the dowry of Cecilia, should be repaid by the citizens of Edinburgh, and that Berwick and its castle should be ceded to England. Gloucester thereupon marched homeward, and Albany laid siege to the castle of Edinburgh, where the Earls of Atholl and Buchan still detained the king. He soon compelled them to capitulate, and James being now in the hands of Albany, the two brothers, in sign of perfect reconciliation, rode together on the same horse to the palace of Holyrood, and slept together in the same bed. The treason of Albany, however, only hid itself in his bosom for a season.
Parting of Queen Elizabeth Wydville and her Son the Duke of York.
and expense of a conquest, received the infant princess with great rejoicings.
The Penance of Jane Shore.
who became the source of power. Immediately after his death he was exposed on a board, naked from the waist upwards for ten hours, so that the lords spiritual and temporal, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London might see that he had no violence. He was then buried in Westminster Abbey, and with great pomp and ceremony.
Edward IV. was a man calculated to make a great figure in rude and martial times. He was handsome, lively of disposition, affable and brave. So long as ​circumstances demanded daring and exertion in the field, he was triumphant and prosperous. Rapid in his resolves and in his movements, undaunted in his attacks, he was uniformly victorious; but peace at once unmanned him. With the last stroke of the sword and the last sound of the trumpet, he flung down his arms, and flew to riot and debauchery. Ever the conqueror in the field, he was always defeated in the city. He never could become conqueror over himself. By unrestrained indulgence he destroyed his constitution, and hurried on to early death. Whether in the battle-field or in the hour of peace, he was unrestrained by principle, and sullied his most brilliant laurels in the blood of the young, the innocent, and the victim incapable of resistance. He was magnificent in his costume, luxurious at table, and most licentious in his amours. As he advanced in years he grew corpulent, gross, and unhealthy. He had the faculty of never forgetting the face of any one whom he had once seen, or the name of any one who had done him an injury. There was no person of any prominence of whom he did not know the whole history; and he had a spy in almost every officer of his government, even to the extremities of his kingdom. By this means he was early informed of the slightest hostile movement, and by a rapid dash into the enemy's quarters he soon extinguished opposition. Such a man might be a brilliant, but could never be a good monarch. He attached no one to his fortunes; therefore all his attempts to knit up alliances failed; and his sons, left young and unprotected, speedily perished.
His children were, Edward, his eldest son and successor, born in the Sanctuary in 1470; Richard, Duke of York; Elizabeth, who was contracted to the Dauphin, but who became the queen of Henry VII.; Cecilia, contracted to James, afterwards IV. of Scotland, but married to John, Viscount Welles; Anne, contracted to Philip of Burgundy, but married to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk; Bridget, who became a nun at Dartford; and Catherine, contracted to the Prince of Spain, but married to William Courtney, Earl of Devonshire. He left two natural children, a son by Elizabeth Lucie, named Arthur, who married the heiress of Lord Lisle, and succeeded to his title; and a daughter named Elizabeth, who married Thomas, Lord Lumley.