The Last of the Barons — Complete
Page 64
CHAPTER II. MANY THINGS BRIEFLY TOLD.
The events that followed the king's escape were rapid and startling. Thebarons assembled at the More, enraged at Edward's seeming distrust ofthem, separated in loud anger. The archbishop learned the cause from oneof his servitors, who detected Marmaduke's ambush, but he was too waryto make known a circumstance suspicious to himself. He flew to London,and engaged the mediation of the Duchess of York to assist his own.[Lingard. See for the dates, Fabyan, 657.]
The earl received their joint overtures with stern and ominous coldness,and abruptly repaired to Warwick, taking with him the Lady Anne. Therehe was joined, the same day, by the Duke and Duchess of Clarence.
The Lincolnshire rebellion gained head: Edward made a dexterous feintin calling, by public commission, upon Clarence and Warwick to aid indispersing it; if they refused, the odium of first aggression wouldseemingly rest with them. Clarence, more induced by personal ambitionthan sympathy with Warwick's wrong, incensed by his brother's recentslights, looking to Edward's resignation and his own consequentaccession to the throne, and inflamed by the ambition and pride of awife whom he at once feared and idolized, went hand in heart with theearl; but not one lord and captain whom Montagu had sounded lent favourto the deposition of one brother for the advancement of the next.Clarence, though popular, was too young to be respected: many there werewho would rather have supported the earl, if an aspirant to the throne;but that choice forbidden by the earl himself, there could be but twoparties in England,--the one for Edward IV., the other for Henry VI.Lord Montagu had repaired to Warwick Castle to communicate in personthis result of his diplomacy. The earl, whose manner was completelychanged, no longer frank and hearty, but close and sinister, listened ingloomy silence.
"And now," said Montagu, with the generous emotion of a man whose noblernature was stirred deeply, "if you resolve on war with Edward, I amwilling to renounce my own ambition, the hand of a king's daughter formy son, so that I may avenge the honour of our common name. I confessthat I have so loved Edward that I would fain pray you to pause, did Inot distrust myself, lest in such delay his craft should charm me backto the old affection. Nathless, to your arm and your great soul I haveowed all, and if you are resolved to strike the blow, I am ready toshare the hazard."
The earl turned away his face, and wrung his brother's hand.
"Our father, methinks, hears thee from the grave!" said he, solemnly,and there was a long pause. At length Warwick resumed: "Return toLondon; seem to take no share in my actions, whatever they be; if Ifail, why drag thee into my ruin?--and yet, trust me, I am rash andfierce no more. He who sets his heart on a great object suddenly becomeswise. When a throne is in the dust, when from St. Paul's Cross a voicegoes forth to Carlisle and the Land's End, proclaiming that the reign ofEdward the Fourth is past and gone, then, Montagu, I claim thy promiseof aid and fellowship,--not before!"
Meanwhile, the king, eager to dispel thought in action, rushed in personagainst the rebellious forces. Stung by fear into cruelty, he beheaded,against all kingly faith, his hostages, Lord Welles and Sir ThomasDymoke, summoned Sir Robert Welles, the leader of the revolt, tosurrender; received for answer, that Sir Robert Welles would not trustthe perfidy of the man who had murdered his father!--pushed on toErpingham, defeated the rebels in a signal battle, and crowned hisvictory by a series of ruthless cruelties, committed to the fierce andlearned Earl of Worcester, "Butcher of England." [Stowe. "WarkworthChronicle"--Cont. Croyl. Lord Worcester ordered Clapham (a squire toLord Warwick) and nineteen others, gentlemen and yeomen, to be impaled,and from the horror the spectacle inspired, and the universal odiumit attached to Worcester, it is to be feared that the unhappy men werestill sensible to the agony of this infliction, though they appear firstto have been drawn, and partially hanged,--outrage confined only to thedead bodies of rebels being too common at that day to have excited theindignation which attended the sentence Worcester passed on his victims.It is in vain that some writers would seek to cleanse the memory of thislearned nobleman from the stain of cruelty by rhetorical remarks onthe improbability that a cultivator of letters should be of a ruthlessdisposition. The general philosophy of this defence is erroneous. Inignorant ages a man of superior acquirements is not necessarily madehumane by the cultivation of his intellect, on the contrary, he toooften learns to look upon the uneducated herd as things of another clay.Of this truth all history is pregnant,--witness the accomplished tyrantsof Greece, the profound and cruel intellect of the Italian Borgias.Richard III. and Henry VIII. were both highly educated for their age.But in the case of Tiptoft, Lord Worcester, the evidence of his crueltyis no less incontestable than that which proves his learning--theCroyland historian alone is unimpeachable. Worcester's popular name of"the Butcher" is sufficient testimony in itself. The people are oftenmistaken, to be sure, but can scarcely be so upon the one point, whethera man who has sat in judgment on themselves be merciful or cruel.]
With the prompt vigour and superb generalship which Edward everdisplayed in war, he then cut his gory way to the force which Clarenceand Warwick (though their hostility was still undeclared) had levied,with the intent to join the defeated rebels. He sent his herald, GarterKing-at-arms, to summon the earl and the duke to appear before himwithin a certain day. The time expired; he proclaimed them traitors, andoffered rewards for their apprehension. [One thousand pounds in money,or one hundred pounds a year in land; an immense reward for that day.]
So sudden had been Warwick's defection, so rapid the king's movements,that the earl had not time to mature his resources, assemble hisvassals, consolidate his schemes. His very preparations, upon the nighton which Edward had repaid his services by such hideous ingratitude, hadmanned the country with armies against himself. Girt but with a scantyforce collected in haste (and which consisted merely of his retainers inthe single shire of Warwick), the march of Edward cut him off from thecounties in which his name was held most dear, in which his trumpetcould raise up hosts. He was disappointed in the aid he had expectedfrom his powerful but self-interested brother-in-law, Lord Stanley.Revenge had become more dear to him than life: life must not behazarded, lest revenge be lost. On still marched the king; and the daythat his troops entered Exeter, Warwick, the females of his family,with Clarence, and a small but armed retinue, took ship from Dartmouth,sailed for Calais (before which town, while at anchor, Isabel wasconfined of her first-born). To the earl's rage and dismay his deputyVauclerc fired upon his ships. Warwick then steered on towards Normandy,captured some Flemish vessels by the way, in token of defiance to theearl's old Burgundian foe, and landed at Harfleur, where he and hiscompanions were received with royal honours by the Admiral of France,and finally took their way to the court of Louis XI. at Amboise.
"The danger is past forever!" said King Edward, as the wine sparkled inhis goblet. "Rebellion hath lost its head,--and now, indeed, and for thefirst time, a monarch I reign alone!" [Before leaving England, Warwickand Clarence are generally said to have fallen in with Anthony Woodvilleand Lord Audley, and ordered them to execution, from which they weresaved by a Dorsetshire gentleman. Carte, who, though his history isnot without great mistakes, is well worth reading by those whom thecharacter of Lord Warwick may interest, says, that the earl had "toomuch magnanimity to put them to death immediately, according to thecommon practice of the times, and only imprisoned them in the castleof Wardour, from whence they were soon rescued by John Thornhill,a gentleman of Dorsetshire." The whole of this story is, however,absolutely contradicted by the "Warkworth Chronicle" (p. 9, edited byMr. Halliwell), according to which authority Anthony Woodville was atthat time commanding a fleet upon the Channel, which waylaid Warwick onhis voyage; but the success therein attributed to the gallant Anthony,in dispersing or seizing all the earl's ships, save the one that borethe earl himself and his family, is proved to be purely fabulous, by theearl's well-attested capture of the Flemish vessels, as he passedfrom Calais to the coasts of Normandy, an exploit he could never haveperformed with a single vessel of
his own. It is very probable that thestory of Anthony Woodville's capture and peril at this time originatesin a misadventure many years before, and recorded in the "PastonLetters," as well as in the "Chronicles."--In the year 1459, AnthonyWoodville and his father, Lord Rivers (then zealous Lancastrians),really did fall into the hands of the Earl of March (Edward IV.),Warwick and Salisbury, and got off with a sound "rating" upon the rudelanguage which such "knaves' sons" and "little squires" had held tothose "who were of king's blood."]