MANY THINGS BRIEFLY TOLD.
The events that followed the king's escape were rapid and startling.
The barons assembled at the More, enraged at Edward's seeming distrust
of them, separated in loud anger. The archbishop learned the cause
from one of his servitors, who detected Marmaduke's ambush, but he was
too wary to 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. There he was joined, the same day, by the Duke and Duchess of
Clarence.
The Lincolnshire rebellion gained head: Edward made a dexterous feint
in calling, by public commission, upon Clarence and Warwick to aid in
dispersing it; if they refused, the odium of first aggression would
seemingly rest with them. Clarence, more induced by personal ambition
than sympathy with Warwick's wrong, incensed by his brother's recent
slights, looking to Edward's resignation and his own consequent
accession to the throne, and inflamed by the ambition and pride of a
wife whom he at once feared and idolized, went hand in heart with the
earl; but not one lord and captain whom Montagu had sounded lent
favour to the deposition of one brother for the advancement of the
next. Clarence, though popular, was too young to be respected: many
there were who would rather have supported the earl, if an aspirant to
the throne; but that choice forbidden by the earl himself, there could
be but two parties in England,--the one for Edward IV., the other for
Henry VI.
Lord Montagu had repaired to Warwick Castle to communicate in person
this result of his diplomacy. The earl, whose manner was completely
changed, no longer frank and hearty, but close and sinister, listened
in gloomy silence.
"And now," said Montagu, with the generous emotion of a man whose
nobler nature was stirred deeply, "if you resolve on war with Edward,
I am willing to renounce my own ambition, the hand of a king's
daughter for my son, so that I may avenge the honour of our common
name. I confess that I have so loved Edward that I would fain pray
you to pause, did I not distrust myself, lest in such delay his craft
should charm me back to the old affection. Nathless, to your arm and
your great soul I have owed all, and if you are resolved to strike the
blow, I am ready to share 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 to
London; seem to take no share in my actions, whatever they be; if I
fail, why drag thee into my ruin?--and yet, trust me, I am rash and
fierce no more. He who sets his heart on a great object suddenly
becomes wise. When a throne is in the dust, when from St. Paul's
Cross a voice goes forth to Carlisle and the Land's End, proclaiming
that the reign of Edward the Fourth is past and gone, then, Montagu, I
claim thy promise of aid and fellowship,--not before!"
Meanwhile, the king, eager to dispel thought in action, rushed in
person against the rebellious forces. Stung by fear into cruelty, he
beheaded, against all kingly faith, his hostages, Lord Welles and Sir
Thomas Dymoke, summoned Sir Robert Welles, the leader of the revolt,
to surrender; received for answer, that Sir Robert Welles would not
trust the perfidy of the man who had murdered his father!--pushed on
to Erpingham, defeated the rebels in a signal battle, and crowned his
victory by a series of ruthless cruelties, committed to the fierce and
learned Earl of Worcester, "Butcher of England." [Stowe. "Warkworth
Chronicle"--Cont. Croyl. Lord Worcester ordered Clapham (a squire to
Lord Warwick) and nineteen others, gentlemen and yeomen, to be
impaled, and from the horror the spectacle inspired, and the universal
odium it attached to Worcester, it is to be feared that the unhappy
men were still sensible to the agony of this infliction, though they
appear first to have been drawn, and partially hanged,--outrage
confined only to the dead bodies of rebels being too common at that
day to have excited the indignation which attended the sentence
Worcester passed on his victims. It is in vain that some writers
would seek to cleanse the memory of this learned nobleman from the
stain of cruelty by rhetorical remarks on the improbability that a
cultivator of letters should be of a ruthless disposition. The
general philosophy of this defence is erroneous. In ignorant ages a
man of superior acquirements is not necessarily made humane by the
cultivation of his intellect, on the contrary, he too often learns to
look upon the uneducated herd as things of another clay. Of this
truth all history is pregnant,--witness the accomplished tyrants of
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
cruelty is no less incontestable than that which proves his learning--
the Croyland historian alone is unimpeachable. Worcester's popular
name of "the Butcher" is sufficient testimony in itself. The people
are often mistaken, to be sure, but can scarcely be so upon the one
point, whether a man who has sat in judgment on themselves be merciful
or cruel.]
With the prompt vigour and superb generalship which Edward ever
displayed in war, he then cut his gory way to the force which Clarence
and Warwick (though their hostility was still undeclared) had levied,
with the intent to join the defeated rebels. He sent his herald,
Garter King-at-arms, to summon the earl and the duke to appear before
him within a certain day. The time expired; he proclaimed them
traitors, and offered 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 his
vassals, consolidate his schemes. His very preparations, upon the
night on which Edward had repaid his services by such hideous
ingratitude, had manned the country with armies against himself. Girt
but with a scanty force collected in haste (and which consisted merely
of his retainers in the single shire of Warwick), the march of Edward
cut him off from the counties in which his name was held most dear, in
which his trumpet could raise up hosts. He was disappointed in the
aid he had expected from his powerful but self-interested brother-in-
law, Lord Stanley. Revenge had become more dear to him than life:
life must not be hazarded, lest revenge be lost. On still marched the
king; and the day that 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 was confined of her first-born). To the earl's rage and dismay
his deputy Vauclerc fired upon his ships. Warwick then steered on
towards Normandy, captured some Flemish vessels by the way, in token
of defiance to the earl's old Burgundian foe, and landed at Harfleur,
where he and his companions 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
in his goblet. "Rebellion hath lost its head,--and now, indeed, and
for the first time, a monarch I reign alone!" [Before leaving
England, Warwick and Clarence are generally said to have fallen in
with Anthony Woodville and Lord Audley, and ordered them to execution,
from which they were saved by a Dorsetshire gentleman. Carte, who,
though his history is not without great mistakes, is well worth
reading by those whom the character of Lord Warwick may interest,
says, that the earl had "too much magnanimity to put them to death
immediately, according to the common practice of the times, and only
imprisoned them in the castle of 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 by Mr. Halliwell), according to which
authority Anthony Woodville was at that time commanding a fleet upon
the Channel, which waylaid Warwick on his voyage; but the success
therein attributed to the gallant Anthony, in dispersing or seizing
all the earl's ships, save the one that bore the earl himself and his
family, is proved to be purely fabulous, by the earl's well-attested
capture of the Flemish vessels, as he passed from Calais to the coasts
of Normandy, an exploit he could never have performed with a single
vessel of his own. It is very probable that the story of Anthony
Woodville's capture and peril at this time originates in a
misadventure many years before, and recorded in the "Paston Letters,"
as well as in the "Chronicles."--In the year 1459, Anthony Woodville
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 rude language
which such "knaves' sons" and "little squires" had held to those "who
were of king's blood."]