LADY BRAMPTON
My noble queen, let former grudges pass,
And henceforth I am thy true servitor.
SHAKSPEARE.
Meanwhile the Yorkists were impatient for action. The existence of
Prince Richard was a secret to all save Lincoln and Lovel--even the
Staffords were kept in ignorance; their purpose, therefore, was merely
to put down the Lancastrians, and to raise their own party, with Warwick
or Lincoln at their head; they cared not which, so that they got a king
who would, in his turn, uproot the Red Rose. Lincoln would consent to no
decisive step; but from the day of his cousin's marriage, all his
emissaries and friends were on foot to cause insurrectionary movements
in the kingdom, rousing in the old Yorkists their ancient party spirit,
and inspiring the young with hopes of future aggrandizement and victory.
As the spring advanced, Henry sent the young queen, with her mother and
sisters, and the countess of Richmond, to hold her court at Winchester,
while he resolved on a progress through the northern counties of
England, the most affected towards the House of York, to endeavour, by
the royal presence, to awaken affection towards the reigning sovereign.
He passed the festival of Easter at Lincoln, and there he heard that
Lord Lovel and the two Staffords had escaped from sanctuary. The sound
of insurrection is fearful to a newly-anointed king; but as no
explanation was given to their movements, and no name of import mingled
in the tale, he felt less perturbation at this intelligence. As he
proceeded on his journey, the affair took a more serious aspect. The
Staffords advanced to besiege Worcester; and Lovel, with an increasing
army of three or four thousand men, was in the neighbourhood of York.
Sir Edward Brampton joined the forces of Lord Lovel, and he and Lady
Brampton again met. The history of this lady was singular. Ten years
before the time of which we write, being then eighteen, she married, and
attended the court of Edward the Fourth. She had talent and vivacity;
her dark laughing eyes, the animation of her countenance, her gay and
_naïve_ manners, attracted her sovereign; and she was soon distinguished
as one whose advancement, if so it might be called, to the highest
influence over him, depended on her own choice between honour and such
preferment. She did not hesitate; but her rejection won Edward as much
as her beauty. A kind of friendship, kept up under the chivalrous
phraseology of the day, was established between them, that gave,
perhaps, more umbrage to the queen than a less avowed connection would
have done. All was open; and if the good humour of her young rival never
permitted her to assume haughtiness, there was something even more
revolting in her girlish assumptions of power and consequence. The queen
hated and affected to despise Lady Brampton; Lady Brampton felt that she
injured the wife of Edward the Fourth. At first she had earnestly sought
to gain her favour, but when rebuffed, she resorted to the weapons of
youth, beauty, and wit, and set at defiance the darkened brow of
Elizabeth. Ten years had passed since then.
Edward the Fourth died, and under Richard the Third Lady Brampton
returned to her natural place in society; nay, the vivacity of speech
with which she defended the rights of his nephews, made him absolutely
discountenance her. In her days of pride she had refused every mark of
favour from Edward, thus to place their avowed friendship far above the
petty intrigues of the courtiers. It might have been thought that the
queen and her rival would now, on the grounds of affection for Edward's
children, have leagued together; but, on the contrary, the mother
expressed contempt and indignation at the presumption of Lady Brampton
in assuming a personal interest in her children, and that lady too well
remembered how often her manner and speech must have offended the queen
to make any vain attempt at reconciliation. The earl of Lincoln and Lady
Brampton had always been friends; her liveliness amused him, her
integrity and real goodness of heart won his esteem. Her passionate love
for the princes in the Tower had caused him, when he withdrew thence the
young Richard, whose ill-health demanded constant feminine attentions,
to confide him to her charge; thus she alone became possessed of the
secret of his existence, and now with Lord Lovel she debated how best
his interests could be furthered.
Lord Lincoln feared by rash measures to endanger the safety of his
nephew. He desired to place him on the throne, but he preferred bringing
him up in freedom and obscurity to any ill-judged attempt that might
throw him into his enemy's hands, and make him prisoner for life. His
plans were all laid upon this principle; he commanded Lord Lovel, who
submitted wholly to him, not to breathe the name of the son of Edward
till he had gained a decided advantage over the reigning sovereign. If
victorious, he might set up the royal standard and proclaim Richard the
Fourth, while the earl, still in London, would call together all the
Yorkists, and, in the absence of the king, seize, in his nephew's name,
upon the capital of the kingdom. If Lord Lovel's attempt proved
unsuccessful, it was decided that the prince should escape immediately
to the Continent, there to remain till some new insurrection was
organized; for, though cautious, he was resolute, and he had determined
never to relinquish his purpose, but to excite rebellion and discontent
against Henry till the rightful heir possessed his own.
These plans were in contradiction to Lady Brampton's views, but she was
obliged to submit. Her quick woman's wit discovered her another danger.
The absolute silence observed concerning the young prince, then only
eleven years of age, might in the end cast a doubt over the justice of
his pretensions, and she told Lord Lovel, that if, after a failure,
Richard quitted England, he must first be seen and acknowledged by his
mother. She resolved, therefore, on immediately going to Winchester to
prepare Elizabeth for the reception of her son; and Lord Lovel, who
agreed in the wisdom of this proposal, promised, at all hazards, that
ere leaving the kingdom the duke of York should cross the country to
that town, whence, by Southampton, he might escape to France. While,
therefore. Lord Lovel increased his army, and marched in high hopes
towards York, Lady Brampton proceeded southward, meditating the safest
and best manner of introducing herself to the queen.
There was a man, Richard Simon, or Symond, who afterwards figured in the
chronicles, that had long been secretly concerned in the course of
events. He was the son of a tenant of Sir John Gray, and had been the
playmate of the Lady Elizabeth Gray's elder children. His love of books,
his sedentary habits, and quick wit on matters of learning, led those
interested in his fate to consider him fitted for the church, and
therefore, he took priest's orders. But his mind, though not attuned to
action in its noblest sense, was not one that could remain at rest. He
loved power; he was sagacious, astute, and intriguing: when the Lady
Gray became queen, he being still too young for high promotion,
preferred an unnoticed but influential situation near her person to more
lucrative employ, which would remove him from the pleasures and dignity
of the court. When Edward died, he devoted himself to the service of his
royal patroness, and hardly escaped being imprisoned for life by
Richard, when the latter was most exasperated against the
queen dowager's relations. From that time Richard Simon found full
occupation for his plotting head, in endeavouring to bring about the
overthrow of the usurping Gloucester, and to raise the hopes of Henry
the Seventh, who requited ill his active zeal: and now again he busied
himself in exalting the queen's party. He looked the man he was--a
prier into secrets--one who conducted the drama of life by back-stairs
and tell-tale valets: his small grey eyes were quick to discern the
meaning of each smile or frown; his young brow was already wrinkled
through care and thought; craft lurked in the corners of his lips; and
his whispering voice betokened habitual caution. He continued to hover
near the queen; now despatched to sound some Yorkist, now closeted to
discuss some expression of the king's, in which to find a secret
meaning. Repose was the thing he hated: and for ever with some plan on
foot, some web to weave or unravel, he was seen with brows a little
elevated by self-conceit, with a courtly bend of the body, and
insinuating address, now assuring a Lancastrian of the perfect
satisfaction of the queen, now whispering to a Yorkist a tale of slights
and injuries practised by King Henry against his consort and her
friends. All the communication that had taken place between Elizabeth
Woodville and the earl of Lincoln had been carried on through this man,
though each knew not that he communicated to the other what either said.
But Lincoln respected his undeviating fidelity towards his patroness,
and valued his talents. It was to this man that Lady Brampton addressed
herself on her arrival at Winchester, to procure for her a private
audience with the queen. Her dark hints respecting the insurrection of
Lovel and the Staffords excited his curiosity, yet he experienced more
difficulty than he expected in bringing the royal dowager to consent to
receive her rival. When our days of prosperity are fled we cling fondly
to all that reminds us of their brightness, and turn with augmented
distaste from every thing that marred their splendour. Elizabeth loved to
remember herself as the chosen bride of Edward, and any circumstance
that spoke of his inconstancy, or detracted from the entireness of her
influence over him, then inspired her with indignation, now with
abhorrence. It required all Simon's dexterity to allay her anger, and
excite her curiosity, sufficiently to induce her to admit her rival to
her presence.
It was at the hour of vespers that the priest introduced Lady Brampton
into the queen's cabinet. Elizabeth was assured that she had secrets of
importance to communicate, and she designed by affability to win her to
a full disclosure of them. Yet her heart and manner grew cold as she
entered the closet where the lady and her guide already were, and
bending her head slightly, she said, "The Lady Brampton desired an
audience with me--I grant it."
With all her vivacity and consciousness of the importance of her
disclosures, the lady felt herself awed and chilled; and the memory of
Edward came across her, who had before shielded her from such
unkindness, and filled her eyes with tears. A long pause ensued; the
queen looked as in expectation, and Richard Simon, who had retired to an
embrasure of a window, was about to come forward, when Lady Brampton,
conquering her emotion, said, "Your grace is the happy mother of the
queen of England, and the hope of an heir, which you now entertain, may
make my intelligence distasteful."
"Say on," replied Elizabeth, haughtily; "I listen to your words."
The lady felt much inclined not to say another word, but assuming almost
equal coldness of manner, she continued, "Would your grace prefer that
your fair daughter should still bear the sceptre, or that Richard the
Fourth should wrest it from the husband's grasp?"
Now indeed the queen started, and cried impetuously, "I charge you,
trifle with me no longer! Explain your words; who would supplant my
child?"
"Her brother," Lady Brampton replied; and seeing the queen lost in a
mixture of amazement and terror, she added, "The Duke of York still
lives: he is now, I trust, at the head of forces sufficient to enforce
his rights. In a few days England will acknowledge him as sovereign."
In reply to these words, spoken with rapidity, as if they were pregnant
with supreme delight to their auditress, the queen with an angry look,
said, "I shall league with no plotters to establish an impostor."
"Beware," said Lady Brampton, indignantly; "let your majesty bethink
yourself before you consign your son to misery and an early grave. Will
his mother be his chief enemy?"
"Who vouches for him?"
"Himself! He is the very Edward who once was yours: his young features
are but the miniature mirror of his royal father; his princely grace,
his wit, his courage, are all derived from him."
"I must see the boy," said the queen, "to end at once this silly masque.
How do you pretend that he escaped form the Tower?"
The independence and sensibility of Lady Brampton's disposition would
not permit her to answer a question asked thus ironically. Had she
looked at the queen, she might have seen, by her change of countenance,
that it was nearly all put on by the jealous instinct that would not
permit her to acknowledge herself under so great an obligation to her
rival. Lady Brampton turned to Simon, saying, "I am ready to depart, Sir
Priest; I see her grace sorrows that the same cold bed does not entomb
Richard of York and Edward the Fifth. Poor prince! My Lord of Lincoln
counselled well, and I was to blame in not acting on his advice."
"Stay," cried Elizabeth, "speak again. Is the earl of Lincoln a party to
this tale?"
"Your majesty insults me," said the lady; "I came here to please a
mother's ear by assurances of her son's safety, and to conduct the
tempest-tost fortunes of this ill-starred boy into the safe harbour of
maternal love. I came with a full heart and an ardent desire to serve
you; no other motive could have led me hither. You receive me with
disdain; you dismiss me with contumely. I fear that so much you hate me,
that, for my sake, your heart is steeled against your princely son. But
as you already know so much as to make it necessary that you should know
all, I will hasten to London, and intreat the noble De la Poole to
communicate with you, and to avert a mother's enmity from her child. I
take my leave."
She was about to depart; but Simon, who knew that a feud between the
prince's partizans must ruin his cause, entreated her to remain; and
then addressing the queen, tried to soothe her, for she was pacing the
rushes of her chamber in excessive agitation. "Peace, good friend," said
she, "I will speak to Lincoln; I will ask him why I, who was deemed by
his honoured uncle fit partaker of his councils, am kept by him in
ignorance of the alleged existence of this poor boy? Even now he might
be sitting on the throne, had I been consulted: instead of this, to what
has this distrust brought him? He is a crownless king, a fugitive
prince, branded as an impostor; a seal is put on his fate, which nothing
probably will ever remove. I, even I, have called my son, if such he be,
a counterfeit!"
Maternal tenderness touched to the quick the royal lady's heart, and she
wept. Lady Brampton was all impulse and goodness of disposition: she
felt that Elizabeth had wronged her, but in a moment she forgave the
offence; she advanced, and kneeling at her feet, touched her hand
gently, as she said, "Let not your grace judge too harshly of our
proceedings. We poor faulty human beings, hurried hither and thither by
passion, are for ever jostling against and hurting each other, where
more perfect natures would coalesce, and thus succeed where we fail.
Forgive, forget the past; it cannot now be changed. Forgive the earl,
who, long bound by an oath to his uncle Gloucester, could only save your
son's life by feigning his death. Forgive the humblest of your servants,
even myself, who acted under his commands, and who now, in disobedience
to them, attempts to bring the royal exile to his mother's arms. Would
that my humility could appease your displeasure, and that you would
acknowledge me your faithful follower. My life should be at the disposal
of you and the princely York."
Lady Brampton, full of vivacity, energy, and even of imperiousness, had
so much grace in her manner and sweetness in her voice, when she laid
these keen weapons aside to assume those of gentleness and love, that
she was irresistible. The queen, at once softened, stretched out her
hand, which the lady pressed respectfully to her lips; then, as friends
bent on one design, they conversed unreservedly together. Lady Brampton
entered into long details concerning the past history of the duke of
York, and the schemes then on foot for his advancement. This was not
their sole interview; they met again and again, and mutual affection
confirming the link which the fate of Richard caused to exist between
them, the queen named the Lady Brampton one of her ladies, and
henceforth they lived together under the same roof.