THE LAST PILGRIMS IN THE LONG PROCESSION TO THE COMMON BOURNE.
The king and his royal brothers, immediately after the victory, rode
back to London to announce their triumph. The foot-soldiers still
stayed behind to recruit themselves after the sore fatigue. And
towards the eminence by Hadley church, the peasants and villagers of
the district had pressed in awe and in wonder; for on that spot had
Henry (now sadly led back to a prison, never again to unclose to his
living form) stood to watch the destruction of the host gathered in
his name; and to that spot the corpses of Warwick and Montagu were
removed, while a bier was prepared to convey their remains to London;
[The bodies of Montagu and the earl were exhibited bareheaded at St.
Paul's church for three days, "that no pretence of their being alive
might stir up any rebellion afterwards; . . . they were then carried
down to the Priory of Bisham, in Berkshire, where among their
ancestors by the mother's side (the Earls of Salisbury), the two
unquiet brothers rest in one tomb. . . . The large river of their
blood, divided now into many streams, runs so small, they are hardly
observed as they flow by." (Habington's "Life of Edward IV.," one of
the most eloquent compositions in the language, though incorrect as a
history).--"Sic transit gloria mundi."] and on that spot had the
renowned friar conjured the mists, exorcised the enchanted guns, and
defeated the horrible machinations of the Lancastrian wizard.
And towards the spot, and through the crowd, a young Yorkist captain
passed with a prisoner he had captured, and whom he was leading to the
tent of the Lord Hastings, the only one of the commanders from whom
mercy might be hoped, and who had tarried behind the king and his
royal brothers to make preparations for the removal of the mighty
dead.
"Keep close to me, Sir Marmaduke," said the Yorkist; we must look to
Hastings to appease the king: and, if he hope not to win your pardon,
he may, at least, after such a victory, aid one foe to fly."
"Care not for me, Alwyn," said the knight; "when Somerset was deaf
save to his own fears, I came back to die by my chieftain's side,
alas, too late! too late! Better now death than life! What kin,
kith, ambition, love, were to other men was Lord Warwick's smile to
me!"
Alwyn kindly respected his prisoner's honest emotion, and took
advantage of it to lead him away from the spot where he saw knights
and warriors thickest grouped, in soldier-like awe and sadness, round
the Hero-Brothers. He pushed through a humbler crowd of peasants and
citizens, and women with babes at their breast; and suddenly saw a
troop of timbrel-women dancing round a leafless tree, and chanting
some wild but mirthful and joyous doggerel.
"What obscene and ill-seasoned revelry is this?" said the trader to a
gaping yeoman.
"They are but dancing, poor girls, round the wicked wizard whom Friar
Bungey caused to be strangled, and his witch daughter."
A chill foreboding seized upon Alwyn: he darted forward, scattering
peasant and tymbestere with his yet bloody sword. His feet stumbled
against some broken fragments; it was the poor Eureka, shattered, at
last, for the sake of the diamond! Valueless to the great friar,
since the science of the owner could not pass to his executioner,--
valueless the mechanism and the invention, the labour and the genius;
but the superstition and the folly and the delusion had their value,
and the impostor who destroyed the engine clutched the jewel!
From the leafless tree was suspended the dead body of a man; beneath,
lay a female, dead too; but whether by the hand of man or the mercy of
Heaven, there was no sign to tell. Scholar and Child, Knowledge and
Innocence, alike were cold; the grim Age had devoured them, as it
devours ever those before, as behind, its march, and confounds, in one
common doom, the too guileless and the too wise!
"Why crowd ye thus, knaves?" said a commanding voice.
"Ha, Lord Hastings! approach! behold!" exclaimed Alwyn.
"Ha, ha!" shouted Graul, as she led her sisters from the spot,
wheeling, and screaming, and tossing up their timbrels, "ha! the witch
and her lover! Ha, ha! Foul is fair! Ha, ha! Witchcraft and death
go together, as thou mayest learn at the last, sleek wooer."
And, peradventure, when, long years afterwards, accusations of
witchcraft, wantonness, and treason resounded in the ears of Hastings,
and, at the signal of Gloucester, rushed in the armed doomsman, those
ominous words echoed back upon his soul!
At that very hour the gates of the Tower were thrown open to the
multitude. Fresh from his victory, Edward and his brothers had gone
to render thanksgivings at St. Paul's (they were devout, those three
Plantagenets!), thence to Baynard's Castle, to escort the queen and
her children once more to the Tower. And, now, the sound of trumpets
stilled the joyous uproar of the multitude, for in the balcony of the
casement that looked towards the chapel the herald had just announced
that King Edward would show himself to the people. On every inch of
the courtyard, climbing up wall and palisade, soldier, citizen, thief,
harlot, age, childhood, all the various conditions and epochs of
multiform life, swayed, clung, murmured, moved, jostled, trampled,--
the beings of the little hour!
High from the battlements against the weltering beam floated Edward's
conquering flag,--a sun shining to the sun. Again, and a third time,
rang the trumpets, and on the balcony, his crown upon his head, but
his form still sheathed in armour, stood the king. What mattered to
the crowd his falseness and his perfidy, his licentiousness and
cruelty? All vices ever vanish in success! Hurrah for King Edward!
THE MAN OF THE AGE suited the age, had valour for its war and cunning
for its peace, and the sympathy of the age was with him! So there
stood the king; at his right hand, Elizabeth, with her infant boy (the
heir of England) in her arms, the proud face of the duchess seen over
the queen's shoulder. By Elizabeth's side was the Duke of Gloucester,
leaning on his sword, and at the left of Edward, the perjured Clarence
bowed his fair head to the joyous throng! At the sight of the
victorious king, of the lovely queen, and, above all, of the young
male heir, who promised length of days to the line of York, the crowd
burst forth with a hearty cry, "Long live the king and the king's
son!" Mechanically Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to
Edward's brother, and suddenly, as with a mother's prophetic instinct,
clasped her infant closer to her bosom, when she caught the glittering
and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (York's young hero of the
day, Warwick's grim avenger in the future), fixed upon that harmless
life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the ambition of
a ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!
NOTES.
I.
The badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff was so celebrated in the
fifteenth century, that the following extract from a letter addressed
by Mr. Courthope, Rouge Croix, to the author, will no doubt interest
the reader, and the author is happy in the opportunity afforded of
expressing his acknowledgments for the courteous attention with which
Mr. Courthope has honoured his inquiries:--
"COLLEGE OF ARMS.
"As regards the badge of Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick,--namely, the
Bear and Staff,--I agree with you, certainly, as to the probability of
his having sometimes used the whole badge, and sometimes the Staff
only, which accords precisely with the way in which the Bear and Staff
are set forth in the Rous Roll to the early earls (Warwick) before the
Conquest. We there find them figured with the Staff upon their
shields and the Bear at their feet, and the Staff alone is introduced
as a quartering upon their shields.
"The story of the origin of these badges is as follows:
"Arth, or Arthgal, is reputed to have been the first Earl of Warwick,
and being one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, it behooved
him to have a cognizance; and Arth or Narth signifying in British the
same as Ursus in Latin, he took the Bear for such cognizance. His
successor, Morvidus, Earl of Warwick, in single combat, overcame a
mighty giant (who had encountered him with a tree pulled up from the
root, the boughs of which had been torn from it), and in token of his
success assumed the Ragged Staff. You will thus see that the origins
of the two were different, which would render the bearing of them
separately not unlikely, and you will likewise infer that both came
through the Beauchamps. I do not find the Ragged Staff ever
attributed to the Neviles before the match with Beauchamp.
"As regards the crest or cognizance of Nevile, the Pied Bull has been
the cognizance of that family from a very early time, and the Bull's
head, its crest, and both the one and the other may have been used by
the king-maker, and by his brother, the Marquis Montagu; the said Bull
appears at the feet of Richard Nevile in the Rous Roll, accompanied by
the Eagle of Monthermer; the crests on either side of him are those of
Montagu and Nevile. Besides these two crests, both of which the
Marquis Montagu may have used, he certainly did use the Gryphon,
issuant out of a ducal coronet, as this appears alone for his crest,
on his garter plate, as a crest for Montagu, he having given the arms
of that family precedence over his paternal coat of Nevile; the king-
maker, likewise, upon his seal, gives the precedence to Montagu and
Monthermer, and they alone appear upon his shield."
II.
Hume, Rapin, and Carte, all dismiss the story of Edward's actual
imprisonment at Middleham, while Lingard, Sharon Turner, and others,
adopt it implicitly. And yet, though Lingard has successfully
grappled with some of Hume's objections, he has left others wholly
unanswered. Hume states that no such fact is mentioned in Edward's
subsequent proclamation against Clarence and Warwick. Lingard
answers, after correcting an immaterial error in Hume's dates, "that
the proclamation ought not to have mentioned it, because it was
confined to the enumeration of offences only committed after the
general amnesty in 1469;" and then, surely with some inconsistency,
quotes the attainder of Clarence many years afterwards, in which the
king enumerates it among his offences, "as jeopardyng the king's royal
estate, person, and life, in strait warde, putting him thereby from
all his libertye after procuring great commotions." But it is clear
that if the amnesty hindered Edward from charging Warwick with this
imprisonment only one year after it was granted, it would, a fortiori,
hinder him from charging Clarence with it nine years after. Most
probable is it that this article of accusation does not refer to any
imprisonment, real or supposed, at Middleham, in 1469, but to
Clarence's invasion of England in 1470, when Edward's state, person,
and life were jeopardized by his narrow escape from the fortified
house, where he might fairly be called "in straite warde;" especially
as the words, "after procuring great commotions," could not apply to
the date of the supposed detention in Middleham, when, instead of
procuring commotions, Clarence had helped Warwick to allay them, but
do properly apply to his subsequent rebellion in 1470. Finally,
Edward's charges against his brother, as Lingard himself has observed
elsewhere, are not proofs, and that king never scrupled at any
falsehood to serve his turn. Nothing, in short, can be more improbable
than this tale of Edward's captivity,--there was no object in it. At
the very time it is said to have taken place, Warwick is absolutely
engaged in warfare against the king's foes. The moment Edward leaves
Middleham, instead of escaping to London, he goes carelessly and
openly to York, to judge and execute the very captain of the rebels
whom Warwick has subdued, and in the very midst of Warwick's armies!
Far from appearing to harbour the natural resentment so vindictive a
king must have felt (had so great an indignity been offered to him),
almost immediately after he leaves York, he takes the Nevile family
into greater power than ever, confers new dignities upon Warwick, and
betroths his eldest daughter to Warwick's nephew. On the whole, then,
perhaps some such view of the king's visit to Middleham which has been
taken in this narrative, may be considered not the least probable
compromise of the disputed and contradictory evidence on the subject.
THE END.