quality, I opine that no one less than royal could so menace--if your
Highness imagines that I have been intrusted by a fallen man, wrong
me not by supposing that I could fear death more than dishonour; for
certes!” continued Adam, with innocent pedantry, “to put the case
scholastically, and in the logic familiar, doubtless, to your Highness,
either I have something to confess or I have not; if I have--”
“Hound!” interrupted the prince, stamping his foot, “thinkest thou to
banter me,--see!” As his foot shook the floor, the door opened, and a
man with his arms bare, covered from head to foot in a black gown of
serge, with his features concealed by a hideous mask, stood ominously at
the aperture.
The prince motioned to the torturer (or tormentor, as he was technically
styled) to approach, which he did noiselessly, till he stood, tall,
grim, and lowering, beside Adam, like some silent and devouring monster
by its prey.
“Dost thou repent thy contumacy? A moment, and I render my questioning
to another!”
“Sir,” said Adam, drawing himself up, and with so sudden a change of
mien, that his loftiness almost awed even the dauntless Richard,--“sir,
my fathers feared not death when they did battle for the throne of
England; and why?--because in their loyal valour they placed not the
interests of a mortal man, but the cause of imperishable honour! And
though their son be a poor scholar, and wears not the spurs of gold;
though his frame be weak and his hairs gray, he loveth honour also well
eno’ to look without dread on death!”
Fierce and ruthless, when irritated and opposed, as the prince was, he
was still in his first youth,--ambition had here no motive to harden
him into stone. He was naturally so brave himself that bravery could not
fail to win from him something of respect and sympathy, and he was taken
wholly by surprise in hearing the language of a knight and hero from
one whom he had regarded but as the artful impostor or the despicable
intriguer.
He changed countenance as Warner spoke, and remained a moment silent.
Then as a thought occurred to him, at which his features relaxed into
a half-smile, he beckoned to the tormentor, said a word in his ear, and
the horrible intruder nodded and withdrew.
“Master Warner,” then said the prince, in his customary sweet and
gliding tones, “it were a pity that so gallant a gentleman should be
exposed to peril for adhesion to a cause that can never prosper, and
that would be fatal, could it prosper, to our common country. For look
you, this Margaret, who is now, we believe, in London” (here he examined
Adam’s countenance, which evinced surprise), “this Margaret, who is
seeking to rekindle the brand and brennen of civil war, has already sold
for base gold to the enemy of the realm, to Louis XI., that very Calais
which your fathers, doubtless, lavished their blood to annex to our
possessions. Shame on the lewd harlot! What woman so bloody and so
dissolute? What man so feeble and craven as her lord?”
“Alas! sir,” said Adam, “I am unfitted for these high considerations of
state. I live but for my art, and in it. And now, behold how my kingdom
is shaken and rent!” he pointed with so touching a smile, and so simple
a sadness, to the broken engine, that Richard was moved.
“Thou lovest this, thy toy? I can comprehend that love for some
dumb thing that we have toiled for. Ay!” continued the prince,
thoughtfully,--“ay! I have noted myself in life that there are objects,
senseless as that mould of iron, which if we labour at them wind round
our hearts as if they were flesh and blood. So some men love learning,
others glory, others power. Well, man, thou lovest that mechanical? How
many years hast thou been about it?”
“From the first to the last, twenty-five years, and it is still
incomplete.”
“Um!” said the prince, smiling, “Master Warner, thou hast read of the
judgment of Solomon,--how the wise king discovered the truth by ordering
the child’s death?”
“It was indeed,” said Adam, unsuspectingly, “a most shrewd suggestion of
native wit and clerkly wisdom.”
“Glad am I thou approvest it, Master Warner,” said Richard. And as he
spoke the tormentor reappeared with a smith, armed with the implements
of his trade.
“Good smith, break into pieces this stubborn iron; bare all its
receptacles; leave not one fragment standing on the other! ‘Delenda est
tua Carthago,’ Master Warner. There is Latin in answer to thy logic.”
It is impossible to convey any notion of the terror, the rage, the
despair, which seized upon the unhappy sage when these words smote his
ear, and he saw the smith’s brawny arms swing on high the ponderous
hammer. He flung himself between the murderous stroke and his beloved
model. He embraced the grim iron tightly. “Kill me!” he exclaimed
sublimely, “kill me!--not my THOUGHT!”
“Solomon was verily and indeed a wise king,” said the duke, with a low
inward laugh. “And now, man, I have thee! To save thy infant, thine
art’s hideous infant, confess the whole!”
It was then that a fierce struggle evidently took place in Adam’s bosom.
It was, perhaps--O reader! thou whom pleasure, love, ambition, hatred,
avarice, in thine and our ordinary existence, tempt--it was, perhaps, to
him the one arch-temptation of a life. In the changing countenance, the
heaving breast, the trembling lip, the eyes that closed and opened to
close again, as if to shut out the unworthy weakness,--yea, in the whole
physical man,--was seen the crisis of the moral struggle. And what, in
truth, to him an Edward or a Henry, a Lancaster or a York? Nothing. But
still that instinct, that principle, that conscience, ever strongest in
those whose eyes are accustomed to the search of truth, prevailed. So
he rose suddenly and quietly, drew himself apart, left his work to the
Destroyer, and said,--
“Prince, thou art a boy! Let a boy’s voice annihilate that which should
have served all time. Strike!”
Richard motioned; the hammer descended, the engine and its appurtenances
reeled and crashed, the doors flew open, the wheels rattled, the sparks
flew. And Adam Warner fell to the ground, as if the blow had broken his
own heart. Little heeding the insensible victim of his hard and cunning
policy, Richard advanced to the inspection of the interior recesses of
the machinery. But that which promised Adam’s destruction saved him. The
heavy stroke had battered in the receptacle of the documents, had
buried them in the layers of iron. The faithful Eureka, even amidst its
injuries and wrecks, preserved the secret of its master.
The prince, with impatient hands, explored all the apertures yet
revealed, and after wasting many minutes in a fruitless search, was
about to bid the smith complete the work of destruction, when the door
suddenly opened and Lord Hastings entered. His quick eye took in the
whole scene; he arrested the lifted arm of the smith, and passing
deliberately to Gloucester, said, with a profound reverence, but a
half-reproachful smile, “My lord! my lord! your Highness is indeed
severe upon my poor scholar.”
“Canst thou answer for thy scholar’s loyalty?” said the duke, gloomily.
Hastings drew the prince aside, and said, in a low tone, “His loyalty!
poor man, I know not; but his guilelessness, surely, yes. Look you,
sweet prince, I know the interest thou hast in keeping well with the
Earl of Warwick, whom I, in sooth, have slight cause to love. Thou hast
trusted me with thy young hopes of the Lady Anne; this new Nevile placed
about the king, and whose fortunes Warwick hath made his care, hath,
I have reason to think, some love passages with the scholar’s
daughter,--the daughter came to me for the passport. Shall this
Marmaduke Nevile have it to say to his fair kinswoman, with the
unforgiving malice of a lover’s memory, that the princely Gloucester
stooped to be the torturer of yon poor old man? If there be treason in
the scholar or in yon battered craft-work, leave the search to me!”
The duke raised his dark, penetrating eyes to those of Hastings, which
did not quail; for here world-genius encountered world-genius, and art,
art.
“Thine argument hath more subtlety and circumlocution than suit with
simple truth,” said the prince, smiling. “But it is enough to Richard
that Hastings wills protection even to a spy!”
Hastings kissed the duke’s hand in silence, and going to the door, he
disappeared a moment and returned with Sibyll. As she entered, pale and
trembling, Adam rose, and the girl with a wild cry flew to his bosom.
“It is a winsome face, Hastings,” said the duke, dryly. “I pity Master
Nevile the lover, and envy my Lord Chamberlain the protector.”
Hastings laughed, for he was well pleased that Richard’s suspicion took
that turn.
“And now,” he said, “I suppose Master Nevile and the Duchess of
Bedford’s page may enter. Your guard stopped them hitherto. They come
for this gentleman from her highness the queen’s mother.”
“Enter, Master Nevile, and you, Sir Page. What is your errand?”
“My lady, the duchess,” said the page, “has sent me to conduct Master
Warner to the apartments prepared for him as her special multiplier and
alchemist.”
“What!” said the prince, who, unlike the irritable Clarence, made it
his policy to show all decorous homage to the queen’s kin, “hath that
illustrious lady taken this gentleman into her service? Why announced
you not, Master Warner, what at once had saved you from further
questioning? Lord Hastings, I thank you now for your intercession.”
Hastings, in answer, pointed archly at Marmaduke, who was aiding Sibyll
to support her father. “Do you suspect me still, prince?” he whispered.
The duke shrugged his shoulders, and Adam, breaking from Marmaduke
and Sibyll, passed with tottering steps to the shattered labour of his
solitary life. He looked at the ruin with mournful despondence, with
quivering lips. “Have you done with me?” then he said, bowing his head
lowlily, for his pride was gone; “may we--that is, I and this, my poor
device--withdraw from your palace? I see we are not fit for kings!”
“Say not so,” said the young duke, gently: “we have now convinced
ourselves of our error, and I crave thy pardon, Master Warner, for my
harsh dealings. As for this, thy toy, the king’s workmen shall set it
right for thee. Smith, call the fellows yonder, to help bear this to--”
He paused, and glanced at Hastings.
“To my apartments,” said the chamberlain. “Your Highness may be sure
that I will there inspect it. Fear not, Master Warner; no further harm
shall chance to thy contrivance.”
“Come, sir, forgive me,” said the duke. With gracious affability the
young prince held out his hand, the fingers of which sparkled with
costly gems, to the old man. The old man bowed as if his beard would
have swept the earth, but he did not touch the hand. He seemed still in
a state between dream and reason, life and death: he moved not, spoke
not, till the men came to bear the model; and he then followed it, his
arms folded in his gown, till, on entering the court, it was borne in
a contrary direction from his own, to the chamberlain’s apartment; then
wistfully pursuing it with his eyes, he uttered such a sigh as might
have come from a resigned father losing the last glimpse of a beloved
son.
Richard hesitated a moment, loth to relinquish his research, and
doubtful whether to follow the Eureka for renewed investigation; but
partly unwilling to compromise his dignity in the eyes of Hastings,
should his suspicions prove unfounded, and partly indisposed to risk the
displeasure of the vindictive Duchess of Bedford by further molestation
of one now under her protection, he reluctantly trusted all further
inquiry to the well-known loyalty of Hastings. “If Margaret be in
London,” he muttered to himself as he turned slowly away, “now is the
time to seize and chain the lioness! Ho, Catesby,--hither (a
valuable man that Catesby--a lawyer’s nurturing with a bloodhound’s
nature!)--Catesby, while King Edward rides for pleasure, let thou and
I track the scent of his foes. If the she-wolf of Anjou hath ventured
hither, she hides in some convent or monastery, be sure. See to our
palfreys, Catesby! Strange,” added the prince, muttering to himself,
“that I am more restless to guard the crown than he who wears it! Nay,
a crown is a goodly heirloom in a man’s family, and a fair sight to see
near--and near--and near--”
The prince abruptly paused, opened and shut his right hand convulsively,
and drew a long sigh.
BOOK IV. INTRIGUES OF THE COURT OF EDWARD IV.
CHAPTER I. MARGARET OF ANJOU.
The day after the events recorded in the last section of this narrative,
and about the hour of noon, Robert Hilyard (still in the reverend
disguise in which he had accosted Hastings) bent his way through the
labyrinth of alleys that wound in dingy confusion from the Chepe towards
the river.
The purlieus of the Thames, in that day of ineffective police, sheltered
many who either lived upon plunder, or sought abodes that proffered, at
alarm, the facility of flight. Here, sauntering in twos or threes, or
lazily reclined by the threshold of plaster huts, might be seen that
refuse population which is the unholy offspring of civil war,--disbanded
soldiers of either Rose, too inured to violence and strife for peaceful
employment, and ready for any enterprise by which keen steel wins bright
gold. At length our friend stopped before the gate of a small house, on
the very marge of the river, which belonged to one of the many religious
orders then existing; but from its site and aspect denoted the poverty
seldom their characteristic. Here he knocked; the door was opened by a
lay-brother; a sign and a smile were interchanged, and the visitor was
ushered into a room belonging to the superior, but given up for the last
few days to a foreign priest, to whom the whole community appeared to
consider the reverence of a saint was due. And yet this priest, who,
seated alone, by a casement which commanded a partial view of the
distant Tower of London, received the conspirator, was clad in the
humblest serge. His face was smooth and delicate; and the animation of
the aspect, the vehement impatience of the gesture, evinced little of
the holy calm that should belong to those who have relinquished the
affairs of earth for meditation on the things of heaven. To this
personage the sturdy Hilyard bowed his manly knees; and casting himself
at the priest’s feet, his eyes, his countenance, changed from their
customary hardihood and recklessness into an expression at once of
reverence and of pity.
“Well, man--well, friend--good friend, tried and leal friend, speak!
speak!” exclaimed the priest, in an accent that plainly revealed a
foreign birth.
“Oh, gracious lady! all hope is over; I come but to bid you fly. Adam
Warner was brought before the usurper; he escaped, indeed, the torture,
and was faithful to the trust. But the papers--the secret of the
rising--are in the hands of Hastings.”
“How long, O Lord,” said Margaret of Anjou, for she it was, under that
reverend disguise, “how long wilt Thou delay the hour of triumph and
revenge?”
The princess as she spoke had suffered her hood to fall back, and
her pale, commanding countenance, so well fitted to express fiery and
terrible emotion, wore that aspect in which many a sentenced man had
read his doom,--an aspect the more fearful, inasmuch as the passion that
pervaded it did not distort the features, but left them locked, rigid,
and marble-like in beauty, as the head of the Medusa.
“The day will dawn at last,” said Hilyard; “but the judgments of Heaven
are slow. We are favoured, at the least, that our secret is confined
to a man more merciful than his tribe.” He then related to Margaret
his interview with Hastings at the house of the Lady Lougueville, and
continued: “This morning, not an hour since, I sought him (for last
evening he did not leave Edward, a council met at the Tower), and
learned that he had detected the documents in the recesses of Warner’s
engine. Knowing from your Highness and your spies that he had been open
to the gifts of Charolois, I spoke to him plainly of the guerdon that
should await his silence. ‘Friar,’ he answered, ‘if in this court and
this world I have found it were a fool’s virtue to be more pure than
others, and if I know that I should but provoke the wrath of those who
profit by Burgundian gold, were I alone to disdain its glitter, I have
still eno’ of my younger conscience left me not to make barter of
human flesh. Did I give these papers to King Edward, the heads of fifty
gallant men, whose error is but loyalty to their ancient sovereign,
would glut the doomsman; but,’ he continued, ‘I am yet true to my king
and his cause; I shall know how to advise Edward to the frustrating all
your schemes. The districts where you hoped a rising will be guarded,
the men ye count upon will be watched: the Duke of Gloucester, whose
vigilance never sleeps, has learned that the Lady Margaret is in
England, disguised as a priest. To-morrow all the religious houses will
be searched; if thou knowest where she lies concealed, bid her lose not
an hour to fly.’”
“I Will NOT fly!” exclaimed Margaret; “let Edward, if he dare, proclaim
to my people that their queen is in her city of London. Let him send his
hirelings to seize her. Not in this dress shall she be found. In robes
of state, the sceptre in her hand, shall they drag the consort of their
king to the prison-house of her palace.”
“On my knees, great queen, I implore you to be calm; with the loss
of your liberty ends indeed all hope of victory, all chance even of
struggle. Think not Edward’s fears would leave to Margaret the life that
his disdain has spared to your royal spouse. Between your prison and
your grave, but one secret and bloody step! Be ruled; no time to lose!
My trusty Hugh even now waits with his boat below. Relays of horses
are ready, night and day, to bear you to the coast; while seeking your
restoration, I have never neglected the facilities for flight. Pause
not, O gracious lady; let not your son say, ‘My mother’s passion has
lost me the hope of my grandsire’s crown.’”
“My boy; my princely boy, my Edward!” exclaimed Margaret, bursting
into tears, all the warrior-queen merged in the remembrance of the fond
mother. “Ah, faithful friend! he is so gallant and so beautiful! Oh, he
shall reward thee well hereafter!”
“May he live to crush these barons, and raise this people!” said the
demagogue of Redesdale. “But now, save thyself!”
“But what! is it not possible yet to strike the blow? Rather let us spur
to the north; rather let us hasten the hour of action, and raise the Red
Rose through the length and breadth of England!”
“Ah, lady, if without warrant from your lord; if without foreign
subsidies; if without having yet ripened the time; if without gold,
without arms, and without one great baron on our side, we forestall a
rising, all that we have gained is lost; and instead of war, you can
scarcely provoke a riot. But for this accursed alliance of Edward’s
daughter with the brother of icy-hearted Louis, our triumph had been
secure. The French king’s gold would have manned a camp, bribed the
discontented lords, and his support have sustained the hopes of the more
leal Lancastrians. But it is in vain to deny, that if Lord Warwick win
Louis--”
“He will not! he shall not!--Louis, mine own kinsman!” exclaimed
Margaret, in a voice in which the anguish pierced through the louder
tone of resentment and disdain.
“Let us hope that he will not,” replied Hilyard, soothingly; “some
chance may yet break off these nuptials, and once more give us France
as our firm ally. But now we must be patient. Already Edward is fast
wearing away the gloss of his crown; already the great lords desert his
court; already, in the rural provinces, peasant and franklin complain of
the exactions of his minions; already the mighty House of Nevile frowns
sullen on the throne it built. Another year, and who knows but the Earl
of Warwick,--the beloved and the fearless, whose statesman-art alone
hath severed from you the arms and aid of France, at whose lifted
finger all England would bristle with armed men--may ride by the side of
Margaret through the gates of London?”
“Evil-omened consoler, never!” exclaimed the princess, starting to her
feet, with eyes that literally shot fire. “Thinkest thou that the spirit
of a queen lies in me so low and crushed, that I, the descendant of
Charlemagne, could forgive the wrongs endured from Warwick and his
father? But thou, though wise and loyal, art of the Commons; thou
knowest not how they feel through whose veins rolls the blood of kings!”
A dark and cold shade fell over the bold face of Robin of Redesdale at
these words.
“Ah, lady,” he said, with bitterness, “if no misfortune can curb
thy pride, in vain would we rebuild thy throne. It is these Commons,
Margaret of Anjou--these English Commons--this Saxon People, that can
alone secure to thee the holding of the realm which the right arm wins.
And, beshrew me, much as I love thy cause, much as thou hast with thy
sorrows and thy princely beauty glamoured and spelled my heart and
my hand,--ay, so that I, the son of a Lollard, forget the wrongs the
Lollards sustained from the House of Lancaster; so that I, who have seen
the glorious fruitage of a Republic, yet labour for thee, to overshadow
the land with the throne of ONE--yet--yet, lady--yet, if I thought thou
wert to be the same Margaret as of old, looking back to thy dead kings,
and contemptuous of thy living people, I would not bid one mother’s son
lift lance or bill on thy behalf.”
So resolutely did Robin of Redesdale utter these words, that the queen’s
haughty eye fell abashed as he spoke; and her craft, or her intellect,
which was keen and prompt where her passions did not deafen and blind
her judgment, instantly returned to her. Few women equalled this once
idol of knight and minstrel, in the subduing fascination that she could
exert in her happier moments. Her affability was as gracious as her
wrath was savage; and with a dignified and winning frankness, she
extended her hand to her ally, as she answered, in a sweet, humble,
womanly, and almost penitent voice,--
“O bravest and lealest of friends, forgive thy wretched queen. Her
troubles distract her brain,--chide her not if they sour her speech.
Saints above! will ye not pardon Margaret if at times her nature be
turned from the mother’s milk into streams of gall and bloody purpose,
when ye see, from your homes serene, in what a world of strife and
falsehood her very womanhood hath grown unsexed?” She paused a moment,
and her uplifted eyes shed tears fast and large. Then, with a sigh,
she turned to Hilyard, and resumed more calmly, “Yes, thou art
right,--adversity hath taught me much. And though adversity will too
often but feed and not starve our pride, yet thou--thou hast made me
know that there is more of true nobility in the blunt Children of the
People than in many a breast over which flows the kingly robe. Forgive
me, and the daughter of Charlemagne shall yet be a mother to the
Commons, who claim thee as their brother!”
Thoroughly melted, Robin of Redesdale bowed over the hand held to his
lips, and his rough voice trembled as he answered, though that answer
took but the shape of prayer.
“And now,” said the princess, smiling, “to make peace lasting between
us, I conquer myself, I yield to thy counsels. Once more the fugitive, I
abandon the city that contains Henry’s unheeded prison. See, I am ready.
Who will know Margaret in this attire? Lead on!”
Rejoiced to seize advantage of this altered and submissive mood,
Robin instantly took the way through a narrow passage, to a small door
communicating with the river. There Hugh was waiting in a small boat,
moored to the damp and discoloured stairs.
Robin, by a gesture, checked the man’s impulse to throw himself at the
feet of the pretended priest, and bade him put forth his best speed.
The princess seated herself by the helm, and the little boat cut
rapidly through the noble stream. Galleys, gay and gilded, with armorial
streamers, and filled with nobles and gallants, passed them, noisy with
mirth or music, on their way. These the fallen sovereign heeded not;
but, with all her faults, the woman’s heart beating in her bosom--she
who in prosperity had so often wrought ruin, and shame, and woe to
her gentle lord; she who had been reckless of her trust as queen; and
incurred grave--but, let us charitably hope, unjust--suspicion of her
faith as wife, still fixed her eyes on the gloomy tower that contained
her captive husband, and felt that she could have forgotten a while even
the loss of power if but permitted to fall on that plighted heart, and
weep over the past with the woe-worn bridegroom of her youth.
CHAPTER II. IN WHICH ARE LAID OPEN TO THE READER THE CHARACTER OF
EDWARD THE FOURTH AND THAT OF HIS COURT, WITH THE MACHINATIONS OF THE
WOODVILLES AGAINST THE EARL OF WARWICK.
Scarcely need it be said to those who have looked with some philosophy
upon human life, that the young existence of Master Marmaduke Nevile,
once fairly merged in the great common sea, will rarely reappear before
us individualized and distinct. The type of the provincial cadet of the
day hastening courtwards to seek his fortune, he becomes lost amidst
the gigantic characters and fervid passions that alone stand forth in
history. And as, in reading biography, we first take interest in the
individual who narrates, but if his career shall pass into that broader
and more stirring life, in which he mingles with men who have left a
more dazzling memory than his own, we find the interest change from the
narrator to those by whom he is surrounded and eclipsed,--so, in this
record of a time, we scarce follow our young adventurer into the court
of the brilliant Edward ere the scene itself allures and separates us
from our guide; his mission is, as it were, well-nigh done. We leave,
then, for a while this bold, frank nature-fresh from the health of
the rural life--gradually to improve, or deprave itself, in the
companionship it finds. The example of the Lords Hastings, Scales, and
Worcester, and the accomplishments of the two younger Princes of York,
especially the Duke of Gloucester, had diffused among the younger
and gayer part of the court that growing taste for letters which
had somewhat slept during the dynasty of the House of Lancaster; and
Marmaduke’s mind became aware that learning was no longer the peculiar
distinction of the Church, and that Warwick was behind his age when he
boasted “that the sword was more familiar to him than the pen.” He had
the sagacity to perceive that the alliance with the great earl did not
conduce to his popularity at court; and even in the king’s presence,
the courtiers permitted themselves many taunts and jests at the fiery
Warwick, which they would have bitten out their tongues ere they would
have vented before the earl himself. But though the Nevile sufficiently
controlled his native candour not to incur unprofitable quarrel by
ill-mannered and unseasonable defence of the hero-baron when sneered at
or assailed, he had enough of the soldier and the man in him not to be
tainted by the envy of the time and place,--not to lose his gratitude to
his patron, nor his respect for the bulwark of the country. Rather, it
may be said, that Warwick gained in his estimation whenever compared
with the gay and silken personages who avenged themselves by words for
his superiority in deeds. Not only as a soldier, but as a statesman, the
great and peculiar merits of the earl were visible in all those measures
which emanated solely from himself. Though so indifferently educated,
his busy, practical career, his affable mixing with all classes, and
his hearty, national sympathies made him so well acquainted with the
interests of his country and the habits of his countrymen, that he was
far more fitted to rule than the scientific Worcester or the learned
Scales. The Young Duke of Gloucester presented a marked contrast to the
general levity of the court, in speaking of this powerful nobleman. He
never named him but with respect, and was pointedly courteous to
even the humblest member of the earl’s family. In this he appeared to
advantage by the side of Clarence, whose weakness of disposition made
him take the tone of the society in which he was thrown, and who, while
really loving Warwick, often smiled at the jests against him,--not,
indeed, if uttered by the queen or her family, of whom he ill concealed
his jealousy and hatred.
The whole court was animated and pregnant with a spirit of intrigue,
which the artful cunning of the queen, the astute policy of Jacquetta,
and the animosity of the different factions had fomented to a degree
quite unknown under former reigns. It was a place in which the wit of
young men grew old rapidly; amidst stratagem, and plot, and ambitious
design, and stealthy overreaching, the boyhood of Richard III. passed
to its relentless manhood: such is the inevitable fruit of that era in
civilization when a martial aristocracy first begins to merge into a
voluptuous court.
Through this moving and shifting web of ambition and intrigue the royal
Edward moved with a careless grace: simple himself, because his object
was won, and pleasure had supplanted ambition. His indolent, joyous
temper served to deaden his powerful intellect; or, rather, his
intellect was now lost in the sensual stream through which it flowed.
Ever in pursuit of some new face, his schemes and counterschemes
were limited to cheat a husband or deceive a wife; and dexterous and
successful no doubt they were. But a vice always more destructive
than the love of women began also to reign over him,--namely, the
intemperance of the table. The fastidious and graceful epicurism of the
early Normans, inclined to dainties but abhorring excess, and regarding
with astonished disdain the heavy meals and deep draughts of the Saxon,
had long ceased to characterize the offspring of that noblest of
all noble races. Warwick, whose stately manliness was disgusted with
whatever savoured of effeminacy or debauch, used to declare that he
would rather fight fifty battles for Edward IV. than once sup with him!
Feasts were prolonged for hours, and the banquets of this king of the
Middle Ages almost resembled those of the later Roman emperors. The Lord
Montagu did not share the abstemiousness of his brother of Warwick. He
was, next to Hastings, the king’s chosen and most favourite companion.
He ate almost as much as the king, and drank very little less. Of few
courtiers could the same be said! Over the lavish profligacy and excess
of the court, however, a veil dazzling to the young and high-spirited
was thrown. Edward was thoroughly the cavalier, deeply imbued with the
romance of chivalry, and, while making the absolute woman his plaything,
always treated the ideal woman as a goddess. A refined gallantry, a
deferential courtesy to dame and demoiselle, united the language of
an Amadis with the licentiousness of a Gaolor; and a far more
alluring contrast than the court of Charles II. presented to the grim
Commonwealth seduced the vulgar in that of this most brave and most
beautiful prince, when compared with the mournful and lugubrious circles
in which Henry VI. had reigned and prayed. Edward himself, too, it
was so impossible to judge with severe justice, that his extraordinary
popularity in London, where he was daily seen, was never diminished by
his faults; he was so bold in the field, yet so mild in the chamber;
when his passions slept, he was so thoroughly good-natured and social,
so kind to all about his person, so hearty and gladsome in his talk and
in his vices, so magnificent and so generous withal; and, despite his
indolence, his capacities for business were marvellous,--and these last
commanded the reverence of the good Londoners; he often administered
justice himself, like the caliphs of the East, and with great acuteness
and address. Like most extravagant men, he had a wholesome touch
of avarice. That contempt for commerce which characterizes a modern
aristocracy was little felt by the nobles of that day, with the
exception of such blunt patricians as Lord Warwick or Raoul de Fulke.
The great House of De la Pole (Duke of Suffolk), the heir of which
married Edward’s sister Elizabeth, had been founded by a merchant of
Hull. Earls and archbishops scrupled not to derive revenues from what
we should now esteem the literal resources of trade. [The Abbot of
St. Alban’s (temp. Henry III.) was a vendor of Yarmouth bloaters. The
Cistercian Monks were wool-merchants; and Macpherson tells us of
a couple of Iceland bishops who got a license from Henry VI. for
smuggling. (Matthew Paris. Macpherson’s “Annals of Commerce,” 10.)
As the Whig historians generally have thought fit to consider the
Lancastrian cause the more “liberal” of the two, because Henry IV. was
the popular choice, and, in fact, an elected, not an hereditary king, so
it cannot be too emphatically repeated, that the accession of Edward IV.
was the success of two new and two highly--popular principles,--the one
that of church reform, the other that of commercial calculation. All
that immense section, almost a majority of the people, who had been
persecuted by the Lancastrian kings as Lollards, revenged on Henry the
aggrieved rights of religious toleration. On the other hand, though
Henry IV., who was immeasurably superior to his warlike son in intellect
and statesmanship, had favoured the growing commercial spirit, it had
received nothing but injury under Henry V., and little better than
contempt under Henry VI. The accession of the Yorkists was, then, on
two grounds a great popular movement; and it was followed by a third
advantage to the popular cause,--namely, in the determined desire both
of Edward and Richard III. to destroy the dangerous influence of the
old feudal aristocracy. To this end Edward laboured in the creation of
a court noblesse; and Richard, with the more dogged resolution that
belonged to him, went at once to the root of the feudal power, in
forbidding the nobles to give badges and liveries (this also was
forbidden, it is true, by the edict of Edward IV. as well as by his
predecessors from the reign of Richard II.; but no king seems to have
had the courage to enforce the prohibition before Richard III.),--in
other words, to appropriate armies under the name of retainers.
Henry VII., in short, did not originate the policy for which he has
monopolized the credit; he did but steadily follow out the theory of
raising the middle class and humbling the baronial, which the House of
York first put into practice.] shown itself on this point more liberal
in its policy, more free from feudal prejudices, than that of the
Plantagenets. Even Edward II. was tenacious of the commerce with Genoa,
and an intercourse with the merchant princes of that republic probably
served to associate the pursuits of commerce with the notion of rank and
power. Edward III. is still called the Father of English Commerce; but
Edward IV. carried the theories of his ancestors into far more extensive
practice, for his own personal profit. This king, so indolent in the
palace, was literally the most active merchant in the mart. He traded
largely in ships of his own, freighted with his own goods; and though,
according to sound modern economics, this was anything but an aid to
commerce, seeing that no private merchant could compete with a royal
trader who went out and came in duty-free, yet certainly the mere
companionship and association in risk and gain, and the common
conversation that it made between the affable monarch and the homeliest
trader, served to increase his popularity, and to couple it with respect
for practical sense. Edward IV. was in all this pre-eminently THE MAN
OF HIS AGE,--not an inch behind it or before! And, in addition to this
happy position, he was one of those darlings of Nature, so affluent and
blest in gifts of person, mind, and outward show, that it is only at the
distance of posterity we ask why men of his own age admired the false,
the licentious, and the cruel, where those contemporaries, over-dazzled,
saw but the heroic and the joyous, the young, the beautiful,--the
affable to friend, and the terrible to foe!
It was necessary to say thus much on the commercial tendencies of
Edward, because, at this epoch, they operated greatly, besides other
motives shortly to be made clear, in favour of the plot laid by the
enemies of the Earl of Warwick, to dishonour that powerful minister and
drive him from the councils of the king.
One morning Hastings received a summons to attend Edward, and on
entering the royal chamber, he found already assembled Lord Rivers, the
queen’s father, Anthony Woodville, and the Earl of Worcester.
The king seemed thoughtful; he beckoned Hastings to approach, and placed
in his hand a letter, dated from Rouen. “Read and judge, Hastings,” said
Edward.
The letter was from a gentleman in Warwick’s train. It gave a glowing
account of the honours accorded to the earl by Louis XI., greater than
those ever before manifested to a subject, and proceeded thus:--
“But it is just I should apprise you that there be strange rumours as to
the marvellous love that King Louis shows my lord the earl. He lodgeth
in the next house to him, and hath even had an opening made in the
partition-wall between his own chamber and the earl’s. Men do say that
the king visits him nightly, and there be those who think that so much
stealthy intercourse between an English ambassador and the kinsman of
Margaret of Anjou bodeth small profit to our grace the king.”
“I observe,” said Hastings, glancing to the superscription, “that this
letter is addressed to my Lord Rivers. Can he avouch the fidelity of his
correspondent?”
“Surely, yes,” answered Rivers; “it is a gentleman of my own blood.”
“Were he not so accredited,” returned Hastings, “I should question the
truth of a man who can thus consent to play the spy upon his lord and
superior.”
“The public weal justifies all things,” said the Earl of Worcester (who,
though by marriage nearly connected to Warwick, eyed his power with
the jealous scorn which the man of book-lore often feels for one whose
talent lies in action),--“so held our masters in all state-craft, the
Greek and Roman.”
“Certes,” said Sir Anthony Woodville, “it grieveth the pride of an
English knight that we should be beholden for courtesies to the born foe
of England, which I take the Frenchman naturally to be.”
“Ah,” said Edward, smiling sternly, “I would rather be myself, with
banner and trump, before the walls of Paris, than sending my cousin the
earl to beg the French king’s brother to accept my sister as a bride.
And what is to become of my good merchant-ships if Burgundy take umbrage
and close its ports?”
“Beau sire,” said Hastings, “thou knowest how little cause I have to
love the Earl of Warwick. We all here, save your gracious self, bear the
memory of some affront rendered to us by his pride and heat of mood! but
in this council I must cease to be William de Hastings, and be all and
wholly the king’s servant. I say first, then, with reference to these
noble peers, that Warwick’s faith to the House of York is too well
proven to become suspected because of the courtesies of King Louis,--an
artful craft, as it clearly seems to me, of the wily Frenchman, to
weaken your throne, by provoking your distrust of its great supporter.
Fall we not into such a snare! Moreover, we may be sure that Warwick
cannot be false, if he achieve the object of his embassy,--namely,
detach Louis from the side of Margaret and Lancaster by close alliance
with Edward and York. Secondly, sire, with regard to that alliance,
which it seems you would repent,--I hold now, as I have held ever, that
it is a master-stroke in policy, and the earl in this proves his sharp
brain worthy his strong arm; for as his highness the Duke of Gloucester
hath now clearly discovered that Margaret of Anjou has been of late
in London, and that treasonable designs were meditated, though now
frustrated, so we may ask why the friends of Lancaster really stood
aloof; why all conspiracy was, and is, in vain?--Because, sire, of this
very alliance with France; because the gold and subsidies of Louis are
not forthcoming; because the Lancastrians see that if once Lord Warwick
win France from the Red Rose, nothing short of such a miracle as their
gaining Warwick instead can give a hope to their treason. Your Highness
fears the anger of Burgundy, and the suspension of your trade with the
Flemings; but--forgive me--this is not reasonable. Burgundy dare not
offend England, matched, as its arms are, with France; the Flemings gain
more by you than you gain by the Flemings, and those interested burghers
will not suffer any prince’s quarrel to damage their commerce. Charolois
may bluster and threat, but the storm will pass, and Burgundy will be
contented, if England remain neutral in the feud with France. All these
reasons, sire, urge me to support my private foe, the Lord Warwick,
and to pray you to give no ear to the discrediting his Honour and his
embassy.”
The profound sagacity of these remarks, the repute of the speaker, and
the well-known grudge between him and Warwick, for reasons hereafter
to be explained, produced a strong effect upon the intellect of Edward,
always vigorous, save when clouded with passion. But Rivers, whose
malice to the earl was indomitable, coldly recommenced,--
“With submission to the Lord Hastings, sire, whom we know that love
sometimes blinds, and whose allegiance to the earl’s fair sister, the
Lady of Bonville, perchance somewhat moves him to forget the day when
Lord Warwick--”
“Cease, my lord,” said Hastings, white with suppressed anger; “these
references beseem not the councils of grave men.”
“Tut, Hastings,” said Edward, laughing merrily, “women mix themselves
up in all things: board or council, bed or battle,--wherever there
is mischief astir, there, be sure, peeps a woman’s sly face from her
wimple. Go on, Rivers.”
“Your pardon, my Lord Hastings,” said Rivers, “I knew not my thrust went
so home; there is another letter I have not yet laid before the king.”
He drew forth a scroll from his bosom, and read as follows:--
“Yesterday the earl feasted the king, and as, in discharge of mine
office, I carved for my lord, I heard King Louis say, ‘Pasque Dieu, my
Lord Warwick, our couriers bring us word that Count Charolois declares
he shall yet wed the Lady Margaret, and that he laughs at your
ambassage. What if our brother, King Edward, fall back from the treaty?’
‘He durst not!’ said the earl.”
“Durst not!” exclaimed Edward, starting to his feet, and striking the
table with his clenched hand, “durst not! Hastings, hear you that?”
Hastings bowed his head in assent. “Is that all, Lord Rivers?”
“All! and methinks enough.”
“Enough, by my halidame!” said Edward, laughing bitterly; “he shall see
what a king dares, when a subject threatens. Admit the worshipful
the deputies from our city of London,--lord chamberlain, it is thine
office,--they await in the anteroom.”
Hastings gravely obeyed, and in crimson gowns, with purple hoods and
gold chains, marshalled into the king’s presence a goodly deputation
from the various corporate companies of London.
These personages advanced within a few paces of the dais, and there
halted and knelt, while their spokesman read, on his knees, a long
petition, praying the king to take into his gracious consideration
the state of the trade with the Flemings; and though not absolutely
venturing to name or to deprecate the meditated alliance with France,
beseeching his grace to satisfy them as to certain rumours, already very
prejudicial to their commerce, of the possibility of a breach with the
Duke of Burgundy. The merchant-king listened with great attention and
affability to this petition; and replied shortly, that he thanked the
deputation for their zeal for the public weal,--that a king would have
enough to do if he contravened every gossip’s tale; but that it was
his firm purpose to protect, in all ways, the London traders, and to
maintain the most amicable understanding with the Duke of Burgundy.
The supplicators then withdrew from the royal presence.
“Note you how gracious the king was to me?” whispered Master Heyford to
one of his brethren; “he looked at me while he answered.”
“Coxcomb!” muttered the confidant, “as if I did not catch his eye when
he said, ‘Ye are the pillars of the public weal!’ But because Master
Heyford has a handsome wife he thinks he tosseth all London on his own
horns!”
As the citizens were quitting the palace, Lord Rivers joined them. “You
will thank me for suggesting this deputation, worthy sirs,” said he,
smiling significantly; “you have timed it well!”--and passing by them,
without further comment, he took the way to the queen’s chamber.
Elizabeth was playing with her infant daughter, tossing the child in
the air, and laughing at its riotous laughter. The stern old Duchess of
Bedford, leaning over the back of the state-chair, looked on with all
a grandmother’s pride, and half chanted a nursery rhyme. It was a
sight fair to see! Elizabeth never seemed more lovely: her artificial,
dissimulating smile changed into hearty, maternal glee, her smooth
cheek flushed with exercise, a stray ringlet escaping from the stiff
coif!--And, alas, the moment the two ladies caught sight of Rivers, all
the charm was dissolved; the child was hastily put on the floor; the
queen, half ashamed of being natural, even before her father, smoothed
back the rebel lock, and the duchess, breaking off in the midst of her
grandam song, exclaimed,--
“Well, well! how thrives our policy?”
“The king,” answered Rivers, “is in the very mood we could desire. At
the words, ‘He durst not!’ the Plantagenet sprung up in his breast; and
now, lest he ask to see the rest of the letter, thus I destroy it;” and
flinging the scroll in the blazing hearth, he watched it consume.
“Why this, sir?” said the queen.
“Because, my Elizabeth, the bold words glided off into a decent
gloss,--‘He durst not,’ said Warwick, ‘because what a noble heart dares
least is to belie the plighted word, and what the kind heart shuns most
is to wrong the confiding friend.”
“It was fortunate,” said the duchess, “that Edward took heat at the
first words, nor stopped, it seems, for the rest!”
“I was prepared, Jacquetta; had he asked to see the rest, I should have
dropped the scroll into the brazier, as containing what I would not
presume to read. Courage! Edward has seen the merchants; he has flouted
Hastings,--who would gainsay us. For the rest, Elizabeth, be it yours
to speak of affronts paid by the earl to your highness; be it yours,
Jacquetta, to rouse Edward’s pride by dwelling on Warwick’s overweening
power; be it mine to enlist his interest on behalf of his merchandise;
be it Margaret’s to move his heart by soft tears for the bold Charolois;
and ere a month be told, Warwick shall find his embassy a thriftless
laughing-stock, and no shade pass between the House of Woodville and the
sun of England.”
“I am scarce queen while Warwick is minister,” said Elizabeth,
vindictively. “How he taunted me in the garden, when we met last!”
“But hark you, daughter and lady liege, hark you! Edward is not prepared
for the decisive stroke. I have arranged with Anthony, whose chivalrous
follies fit him not for full comprehension of our objects, how upon
fair excuse the heir of Burgundy’s brother--the Count de la Roche--shall
visit London; and the count once here, all is ours! Hush! take up the
little one,--Edward comes!”
CHAPTER III. WHEREIN MASTER NICHOLAS ALWYN VISITS THE COURT, AND THERE
LEARNS MATTER OF WHICH THE ACUTE READER WILL JUDGE FOR HIMSELF.
It was a morning towards the end of May (some little time after Edward’s
gracious reception of the London deputies), when Nicholas Alwyn,
accompanied by two servitors armed to the teeth,--for they carried with
them goods of much value, and even in the broad daylight and amidst
the most frequented parts of the city, men still confided little in the
security of the law,--arrived at the Tower, and was conducted to the
presence of the queen.
Elizabeth and her mother were engaged in animated but whispered
conversation when the goldsmith entered; and there was an unusual gayety
in the queen’s countenance as she turned to Alwyn and bade him show her
his newest gauds.
While with a curiosity and eagerness that seemed almost childlike
Elizabeth turned over rings, chains, and brooches, scarcely listening
to Alwyn’s comments on the lustre of the gems or the quaintness of the
fashion, the duchess disappeared for a moment, and returned with the
Princess Margaret.
This young princess had much of the majestic beauty of her royal
brother; but, instead of the frank, careless expression so fascinating
in Edward, there was, in her full and curved lip and bright large eye,
something at once of haughtiness and passion, which spoke a decision and
vivacity of character beyond her years.
“Choose for thyself, sweetheart and daughter mine,” said the duchess,
affectionately placing her hand on Margaret’s luxuriant hair, “and let
the noble visitor we await confess that our rose of England outblooms
the world.”
The princess coloured with complaisant vanity at these words, and,
drawing near the queen, looked silently at a collar of pearls, which
Elizabeth held.
“If I may adventure so to say,” observed Alwyn, “pearls will mightily
beseem her highness’s youthful bloom; and lo! here be some adornments
for the bodice or partelet, to sort with the collar; not,” added the
goldsmith, bowing low, and looking down,--“not perchance displeasing
to her highness, in that they are wrought in the guise of the fleur de
lis--”
An impatient gesture in the queen, and a sudden cloud over the fair
brow of Margaret, instantly betokened to the shrewd trader that he
had committed some most unwelcome error in this last allusion to the
alliance with King Louis of France, which, according to rumour, the Earl
of Warwick had well-nigh brought to a successful negotiation; and to
convince him yet more of his mistake, the duchess said haughtily, “Good
fellow, be contented to display thy goods, and spare us thy comments.
As for thy hideous fleur de lis, an’ thy master had no better device, he
would not long rest the king’s jeweller.”
“I have no heart for the pearls,” said Margaret, abruptly; “they are
at best pale and sicklied. What hast thou of bolder ornament and more
dazzling lustrousness?”
“These emeralds, it is said, were once among the jewels of the great
House of Burgundy,” observed Nicholas, slowly, and fixing his keen,
sagacious look on the royal purchasers.
“Of Burgundy!” exclaimed the queen.
“It is true,” said the Duchess of Bedford, looking at the ornament with
care, and slightly colouring,--for in fact the jewels had been a present
from Philip the Good to the Duke of Bedford, and the exigencies of the
civil wars had led, some time since, first to their mortgage, or rather
pawn, and then to their sale.
The princess passed her arm affectionately round Jacquetta’s neck, and
said, “If you leave me my choice, I will have none but these emeralds.”
The two elder ladies exchanged looks and smiles. “Hast thou travelled,
young man?” asked the duchess.
“Not in foreign parts, gracious lady, but I have lived much with those
who have been great wanderers.”
“Ah, and what say they of the ancient friends of mine House, the princes
of Burgundy?”
“Lady, all men agree that a nobler prince and a juster than Duke Philip
never reigned over brave men; and those who have seen the wisdom of his
rule, grieve sorely to think so excellent and mighty a lord should have
trouble brought to his old age by the turbulence of his son, the Count
of Charolois.”
Again Margaret’s fair brow lowered, and the duchess hastened to
answer, “The disputes between princes, young man, can never be rightly
understood by such as thou and thy friends. The Count of Charolois is
a noble gentleman; and fire in youth will break out. Richard the Lion
Hearted of England was not less puissant a king for the troubles he
occasioned to his sire when prince.”
Alwyn bit his lip, to restrain a reply that might not have been well
received; and the queen, putting aside the emeralds and a few other
trinkets, said, smilingly, to the duchess, “Shall the king pay for
these, or have thy learned men yet discovered the great secret?”
“Nay, wicked child,” said the duchess, “thou lovest to banter me; and
truth to say, more gold has been melted in the crucible than as yet
promises ever to come out of it; but my new alchemist, Master Warner,
seems to have gone nearer to the result than any I have yet known.
Meanwhile, the king’s treasurer must, perforce, supply the gear to the
king’s sister.”
The queen wrote an order on the officer thus referred to, who was no
other than her own father, Lord Rivers; and Alwyn, putting up his goods,
was about to withdraw, when the duchess said carelessly, “Good youth,
the dealings of our merchants are more with Flanders than with France,
is it not so?”
“Surely,” said Alwyn; “the Flemings are good traders and honest folk.”
“It is well known, I trust, in the city of London, that this new
alliance with France is the work of their favourite, the Lord Warwick,”
said the duchess, scornfully; “but whatever the earl does is right with
ye of the hood and cap, even though he were to leave yon river without
one merchant-mast.”
“Whatever be our thoughts, puissant lady,” said Alwyn, cautiously, “we
give them not vent to the meddling with state affairs.”
“Ay,” persisted Jacquetta, “thine answer is loyal and discreet. But an’
the Lord Warwick had sought alliance with the Count of Charolois, would
there have been brighter bonfires than ye will see in Smithfield, when
ye hear that business with the Flemings is surrendered for fine words
from King Louis the Cunning?”
“We trust too much to our king’s love for the citizens of London to fear
that surrender, please your Highness,” answered Alwyn; “our king himself
is the first of our merchants, and he hath given a gracious answer to
the deputation from our city.”
“You speak wisely, sir,” said the queen; “and your king will yet defend
you from the plots of your enemies. You may retire.”
Alwyn, glad to be released from questionings but little to his taste,
hastened to depart. At the gate of the royal lodge, he gave his
caskets to the servitors who attended him, and passing slowly along the
courtyard, thus soliloquized:
“Our neighbours the Scotch say, ‘It is good fishing in muddy waters;’
but he who fishes into the secrets of courts must bait with his head.
What mischief doth that crafty queen, the proud duchess, devise? Um!
They are thinking still to match the young princess with the hot Count
of Charolois. Better for trade, it is true, to be hand in hand with the
Flemings; but there are two sides to a loaf. If they play such a trick
on the stout earl, he is not a man to sit down and do nothing. More food
for the ravens, I fear,--more brown bills and bright lances in the green
fields of poor England!--and King Louis is an awful carle to sow flax in
his neighbour’s house, when the torches are burning. Um! Where is
fair Marmaduke. He looks brave in his gay super-tunic. Well, sir and
foster-brother, how fare you at court?”
“My dear Nicholas, a merry welcome and hearty to your sharp, thoughtful
face. Ah, man! we shall have a gay time for you venders of gewgaws.
There are to be revels and jousts, revels in the Tower and jousts in
Smithfield. We gentles are already hard at practice in the tilt-yard.”
“Sham battles are better than real ones, Master Nevile! But what is in
the wind?”
“A sail, Nicholas! a sail bound to England! Know that the Count of
Charolois has permitted Sir Anthony Count de la Roche, his bastard
brother, to come over to London, to cross lances with our own Sir
Anthony Lord Scales. It is an old challenge, and right royally will the
encounter be held.”
“Um!” muttered Alwyn, “this bastard, then, is the carrier pigeon.--And,”
said he, aloud, “is it only to exchange hard blows that Sir Anthony of
Burgundy comes over to confer with Sir Anthony of England? Is there no
court rumour of other matters between them?”
“Nay. What else? Plague on you craftsmen! You cannot even comprehend the
pleasure and pastime two knights take in the storm of the lists!”
“I humbly avow it, Master Nevile. But it seemeth, indeed, strange to me
that the Count of Charolois should take this very moment to send envoys
of courtesy when so sharp a slight has been put on his pride, and so
dangerous a blow struck at his interests, as the alliance between the
French prince and the Lady Margaret. Bold Charles has some cunning, I
trow, which your kinsman of Warwick is not here to detect.”
“Tush, man! Trade, I see, teaches ye all so to cheat and overreach,
that ye suppose a knight’s burgonet is as full of tricks and traps as
a citizen’s flat-cap. Would, though, that my kinsman of Warwick were
here,” added Marmaduke, in a low whisper, “for the women and the
courtiers are doing their best to belie him.”
“Keep thyself clear of them all, Marmaduke,” said Alwyn; “for, by the
Lord, I see that the evil days are coming once more, fast and dark,
and men like thee will again have to choose between friend and friend,
kinsman and king. For my part, I say nothing; for I love not fighting,
unless compelled to it. But if ever I do fight, it will not be by thy
side, under Warwick’s broad flag.”
“Eh, man?” interrupted Nevile.
“Nay, nay,” continued Nicholas, shaking his head, “I admire the great
earl, and were I lord or gentle, the great earl should be my chief.
But each to his order; and the trader’s tree grows not out of a baron’s
walking-staff. King Edward may be a stern ruler, but he is a friend
to the goldsmiths, and has just confirmed our charter. ‘Let every man
praise the bridge he goes over,’ as the saw saith. Truce to this talk,
Master Nevile. I hear that your young hostess--ehem!--Mistress Sibyll,
is greatly marvelled at among the court gallants, is it so?”
Marmaduke’s frank face grew gloomy. “Alas! dear foster-brother,” he
said, dropping the somewhat affected tone in which he had before spoken,
“I must confess to my shame, that I cannot yet get the damsel out of my
thoughts, which is what I consider it a point of manhood and spirit to
achieve.”
“How so?”
“Because, when a maiden chooseth steadily to say nay to your wooing, to
follow her heels, and whine and beg, is a dog’s duty, not a man’s.”
“What!” exclaimed Alwyn, in a voice of great eagerness, “mean you to say
that you have wooed Sibyll Warner as your wife?”
“Verily, yes!”
“And failed?”
“And failed.”
“Poor Marmaduke!”
“There is no ‘poor’ in the matter, Nick Alwyn,” returned Marmaduke,
sturdily; “if a girl likes me, well; if not, there are too many others
in the wide world for a young fellow to break his heart about one. Yet,”
he added, after a short pause, and with a sigh,--“yet, if thou hast
not seen her since she came to the court, thou wilt find her wondrously
changed.”
“More’s the pity!” said Alwyn, reciprocating his friend’s sigh.
“I mean that she seems all the comelier for the court air. And beshrew
me, I think the Lord Hastings, with his dulcet flatteries, hath made it
a sort of frenzy for all the gallants to flock round her.”
“I should like to see Master Warner again,” said Alwyn; “where lodges
he?”
“Yonder, by the little postern, on the third flight of the turret that
flanks the corridor, [This description refers to that part of the Tower
called the King’s or Queen’s Lodge, and long since destroyed.] next to
Friar Bungey, the magician; but it is broad daylight, and therefore not
so dangerous,--not but thou mayest as well patter an ave in going up
stairs.”
“Farewell, Master Nevile,” said Alwyn, smiling; “I will seek the
mechanician, and if I find there Mistress Sibyll, what shall I say from
thee?”
“That young bachelors in the reign of Edward IV. will never want fair
feres,” answered the Nevile, debonairly smoothing his lawn partelet.
CHAPTER IV. EXHIBITING THE BENEFITS WHICH ROYAL PATRONAGE CONFERS ON
GENIUS,--ALSO THE EARLY LOVES OF THE LORD HASTINGS; WITH OTHER MATTERS
EDIFYING AND DELECTABLE.
The furnace was still at work, the flame glowed, the bellows heaved;
but these were no longer ministering to the service of a mighty and
practical invention. The mathematician, the philosopher, had descended
to the alchemist. The nature of the TIME had conquered the nature of
a GENIUS meant to subdue time. Those studies that had gone so far
to forestall the master-triumph of far later ages were exchanged for
occupations that played with the toys of infant wisdom. O true Tartarus
of Genius, when its energies are misapplied, when the labour but rolls
the stone up the mountain, but pours water upon water through the sieve!
There is a sanguineness in men of great intellect which often leads them
into follies avoided by the dull. When Adam Warner saw the ruin of his
contrivance; when he felt that time and toil and money were necessary to
its restoration; and when the gold he lacked was placed before him as a
reward for alchemical labours, he at first turned to alchemy as he would
have turned to the plough,--as he had turned to conspiracy,--simply as a
means to his darling end. But by rapid degrees the fascination which all
the elder sages experienced in the grand secret exercised its witchery
over his mind. If Roger Bacon, though catching the notion of the
steam-engine, devoted himself to the philosopher’s stone; if even in so
much more enlightened an age Newton had wasted some precious hours in
the transmutation of metals, it was natural that the solitary sage of
the reign of Edward IV. should grow, for a while at least, wedded to a
pursuit which promised results so august. And the worst of alchemy is,
that it always allures on its victims: one gets so near and so near the
object,--it seems that so small an addition will complete the sum!
So there he was--this great practical genius--hard at work on turning
copper into gold!
“Well, Master Warner,” said the young goldsmith, entering the student’s
chamber, “methinks you scarcely remember your friend and visitor,
Nicholas Alwyn?”
“Remember, oh, certes! doubtless one of the gentlemen present when they
proposed to put me to the brake [the old word for rack]. Please to stand
a little on this side--what is your will?”
“I am not a gentleman, and I should have been loth to stand idly by
when the torture was talked of for a free-born Englishman, let alone a
scholar. And where is your fair daughter, Master Warner? I suppose you
see but little of her now she is the great dame’s waiting-damsel?”
“And why so, Master Alwyn?” asked a charming voice; and Alwyn for the
first time perceived the young form of Sibyll, by the embrasure of a
window, from which might be seen in the court below a gay group of lords
and courtiers, with the plain, dark dress of Hastings, contrasting their
gaudy surcoats, glittering with cloth-of-gold. Alwyn’s tongue clove
to his mouth; all he had to say was forgotten in a certain bashful and
indescribable emotion.
The alchemist had returned to his furnace, and the young man and the
girl were as much alone as if Adam Warner had been in heaven.
“And why should the daughter forsake the sire more in a court, where
love is rare, than in the humbler home, where they may need each other
less?”
“I thank thee for the rebuke, mistress,” said Alwyn, delighted with her
speech; “for I should have been sorry to see thy heart spoiled by the
vanities that kill most natures.” Scarcely had he uttered these words,
than they seemed to him overbold and presuming; for his eye now took in
the great change of which Marmaduke had spoken. Sibyll’s dress beseemed
the new rank which she held: the corset, fringed with gold, and made of
the finest thread, showed the exquisite contour of the throat and
neck, whose ivory it concealed. The kirtle of rich blue became the
fair complexion and dark chestnut hair; and over all she wore that
most graceful robe, called the sasquenice, of which the old French poet
sang,--
“Car nulie robe n’est si belle
A dame ne a demoiselle.”
This garment, worn over the rest of the dress, had perhaps a classical
origin, and with slight variations may be seen on the Etruscan vases;
it was long and loose, of the whitest and finest linen, with hanging
sleeves, and open at the sides. But it was not the mere dress that
had embellished the young maiden’s form and aspect,--it was rather an
indefinable alteration in the expression and the bearing. She looked as
if born to the airs of courts; still modest indeed, and simple, but with
a consciousness of dignity, and almost of power; and in fact the
woman had been taught the power that womanhood possesses. She had been
admired, followed, flattered; she had learned the authority of beauty.
Her accomplishments, uncommon in that age among her sex, had aided her
charm of person; her natural pride, which, though hitherto latent, was
high and ardent, fed her heart with sweet hopes; a bright career seemed
to extend before her; and, at peace as to her father’s safety, relieved
from the drudging cares of poverty, her fancy was free to follow
the phantasms of sanguine youth through the airy land of dreams. And
therefore it was that the maid was changed!
At the sight of the delicate beauty, the self-possessed expression,
the courtly dress, the noble air of Sibyll, Nicholas Alwyn recoiled and
turned pale; he no longer marvelled at her rejection of Marmaduke, and
he started at the remembrance of the bold thoughts which he had dared
himself to indulge.
The girl smiled at the young man’s confusion.
“It is not prosperity that spoils the heart,” she said touchingly,
“unless it be mean indeed. Thou rememberest, Master Alwyn, that when God
tried His saint, it was by adversity and affliction.”
“May thy trial in these last be over,” answered Alwyn; “but the humble
must console their state by thinking that the great have their trials
too; and, as our homely adage hath it, ‘That is not always good in
the maw which is sweet in the mouth.’ Thou seest much of my gentle
foster-brother, Mistress Sibyll?”
“But in the court dances, Master Alwyn; for most of the hours in which
my lady duchess needs me not are spent here. Oh, my father hopes great
things! and now at last fame dawns upon him.”
“I rejoice to hear it, mistress; and so, having paid ye both my homage,
I take my leave, praying that I may visit you from time to time, if it
be only to consult this worshipful master touching certain improvements
in the horologe, in which his mathematics can doubtless instruct me.
Farewell. I have some jewels to show to the Lady of Bonville.”
“The Lady of Bonville!” repeated Sibyll, changing colour; “she is a dame
of notable loveliness.”
“So men say,--and mated to a foolish lord; but scandal, which spares
few, breathes not on her,--rare praise for a court dame. Few Houses can
have the boast of Lord Warwick’s,--‘that all the men are without fear,
and all the women without stain.’”
“It is said,” observed Sibyll, looking down, “that my Lord Hastings once
much affectioned the Lady Bonville. Hast thou heard such gossip?”
“Surely, yes; in the city we hear all the tales of the court; for many
a courtier, following King Edward’s exemplar, dines with the citizen
to-day, that he may borrow gold from the citizen to-morrow. Surely, yes;
and hence, they say, the small love the wise Hastings bears to the stout
earl.”
“How runs the tale? Be seated, Master Alwyn.”
“Marry, thus: when William Hastings was but a squire, and much favoured
by Richard, Duke of York, he lifted his eyes to the Lady Katherine
Nevile, sister to the Earl of Warwick, and in beauty and in dower, as in
birth, a mate for a king’s son.”
“And, doubtless, the Lady Katherine returned his love?”
“So it is said, maiden; and the Earl of Salisbury her father and Lord
Warwick her brother discovered the secret, and swore that no new man
(the stout earl’s favourite word of contempt), though he were made a
duke, should give to an upstart posterity the quarterings of Montagu
and Nevile. Marry, Mistress Sibyll, there is a north country and pithy
proverb, ‘Happy is the man whose father went to the devil.’ Had some old
Hastings been a robber and extortioner, and left to brave William the
heirship of his wickedness in lordships and lands, Lord Warwick had not
called him ‘a new man.’ Master Hastings was dragged, like a serf’s son,
before the earl on his dais; and be sure he was rated soundly, for
his bold blood was up, and he defied the earl, as a gentleman born, to
single battle. Then the earl’s followers would have fallen on him; and
in those days, under King Henry, he who bearded a baron in his hall must
have a troop at his back, or was like to have a rope round his neck;
but the earl (for the lion is not as fierce as they paint him) came down
from his dais, and said, ‘Man, I like thy spirit, and I myself will dub
thee knight that I may pick up thy glove and give thee battle.’”
“And they fought? Brave Hastings!”
“No. For whether the Duke of York forbade it, or whether the Lady
Katherine would not hear of such strife between fere and frere, I know
not; but Duke Richard sent Hastings to Ireland, and, a month after, the
Lady Katherine married Lord Bonville’s son and heir,--so, at least,
tell the gossips and sing the ballad-mongers. Men add that Lord Hastings
still loves the dame, though, certes, he knows how to console himself.”
“Loves her! Nay, nay,--I trove not,” answered Sibyll, in a low voice,
and with a curl of her dewy lip.
At this moment the door opened gently and Lord Hastings himself entered.
He came in with the familiarity of one accustomed to the place.
“And how fares the grand secret, Master Warner? Sweet mistress! thou
seemest lovelier to me in this dark chamber than outshining all in the
galliard. Ha! Master Alwyn, I owe thee many thanks for making me know
first the rare arts of this fair emblazoner. Move me yon stool, good
Alwyn.”
As the goldsmith obeyed, he glanced from Hastings to the blushing face
and heaving bosom of Sibyll, and a deep and exquisite pang shot through
his heart. It was not jealousy alone; it was anxiety, compassion,
terror. The powerful Hastings, the ambitious lord, the accomplished
libertine--what a fate for poor Sibyll, if for such a man the cheek
blushed and the bosom heaved!
“Well, Master Warner,” resumed Hastings, “thou art still silent as to
thy progress.”
The philosopher uttered an impatient groan. “Ah, I comprehend. The
goldmaker must not speak of his craft before the goldsmith. Good Alwyn,
thou mayest retire. All arts have their mysteries.”
Alwyn, with a sombre brow, moved to the door.
“In sooth,” he said, “I have overtarried, good my lord. The Lady
Bonville will chide me; for she is of no patient temper.”
“Bridle thy tongue, artisan, and begone!” said Hastings, with unusual
haughtiness and petulance.
“I stung him there,” muttered Alwyn, as he withdrew. “Oh, fool that
I was to--nay, I thought it never, I did but dream it. What wonder we
traders hate these silken lords! They reap, we sow; they trifle, we
toil; they steal with soft words into the hearts which--Oh, Marmaduke,
thou art right-right!--Stout men sit not down to weep beneath the
willow. But she--the poor maiden--she looked so haughty and so happy.
This is early May; will she wear that look when the autumn leaves are
strewn?”
CHAPTER V. THE WOODVILLE INTRIGUE PROSPERS.--MONTAGU CONFERS WITH
HASTINGS, VISITS THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, AND IS MET ON THE ROAD BY A
STRANGE PERSONAGE.
And now the one topic at the court of King Edward IV. was the expected
arrival of Anthony of Burgundy, Count de la Roche, bastard brother of
Charolois, afterwards, as Duke of Burgundy, so famous as Charles
the Bold. Few, indeed, out of the immediate circle of the Duchess of
Bedford’s confidants regarded the visit of this illustrious foreigner as
connected with any object beyond the avowed one of chivalrous encounter
with Anthony Woodville, the fulfilment of a challenge given by the
latter two years before, at the time of the queen’s coronation. The
origin of this challenge, Anthony Woodville Lord Scales has himself
explained in a letter to the bastard, still extant, and of which an
extract may be seen in the popular and delightful biographies of Miss
Strickland. [Queens of England, vol. iii. p. 380] It seems that, on the
Wednesday before Easter Day, 1465, as Sir Anthony was speaking to his
royal sister, “on his knees,” all the ladies of the court gathered
round him, and bound to his left knee a band of gold adorned with stones
fashioned into the letters S. S. (souvenance or remembrance), and to
this band was suspended an enamelled “Forget-me-not.” “And one of the
ladies said that ‘he ought to take a step fitting for the times.’” This
step was denoted by a letter on vellum, bound with a gold thread, placed
in his cap; and having obtained the king’s permission to bring the
adventure of the flower of souvenance to a conclusion, the gallant
Anthony forwarded the articles and the enamelled flower to the Bastard
of Burgundy, beseeching him to touch the latter with his knightly hand,
in token of his accepting the challenge. The Count de la Roche did
so, but was not sent by his brother amongst the knights whom Charolois
despatched to England, and the combat had been suspended to the present
time.
But now the intriguing Rivers and his duchess gladly availed themselves
of so fair a pretext for introducing to Edward the able brother of
Warwick’s enemy and the French prince’s rival, Charles of Burgundy;
and Anthony Woodville, too gentle and knightly a person to have abetted
their cunning projects in any mode less chivalrous, willingly consented
to revive a challenge in honour of the ladies of England.
The only one amongst the courtiers who seemed dissatisfied with the
meditated visit of the doughty Burgundian champion was the Lord Montagu.
This penetrating and experienced personage was not to be duped by an
affectation of that chivalry which, however natural at the court of
Edward III., was no longer in unison with the more intriguing and
ambitious times over which presided the luxurious husband of Elizabeth
Woodville. He had noticed of late, with suspicion, that Edward had held
several councils with the anti-Nevile faction, from which he himself was
excluded. The king, who heretofore had delighted in his companionship,
had shown him marks of coldness and estrangement; and there was an
exulting malice in the looks of the Duchess of Bedford, which augured
some approaching triumph over the great family which the Woodvilles so
openly laboured to supplant. One day, as Marmaduke was loitering in
the courtyard of the Tower, laughing and jesting with his friends, Lord
Montagu, issuing from the king’s closet, passed him with a hurried step
and a thoughtful brow. This haughty brother of the Earl of Warwick had
so far attended to the recommendation of the latter, that he had with
some courtesy excused himself to Marmaduke for his language in the
archery-ground, and had subsequently, when seeing him in attendance
on the king, honoured him with a stately nod, or a brief “Good morrow,
young kinsman.” But as his eye now rested on Marmaduke, while the group
vailed their bonnets to the powerful courtier, he called him forth, with
a familiar smile he had never before assumed, and drawing him apart, and
leaning on his shoulder, much to the envy of the standers by, he said
caressingly,--
“Dear kinsman Guy--”
“Marmaduke, please you, my lord.”
“Dear kinsman Marmaduke, my brother esteems you for your father’s sake.
And, sooth to say, the Neviles are not so numerous in court as they
were. Business and state matters have made me see too seldom those whom
I would most affect. Wilt thou ride with me to the More Park? I would
present thee to my brother the archbishop.”
“If the king would graciously hold me excused.”
“The king, sir! when I--I forgot,” said Montagu, checking himself--“oh,
as to that, the king stirs not out to-day! He hath with him a score of
tailors and armourers in high council on the coming festivities. I will
warrant thy release; and here comes Hastings, who shall confirm it.”
“Fair my lord!”--as at that moment Hastings emerged from the little
postern that gave egress from the apartments occupied by the alchemist
of the Duchess of Bedford--“wilt thou be pleased, in thy capacity of
chamberlain, to sanction my cousin in a day’s absence? I would confer
with him on family matters.”
“Certes, a small favour to so deserving a youth. I will see to his
deputy.”
“A word with you, Hastings,” said Montagu, thoughtfully, and he
drew aside his fellow courtier: “what thinkest thou of this Burgundy
bastard’s visit?”
“That it has given a peacock’s strut to the popinjay Anthony Woodville.”
“Would that were all!” returned Montagu. “But the very moment that
Warwick is negotiating with Louis of France, this interchange of
courtesies with Louis’s deadly foe, the Count of Charolois, is out of
season.”
“Nay, take it not so gravely,--a mere pastime.”
“Hastings, thou knowest better. But thou art no friend of my great
brother.”
“Small cause have I to be so,” answered Hastings, with a quivering lip.
“To him and your father I owe as deep a curse as ever fell on the heart
of man. I have lived to be above even Lord Warwick’s insult. Yet young,
I stand amongst the warriors and peers of England with a crest as haught
and a scutcheon as stainless as the best. I have drunk deep of the
world’s pleasures. I command, as I list, the world’s gaudy pomps, and I
tell thee, that all my success in life countervails not the agony of the
hour when all the bloom and loveliness of the earth faded into winter,
and the only woman I ever loved was sacrificed to her brother’s pride.”
The large drops stood on the pale brow of the fortunate noble as he thus
spoke, and his hollow voice affected even the worldly Montagu.
“Tush, Hastings!” said Montagu, kindly; “these are but a young man’s
idle memories. Are we not all fated, in our early years, to love in
vain?--even I married not the maiden I thought the fairest, and held
the dearest. For the rest, bethink thee,--thou wert then but a simple
squire.”
“But of as ancient and pure a blood as ever rolled its fiery essence
through a Norman’s veins.”
“It may be so; but old Houses, when impoverished, are cheaply held. And
thou must confess thou wert then no mate for Katherine. Now, indeed, it
were different; now a Nevile might be proud to call Hastings brother.”
“I know it,” said Hastings, proudly,--“I know it, lord; and why?
Because I have gold, and land, and the king’s love, and can say, as the
Centurion, to my fellow-man, ‘Do this, and he doeth it;’ and yet I tell
thee, Lord Montagu, that I am less worthy now the love of beauty, the
right hand of fellowship from a noble spirit, than I was then, when--the
simple squire--my heart full of truth and loyalty, with lips that had
never lied, with a soul never polluted by unworthy pleasures or mean
intrigues, I felt that Katherine Nevile should never blush to own her
fere and plighted lord in William de Hastings. Let this pass, let it
pass! You call me no friend to Warwick. True! but I am a friend to
the king he has served, and the land of my birth to which he has given
peace; and therefore, not till Warwick desert Edward, not till he wake
the land again to broil and strife, will I mingle in the plots of those
who seek his downfall. If in my office and stated rank I am compelled to
countenance the pageant of this mock tournament, and seem to honour the
coming of the Count de la Roche, I will at least stand aloof and free
from all attempt to apply a gaudy pageant to a dangerous policy; and on
this pledge, Montagu, I give you my knightly hand.”
“It suffices,” answered Montagu, pressing the hand extended to him. “But
the other day I heard the king’s dissour tell him a tale of some tyrant,
who silently showed a curious questioner how to govern a land, by
cutting down, with his staff, the heads of the tallest poppies; and the
Duchess of Bedford turned to me, and asked, ‘What says a Nevile to
the application?’ ‘Faith, lady,’ said I, ‘the Nevile poppies have oak
stems.’ Believe me, Hastings, these Woodvilles may grieve and wrong and
affront Lord Warwick, but woe to all the pigmy goaders when the lion
turns at bay!”
With this solemn menace, Montagu quitted Hastings, and passed on,
leaning upon Marmaduke, and with a gloomy brow.
At the gate of the palace waited the Lord Montagu’s palfrey and his
retinue of twenty squires and thirty grooms. “Mount, Master Marmaduke,
and take thy choice among these steeds, for we shall ride alone. There
is no Nevile amongst these gentlemen.” Marmaduke obeyed. The earl
dismissed his retinue, and in little more than ten minutes,--so
different, then, was the extent of the metropolis,--the noble and the
squire were amidst the open fields.
They had gone several miles at a brisk trot before the earl opened his
lips, and then, slackening his pace, he said abruptly, “How dost thou
like the king? Speak out, youth; there are no eavesdroppers here.”
“He is a most gracious master and a most winning gentleman.”
“He is both,” said Montagu, with a touch of emotion that surprised
Marmaduke; “and no man can come near without loving him. And yet,
Marmaduke (is that thy name?)--yet whether it be weakness or falseness,
no man can be sure of his king’s favour from day to day. We Neviles must
hold fast to each other. Not a stick should be lost if the fagot is to
remain unbroken. What say you?” and the earl’s keen eye turned sharply
on the young man.
“I say, my lord, that the Earl of Warwick was to me patron, lord, and
father, when I entered yon city a friendless orphan; and that, though
I covet honours, and love pleasure, and would be loth to lift finger or
speak word against King Edward, yet were that princely lord--the head of
mine House--an outcast and a beggar, by his side I would wander, for his
bread I would beg.”
“Young man,” exclaimed Montagu, “from this hour I admit thee to my
heart! Give me thy hand. Beggar and outcast?--No! If the storm come, the
meaner birds take to shelter, the eagle remains solitary in heaven!” So
saying, he relapsed into silence, and put spurs to his steed. Towards
the decline of day they drew near to the favourite palace of the
Archbishop of York. There the features of the country presented a more
cultivated aspect than it had hitherto worn. For at that period the
lands of the churchmen were infinitely in advance of those of the laity
in the elementary arts of husbandry, partly because the ecclesiastic
proprietors had greater capital at their command, partly because their
superior learning had taught them to avail themselves, in some
measure, of the instructions of the Latin writers. Still the prevailing
characteristic of the scenery was pasture land,--immense tracts of
common supported flocks of sheep; the fragrance of new-mown hay breathed
sweet from many a sunny field. In the rear stretched woods of Druid
growth; and in the narrow lanes, that led to unfrequent farms and
homesteads, built almost entirely either of wood or (more primitive
still) of mud and clay, profuse weeds, brambles, and wild-flowers almost
concealed the narrow pathway, never intended for cart or wagon, and
arrested the slow path of the ragged horse bearing the scanty produce
of acres to yard or mill. But though to the eye of an economist or
philanthropist broad England now, with its variegated agriculture, its
wide roads, its white-walled villas, and numerous towns, may present a
more smiling countenance, to the early lover of Nature, fresh from the
child-like age of poetry and romance, the rich and lovely verdure which
gave to our mother-country the name of “Green England;” its wild woods
and covert alleys, proffering adventure to fancy; its tranquil heaths,
studded with peaceful flocks, and vocal, from time to time, with the
rude scrannel of the shepherd,--had a charm which we can understand
alone by the luxurious reading of our elder writers. For the country
itself ministered to that mingled fancy and contemplation which the
stirring and ambitious life of towns and civilization has in much
banished from our later literature.
Even the thoughtful Montagu relaxed his brow as he gazed around, and he
said to Marmaduke, in a gentle and subdued voice,--
“Methinks, young cousin, that in such scenes, those silly rhymes taught
us in our childhood of the green woods and the summer cuckoos, of bold
Robin and Maid Marian, ring back in our ears. Alas that this fair land
should be so often dyed in the blood of her own children! Here, how the
thought shrinks from broils and war,--civil war, war between brother
and brother, son and father! In the city and the court, we forget others
overmuch, from the too keen memory of ourselves.”
Scarcely had Montagu said these words, before there suddenly emerged
from a bosky lane to the right a man mounted upon a powerful roan
horse. His dress was that of a substantial franklin; a green surtout
of broadcloth, over a tight vest of the same colour, left, to the
admiration of a soldierly eye, an expanse of chest that might have vied
with the mighty strength of Warwick himself. A cap, somewhat like a
turban, fell in two ends over the left cheek, till they touched
the shoulder, and the upper part of the visage was concealed by a
half-vizard, not unfrequently worn out of doors with such head-gear,
as a shade from the sun. Behind this person rode, on a horse equally
powerful, a man of shorter stature, but scarcely less muscular a frame,
clad in a leathern jerkin, curiously fastened with thongs, and wearing a
steel bonnet, projecting far over the face.
The foremost of these strangers, coming thus unawares upon the
courtiers, reined in his steed, and said in a clear, full voice, “Good
evening to you, my masters. It is not often that these roads witness
riders in silk and pile.”
“Friend,” quoth the Montagu, “may the peace we enjoy under the White
Rose increase the number of all travellers through our land, whether in
pile or russet!”
“Peace, sir!” returned the horseman, roughly,--“peace is no blessing to
poor men, unless it bring something more than life,--the means to live
in security and ease. Peace hath done nothing for the poor of England.
Why, look you towards yon gray tower,--the owner is, forsooth, gentleman
and knight; but yesterday he and his men broke open a yeoman’s house,
carried off his wife and daughters to his tower, and refuseth to
surrender them till ransomed by half the year’s produce on the yeoman’s
farm.”
“A caitiff and illegal act,” said Montagu.
“Illegal! But the law will notice it not,--why should it? Unjust, if it
punish the knight and dare not touch the king’s brother!”
“How, sir?”
“I say the king’s brother! Scarcely a month since, twenty-four persons
under George Duke of Clarence entered by force a lady’s house,
and seized her jewels and her money, upon some charge, God wot, of
contriving mischief to the boy-duke. [See for this and other instances
of the prevalent contempt of law in the reign of Edward IV.,
and, indeed, during the fifteenth century, the extracts from the
Parliamentary Rolls, quoted by Sharon Turner, “History of England,”
vol. iii. p. 399.] Are not the Commons ground by imposts for the queen’s
kindred? Are not the king’s officers and purveyors licensed spoilers and
rapiners? Are not the old chivalry banished for new upstarts? And in all
this, is peace better than war?”
“Knowest thou not that these words are death, man?”
“Ay, in the city! but in the fields and waste thought is free. Frown
not, my lord. Ah, I know you, and the time may come when the baron will
act what the franklin speaks. What! think you I see not the signs of the
storm? Are Warwick and Montagu more safe with Edward than they were with
Henry? Look to thyself! Charolois will outwit King Louis, and ere the
year be out, the young Margaret of England will be lady of your brave
brother’s sternest foe!”
“And who art thou, knave?” cried Montagu, aghast, and laying his gloved
hand on the bold prophet’s bridle.
“One who has sworn the fall of the House of York, and may live to fight,
side by side, in that cause with Warwick; for Warwick, whatever be his
faults, has an English heart, and loves the Commons.”
Montagu, uttering an exclamation of astonishment, relaxed hold of the
franklin’s bridle; and the latter waved his hand, and spurring his steed
across the wild chain of commons, disappeared with his follower.
“A sturdy traitor!” muttered the earl, following him with his eye. “One
of the exiled Lancastrian lords, perchance. Strange how they pierce into
our secrets! Heardst thou that fellow, Marmaduke?”
“Only in a few sentences, and those brought my hand to my dagger. But
as thou madest no sign, I thought his grace the king could not be much
injured by empty words.”
“True! and misfortune has ever a shrewish tongue.”
“An’ it please you, my lord,” quoth Marmaduke, “I have seen the man
before, and it seemeth to me that he holds much power over the rascal
rabble.” And here Marmaduke narrated the attack upon Warner’s house, and
how it was frustrated by the intercession of Robin of Redesdale.
“Art thou sure it is the same man, for his face was masked?”
“My lord, in the North, as thou knowest, we recognize men by their
forms, not faces,--as in truth we ought, seeing that it is the sinews
and bulk, not the lips and nose, that make a man a useful friend or
dangerous foe.”
Montagu smiled at this soldierly simplicity. “And heard you the name the
raptrils shouted?”
“Robin, my lord. They cried out ‘Robin,’ as if it had been a ‘Montagu I
or a ‘Warwick.’”
“Robin! ah, then I guess the man,--a most perilous and stanch
Lancastrian. He has more weight with the poor than had Cade the rebel,
and they say Margaret trusts him as much as she does an Exeter or
Somerset. I marvel that he should show himself so near the gates
of London. It must be looked to. But come, cousin. Our steeds are
breathed,--let us on!”
On arriving at the More, its stately architecture, embellished by the
prelate with a facade of double arches, painted and blazoned somewhat in
the fashion of certain old Italian houses, much dazzled Marmaduke. And
the splendour of the archbishop’s retinue--less martial indeed than
Warwick’s--was yet more imposing to the common eye. Every office that
pomp could devise for a king’s court was to be found in the household
of this magnificent prelate,--master of the horse and the hounds,
chamberlain, treasurer, pursuivant, herald, seneschal, captain of the
body-guard, etc.,--and all emulously sought for and proudly held by
gentlemen of the first blood and birth. His mansion was at once a court
for middle life, a school for youth, an asylum for age; and thither, as
to a Medici, fled the letters and the arts.
Through corridor and hall, lined with pages and squires, passed Montagu
and Marmaduke, till they gained a quaint garden, the wonder and envy of
the time, planned by an Italian of Mantua, and perhaps the stateliest
one of the kind existent in England. Straight walks, terraces, and
fountains, clipped trees, green alleys, and smooth bowling-greens
abounded; but the flowers were few and common: and if here and there a
statue might be found, it possessed none of the art so admirable in our
earliest ecclesiastical architecture, but its clumsy proportions were
made more uncouth by a profusion of barbaric painting and gilding. The
fountains, however, were especially curious, diversified, and elaborate:
some shot up as pyramids, others coiled in undulating streams, each jet
chasing the other as serpents; some, again, branched off in the form of
trees, while mimic birds, perched upon leaden boughs, poured water
from their bills. Marmaduke, much astonished and bewildered, muttered
a paternoster in great haste; and even the clerical rank of the prelate
did not preserve him from the suspicion of magical practices in the
youth’s mind.
Remote from all his train, in a little arbour overgrown with the
honeysuckle and white rose, a small table before him bearing fruits,
confectionery, and spiced wines (for the prelate was a celebrated
epicure, though still in the glow of youth), they found George Nevile,
reading lazily a Latin manuscript.
“Well, my dear lord and brother,” said Montagu, laying his arm on the
prelate’s shoulder, “first let me present to thy favour a gallant youth,
Marmaduke Nevile, worthy his name and thy love.”
“He is welcome, Montagu, to our poor house,” said the archbishop,
rising, and complacently glancing at his palace, splendidly gleaming
through the trellis-work. “‘Puer ingenui vultus.’ Thou art acquainted,
doubtless, young sir, with the Humaner Letters?”
“Well-a-day, my lord, my nurturing was somewhat neglected in the
province,” said Marmaduke, disconcerted, and deeply blushing, “and only
of late have I deemed the languages fit study for those not reared for
our Mother Church.”
“Fie, sir, fie! Correct that error, I pray thee. Latin teaches the
courtier how to thrive, the soldier how to manoeuvre, the husbandman
how to sow; and if we churchmen are more cunning, as the profane call us
(and the prelate smiled) than ye of the laity, the Latin must answer for
the sins of our learning.”
With this, the archbishop passed his arm affectionately through his
brother’s, and said, “Beshrew me, Montagu, thou lookest worn and weary.
Surely thou lackest food, and supper shall be hastened. Even I, who have
but slender appetite, grow hungered in these cool gloaming hours.”
“Dismiss my comrade, George,--I would speak to thee,” whispered Montagu.
“Thou knowest not Latin?” said the archbishop, turning with a
compassionate eye to Nevile, whose own eye was amorously fixed on the
delicate confectioneries,--“never too late to learn. Hold, here is a
grammar of the verbs, that, with mine own hand, I have drawn up for
youth. Study thine amo and thy moneo, while I confer on Church matters
with giddy Montagu. I shall expect, ere we sup, that thou wilt have
mastered the first tenses.”
“But--”
“Oh, nay, nay; but me no buts. Thou art too tough, I fear me, for
flagellation, a wondrous improver of tender youth,”--and the prelate
forced his grammar into the reluctant hands of Marmaduke, and sauntered
down one of the solitary alleys with his brother.
Long and earnest was their conference, and at one time keen were their
dispute’s.
The archbishop had very little of the energy of Montagu or the
impetuosity of Warwick, but he had far more of what we now call mind, as
distinct from talent, than either; that is, he had not their capacities
for action, but he had a judgment and sagacity that made him considered
a wise and sound adviser: this he owed principally to the churchman’s
love of ease, and to his freedom from the wear and tear of the passions
which gnawed the great minister and the aspiring courtier; his natural
intellect was also fostered by much learning. George Nevile had been
reared, by an Italian ecclesiastic, in all the subtle diplomacy of the
Church; and his ambition, despising lay objects (though he consented to
hold the office of chancellor), was concentrated in that kingdom over
kings which had animated the august dominators of religious Rome.
Though, as we have said, still in that age when the affections are
usually vivid, [He was consecrated Bishop of Exeter at the age of
twenty; at twenty-six he became Archbishop of York, and was under thirty
at the time referred to in the text.] George Nevile loved no human
creature,--not even his brothers; not even King Edward, who, with all
his vices, possessed so eminently the secret that wins men’s hearts.
His early and entire absorption in the great religious community, which
stood apart from the laymen in order to control them, alienated him from
his kind; and his superior instruction only served to feed him with a
calm and icy contempt for all that prejudice, as he termed it, held dear
and precious. He despised the knight’s wayward honour, the burgher’s
crafty honesty. For him no such thing as principle existed; and
conscience itself lay dead in the folds of a fancied exemption from all
responsibility to the dull herd, that were but as wool and meat to the
churchman shepherd. But withal, if somewhat pedantic, he had in his
manner a suavity and elegance and polish which suited well his high
station, and gave persuasion to his counsels. In all externals he was as
little like a priest as the high-born prelates of that day usually were.
In dress he rivalled the fopperies of the Plantagenet brothers; in the
chase he was more ardent than Warwick had been in his earlier youth; and
a dry sarcastic humour, sometimes elevated into wit, gave liveliness to
his sagacious converse.
Montagu desired that the archbishop and himself should demand solemn
audience of Edward, and gravely remonstrate with the king on the
impropriety of receiving the brother of a rival suitor, while Warwick
was negotiating the marriage of Margaret with a prince of France.
“Nay,” said the archbishop, with a bland smile, that fretted Montagu
to the quick, “surely even a baron, a knight, a franklin, a poor priest
like myself, would rise against the man who dictated to his hospitality.
Is a king less irritable than baron, knight, franklin, and priest,--or
rather, being, as it were, per legem, lord of all, hath he not
irritability eno’ for all four? Ay, tut and tush as thou wilt, John, but
thy sense must do justice to my counsel at the last. I know Edward well;
he hath something of mine own idlesse and ease of temper, but with more
of the dozing lion than priests, who have only, look you, the mildness
of the dove. Prick up his higher spirit, not by sharp remonstrance, but
by seeming trust. Observe to him, with thy gay, careless laugh--which,
methinks, thou hast somewhat lost of late--that with any other prince
Warwick might suspect some snare, some humiliating overthrow of his
embassage, but that all men know how steadfast in faith and honour is
Edward IV.”
“Truly,” said Montagu, with a forced smile, “you understand mankind; but
yet, bethink you--suppose this fail, and Warwick return to England to
hear that he hath been cajoled and fooled; that the Margaret he had
crossed the seas to affiance to the brother of Louis is betrothed to
Charolois--bethink you, I say, what manner of heart beats under our
brother’s mail.”
“Impiger, iracundus!” said the archbishop; “a very Achilles, to whom our
English Agamemnon, if he cross him, is a baby. All this is sad truth;
our parents spoilt him in his childhood, and glory in his youth, and
wealth, power, success, in his manhood. Ay! if Warwick be chafed,
it will be as the stir of the sea-serpent, which, according to the
Icelanders, moves a world. Still, the best way to prevent the danger is
to enlist the honour of the king in his behalf,--to show that our
eyes are open, but that we disdain to doubt, and are frank to confide.
Meanwhile send messages and warnings privately to Warwick.”
These reasonings finally prevailed with Montagu, and the brothers
returned with one mind to the house. Here, as after their ablutions they
sat down to the evening meal, the archbishop remembered poor Marmaduke,
and despatched to him one of his thirty household chaplains. Marmaduke
was found fast asleep over the second tense of the verb amo.
CHAPTER VI. THE ARRIVAL OF THE COUNT DE LA ROCHE, AND THE VARIOUS
EXCITEMENT PRODUCED ON MANY PERSONAGES BY THAT EVENT.
The prudence of the archbishop’s counsel was so far made manifest, that
on the next day Montagu found all remonstrance would have been too late.
The Count de la Roche had already landed, and was on his way to London.
The citizens, led by Rivers partially to suspect the object of the
visit, were delighted not only by the prospect of a brilliant pageant,
but by the promise such a visit conveyed of a continued peace with their
commercial ally; and the preparations made by the wealthy merchants
increased the bitterness and discontent of Montagu. At length, at the
head of a gallant and princely retinue, the Count de la Roche entered
London. Though Hastings made no secret of his distaste to the Count de
la Roche’s visit, it became his office as lord chamberlain to meet the
count at Blackwall, and escort him and his train, in gilded barges, to
the palace.
In the great hall of the Tower, in which the story of Antiochus was
painted by the great artists employed under Henry III., and on the
elevation of the dais, behind which, across Gothic columns, stretched
draperies of cloth-of-gold, was placed Edward’s chair of state. Around
him were grouped the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, the Lords
Worcester, Montagu, Rivers, D’Eyncourt, St. John, Raoul de Fulke, and
others. But at the threshold of the chamber stood Anthony Woodville, the
knightly challenger, his knee bound by the ladye-badge of the S. S.,
and his fine person clad in white-flowered velvet of Genoa, adorned with
pearls. Stepping forward, as the count appeared, the gallant Englishman
bent his knee half-way to the ground, and raising the count’s hand to
his lips, said in French, “Deign, noble sir, to accept the gratitude of
one who were not worthy of encounter from so peerless a hand, save
by the favour of the ladies of England, and your own courtesy, which
ennobles him whom it stoops to.” So saying, he led the count towards the
king.
De la Roche, an experienced and profound courtier, and justly deserving
Hall’s praise as a man of “great witte, courage, valiantness, and
liberalitie,” did not affect to conceal the admiration which the
remarkable presence of Edward never failed to excite; lifting his hand
to his eyes, as if to shade them from a sudden blaze of light, he would
have fallen on both knees, but Edward with quick condescension raised
him, and, rising himself, said gayly,--
“Nay, Count de la Roche, brave and puissant chevalier, who hath crossed
the seas in honour of knighthood and the ladies, we would, indeed,
that our roiaulme boasted a lord like thee, from whom we might ask such
homage. But since thou art not our subject, it consoles us at least that
thou art our guest. By our halidame, Lord Scales, thou must look well
to thy lance and thy steed’s girths, for never, I trow, hast thou met a
champion of goodlier strength and knightlier mettle.”
“My lord king,” answered the count, “I fear me, indeed, that a knight
like the Sieur Anthony, who fights under the eyes of such a king, will
prove invincible. Did kings enter the lists with kings, where, through
broad Christendom, find a compeer for your Highness?”
“Your brother, Sir Count, if fame lies not,” returned Edward, slightly
laughing, and lightly touching the Bastard’s shoulder, “were a fearful
lance to encounter, even though Charlemagne himself were to revive with
his twelve paladins at his back. Tell us, Sir Count,” added the king,
drawing himself up,--“tell us, for we soldiers are curious in such
matters, hath not the Count of Charolois the advantage of all here in
sinews and stature?”
“Sire,” returned De la Roche, “my princely brother is indeed mighty
with the brand and battle-axe, but your Grace is taller by half the
head,--and, peradventure, of even a more stalwart build; but that mere
strength in your Highness is not that gift of God which strikes the
beholder most.”
Edward smiled good-humouredly at a compliment the truth of which was too
obvious to move much vanity, and said with a royal and knightly grace,
“Our House of York hath been taught, Sir Count, to estimate men’s beauty
by men’s deeds, and therefore the Count of Charolois hath long been
known to us--who, alas, have seen him not!--as the fairest gentleman
of Europe. My Lord Scales, we must here publicly crave your pardon. Our
brother-in-law, Sir Count, would fain have claimed his right to hold you
his guest, and have graced himself by exclusive service to your person.
We have taken from him his lawful office, for we kings are jealous, and
would not have our subjects more honoured than ourselves.” Edward turned
round to his courtiers as he spoke, and saw that his last words had
called a haughty and angry look to the watchful countenance of Montagu.
“Lord Hastings,” he continued, “to your keeping, as our representative,
we intrust this gentleman. He must need refreshment ere we present him
to our queen.”
The count bowed to the ground, and reverently withdrew from the royal
presence, accompanied by Hastings. Edward then, singling Anthony
Woodville and Lord Rivers from the group, broke up the audience, and,
followed by those two noblemen, quitted the hall.
Montagu, whose countenance had recovered the dignified and high-born
calm habitual to it, turned to the Duke of Clarence, and observed
indifferently, “The Count de la Roche hath a goodly mien, and a fair
tongue.”
“Pest on these Burgundians!” answered Clarence, in an undertone, and
drawing Montagu aside. “I would wager my best greyhound to a scullion’s
cur that our English knights will lower their burgonets.”
“Nay, sir, an idle holiday show. What matters whose lance breaks, or
whose destrier stumbles?”
“Will you not, yourself, cousin Montagu--you who are so peerless in the
joust--take part in the fray?”
“I, your Highness,--I, the brother of the Earl of Warwick, whom this
pageant hath been devised by the Woodvilles to mortify and disparage in
his solemn embassy to Burgundy’s mightiest foe!--I!”
“Sooth to say,” said the young prince, much embarrassed, “it grieves
me sorely to hear thee speak as if Warwick would be angered at this
pastime. For, look you, Montagu, I, thinking only of my hate to Burgundy
and my zeal for our English honour, have consented, as high constable,
and despite my grudge to the Woodvilles, to bear the bassinet of our own
champion, and--”
“Saints in heaven!” exclaimed Montagu, with a burst of his fierce
brother’s temper, which he immediately checked, and changed into a tone
that concealed, beneath outward respect, the keenest irony, “I crave
your pardon humbly for my vehemence, Prince of Clarence. I suddenly
remember me that humility is the proper virtue of knighthood. Your
Grace does indeed set a notable example of that virtue to the peers of
England; and my poor brother’s infirmity of pride will stand rebuked for
aye, when he hears that George Plantagenet bore the bassinet of Anthony
Woodville.”
“But it is for the honour of the ladies,” said Clarence, falteringly;
“in honour of the fairest maid of all--the flower of English beauty--the
Lady Isabel--that I--”
“Your Highness will pardon me,” interrupted Montagu; “but I do trust to
your esteem for our poor and insulted House of Nevile so far as to be
assured that the name of my niece Isabel will not be submitted to the
ribald comments of a base-born Burgundian.”
“Then I will break no lance in the lists!”
“As it likes you, prince,” replied Montagu, shortly; and, with a low
bow, he quitted the chamber, and was striding to the outer gate of the
Tower, when a sweet, clear voice behind him called him by his name.
He turned abruptly, to meet the dark eye and all-subduing smile of the
boy-Duke of Gloucester.
“A word with you, Montagu, noblest and most prized, with your princely
brothers, of the champions of our House,--I read your generous
indignation with our poor Clarence. Ay, sir! ay!--it was a weakness in
him that moved even me. But you have not now to learn that his nature,
how excellent soever, is somewhat unsteady. His judgment alone lacks
weight and substance,--ever persuaded against his better reason by
those who approach his infirmer side; but if it be true that our cousin
Warwick intends for him the hand of the peerless Isabel, wiser heads
will guide his course.”
“My brother,” said Montagu, greatly softened, “is much beholden to your
Highness for a steady countenance and friendship, for which I also,
believe me--and the families of Beauchamp, Montagu, and Nevile--are duly
grateful. But to speak plainly (which your Grace’s youthful candour,
so all-acknowledged, will permit), the kinsmen of the queen do now so
aspire to rule this land, to marry or forbid to marry, not only our own
children, but your illustrious father’s, that I foresee in this visit of
the bastard Anthony the most signal disgrace to Warwick that ever king
passed upon ambassador or gentleman. And this moves me more!--yea, I vow
to Saint George, my patron, it moves me more--by the thought of
danger to your royal House than by the grief of slight to mine; for
Warwick--but you know him.”
“Montagu, you must soothe and calm your brother if chafed. I impose that
task on your love for us. Alack, would that Edward listened more to me
and less to the queen’s kith! These Woodvilles!--and yet they may live
to move not wrath but pity. If aught snapped the thread of Edward’s life
(Holy Paul forbid!), what would chance to Elizabeth, her brothers, her
children?”
“Her children would mount the throne that our right hands built,” said
Montagu, sullenly.
“Ah, think you so?--you rejoice me! I had feared that the barons might,
that the commons would, that the Church must, pronounce the unhappy
truth, that--but you look amazed, my lord! Alas, my boyish years are too
garrulous!”
“I catch not your Highness’s meaning.”
“Pooh, pooh! By Saint Paul, your seeming dulness proves your loyalty;
but with me, the king’s brother, frankness were safe. Thou knowest well
that the king was betrothed before to the Lady Eleanor Talbot; that
such betrothal, not set aside by the Pope, renders his marriage with
Elizabeth against law; that his children may (would to Heaven it were
not so!) be set aside as bastards, when Edward’s life no longer shields
them from the sharp eyes of men.”
“Ah,” said Montagu, thoughtfully; “and in that case, George of Clarence
would wear the crown, and his children reign in England.”
“Our Lord forefend,” said Richard, “that I should say that Warwick
thought of this when he deemed George worthy of the hand of Isabel. Nay,
it could not be so; for, however clear the claim, strong and powerful
would be those who would resist it, and Clarence is not, as you will
see, the man who can wrestle boldly,--even for a throne. Moreover, he is
too addicted to wine and pleasure to bid fair to outlive the king.”
Montagu fixed his penetrating eyes on Richard, but dropped them,
abashed, before that steady, deep, unrevealing gaze, which seemed to
pierce into other hearts, and show nothing of the heart within.
“Happy Clarence!” resumed the prince, with a heavy sigh, and after a
brief pause,--“a Nevile’s husband and a Warwick’s son--what can the
saints do more for men? You must excuse his errors--all our errors--to
your brother. You may not know, peradventure, sweet Montagu, how deep
an interest I have in maintaining all amity between Lord Warwick and the
king. For methinks there is one face fairer than fair Isabel’s, and one
man more to be envied than even Clarence. Fairest face to me in the wide
world is the Lady Anne’s! happiest man between the cradle and the grave
is he whom the Lady Anne shall call her lord! and if I--oh, look you,
Montagu, let there be no breach between Warwick and the king! Fare you
well, dear lord and cousin,--I go to Baynard’s Castle till these feasts
are over.”
“Does not your Grace,” said Montagu, recovering from the surprise into
which one part of Gloucester’s address had thrown him--“does not your
Grace--so skilled in lance and horsemanship--preside at the lists?”
“Montagu, I love your brother well enough to displease my king. The
great earl shall not say, at least, that Richard Plantagenet in his
absence forgot the reverence due to loyalty and merit. Tell him that;
and if I seem (unlike Clarence) to forbear to confront the queen and
her kindred, it is because you should make no enemies,--not the less for
that should princes forget no friends.”
Richard said this with a tone of deep feeling, and, folding his arms
within his furred surcoat, walked slowly on to a small postern admitting
to the river; but there, pausing by a buttress which concealed him till
Montagu had left the yard, instead of descending to his barge, he turned
back into the royal garden. Here several of the court of both sexes
were assembled, conferring on the event of the day. Richard halted at a
distance, and contemplated their gay dresses and animated countenances
with something between melancholy and scorn upon his young brow. One
of the most remarkable social characteristics of the middle ages is
the prematurity at which the great arrived at manhood, shared in its
passions, and indulged its ambitions. Among the numerous instances in
our own and other countries that might be selected from history, few are
more striking than that of this Duke of Gloucester, great in camp and
in council at an age when nowadays a youth is scarcely trusted to the
discipline of a college. The whole of his portentous career was closed,
indeed, before the public life of modern ambition usually commences.
Little could those accustomed to see on our stage “the elderly ruffian”
[Sharon Turner] our actors represent, imagine that at the opening
of Shakspeare’s play of “Richard the Third” the hero was but in his
nineteenth year; but at the still more juvenile age in which he appears
in this our record, Richard of Gloucester was older in intellect,
and almost in experience, than many a wise man at the date of
thirty-three,--the fatal age when his sun set forever on the field of
Bosworth!
The young prince, then, eyed the gaudy, fluttering, babbling assemblage
before him with mingled melancholy and scorn. Not that he felt, with the
acuteness which belongs to modern sentiment, his bodily defects amidst
that circle of the stately and the fair, for they were not of a nature
to weaken his arm in war or lessen his persuasive influences in peace.
But it was rather that sadness which so often comes over an active and
ambitious intellect in early youth, when it pauses to ask, in sorrow and
disdain, what its plots and counterplots, its restlessness and strife,
are really worth. The scene before him was of pleasure,--but in pleasure
neither the youth nor the manhood of Richard III. was ever pleased;
though not absolutely of the rigid austerity of Amadis or our Saxon
Edward, he was comparatively free from the licentiousness of his times.
His passions were too large for frivolous excitements. Already the
Italian, or, as it is falsely called, the Machiavelian policy, was
pervading the intellect of Europe, and the effects of its ruthless,
grand, and deliberate statecraft are visible from the accession of
Edward IV. till the close of Elizabeth’s reign. With this policy, which
reconciled itself to crime as a necessity of wisdom, was often blended a
refinement of character which disdained vulgar vices. Not skilled alone
in those knightly accomplishments which induced Caxton, with propriety,
to dedicate to Richard “The Book of the Order of Chivalry,” the Duke of
Gloucester’s more peaceful amusements were borrowed from severer Graces
than those which presided over the tastes of his royal brothers. He
loved, even to passion, the Arts, Music,--especially of the more Doric
and warlike kind,--Painting and Architecture; he was a reader of books,
as of men,--the books that become princes,--and hence that superior
knowledge of the principles of law and of commerce which his brief reign
evinced. More like an Italian in all things than the careless Norman
or the simple Saxon, Machiavel might have made of his character a
companion, though a contrast to that of Castruccio Castrucani.
The crowd murmured and rustled at the distance, and still with folded
arms Richard gazed aloof, when a lady, entering the garden from the
palace, passed by him so hastily that she brushed his surcoat, and,
turning round in surprise, made a low reverence, as she exclaimed,
“Prince Richard! and alone amidst so many!”
“Lady,” said the duke, “it was a sudden hope that brought me into this
garden,--and that was the hope to see your fair face shining above the
rest.”
“Your Highness jests,” returned the lady, though her superb countenance
and haughty carriage evinced no opinion of herself so humble as her
words would imply.
“My Lady of Bonville,” said the young duke, laying his hand on her arm,
“mirth is not in my thoughts at this hour.”
“I believe your Highness; for the Lord Richard Plantagenet is not one of
the Woodvilles. The mirth is theirs to-day.”
“Let who will have mirth,--it is the breath of a moment. Mirth cannot
tarnish glory,--the mirror in which the gods are glassed.”
“I understand you, my lord,” said the proud lady; and her face, before
stern and high, brightened into so lovely a change, so soft and winning
a smile, that Gloucester no longer marvelled that that smile had rained
so large an influence on the fate and heart of his favourite Hastings.
The beauty of this noble woman was indeed remarkable in its degree, and
peculiar in its character. She bore a stronger likeness in feature to
the archbishop than to either of her other brothers; for the prelate
had the straight and smooth outline of the Greeks,--not like Montagu and
Warwick, the lordlier and manlier aquiline of the Norman race,--and
his complexion was feminine in its pale clearness. But though in this
resembling the subtlest of the brethren, the fair sister shared with
Warwick an expression, if haughty, singularly frank and candid in its
imperious majesty; she had the same splendid and steady brilliancy
of eye, the same quick quiver of the lip, speaking of nervous
susceptibility and haste of mood. The hateful fashion of that day which
pervaded all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, was the prodigal
use of paints and cosmetics, and all imaginable artificial adjuncts of a
spurious beauty. This extended often even to the men, and the sturdiest
warrior deemed it no shame to recur to such arts of the toilet as the
vainest wanton in our day would never venture to acknowledge. But the
Lady Bonville, proudly confident of her beauty, and possessing a purity
of mind that revolted from the littleness of courting admiration,
contrasted forcibly in this the ladies of the court. Her cheek was of a
marble whiteness, though occasionally a rising flush through the clear,
rich, transparent skin showed that in earlier youth the virgin bloom had
not been absent from the surface. There was in her features, when they
reposed, somewhat of the trace of suffering,--of a struggle, past it may
be, but still remembered. But when she spoke, those features lighted
up and undulated in such various and kindling life as to dazzle, to
bewitch, or to awe the beholder, according as the impulse moulded the
expression. Her dress suited her lofty and spotless character. Henry
VI. might have contemplated with holy pleasure its matronly decorum; the
jewelled gorget ascended to the rounded and dimpled chin; the arms were
bare only at the wrists, where the blue veins were seen through a
skin of snow; the dark glossy locks, which her tirewoman boasted, when
released, swept the ground, were gathered into a modest and simple
braid, surmounted by the beseeming coronet that proclaimed her rank. The
Lady Bonville might have stood by the side of Cornelia, the model of
a young and high-born matron, in whose virtue the honour of man might
securely dwell.
“I understand you, my lord,” she said, with her bright, thankful smile;
“and as Lord Warwick’s sister, I am grateful.”