WARWICK AND THE WOODVILLES.
At a court, over which Elizabeth Woodville exercised all the influence
derived from her rank as a queen and her fascination as a woman, the
Earl of Warwick was somewhat out of place. By Woodvilles, Herberts,
and Howards, he was regarded with awe and envy as the haughtiest
representative of England's patricians. Especially to the queen and
her kinsmen his presence was irksome; and, knowing that any attempt
to make "The Stout Earl" a courtier after the Woodville pattern was
hopeless as to convert a bird of prey into a barn-door fowl, they were
at no pains to conceal the pleasure they felt in mortifying his pride
and destroying his influence. One possibility does not seem to have
struck them. The Woodvilles themselves, to receive benefits, had been
suddenly converted from the Red Rose to the White; Warwick, to avenge
the nation's injuries and his own, might as suddenly be converted from
the White Rose to the Red.
Notwithstanding the exile of Lancastrians and the discontent of
Yorkists, no court in Christendom was more brilliant than that of
King Edward. Indeed, foreign embassadors confessed, with mingled
envy and admiration, that their eyes were dazzled by the surpassing
loveliness of the damsels who appeared at state balls in the Palace
of Westminster; and among these fair beings, perhaps, none was more
interesting than the king's sister, Margaret, youngest daughter of
Richard Plantagenet and Cicely Neville.
Two daughters of the Duke of York were already wives. Both had been
married to English dukes--one to Exeter, another to Suffolk; and it
was known that Edward, having, by his union with Elizabeth Woodville,
lost the opportunity of allying himself with the Continental dynasties,
contemplated for his remaining sister a marriage with some foreign
prince capable of aiding him in case of a change of fortune.
Suitors were not, of course, wanting when so fair a princess as
Margaret Plantagenet was to be won; and it happened that while Warwick
was at feud with the Woodvilles--while the populace were clamoring
against the new men with whom the king's court swarmed--her hand was
contended for by Louis of France, for a prince of the blood royal,
and by Louis of Bruges for the Count of Charolois, who, since his
interview with Margaret of Anjou, had taken up arms against Louis and
defeated him in the battle of Montlhéry. The choice was a matter of
some difficulty; for the Woodvilles and Warwick took different sides
of the question. The queen's kindred favored the suit of the Count of
Charolois; while "The Stout Earl," between whom and the Burgundian
no amity existed, declared decidedly for an alliance with France.
Edward was in some perplexity, but at length he yielded to the earl's
arguments; and, in 1467, the frank, unsuspecting king-maker departed to
negotiate a marriage with that celebrated master of kingcraft, whose
maxim was, that he who knew not how to dissemble knew not how to reign.
When Louis heard of Warwick's embassy he could not help thinking the
occasion favorable for the exercise of his craft. He resolved to give
the earl such a reception as might stir the jealousy of Edward, and
acted in such a manner as to create in the breast of the English king
suspicions of the powerful noble who had placed him on a throne. Having
landed at Harfleur, Warwick was, on the 7th of June, conveyed in a
barge to the village of La Bouille, on the Seine. On arriving at La
Bouille, he found a magnificent banquet prepared for him, and the king
ready to act as host. After having been sumptuously feasted, Warwick
embarked in his boat for Rouen, whither the king and his attendants
went by land; and the inhabitants of the town met the earl at the gate
of the Quay St. Eloy, where the king had ordered a most honorable
reception. Banners, crosses, and holy water were then presented to
Warwick by priests in their copes; and he was conducted in procession
to the cathedral, where he made his oblation, and thence to lodgings
prepared for him at the monastery of the Jacobins.
Having thus received Warwick with the honors usually paid to royalty,
Louis entertained the great earl in a style corresponding with the
reception; and even ordered the queen and princesses to come to Rouen
to testify their respect. The crafty king, meantime, did not refrain
from those mischievous tricks at which he was such an adept. While
Warwick staid at Rouen Louis lodged in the next house, and visited the
earl at all hours, passing through a private door with such an air of
mystery, as might, when reported to Edward, raise suspicions that some
conspiracy had been hatching.
After the conference at Rouen had lasted for twelve days, Louis
departed for Chartres, and Warwick set sail for England. The earl
had been quite successful in the object of his mission; and he was
accompanied home by the Archbishop of Narbonne, charged by Louis to put
the finishing stroke to the treaty which was to detach the French king
forever from the Lancastrian alliance.
Meanwhile, the Woodvilles had not been idle. Far from submitting
patiently to the earl's triumph, they had labored resolutely to mortify
his pride and frustrate his mission. The business was artfully
managed. Anthony Woodville, in the name of the ladies of England,
revived an old challenge to Anthony, Count de la Roche, an illegitimate
son of the Duke of Burgundy; and the count, commonly called "The
Bastard of Burgundy," having accepted the challenge, with the usual
forms, intimated his intention to come to England without delay.
The news crept abroad that a great passage of arms was to take place;
and the highest expectations were excited by the prospect. The king
himself entered into the spirit of the business, consented to act as
umpire, and made such arrangements as, it was conceived, would render
the tournament memorable. Several months were spent in adjusting the
preliminaries; and the noblest knights of France and Scotland were
invited to honor the tournament with their presence.
At length the Bastard of Burgundy arrived in London with a splendid
retinue; and lists were erected in Smithfield, with pavilions for the
combatants, and galleries around for the ladies of Edward's court and
other noble personages who had been invited to witness the pageant. On
the 11th of June, all the ceremonies prescribed by the laws of chivalry
having been performed, the combatants prepared for the encounter,
and advanced on horseback from their pavilions into the middle of
the inclosed space. After having answered the usual questions, they
took their places in the lists, and, at the sound of trumpet, spurred
their steeds and charged each other with sharp spears. Both champions,
however, bore themselves fairly in the encounter, and parted with equal
honor.
On the second day of the Smithfield tournament, the result was somewhat
less gratifying to the Burgundian. On this occasion the champions
again fought on horseback; and, as it happened, the steed of Anthony
Woodville had a long and sharp pike of steel on his chaffron. This
weapon was destined to have great influence on the fortunes of the day;
for, while the combatants were engaged hand to hand, the pike's point
entered the nostrils of the Bastard's steed, and the animal, infuriated
by the pain, reared and plunged till he fell on his side. The Bastard
was, of course, borne to the ground; and Anthony Woodville, riding
round about with his drawn sword, asked his opponent to yield. At this
point, the marshals, by the king's command, interfered, and extricated
the Burgundian from his fallen steed. "I could not hold me by the
clouds," exclaimed the brave Bastard; "but, though my horse fail me,
I will not fail my encounter." The king, however, decided against the
combat being then renewed.
Another day arrived, and the champions, armed with battle-axes,
appeared on foot within the lists. This day proved as unfortunate
for the Bastard as the former had been. Both knights, indeed, bore
themselves valiantly; but, at a critical moment, the point of
Woodville's axe penetrated the sight-hole of his antagonist's helmet,
and, availing himself of this advantage, Anthony was on the point of
so twisting his weapon as to bring the Burgundian to his knee. At that
instant, however, the king cast down his warder, and the marshals
hastened to sever the combatants. The Bastard, having no relish for
being thus worsted, declared himself far from content, and demanded
of the king, in the name of justice, that he should be allowed to
perform his enterprise. Edward thereupon appealed to the marshals; and
they, having considered the matter, decided that by the laws of the
tournament the Burgundian was entitled to have his demand granted;
but that, in such a case, he must be delivered to his adversary in
precisely the same predicament as when the king interfered--in fact,
with the point of Anthony Woodville's weapon thrust into the crevice
of his visor: "which," says Dugdale, "when the Bastard understood, he
relinquished his farther challenge."
The tournament at Smithfield, unlike "the gentle passage at Ashby,"
terminated without bloodshed. Indeed, neither Anthony Woodville nor his
antagonist felt any ambition to die in their harness in the lists; and
the Bastard, in visiting England, had a much more practical object in
view than to afford amusement to gossiping citizens. He was, in fact,
commissioned by the Count of Charolois to press the English king on
the subject of a match with Margaret of York; and he played his part
so well as to elicit from Edward, notwithstanding Warwick's embassy, a
promise that the hand of the princess should be given to the heir of
Burgundy. When Warwick returned from France and found what had been
done in his absence, he considered that he had been dishonored. Such
usage would, at any time, have grated hard on the earl's heart; and
the idea of the Woodvilles having been the authors of this wrong made
his blood boil with indignation. He forthwith retired to Middleham, in
a humor the reverse of serene, and there brooded over his wrongs in a
mood the reverse of philosophic.
The king did not allow the king-maker's anger to die for want of fuel.
On the contrary, having given Warwick serious cause of offense, he
added insult to injury by pretending that the earl had been gained over
by Louis to the Lancastrian cause, and that the state was in no small
danger from his treasonable attempts. At the same time, he abruptly
deprived George Neville, Archbishop of York,[8] of the office of
chancellor--thus indicating still farther distrust of the great family
to whose efforts he owed his crown.
While rumors as to Warwick's new-born sympathies with the house of
Lancaster were afloat, the Castle of Harleck fell into the king's
hands. Within the fortress was taken an agent of Margaret; and he, on
being put to the rack, declared that Warwick, during his mission to
France, had, at Rouen, spoken with favor of the exiled queen, during a
confidential conversation with Louis. Warwick treated the accusation
with contempt, and declined to leave his castle to be confronted with
the accuser.
This unfortunate incident was little calculated to smooth the way for a
reconciliation. Nevertheless, the Archbishop of York, who had a keen
eye for his own interest, undertook to mediate between his brother and
the king. The churchman was successful in his efforts; and in July,
1468, when Margaret Plantagenet departed from England for her new home,
Warwick rode before her, through the city of London, as if to indicate
by his presence that he had withdrawn his objections to her marriage
with the Count of Charolois, who, in the previous year, on the death of
his father, had succeeded to the ducal sovereignty of Burgundy.
The chroniclers might with propriety have described this as a second
"dissimulated love-day." No true reconcilement could take place
between the king and the king-maker. Warwick considered Edward the
most ungrateful of mankind; and the king thought of the earl, as the
Regent-Duke of Albany said of the third Lord Home, that "he was too
great to be a subject." The king regarded Warwick's patriotic counsel
with aversion: the earl's discontent could be read by the multitude in
his frank face. Each, naturally, began to calculate his strength.
Edward had one source of consolation. In giving his sister to Burgundy
he had gained a potent ally on the Continent; and he rejoiced to think
that, in the event of a change of fortune, a relative so near would
assuredly befriend him. Edward, like other men, deceived himself on
such subjects. He little imagined how soon he would have to ask his
brother-in-law's protection, and how he should find that Burgundy,
while taking a wife from the house of York, had not quite laid his
prejudices in favor of the house of Lancaster.
Warwick, on his part, felt aught rather than satisfied. Notwithstanding
his appearance at court, he was brooding over the injury that he had
received. Convinced of the expediency of making friends, he addressed
himself to the king's brothers--George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard,
Duke of Gloucester. Of Gloucester the earl could make nothing. The
wily boy played with his dagger as he was wont, and maintained such
a reserve that it would have been imprudent to trust him. With
Clarence the earl had more success. Indeed, the duke complained of
the king's unkindness; and particularly that though Edward had given
rich heiresses to Dorset and Woodville, he had found no match for his
own brother. Having both something of which to complain, the earl and
the duke formed an alliance offensive and defensive; and a project
was formed for binding them to each other by a tie which the Nevilles
deemed could hardly be broken.
Warwick had not been blessed with a son to inherit his vast estates,
his great name, and his popularity, which was quite undiminished. He,
however, had two daughters--Isabel and Anne--whose birth and lineage
were such as to put them on a level with any prince in Europe. It
appears that Isabel had inspired Clarence with an ardent attachment;
but the king and "the queen's kindred" were averse to a match. Warwick
now declared that the marriage should take place in spite of their
hostility; and Clarence agreed, for Isabel's sake, to defy both Edward
and the Woodvilles.
Having taken their resolution, the duke and the earl, in the summer
of 1469, sailed for Calais, of which Warwick was still governor.
Preparations were made for uniting Clarence and Isabel; and in the
month of July, "in the Chapel of Our Lady," the ill-starred marriage
was solemnized with a pomp befitting the rank of a Plantagenet
bridegroom and a Neville bride.
King Edward no sooner heard of this marriage than he expressed strong
displeasure. Unkind words passed in consequence; and, from that date,
no affection existed between the king and the king-maker. About the
same time there appeared in the heavens a comet, such as had been
seen on the eve of great national changes--as before Hastings, which
gave England to the Norman yoke, and Evesham, which freed Englishmen
from the domination of a foreign baronage and an alien church. The
superstitious were immediately struck with the "blazing star," and
expressed their belief that it heralded a political revolution. Others
did not look at the sky for signs of a coming struggle. Indeed, those
who were capable of comprehending the events passing before them could
entertain little doubt that England had not yet seen the last of the
Wars of the Roses.