THE PROSPERITY OF THE OUTER SHOW--THE CARES OF THE INNER MAN.
The position of the king-maker was, to a superficial observer, such as
might gratify to the utmost the ambition and the pride of man. He had
driven from the land one of the most gorgeous princes and one of the
boldest warriors that ever sat upon a throne. He had changed a
dynasty without a blow. In the alliances of his daughters, whatever
chanced, it seemed certain that by one or the other his posterity
would be the kings of England.
The easiness of his victory appeared to prove of itself that the
hearts of the people were with him; and the parliament that he
hastened to summon confirmed by law the revolution achieved by a
bloodless sword. [Lingard, Hume, etc.]
Nor was there aught abroad which menaced disturbance to the peace at
home. Letters from the Countess of Warwick and Lady Anne announced
their triumphant entry at Paris, where Margaret of Anjou was received
with honours never before rendered but to a queen of France.
A solemn embassy, meanwhile, was preparing to proceed from Paris to
London to congratulate Henry, and establish a permanent treaty of
peace and commerce, [Rymer, xi., 682-690] while Charles of Burgundy
himself (the only ally left to Edward) supplicated for the continuance
of amicable relations with England, stating that they were formed with
the country, not with any special person who might wear the crown;
[Hume, Comines] and forbade his subjects by proclamation to join any
enterprise for the recovery of his throne which Edward might attempt.
The conduct of Warwick, whom the parliament had declared, conjointly
with Clarence, protector of the realm during the minority of the
Prince of Wales, was worthy of the triumph he had obtained. He
exhibited now a greater genius for government than he had yet
displayed; for all his passions were nerved to the utmost, to
consummate his victory and sharpen his faculties. He united mildness
towards the defeated faction with a firmness which repelled all
attempt at insurrection. [Habington.]
In contrast to the splendour that surrounded his daughter Anne, all
accounts spoke of the humiliation to which Charles subjected the
exiled king; and in the Sanctuary, amidst homicides and felons, the
wife of the earl's defeated foe gave birth to a male child, baptized
and christened (says the chronicler) "as the son of a common man."
For the Avenger and his children were regal authority and gorgeous
pomp, for the fugitive and his offspring were the bread of the exile,
or the refuge of the outlaw.
But still the earl's prosperity was hollow, the statue of brass stood
on limbs of clay. The position of a man with the name of subject, but
the authority of king, was an unpopular anomaly in England. In the
principal trading-towns had been long growing up that animosity
towards the aristocracy of which Henry VII. availed himself to raise a
despotism (and which, even in our day, causes the main disputes of
faction); but the recent revolution was one in which the towns had had
no share. It was a revolution made by the representative of the
barons and his followers. It was connected with no advancement of the
middle class; it seemed to the men of commerce but the violence of a
turbulent and disappointed nobility. The very name given to Warwick's
supporters was unpopular in the towns. They were not called the
Lancastrians, or the friends of King Henry,--they were styled then,
and still are so, by the old chronicler, "The Lord's Party." Most of
whatever was still feudal--the haughtiest of the magnates, the rudest
of the yeomanry, the most warlike of the knights--gave to Warwick the
sanction of their allegiance; and this sanction was displeasing to the
intelligence of the towns.
Classes in all times have a keen instinct of their own class-
interests. The revolution which the earl had effected was the triumph
of aristocracy; its natural results would tend to strengthen certainly
the moral, and probably the constitutional, power already possessed by
that martial order. The new parliament was their creature, Henry VI.
was a cipher, his son a boy with unknown character, and according to
vulgar scandal, of doubtful legitimacy, seemingly bound hand and foot
in the trammels of the archbaron's mighty House; the earl himself had
never scrupled to evince a distaste to the change in society which was
slowly converting an agricultural into a trading population.
It may be observed, too, that a middle class as rarely unites itself
with the idols of the populace as with the chiefs of a seignorie.
The brute attachment of the peasants and the mobs to the gorgeous and
lavish earl seemed to the burgesses the sign of a barbaric clanship,
opposed to that advance in civilization towards which they half
unconsciously struggled.
And here we must rapidly glance at what, as far as a statesman may
foresee, would have been the probable result of Warwick's ascendancy,
if durable and effectual. If attached, by prejudice and birth, to the
aristocracy, he was yet by reputation and habit attached also to the
popular party,--that party more popular than the middle class,--the
majority, the masses. His whole life had been one struggle against
despotism in the crown. Though far from entertaining such schemes as
in similar circumstances might have occurred to the deep sagacity of
an Italian patrician for the interest of his order, no doubt his
policy would have tended to this one aim,--the limitation of the
monarchy by the strength of an aristocracy endeared to the
agricultural population, owing to that population its own powers of
defence, with the wants and grievances of that population thoroughly
familiar, and willing to satisfy the one and redress the other: in
short, the great baron would have secured and promoted liberty
according to the notions of a seigneur and a Norman, by making the
king but the first nobleman of the realm. Had the policy lasted long
enough to succeed, the subsequent despotism, which changed a limited
into an absolute monarchy under the Tudors, would have been prevented,
with all the sanguinary reaction in which the Stuarts were the
sufferers. The earl's family, and his own "large father-like heart,"
had ever been opposed to religious persecution; and timely toleration
to the Lollards might have prevented the long-delayed revenge of their
posterity, the Puritans. Gradually, perhaps, might the system he
represented (of the whole consequences of which he was unconscious)
have changed monarchic into aristocratic government, resting, however,
upon broad and popular institutions; but no doubt, also, the middle,
or rather the commercial class, with all the blessings that attend
their power, would have risen much more slowly than when made as they
were already, partially under Edward IV., and more systematically
under Henry VIL, the instrument for destroying feudal aristocracy, and
thereby establishing for a long and fearful interval the arbitrary
rule of the single tyrant. Warwick's dislike to the commercial biases
of Edward was, in fact, not a patrician prejudice alone. It required
no great sagacity to perceive that Edward had designed to raise up a
class that, though powerful when employed against the barons, would
long be impotent against the encroachments of the crown; and the earl
viewed that class not only as foes to his own order, but as tools for
the destruction of the ancient liberties.
Without presuming to decide which policy, upon the whole, would have
been the happier for England,--the one that based a despotism on the
middle class, or the one that founded an aristocracy upon popular
affection,--it was clear to the more enlightened burgesses of the
great towns, that between Edward of York and the Earl of Warwick a
vast principle was at stake, and the commercial king seemed to them a
more natural ally than the feudal baron; and equally clear it is to
us, now, that the true spirit of the age fought for the false Edward,
and against the honest earl.
Warwick did not, however, apprehend any serious results from the
passive distaste of the trading towns. His martial spirit led him to
despise the least martial part of the population. He knew that the
towns would not rise in arms so long as their charters were respected;
and that slow, undermining hostility which exists only in opinion, his
intellect, so vigorous in immediate dangers, was not far-sighted
enough to comprehend. More direct cause for apprehension would there
have been to a suspicious mind in the demeanour of the earl's
colleague in the Protectorate,--the Duke of Clarence. It was
obviously Warwick's policy to satisfy this weak but ambitious person.
The duke was, as before agreed, declared heir to the vast possessions
of the House of York. He was invested with the Lieutenancy of
Ireland, but delayed his departure to his government till the arrival
of the Prince of Wales. The personal honours accorded him in the mean
while were those due to a sovereign; but still the duke's brow was
moody, though, if the earl noticed it, Clarence rallied into seeming
cheerfulness, and reiterated pledges of faith and friendship.
The manner of Isabel to her father was varying and uncertain: at one
time hard and cold; at another, as if in the reaction of secret
remorse, she would throw herself into his arms, and pray him,
weepingly, to forgive her wayward humours. But the curse of the
earl's position was that which he had foreseen before quitting
Amboise, and which, more or less, attends upon those who from whatever
cause suddenly desert the party with which all their associations,
whether of fame or friendship, have been interwoven. His vengeance
against one had comprehended many still dear to him. He was not only
separated from his old companions in arms, but he had driven their
most eminent into exile. He stood alone amongst men whom the habits
of an active life had indissolubly connected, in his mind, with
recollections of wrath and wrong. Amidst that princely company which
begirt him, he hailed no familiar face. Even many of those who most
detested Edward (or rather the Woodvilles) recoiled from so startling
a desertion to the Lancastrian foe. It was a heavy blow to a heart
already bruised and sore, when the fiery Raoul de Fulke, who had so
idolized Warwick, that, despite his own high lineage, he had worn his
badge upon his breast, sought him at the dead of night, and thus
said,--
"Lord of Salisbury and Warwick, I once offered to serve thee as a
vassal, if thou wouldst wrestle with lewd Edward for the crown which
only a manly brow should wear; and hadst thou now returned, as Henry
of Lancaster returned of old, to gripe the sceptre of the Norman with
a conqueror's hand, I had been the first to cry, 'Long live King
Richard, namesake and emulator of Coeur de Lion!' But to place upon
the throne yon monk-puppet, and to call on brave hearts to worship a
patterer of aves and a counter of beads; to fix the succession of
England in the adulterous offspring of Margaret, the butcher-harlot
[One of the greatest obstacles to the cause of the Red Rose was the
popular belief that the young prince was not Henry's son. Had that
belief not been widely spread and firmly maintained, the lords who
arbitrated between Henry VI. and Richard Duke of York, in October,
1460, could scarcely have come to the resolution to set aside the
Prince of Wales altogether, to accord Henry the crown for his life,
and declare the Duke of York his heir. Ten years previously (in
November, 1450), before the young prince was born or thought of, and
the proposition was really just and reasonable, it was moved in the
House of Commons to declare Richard Duke of York next heir to Henry;
which, at least, by birthright, he certainly was; but the motion met
with little favour and the mover was sent to the Tower.]; to give the
power of the realm to the men against whom thou thyself hast often led
me to strive with lance and battle-axe, is to open a path which leads
but to dishonour, and thither Raoul de Fulke follows not even the
steps of the Lord of Warwick. Interrupt me not! speak not! As thou
to Edward, so I now to thee, forswear allegiance, and I bid thee
farewell forever!"
"I pardon thee," answered Warwick; "and if ever thou art wronged as I
have been, thy heart will avenge me. Go!" But when this haughty
visitor was gone, the earl covered his face with his hands, and
groaned aloud. A defection perhaps even more severely felt came next.
Katherine de Bonville had been the earl's favourite sister; he wrote
to her at the convent to which she had retired, praying her
affectionately to come to London, "and cheer his vexed spirit, and
learn the true cause, not to be told by letter, which had moved him to
things once farthest from his thought." The messenger came back, the
letter unopened; for Katherine had left the convent, and fled into
Burgundy, distrustful, as it seemed to Warwick, of her own brother.
The nature of this lion-hearted man was, as we have seen, singularly
kindly, frank, and affectionate; and now in the most critical, the
most anxious, the most tortured period of his life, confidence and
affection were forbidden to him. What had he not given for one hour
of the soothing company of his wife, the only being in the world to
whom his pride could have communicated the grief of his heart, or the
doubts of his conscience! Alas! never on earth should he hear that
soft voice again! Anne, too, the gentle, childlike Anne, was afar;
but she was happy,--a basker in the brief sunshine, and blind to the
darkening clouds. His elder child, with her changeful moods, added
but to his disquiet and unhappiness. Next to Edward, Warwick of all
the House of York had loved Clarence, though a closer and more
domestic intimacy had weakened the affection by lessening the esteem.
But looking further into the future, he now saw in this alliance the
seeds of many a rankling sorrow. The nearer Anne and her spouse to
power and fame, the more bitter the jealousy of Clarence and his wife.
Thus, in the very connections which seemed most to strengthen his
House, lay all which must destroy the hallowed unity and peace of
family and home.
The Archbishop of York had prudently taken no part whatever in the
measures that had changed the dynasty. He came now to reap the
fruits; did homage to Henry VI., received the Chancellor's seals, and
recommenced intrigues for the Cardinal's hat. But between the bold
warrior and the wily priest there could be but little of the
endearment of brotherly confidence and love. With Montagu alone could
the earl confer in cordiality and unreserve; and their similar
position, and certain points of agreement in their characters, now
more clearly brought out and manifest, served to make their friendship
for each other firmer and more tender, in the estrangement of all
other ties, than ever it had been before. But the marquis was soon
compelled to depart from London, to his post as warden of the northern
marches; for Warwick had not the rash presumption of Edward, and
neglected no precaution against the return of the dethroned king.
So there, alone, in pomp and in power, vengeance consummated, ambition
gratified, but love denied; with an aching heart and a fearless front;
amidst old foes made prosperous, and old friends alienated and ruined,
stood the king-maker! and, day by day, the untimely streaks of gray
showed more and more amidst the raven curls of the strong man.