LORD WARWICK, WITH THE FOE IN THE FIELD AND THE TRAITOR AT THE HEARTH.
Every precaution which human wisdom could foresee had Lord Warwick
taken to guard against invasion, or to crush it at the onset. [Hall.]
All the coasts on which it was most probable Edward would land had
been strongly guarded. And if the Humber had been left without
regular troops, it was because prudence might calculate that the very
spot where Edward did land was the very last he would have selected,--
unless guided by fate to his destruction,--in the midst of an
unfriendly population, and in face of the armies of Northumberland and
of Montagu. The moment the earl heard of Edward's reception at York,
--far from the weakness which the false Clarence (already in
correspondence with Gloucester) imputed to him,--he despatched to
Montagu, by Marmaduke Nevile, peremptory orders to intercept Edward's
path, and give him battle before he could advance farther towards the
centre of the island. We shall explain presently why this messenger
did not reach the marquis. But Clarence was some hours before him in
his intelligence and his measures.
When the earl next heard that Edward had passed Pontefract with
impunity, and had reached Doncaster, he flew first to London, to
arrange for its defence; consigned the care of Henry to the Archbishop
of York, mustered a force already quartered in the neighbourhood of
the metropolis, and then marched rapidly back towards Coventry, where
he had left Clarence with seven thousand men; while he despatched new
messengers to Montagu and Northumberland, severely rebuking the former
for his supineness, and ordering him to march in all haste to attack
Edward in the rear. The earl's activity, promptitude, all-provident
generalship, form a mournful contrast to the errors, the
pusillanimity, and the treachery of others, which hitherto, as we have
seen, made all his wisest schemes abortive. Despite Clarence's
sullenness, Warwick had discovered no reason, as yet, to doubt his
good faith. The oath he had taken--not only to Henry in London, but
to Warwick at Amboise--had been the strongest which can bind man to
man. If the duke had not gained all he had hoped, he had still much
to lose and much to dread by desertion to Edward. He had been the
loudest in bold assertions when he heard of the invasion; and above
all, Isabel, whose influence over Clarence at that time the earl
overrated, had, at the tidings of so imminent a danger to her father,
forgot all her displeasure and recovered all her tenderness.
During Warwick's brief absence, Isabel had indeed exerted her utmost
power to repair her former wrongs, and induce Clarence to be faithful
to his oath. Although her inconsistency and irresolution had much
weakened her influence with the duke, for natures like his are
governed but by the ascendancy of a steady and tranquil will, yet
still she so far prevailed, that the duke had despatched to Richard a
secret courier, informing him that he had finally resolved not to
desert his father-in-law.
This letter reached Gloucester as the invaders were on their march to
Coventry, before the strong walls of which the Duke of Clarence lay
encamped. Richard, after some intent and silent reflection, beckoned
to him his familiar Catesby.
"Marmaduke Nevile, whom our scouts seized on his way to Pontefract, is
safe, and in the rear?"
"Yes, my lord; prisoners but encumber us; shall I give orders to the
provost to end his captivity?"
"Ever ready, Catesby!" said the duke, with a fell smile. "No; hark
ye, Clarence vacillates. If he hold firm to Warwick, and the two
forces fight honestly against us, we are lost; on the other hand, if
Clarence join us, his defection will bring not only the men he
commands, all of whom are the retainers of the York lands and duchy,
and therefore free from peculiar bias to the earl, and easily lured
back to their proper chief; but it will set an example that will
create such distrust and panic amongst the enemy, and give such hope
of fresh desertions to our own men, as will open to us the keys of the
metropolis. But Clarence, I say, vacillates; look you, here is his
letter from Amboise to King Edward; see, his duchess, Warwick's very
daughter, approves the promise it contains! If this letter reach
Warwick, and Clarence knows it is in his hand, George will have no
option but to join us. He will never dare to face the earl, his
pledge to Edward once revealed--"
"Most true; a very legal subtlety, my lord," said the lawyer Catesby,
admiringly.
"You can serve us in this. Fall back; join Sir Marmaduke; affect to
sympathize with him; affect to side with the earl; affect to make
terms for Warwick's amity and favour; affect to betray us; affect to
have stolen this letter. Give it to young Nevile, artfully effect his
escape, as if against our knowledge, and commend him to lose not an
hour--a moment--in gaining the earl, and giving him so important a
forewarning of the meditated treason of his son-in-law."
"I will do all,--I comprehend; but how will the duke learn in time
that the letter is on its way to Warwick?"
"I will seek the duke in his own tent."
"And how shall I effect Sir Marmaduke's escape?"
"Send hither the officer who guards the prisoner; I will give him
orders to obey thee in all things."
The invaders marched on. The earl, meanwhile, had reached Warwick,
hastened thence to throw himself into the stronger fortifications of
the neighbouring Coventry, without the walls of which Clarence was
still encamped; Edward advanced on the town of Warwick thus vacated;
and Richard, at night, rode along to the camp of Clarence. [Hall, and
others.]
The next day, the earl was employed in giving orders to his
lieutenants to march forth, join the troops of his son-in-law, who
were a mile from the walls, and advance upon Edward, who had that
morning quitted Warwick town, when suddenly Sir Marmaduke Nevile
rushed into his presence, and, faltering out, "Beware, beware!" placed
in his hands the fatal letter which Clarence had despatched from
Amboise.
Never did blow more ruthless fall upon man's heart! Clarence's
perfidy--that might be disdained; but the closing lines, which
revealed a daughter's treachery--words cannot express the father's
anguish.
The letter dropped from his hand, a stupor seized his senses, and, ere
yet recovered, pale men hurried into his presence to relate how,
amidst joyous trumpets and streaming banners, Richard of Gloucester
had led the Duke of Clarence to the brotherly embrace of Edward.
[Hall. The chronicler adds: "It was no marvell that the Duke of
Clarence with so small persuasion and less exhorting turned from the
Earl of Warwick's party, for, as you have heard before, this
marchandise was laboured, conducted, and concluded by a damsell, when
the duke was in the French court, to the earl's utter confusion."
Hume makes a notable mistake in deferring the date of Clarence's
desertion to the battle of Barnet.]
Breaking from these messengers of evil news, that could not now
surprise, the earl strode on, alone, to his daughter's chamber.
He placed the letter in her hands, and folding his arms said, "What
sayest thou of this, Isabel of Clarence?" The terror, the shame, the
remorse, that seized upon the wretched lady, the death-like lips, the
suppressed shriek, the momentary torpor, succeeded by the impulse
which made her fall at her father's feet and clasp his knees,--told
the earl, if he had before doubted, that the letter lied not; that
Isabel had known and sanctioned its contents.
He gazed on her (as she grovelled at his feet) with a look that her
eyes did well to shun.
"Curse me not! curse me not!" cried Isabel, awed by his very silence.
"It was but a brief frenzy. Evil counsel, evil passion! I was
maddened that my boy had lost a crown. I repented, I repented!
Clarence shall yet be true. He hath promised it, vowed it to me; hath
written to Gloucester to retract all,--to--"
"Woman! Clarence is in Edward's camp!"
Isabel started to her feet, and uttered a shriek so wild and
despairing, that at least it gave to her father's lacerated heart the
miserable solace of believing the last treason had not been shared. A
softer expression--one of pity, if not of pardon--stole over his dark
face.
"I curse thee not," he said; "I rebuke thee not. Thy sin hath its own
penance. Ill omen broods on the hearth of the household traitor!
Never more shalt thou see holy love in a husband's smile. His kiss
shall have the taint of Judas. From his arms thou shalt start with
horror, as from those of thy wronged father's betrayer,--perchance his
deathsman! Ill omen broods on the cradle of the child for whom a
mother's ambition was but a daughter's perfidy. Woe to thee, wife and
mother! Even my forgiveness cannot avert thy doom!"
"Kill me! kill me!" exclaimed Isabel, springing towards him; but
seeing his face averted, his arms folded on his breast,--that noble
breast, never again her shelter,--she fell lifeless on the floor. [As
our narrative does not embrace the future fate of the Duchess of
Clarence, the reader will pardon us if we remind him that her first-
born (who bore his illustrious grandfather's title of Earl of Warwick)
was cast into prison on the accession of Henry VII., and afterwards
beheaded by that king. By birth, he was the rightful heir to the
throne. The ill-fated Isabel died young (five years after the date at
which our tale has arrived). One of her female attendants was tried
and executed on the charge of having poisoned her. Clarence lost no
time in seeking to supply her place. He solicited the hand of Mary of
Burgundy, sole daughter and heir of Charles the Bold. Edward's
jealousy and fear forbade him to listen to an alliance that might, as
Lingard observes, enable Clarence "to employ the power of Burgundy to
win the crown of England;" and hence arose those dissensions which
ended in the secret murder of the perjured duke.]
The earl looked round, to see that none were by to witness his
weakness, took her gently in his arms, laid her on her couch, and,
bending over her a moment, prayed to God to pardon her.
He then hastily left the room, ordered her handmaids and her litter,
and while she was yet unconscious, the gates of the town opened, and
forth through the arch went the closed and curtained vehicle which
bore the ill-fated duchess to the new home her husband had made with
her father's foe! The earl watched it from the casement of his tower,
and said to himself,--
"I had been unmanned, had I known her within the same walls. Now
forever I dismiss her memory and her crime. Treachery hath done its
worst, and my soul is proof against all storms!"
At night came messengers from Clarence and Edward, who had returned to
Warwick town, with offers of pardon to the earl, with promises of
favour, power, and grace. To Edward the earl deigned no answer; to
the messenger of Clarence he gave this: "Tell thy master I had liefer
be always like myself than like a false and a perjured duke, and that
I am determined never to leave the war till I have lost mine own life,
or utterly extinguished and put down my foes." [Hall.]
After this terrible defection, neither his remaining forces, nor the
panic amongst them which the duke's desertion had occasioned, nor the
mighty interests involved in the success of his arms, nor the
irretrievable advantage which even an engagement of equivocal result
with the earl in person would give to Edward, justified Warwick in
gratifying the anticipations of the enemy,--that his valour and wrath
would urge him into immediate and imprudent battle.
Edward, after the vain bravado of marching up to the walls of
Coventry, moved on towards London. Thither the earl sent Marmaduke,
enjoining the Archbishop of York and the lord mayor but to hold out
the city for three days, and he would come to their aid with such a
force as would insure lasting triumph. For, indeed, already were
hurrying to his banner Montagu, burning to retrieve his error, Oxford
and Exeter, recovered from, and chafing at, their past alarm. Thither
his nephew, Fitzhugh, led the earl's own clansmen of Middleham;
thither were spurring Somerset from the west, [Most historians state
that Somerset was then in London; but Sharon Turner quotes "Harleian
Manuscripts," 38, to show that he had left the metropolis "to raise an
army from the western counties," and ranks him amongst the generals at
the battle of Barnet.] and Sir Thomas Dymoke from Lincolnshire, and
the Knight of Lytton, with his hardy retainers, from the Peak. Bold
Hilyard waited not far from London, with a host of mingled yeomen and
bravos, reduced, as before, to discipline under his own sturdy
energies and the military craft of Sir John Coniers. If London would
but hold out till these forces could unite, Edward's destruction was
still inevitable.