Book: The Last Of The Barons, Volume 7.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> The Last Of The Barons, Volume 7.
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BOOK VII.
THE POPULAR REBELLION.
CHAPTER I.
THE WHITE LION OF MARCH SHAKES HIS MANE.
"And what news?" asked Hastings, as he found himself amidst the king's
squires; while yet was heard the laugh of the tymbesteres, and yet
gliding through the trees might be seen the retreating form of Sibyll.
"My lord, the king needs you instantly. A courier has just arrived
from the North. The Lords St. John, Rivers, De Fulke, and Scales are
already with his highness."
"Where?"
"In the great council chamber."
To that memorable room [it was from this room that Hastings was
hurried to execution, June 13, 1483] in the White Tower, in which the
visitor, on entrance, is first reminded of the name and fate of
Hastings, strode the unprophetic lord.
He found Edward not reclining on cushions and carpets, not womanlike
in loose robes, not with his lazy smile upon his sleek beauty. The
king had doffed his gown, and stood erect in the tight tunic, which
gave in full perfection the splendid proportions of a frame
unsurpassed in activity and strength. Before him, on the long table,
lay two or three open letters, beside the dagger with which Edward had
cut the silk that bound them. Around him gravely sat Lord Rivers,
Anthony Woodville, Lord St. John, Raoul de Fulke, the young and
valiant D'Eyncourt, and many other of the principal lords. Hastings
saw at once that something of pith and moment had occurred; and by the
fire in the king's eye, the dilation of his nostril, the cheerful and
almost joyous pride of his mien and brow, the experienced courtier
read the signs of WAR.
"Welcome, brave Hastings," said Edward, in a voice wholly changed from
its wonted soft affectation,--loud, clear, and thrilling as it went
through the marrow and heart of all who heard its stirring and trumpet
accent,--"welcome now to the field as ever to the banquet! We have
news from the North that bids us brace on the burgonet and buckle-to
the brand,--a revolt that requires a king's arm to quell. In
Yorkshire fifteen thousand men are in arms, under a leader they call
Robin of Redesdale,--the pretext, a thrave of corn demanded by the
Hospital of St. Leonard's, the true design that of treason to our
realm. At the same time, we hear from our brother of Gloucester, now
on the Border, that the Scotch have lifted the Lancaster Rose. There
is peril if these two armies meet. No time to lose,--they are
saddling our war-steeds; we hasten to the van of our royal force. We
shall have warm work, my lords. But who is worthy of a throne that
cannot guard it?"
"This is sad tidings indeed, sire," said Hastings, gravely.
"Sad! Say it not, Hastings! War is the chase of kings! Sir Raoul de
Fulke, why lookest thou so brooding and sorrowful?"
"Sire, I but thought that had Earl Warwick been in England, this--"
"Ha!" interrupted Edward, haughtily and hastily, "and is Warwick the
sun of heaven that no cloud can darken where his face may shine? The
rebels shall need no foe, my realm no regent, while I, the heir of the
Plantagenets, have the sword for one, the sceptre for the other. We
depart this evening ere the sun be set."
"My liege," said the Lord St. John, gravely, "on what forces do you
count to meet so formidable an array?"
"All England, Lord of St. John!"
"Alack! my liege, may you not deceive yourself! But in this crisis it
is right that your leal and trusty subjects should speak out, and
plainly. It seems that these insurgents clamour not against yourself,
but against the queen's relations,--yes, my Lord Rivers, against you
and your House,--and I fear me that the hearts of England are with
them here."
"It is true, sire," put in Raoul de Fulke, boldly; "and if these--new
men are to head your armies, the warriors of Towton will stand aloof,
--Raoul de Fulke serves no Woodville's banner. Frown not, Lord de
Scales! it is the griping avarice of you and yours that has brought
this evil on the king. For you the commons have been pillaged; for
you the daughters of peers have been forced into monstrous marriages,
at war with birth and with nature herself; for you, the princely
Warwick, near to the throne in blood, and front and pillar of our
time-honoured order of seigneur and of knight, has been thrust from
our suzerain's favour. And if now ye are to march at the van of war,
--you to be avengers of the strife of which ye are the cause,--I say
that the soldiers will lack heart, and the provinces ye pass through
will be the country of a foe!"
"Vain man!" began Anthony Woodville, when Hastings laid his hand on
his arm, while Edward, amazed at this outburst from two of the
supporters on whom he principally counted, had the prudence to
suppress his resentment, and remained silent,--but with the aspect of
one resolved to command obedience, when he once deemed it right to
interfere.
"Hold, Sir Anthony!" said Hastings, who, the moment he found himself
with men, woke to all the manly spirit and profound wisdom that had
rendered his name illustrious--"hold, and let me have the word; my
Lords St. John and De Fulke, your charges are more against me than
against these gentlemen, for I am a new man,--a squire by birth, and
proud to derive mine honours from the same origin as all true
nobility,--I mean the grace of a noble liege and the happy fortune of
a soldier's sword. It may be" (and here the artful favourite, the
most beloved of the whole court, inclined himself meekly)--"it may be
that I have not borne those honours so mildly as to disarm blame. In
the war to be, let me atone. My liege, hear your servant: give me no
command,--let me be a simple soldier, fighting by your side. My
example who will not follow?--proud to ride but as a man of arms along
the track which the sword of his sovereign shall cut through the ranks
of battle! Not you, Lord de Scales, redoubtable and invincible with
lance and axe; let us new men soothe envy by our deeds; and you, Lords
St. John and De Fulke, you shall teach us how your fathers led
warriors who did not fight more gallantly than we will. And when
rebellion is at rest, when we meet again in our suzerain's hall,
accuse us new men, if you can find us faulty, and we will answer you
as we best may."
This address, which could have come from no man with such effect as
from Hastings, touched all present. And though the Woodvilles, father
and son, saw in it much to gall their pride, and half believed it a
snare for their humiliation, they made no opposition. Raoul de Fulke,
ever generous as fiery, stretched forth his hand, and said,--
"Lord Hastings, you have spoken well. Be it as the king wills."
"My lords," returned Edward, gayly, "my will is that ye be friends
while a foe is in the field. Hasten, then, I beseech you, one and
all, to raise your vassals, and join our standard at Fotheringay. I
will find ye posts that shall content the bravest."
The king made a sign to break up the conference, and dismissing even
the Woodvilles, was left alone with Hastings.
"Thou hast served me at need, Will;" said the king. "But I shall
remember" (and his eye flashed a tiger's fire) "the mouthing of those
mock-pieces of the lords at Runnymede. I am no John, to be bearded by
my vassals. Enough of them now. Think you Warwick can have abetted
this revolt?"
"A revolt of peasants and yeomen! No, sire. If he did so, farewell
forever to the love the barons bear him."
"Um! and yet Montagu, whom I dismissed ten days since to the Borders,
hearing of disaffection, hath done nought to check it. But come what
may, his must be a bold lance that shivers against a king's mail. And
now one kiss of my lady Bessee, one cup of the bright canary, and then
God and Saint George for the White Rose!"
CHAPTER II.
THE CAMP AT OLNEY.
It was some weeks after the citizens of London had seen their gallant
king, at the head of such forces as were collected in haste in the
metropolis, depart from their walls to the encounter of the rebels.
Surprising and disastrous had been the tidings in the interim. At
first, indeed, there were hopes that the insurrection had been put
down by Montagu, who had defeated the troops of Robin of Redesdale,
near the city of York, and was said to have beheaded their leader.
But the spirit of discontent was only fanned by an adverse wind. The
popular hatred to the Woodvilles was so great, that in proportion as
Edward advanced to the scene of action, the country rose in arms, as
Raoul de Fulke had predicted. Leaders of lordly birth now headed the
rebellion; the sons of the Lords Latimer and Fitzhugh (near kinsmen of
the House of Nevile) lent their names to the cause and Sir John
Coniers, an experienced soldier, whose claims had been disregarded by
Edward, gave to the insurgents the aid of a formidable capacity for
war. In every mouth was the story of the Duchess of Bedford's
witchcraft; and the waxen figure of the earl did more to rouse the
people than perhaps the earl himself could have done in person. [See
"Parliamentary Rolls," vi. 232, for the accusation of witchcraft, and
the fabrication of a necromantic image of Lord Warwick, circulated
against the Duchess of Bedford. She herself quotes and complains of
them.] As yet, however, language of the insurgents was tempered with
all personal respect to the king; they declared in their manifestoes
that they desired only the banishment of the Woodvilles and the recall
of Warwick, whose name they used unscrupulously, and whom they
declared they were on their way to meet. As soon as it was known that
the kinsmen of the beloved earl were in the revolt, and naturally
supposed that the earl himself must countenance the enterprise, the
tumultuous camp swelled every hour, while knight after knight, veteran
after veteran, abandoned the royal standard. The Lord d'Eyncourt (one
of the few lords of the highest birth and greatest following over whom
the Neviles had no influence, and who bore the Woodvilles no grudge)
had, in his way to Lincolnshire,--where his personal aid was necessary
to rouse his vassals, infected by the common sedition,--been attacked
and wounded by a body of marauders, and thus Edward's camp lost one of
its greatest leaders. Fierce dispute broke out in the king's
councils; and when the witch Jacquetta's practices against the earl
travelled from the hostile into the royal camp, Raoul de Fulke, St.
John, and others, seized with pious horror, positively declared they
would throw down their arms and retire to their castles, unless the
Woodvilles were dismissed from the camp and the Earl of Warwick was
recalled to England. To the first demand the king was constrained to
yield; with the second he temporized. He marched from Fotheringay to
Newark; but the signs of disaffection, though they could not dismay
him as a soldier, altered his plans as a captain of singular military
acuteness; he fell back on Nottingham, and despatched, with his own
hands, letters to Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and Warwick. To
the last he wrote touchingly.
"We do not believe" (said the letter) "that ye should be of any such
disposition towards us as the rumour here runneth, considering the
trust and affection we bear you,--and cousin, we think ye shall be to
us welcome." [Paston Letters, ccxcviii. (Knight's edition), vol. ii.
p. 59. See also Lingard, vol. iii. p. 522 (4to edition), note 43, for
the proper date to be assigned to Edward's letter to Warwick, etc.]
But ere these letters reached their destination, the crown seemed
well-nigh lost. At Edgecote the Earl of Pembroke was defeated and
slain, and five thousand royalists were left on the field. Earl
Rivers and his son, Sir John Woodville, [This Sir John Woodville was
the most obnoxious of the queen's brothers, and infamous for the
avarice which had led him to marry the old Duchess of Norfolk, an act
which according to the old laws of chivalry would have disabled him
from entering the lists of knighthood, for the ancient code
disqualified and degraded any knight who should marry any old woman
for her money! Lord Rivers was the more odious to the people at the
time of the insurrection because, in his capacity of treasurer, he had
lately tampered with the coin and circulation.] who in obedience to
the royal order had retired to the earl's country seat of Grafton,
were taken prisoners, and beheaded by the vengeance of the insurgents.
The same lamentable fate befell the Lord Stafford, on whom Edward
relied as one of his most puissant leaders; and London heard with
dismay that the king, with but a handful of troops, and those lukewarm
and disaffected, was begirt on all sides by hostile and marching
thousands.
From Nottingham, however, Edward made good his retreat to a village
called Olney, which chanced at that time to be partially fortified
with a wall and a strong gate. Here the rebels pursued him; and
Edward, hearing that Sir Anthony Woodville, who conceived that the
fate of his father and brother cancelled all motive for longer absence
from the contest, was busy in collecting a force in the neighbourhood
of Coventry, while other assistance might be daily expected from
London, strengthened the fortifications as well as the time would
permit, and awaited the assault of the insurgents.
It was at this crisis, and while throughout all England reigned terror
and commotion, that one day, towards the end of July, a small troop of
horsemen were seen riding rapidly towards the neighbourhood of Olney.
As the village came in view of the cavalcade, with the spire of its
church and its gray stone gateway, so also they beheld, on the
pastures that stretched around wide and far, a moving forest of pikes
and plumes.
"Holy Mother!" said one of the foremost riders, "good the knight and
strong man though Edward be, it were sharp work to cut his way from
that hamlet through yonder fields! Brother, we were more welcome, had
we brought more bills and bows at our backs!"
"Archbishop," answered the stately personage thus addressed, "we bring
what alone raises armies and disbands them,--a NAME that a People
honours! From the moment the White Bear is seen on yonder archway
side by side with the king's banner, that army will vanish as smoke
before the wind."
"Heaven grant it, Warwick!" said the Duke of Clarence; for though
Edward hath used us sorely, it chafes me as Plantagenet and as prince
to see how peasants and varlets can hem round a king."
"Peasants and varlets are pawns in the chessboard, cousin George,"
said the prelate; "and knight and bishop find them mighty useful when
pushing forward to an attack. Now knight and bishop appear themselves
and take up the game. Warwick," added the prelate, in a whisper,
unheard by Clarence, "forget not, while appeasing rebellion, that the
king is in your power."
"For shame, George! I think not now of the unkind king; I think only
of the brave boy I dandled on my knee, and whose sword I girded on at
Towton. How his lion heart must chafe, condemned to see a foe whom
his skill as captain tells him it were madness to confront!"
"Ay, Richard Nevile, ay," said the prelate, with a slight sneer, "play
the Paladin, and become the dupe; release the prince, and betray the
people!"
"No! I can be true to both. Tush! brother, your craft is slight to
the plain wisdom of bold honesty. You slacken your steeds, sirs; on!
on! see the march of the rebels! On, for an Edward and a Warwick!"
and, spurring to full speed, the little company arrived at the gates.
The loud bugle of the new comers was answered by the cheerful note of
the joyous warder, while dark, slow, and solemn over the meadows crept
on the mighty crowd of the rebel army.
"We have forestalled the insurgents!" said the earl, throwing himself
from his black steed. "Marmaduke Nevile, advance our banner; heralds,
announce the Duke of Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and the Earl of
Salisbury and Warwick."
Through the anxious town, along the crowded walls and housetops, into
the hall of an old mansion (that then adjoined the church), where the
king, in complete armour, stood at bay, with stubborn and disaffected
officers, rolled the thunder cry, "A Warwick! a Warwick! all saved! a
Warwick!"
Sharply, as he heard the clamour, the king turned upon his startled
council. "Lords and captains!" said he, with that inexpressible
majesty which he could command in his happier hours, "God and our
Patron Saint have sent us at least one man who has the heart to fight
fifty times the odds of yon miscreant rabble, by his king's side, and
for the honour of loyalty and knighthood!"
"And who says, sire," answered Raoul de Fulke, "that we, your lords
and captains, would not risk blood and life for our king and our
knighthood in a just cause? But we will not butcher our countrymen
for echoing our own complaint, and praying your Grace that a grasping
and ambitious family which you have raised to power may no longer
degrade your nobles and oppress your commons. We shall see if the
Earl of Warwick blame us or approve."
"And I answer," said Edward, loftily, "that whether Warwick approve or
blame, come as friend or foe, I will sooner ride alone through yonder
archway, and carve out a soldier's grave amongst the ranks of
rebellious war, than be the puppet of my subjects, and serve their
will by compulsion. Free am I--free ever will I be, while the crown
of the Plantagenet is mine, to raise those whom I love, to defy the
threats of those sworn to obey me. And were I but Earl of March,
instead of king of England, this hall should have swum with the blood
of those who have insulted the friends of my youth, the wife of my
bosom. Off, Hastings!--I need no mediator with my servants. Nor
here, nor anywhere in broad England, have I my equal, and the king
forgives or scorns--construe it as ye will, my lords--what the simple
gentleman would avenge."
It were in vain to describe the sensation that this speech produced.
There is ever something in courage and in will that awes numbers,
though brave themselves. And what with the unquestioned valour of
Edward; what with the effect of his splendid person, towering above
all present by the head, and moving lightly, with each impulse,
through the mass of a mail that few there could have borne unsinking,
this assertion of absolute power in the midst of mutiny--an army
marching to the gates--imposed an unwilling reverence and sullen
silence mixed with anger, that, while it chafed, admired. They who in
peace had despised the voluptuous monarch, feasting in his palace, and
reclining on the lap of harlot-beauty, felt that in war all Mars
seemed living in his person. Then, indeed, he was a king; and had the
foe, now darkening the landscape, been the noblest chivalry of France,
not a man there but had died for a smile from that haughty lip. But
the barons were knit heart in heart with the popular outbreak, and to
put down the revolt seemed to them but to raise the Woodvilles. The
silence was still unbroken, save where the persuasive whisper of Lord
Hastings might be faintly heard in remonstrance with the more powerful
or the more stubborn of the chiefs, when the tread of steps resounded
without, and, unarmed, bareheaded, the only form in Christendom
grander and statelier than the king's strode into the hall.
Edward, as yet unaware what course Warwick would pursue, and half
doubtful whether a revolt that had borrowed his name and was led by
his kinsmen might not originate in his consent, surrounded by those to
whom the earl was especially dear, and aware that if Warwick were
against him all was lost, still relaxed not the dignity of his mien;
and leaning on his large two-handed sword, with such inward resolves
as brave kings and gallant gentlemen form, if the worst should befall,
he watched the majestic strides of his great kinsman, and said, as the
earl approached, and the mutinous captains louted low,--
"Cousin, you are welcome! for truly do I know that when you have aught
whereof to complain, you take not the moment of danger and disaster.
And whatever has chanced to alienate your heart from me, the sound of
the rebel's trumpet chases all difference, and marries your faith to
mine."
"Oh, Edward, my king, why did you so misjudge me in the prosperous
hour!" said Warwick, simply, but with affecting earnestness: "since in
the adverse hour you arede me well?"
As he spoke, he bowed his head, and, bending his knee, kissed the hand
held out to him.
Edward's face grew radiant, and, raising the earl, he glanced proudly
at the barons, who stood round, surprised and mute.
"Yes, my lords and sirs, see,--it is not the Earl of Warwick, next to
our royal brethren the nearest subject to the throne, who would desert
me in the day of peril!"
"Nor do we, sire," retorted Raoul de Fulke; "you wrong us before our
mighty comrade if you so misthink us. We will fight for the king, but
not for the queen's kindred; and this alone brings on us your anger."
"The gates shall be opened to ye. Go! Warwick and I are men enough
for the rabble yonder."
The earl's quick eye and profound experience of his time saw at once
the dissension and its causes. Nor, however generous, was he willing
to forego the present occasion for permanently destroying an influence
which he knew hostile to himself and hurtful to the realm. His was
not the generosity of a boy, but of a statesman. Accordingly, as
Raoul de Fulke ceased, he took up the word.
"My liege, we have yet an hour good ere the foe can reach the gates.
Your brother and mine accompany me. See, they enter! Please you, a
few minutes to confer with them; and suffer me, meanwhile, to reason
with these noble captains."
Edward paused; but before the open brow of the earl fled whatever
suspicion might have crossed the king's mind.
"Be it so, cousin; but remember this,--to councillors who can menace
me with desertion at such an hour, I concede nothing."
Turning hastily away, he met Clarence and the prelate midway in the
hall, threw his arm caressingly over his brother's shoulder, and,
taking the archbishop by the hand, walked with them towards the
battlements.
"Well, my friends," said Warwick, "and what would you of the king?"
"The dismissal of all the Woodvilles, except the queen; the revocation
of the grants and land accorded to them, to the despoiling the ancient
noble; and, but for your presence, we had demanded your recall."
"And, failing these, what your resolve?"
"To depart, and leave Edward to his fate. These granted, we doubt
little but that the insurgents will disband. These not granted, we
but waste our lives against a multitude whose cause we must approve."
"The cause! But ye know not the real cause," answered Warwick. "I
know it; for the sons of the North are familiar to me, and their
rising hath deeper meaning than ye deem. What! have they not decoyed
to their head my kinsmen, the heirs of Latimer and Fitzhugh, and bold
Coniers, whose steel calque should have circled a wiser brain? Have
they not taken my name as their battle-cry? And do ye think this
falsehood veils nothing but the simple truth of just complaint?"
"Was their rising, then," asked St. John, in evident surprise, "wholly
unauthorized by you?"
"So help me Heaven! if I would resort to arms to redress a wrong,
think not that I myself would be absent from the field! No, my lords,
friends, and captains, time presses; a few words must suffice to
explain what as yet may be dark to you. I have letters from Montagu
and others, which reached me the same day as the king's, and which
clear up the purpose of our misguided countrymen. Ye know well that
ever in England, but especially since the reign of Edward III.,
strange, wild notions of some kind of liberty other than that we enjoy
have floated loose through the land. Among the commons, a half-
conscious recollection that the nobles are a different race from
themselves feeds a secret rancour and mislike, which, at any fair
occasion for riot, shows itself bitter and ruthless,--as in the
outbreak of Cade and others. And if the harvest fail, or a tax gall,
there are never wanting men to turn the popular distress to the ends
of private ambition or state design. Such a man has been the true
head and front of this commotion."
"Speak you of Robin of Redesdale, now dead?" asked one of the
captains.
"He is not dead. [The fate of Robin of Redesdale has been as obscure
as most of the incidents in this most perplexed part of English
history. While some of the chroniclers finish his career according to
the report mentioned in the text, Fabyan not only more charitably
prolongs his life, but rewards him with the king's pardon; and
according to the annals of his ancient and distinguished family (who
will pardon, we trust, a license with one of their ancestry equally
allowed by history and romance), as referred to in Wotton's "English
Baronetage" (Art. "Hilyard"), and which probably rests upon the
authority of the life of Richard III., in Stowe's "Annals," he is
represented as still living in the reign of that king. But the whole
account of this famous demagogue in Wotton is, it must be owned, full
of historical mistakes.] Montagu informs me that the report was
false. He was defeated off York, and retired for some days into the
woods; but it is he who has enticed the sons of Latimer and Fitzhugh
into the revolt, and resigned his own command to the martial cunning
of Sir John Coniers. This Robin of Redesdale is no common man. He
hath had a clerkly education, he hath travelled among the Free Towns
of Italy, he hath deep purpose in all he doth; and among his projects
is the destruction of the nobles here, as it was whilome effected in
Florence, the depriving us of all offices and posts, with other
changes, wild to think of and long to name."