The Last of the Barons — Complete

“And so,” quoth the earl, taking up the tale—“so mare and horse were brought by Aymer’s squires to his English hall; and Aymer’s son, Sir Reginald, bore the cross, and bestrode the fatal steed, without fear and without scathe. From that hour the House of Nevile rose amain, in fame and in puissance; and the legend further saith, that the same palmer encountered Sir Reginald at Joppa, bade him treasure that race of war-steeds as his dearest heritage, for with that race his own should flourish and depart; and the sole one of the Infidel’s spells which could not be broken was that which united the gift—generation after generation, for weal or for woe, for honour or for doom—to the fate of Aymer and his House. ‘And,’ added the palmer, ‘as with woman’s love and woman’s craft was woven the indissoluble charm, so shall woman, whether in craft or in love, ever shape the fortunes of thee and thine.’”

“As yet,” said the prince, “the prophecy is fulfilled in a golden sense, for nearly all thy wide baronies, I trow, have come to thee through the female side. A woman’s hand brought to the Nevile this castle and its lands; [Middleham Castle was built by Robert Fitz Ranulph, grandson of Ribald, younger brother of the Earl of Bretagne and Richmond, nephew to the Conqueror. The founder’s line failed in male heirs, and the heiress married Robert Nevile, son of Lord Raby. Warwick’s father held the earldom of Salisbury in right of his wife, the heiress of Thomas de Montacute.] from a woman came the heritage of Monthermer and Montagu, and Salisbury’s famous earldom; and the dower of thy peerless countess was the broad domains of Beauchamp.”

“And a woman’s craft, young prince, wrought my king’s displeasure! But enough of these dissour’s tales; behold the son of poor Malech, whom, forgetting all such legends, I slew at Towton. Ho, Saladin, greet thy master!”

They stood now in the black steed’s stall.—an ample and high-vaulted space, for halter never insulted the fierce destrier’s mighty neck, which the God of Battles had clothed in thunder. A marble cistern contained his limpid drink, and in a gilded manger the finest wheaten bread was mingled with the oats of Flanders. On entering, they found young George, Montagu’s son, with two or three boys, playing familiarly with the noble animal, who had all the affectionate docility inherited from an Arab origin. But at the sound of Warwick’s voice, its ears rose, its mane dressed itself, and with a short neigh it came to his feet, and kneeling down, in slow and stately grace, licked its master’s hand. So perfect and so matchless a steed never had knight bestrode! Its hide without one white hair, and glossy as the sheenest satin; a lady’s tresses were scarcely finer than the hair of its noble mane; the exceeding smallness of its head, its broad frontal, the remarkable and almost human intelligence of its eye, seemed actually to elevate its conformation above that of its species. Though the race had increased, generation after generation, in size and strength, Prince Richard still marvelled (when, obedient to a sign from Warwick, the destrier rose, and leaned its head, with a sort of melancholy and quiet tenderness, upon the earl’s shoulder) that a horse, less in height and bulk than the ordinary battle-steed, could bear the vast weight of the giant earl in his ponderous mail. But his surprise ceased when the earl pointed out to him the immense strength of the steed’s ample loins, the sinewy cleanness, the iron muscle, of the stag-like legs, the bull-like breadth of chest, and the swelling power of the shining neck.

“And after all,” added the earl, “both in man and beast, the spirit and the race, not the stature and the bulk, bring the prize. Mort Dieu, Richard! it often shames me of mine own thews and broad breast,—I had been more vain of laurels had I been shorter by the head!”

“Nevertheless,” said young George of Montagu, with a page’s pertness, “I had rather have thine inches than Prince Richard’s, and thy broad breast than his grace’s short neck.”

The Duke of Gloucester turned as if a snake had stung him. He gave but one glance to the speaker, but that glance lived forever in the boy’s remembrance, and the young Montagu turned pale and trembled, even before he heard the earl’s stern rebuke.

“Young magpies chatter, boy,—young eagles in silence measure the space between the eyry and the sun!”

The boy hung his head, and would have slunk off, but Richard detained him with a gentle hand. “My fair young cousin,” said he, “thy words gall no sore, and if ever thou and I charge side by side into the foeman’s ranks, thou shalt comprehend what thy uncle designed to say,—how, in the hour of strait and need, we measure men’s stature not by the body but the soul!”

“A noble answer,” whispered Anne, with something like sisterly admiration.

“Too noble,” said the more ambitious Isabel, in the same voice, “for Clarence’s future wife not to fear Clarence’s dauntless brother.”

“And so,” said the prince, quitting the stall with Warwick, while the girls still lingered behind, “so Saladin hath no son! Wherefore? Can you mate him with no bride?”

“Faith,” answered the earl, “the females of his race sleep in yonder dell, their burial-place, and the proud beast disdains all meaner loves. Nay, were it not so, to continue the breed, if adulterated, were but to mar it.”

“You care little for the legend, meseems.”

“Pardieu! at times, yes, over much; but in sober moments I think that the brave man who does his duty lacks no wizard prophecy to fulfil his doom; and whether in prayer or in death, in fortune or defeat, his soul goes straight to God!”

“Umph,” said Richard, musingly; and there was a pause. “Warwick,” resumed the prince, “doubtless, even on your return to London, the queen’s enmity and her mother’s will not cease. Clarence loves Isabel, but Clarence knows not how to persuade the king and rule the king’s womankind. Thou knowest how I have stood aloof from all the factions of the court. Unhappily I go to the Borders, and can but slightly serve thee. But—” (he stopped short, and sighed heavily).

“Speak on, Prince.”

“In a word, then, if I were thy son, Anne’s husband, I see—I see—I see—” (thrice repeated the prince, with a vague dreaminess in his eye, and stretching forth his hand)—“a future that might defy all foes, opening to me and thee!”

Warwick hesitated in some embarrassment.

“My gracious and princely cousin,” he said at length, “this proffer is indeed sweet incense to a father’s pride. But pardon me, as yet, noble Richard, thou art so young that the king and the world would blame me did I suffer my ambition to listen to such temptation. Enough, at present, if all disputes between our House and the king can be smoothed and laid at rest without provoking new ones. Nay, pardon me, prince, let this matter cease—at least, till thy return from the Borders.”

“May I take with me hope?”

“Nay,” said Warwick, “thou knowest that I am a plain man; to bid thee hope were to plight my word. And,” he added seriously, “there be reasons grave and well to be considered why both the daughters of a subject should not wed with their king’s brothers. Let this cease now, I pray thee, sweet lord.”

Here the demoiselles joined their father, and the conference was over; but when Richard, an hour after, stood musing alone on the battlements, he muttered to himself, “Thou art a fool, stout earl, not to have welcomed the union between thy power and my wit. Thou goest to a court where without wit power is nought. Who may foresee the future? Marry, that was a wise ancient fable, that he who seized and bound Proteus could extract from the changeful god the prophecy of the days to come. Yea! the man who can seize Fate can hear its voice predict to him. And by my own heart and brain, which never yet relinquished what affection yearned for, or thought aspired to, I read, as in a book, Anne, that thou shalt be mine; and that where wave on yon battlements the ensigns of Beauchamp, Monthermer, and Nevile, the Boar of Gloucester shall liege it over their broad baronies and hardy vassals.”

BOOK VI

WHEREIN ARE OPENED SOME GLIMPSES OF THE FATE BELOW THAT ATTENDS THOSE WHO ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, AND THOSE WHO DESIRE TO MAKE OTHERS BETTER. LOVE, DEMAGOGY, AND SCIENCE ALL EQUALLY OFF-SPRING OF THE SAME PROLIFIC DELUSION,—NAMELY, THAT MEAN SOULS (THE EARTH’S MAJORITY) ARE WORTH THE HOPE AND THE AGONY OF NOBLE SOULS, THE EVERLASTING SUFFERING AND ASPIRING FEW

CHAPTER I. NEW DISSENSIONS

We must pass over some months. Warwick and his family had returned to London, and the meeting between Edward and the earl had been cordial and affectionate. Warwick was reinstated in the offices which gave him apparently the supreme rule in England. The Princess Margaret had left England as the bride of Charles the Bold; and the earl had attended the procession in honour of her nuptials. The king, agreeably with the martial objects he had had long at heart, had then declared war on Louis XI., and parliament was addressed and troops were raised for that impolitic purpose. [Parliamentary Rolls, 623. The fact in the text has been neglected by most historians.] To this war, however, Warwick was inflexibly opposed. He pointed out the madness of withdrawing from England all her best-affected chivalry, at a time when the adherents of Lancaster, still powerful, would require no happier occasion to raise the Red Rose banner. He showed how hollow was the hope of steady aid from the hot but reckless and unprincipled Duke of Burgundy, and how different now was the condition of France under a king of consummate sagacity and with an overflowing treasury to its distracted state in the former conquests of the English. This opposition to the king’s will gave every opportunity for Warwick’s enemies to renew their old accusation of secret and treasonable amity with Louis. Although the proud and hasty earl had not only forgiven the affront put upon him by Edward, but had sought to make amends for his own intemperate resentment, by public attendance on the ceremonials that accompanied the betrothal of the princess, it was impossible for Edward ever again to love the minister who had defied his power and menaced his crown. His humour and his suspicions broke forth despite the restraint that policy dictated to him: and in the disputes upon the invasion of France, a second and more deadly breach between Edward and his minister must have yawned, had not events suddenly and unexpectedly proved the wisdom of Warwick’s distrust of Burgundy. Louis XI. bought off the Duke of Bretagne, patched up a peace with Charles the Bold, and thus frustrated all the schemes and broke all the alliances of Edward at the very moment his military preparations were ripe. [W. Wyr, 518.]

Still the angry feelings that the dispute had occasioned between Edward and the earl were not removed with the cause; and under pretence of guarding against hostilities from Louis, the king requested Warwick to depart to his government of Calais, the most important and honourable post, it is true, which a subject could then hold: but Warwick considered the request as a pretext for his removal from the court. A yet more irritating and insulting cause of offence was found in Edward’s withholding his consent to Clarence’s often-urged demand for permission to wed with the Lady Isabel. It is true that this refusal was accompanied with the most courteous protestations of respect for the earl, and placed only upon the general ground of state policy.

“My dear George,” Edward would say, “the heiress of Lord Warwick is certainly no mal-alliance for a king’s brother; but the safety of the throne imperatively demands that my brothers should strengthen my rule by connections with foreign potentates. I, it is true, married a subject, and see all the troubles that have sprung from my boyish passion! No, no! Go to Bretagne. The duke hath a fair daughter, and we will make up for any scantiness in the dower. Weary me no more, George. Fiat voluntas mea!”

But the motives assigned were not those which influenced the king’s refusal. Reasonably enough, he dreaded that the next male heir to his crown should wed the daughter of the subject who had given that crown, and might at any time take it away. He knew Clarence to be giddy, unprincipled, and vain. Edward’s faith in Warwick was shaken by the continual and artful representations of the queen and her family. He felt that the alliance between Clarence and the earl would be the union of two interests almost irresistible if once arrayed against his own.

But Warwick, who penetrated into the true reason for Edward’s obstinacy, was yet more resentful against the reasons than the obstinacy itself. The one galled him through his affections, the other through his pride; and the first were as keen as the last was morbid. He was the more chafed, inasmuch as his anxiety of father became aroused. Isabel was really attached to Clarence, who, with all his errors, possessed every superficial attraction that graced his House,—gallant and handsome, gay and joyous, and with manners that made him no less popular than Edward himself.

And if Isabel’s affections were not deep, disinterested, and tender, like those of Anne, they were strengthened by a pride which she inherited from her father, and a vanity which she took from her sex. It was galling in the extreme to feel that the loves between her and Clarence were the court gossip, and the king’s refusal the court jest. Her health gave way, and pride and love both gnawed at her heart.

It happened, unfortunately for the king and for Warwick, that Gloucester, whose premature acuteness and sagacity would have the more served both, inasmuch as the views he had formed in regard to Anne would have blended his interest in some degree with that of the Duke of Clarence, and certainly with the object of conciliation between Edward and his minister,—it happened, we say, unfortunately, that Gloucester was still absent with the forces employed on the Scottish frontier, whither he had repaired on quitting Middleham, and where his extraordinary military talents found their first brilliant opening; and he was therefore absent from London during all the disgusts he might have removed and the intrigues he might have frustrated.

But the interests of the House of Warwick, during the earl’s sullen and indignant sojourn at his government of Calais, were not committed to unskilful hands; and Montagu and the archbishop were well fitted to cope with Lord Rivers and the Duchess of Bedford.

Between these able brothers, one day, at the More, an important conference took place.

“I have sought you,” said Montagu, with more than usual care upon his brow—“I have sought you in consequence of an event that may lead to issues of no small moment, whether for good or evil. Clarence has suddenly left England for Calais.”

“I know it, Montagu; the duke confided to me his resolution to proclaim himself old enough to marry,—and discreet enough to choose for himself.”

“And you approved?”

“Certes; and, sooth to say, I brought him to that modest opinion of his own capacities. What is more still, I propose to join him at Calais.”

“George!”

“Look not so scared, O valiant captain, who never lost a battle,—where the Church meddles, all prospers. Listen!” And the young prelate gathered himself up from his listless posture, and spoke with earnest unction. “Thou knowest that I do not much busy myself in lay schemes; when I do, the object must be great. Now, Montagu, I have of late narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a court, and I see that the spider will devour the wasp, unless the wasp boldly break the web,—for woman-craft I call the spider, and soldier-pride I style the wasp. To speak plainly, these Woodvilles must be bravely breasted and determinately abashed. I do not mean that we can deal with the king’s wife and her family as with any other foes; but we must convince them that they cannot cope with us, and that their interests will best consist in acquiescing in that condition of things which places the rule of England in the hands of the Neviles.”

“My own thought, if I saw the way!”

“I see the way in this alliance; the Houses of York and Warwick must become so indissolubly united, that an attempt to injure the one must destroy both. The queen and the Woodvilles plot against us; we must raise in the king’s family a counterpoise to their machinations. It brings no scandal on the queen to conspire against Warwick, but it would ruin her in the eyes of England to conspire against the king’s brother; and Clarence and Warwick must be as one. This is not all! If our sole aid was in giddy George, we should but buttress our House with a weathercock. This connection is but as a part of the grand scheme on which I have set my heart,—Clarence shall wed Isabel, Gloucester wed Anne, and (let thy ambitious heart beat high, Montagu) the king’s eldest daughter shall wed thy son,—the male representative of our triple honours. Ah, thine eyes sparkle now! Thus the whole royalty of England shall centre in the Houses of Nevile and York; and the Woodvilles will be caught and hampered in their own meshes, their resentment impotent; for how can Elizabeth stir against us, if her daughter be betrothed to the son of Montagu, the nephew of Warwick? Clarence, beloved by the shallow commons; [Singular as it may seem to those who know not that popularity is given to the vulgar qualities of men, and that where a noble nature becomes popular (a rare occurrence), it is despite the nobleness,—not because of it. Clarence was a popular idol even to the time of his death.—Croyl., 562.] Gloucester, adored both by the army and the Church; and Montagu and Warwick, the two great captains of the age,—is not this a combination of power that may defy Fate?”

“O George!” said Montagu, admiringly, “what pity that the Church should spoil such a statesman!”

“Thou art profane, Montagu; the Church spoils no man,—the Church leads and guides ye all; and, mark, I look farther still. I would have intimate league with France; I would strengthen ourselves with Spain and the German Emperor; I would buy or seduce the votes of the sacred college; I would have thy poor brother, whom thou so pitiest because he has no son to marry a king’s daughter, no daughter to wed with a king’s son—I would have thy unworthy brother, Montagu, the father of the whole Christian world, and, from the chair of the Vatican, watch over the weal of kingdoms. And now, seest thou why with to-morrow’s sun I depart for Calais, and lend my voice in aid of Clarence’s for the first knot in this complicated bond?”

“But will Warwick consent while the king opposes? Will his pride—”

“His pride serves us here; for so long as Clarence did not dare to gainsay the king, Warwick in truth might well disdain to press his daughter’s hand upon living man. The king opposes, but with what right? Warwick’s pride will but lead him, if well addressed, to defy affront and to resist dictation. Besides, our brother has a woman’s heart for his children; and Isabel’s face is pale, and that will plead more than all my eloquence.”

“But can the king forgive your intercession and Warwick’s contumacy?”

“Forgive!—the marriage once over, what is left for him to do? He is then one with us, and when Gloucester returns all will be smooth again,—smooth for the second and more important nuptials; and the second shall preface the third; meanwhile, you return to the court. To these ceremonials you need be no party: keep but thy handsome son from breaking his neck in over-riding his hobby, and ‘bide thy time!’”

Agreeably with the selfish but sagacious policy thus detailed, the prelate departed the next day for Calais, where Clarence was already urging his suit with the ardent impatience of amorous youth. The archbishop found, however, that Warwick was more reluctant than he had anticipated, to suffer his daughter to enter any House without the consent of its chief; nor would the earl, in all probability, have acceded to the prayers of the princely suitor, had not Edward, enraged at the flight of Clarence, and worked upon by the artful queen, committed the imprudence of writing an intemperate and menacing letter to the earl, which called up all the passions of the haughty Warwick.