The Last of the Barons — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

  CHAPTER II. THE PROSPERITY OF THE OUTER SHOW--THE CARES OF THE INNERMAN.

  The position of the king-maker was, to a superficial observer, such asmight gratify to the utmost the ambition and the pride of man. He haddriven from the land one of the most gorgeous princes and one of theboldest warriors that ever sat upon a throne. He had changed a dynastywithout a blow. In the alliances of his daughters, whatever chanced, itseemed certain that by one or the other his posterity would be the kingsof England.

  The easiness of his victory appeared to prove of itself that the heartsof the people were with him; and the parliament that he hastened tosummon confirmed by law the revolution achieved by a bloodless sword.[Lingard, Hume, etc.]

  Nor was there aught abroad which menaced disturbance to the peace athome. Letters from the Countess of Warwick and Lady Anne announced theirtriumphant entry at Paris, where Margaret of Anjou was received withhonours never before rendered but to a queen of France.

  A solemn embassy, meanwhile, was preparing to proceed from Paris toLondon to congratulate Henry, and establish a permanent treaty of peaceand commerce, [Rymer, xi., 682-690] while Charles of Burgundy himself(the only ally left to Edward) supplicated for the continuance ofamicable relations with England, stating that they were formed with thecountry, not with any special person who might wear the crown; [Hume,Comines] and forbade his subjects by proclamation to join any enterprisefor the recovery of his throne which Edward might attempt.

  The conduct of Warwick, whom the parliament had declared, conjointlywith Clarence, protector of the realm during the minority of the Princeof Wales, was worthy of the triumph he had obtained. He exhibited nowa greater genius for government than he had yet displayed; for allhis passions were nerved to the utmost, to consummate his victory andsharpen his faculties. He united mildness towards the defeated factionwith a firmness which repelled all attempt at insurrection. [Habington.]

  In contrast to the splendour that surrounded his daughter Anne, allaccounts spoke of the humiliation to which Charles subjected the exiledking; and in the Sanctuary, amidst homicides and felons, the wife of theearl'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 andhis children were regal authority and gorgeous pomp, for the fugitiveand his offspring were the bread of the exile, or the refuge of theoutlaw.

  But still the earl's prosperity was hollow, the statue of brass stood onlimbs of clay. The position of a man with the name of subject, but theauthority of king, was an unpopular anomaly in England. In the principaltrading-towns had been long growing up that animosity towards thearistocracy of which Henry VII. availed himself to raise a despotism(and which, even in our day, causes the main disputes of faction); butthe recent revolution was one in which the towns had had no share.It was a revolution made by the representative of the barons and hisfollowers. It was connected with no advancement of the middle class;it seemed to the men of commerce but the violence of a turbulent anddisappointed nobility. The very name given to Warwick's supporters wasunpopular in the towns. They were not called the Lancastrians, or thefriends of King Henry,--they were styled then, and still are so, bythe old chronicler, "The Lord's Party." Most of whatever was stillfeudal--the haughtiest of the magnates, the rudest of the yeomanry,the most warlike of the knights--gave to Warwick the sanction of theirallegiance; and this sanction was displeasing to the intelligence of thetowns.

  Classes in all times have a keen instinct of their own class-interests.The revolution which the earl had effected was the triumph ofaristocracy; its natural results would tend to strengthen certainly themoral, and probably the constitutional, power already possessed by thatmartial order. The new parliament was their creature, Henry VI. was acipher, his son a boy with unknown character, and according to vulgarscandal, of doubtful legitimacy, seemingly bound hand and foot in thetrammels of the archbaron's mighty House; the earl himself had neverscrupled to evince a distaste to the change in society which was slowlyconverting an agricultural into a trading population.

  It may be observed, too, that a middle class as rarely unites itselfwith the idols of the populace as with the chiefs of a seignorie. Thebrute attachment of the peasants and the mobs to the gorgeous and lavishearl seemed to the burgesses the sign of a barbaric clanship, opposedto that advance in civilization towards which they half unconsciouslystruggled.

  And here we must rapidly glance at what, as far as a statesman mayforesee, would have been the probable result of Warwick's ascendancy,if durable and effectual. If attached, by prejudice and birth, to thearistocracy, he was yet by reputation and habit attached also to thepopular party,--that party more popular than the middle class,--themajority, the masses. His whole life had been one struggle againstdespotism in the crown. Though far from entertaining such schemes asin similar circumstances might have occurred to the deep sagacity ofan Italian patrician for the interest of his order, no doubt his policywould have tended to this one aim,--the limitation of the monarchy bythe strength of an aristocracy endeared to the agricultural population,owing to that population its own powers of defence, with the wantsand grievances of that population thoroughly familiar, and willing tosatisfy the one and redress the other: in short, the great baron wouldhave secured and promoted liberty according to the notions of a seigneurand 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 whichthe Stuarts were the sufferers. The earl's family, and his own "largefather-like heart," had ever been opposed to religious persecution; andtimely toleration to the Lollards might have prevented the long-delayedrevenge of their posterity, the Puritans. Gradually, perhaps, mightthe system he represented (of the whole consequences of which he wasunconscious) 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 blessingsthat attend their power, would have risen much more slowly thanwhen made as they were already, partially under Edward IV., and moresystematically under Henry VIL, the instrument for destroying feudalaristocracy, and thereby establishing for a long and fearful intervalthe arbitrary rule of the single tyrant. Warwick's dislike to thecommercial biases of Edward was, in fact, not a patrician prejudicealone. It required no great sagacity to perceive that Edward haddesigned to raise up a class that, though powerful when employed againstthe barons, would long be impotent against the encroachments of thecrown; 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 havebeen the happier for England,--the one that based a despotism on themiddle class, or the one that founded an aristocracy upon popularaffection,--it was clear to the more enlightened burgesses of thegreat towns, that between Edward of York and the Earl of Warwick a vastprinciple was at stake, and the commercial king seemed to them a morenatural 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 againstthe honest earl.

  Warwick did not, however, apprehend any serious results from the passivedistaste of the trading towns. His martial spirit led him to despise theleast martial part of the population. He knew that the towns would notrise in arms so long as their charters were respected; and that slow,undermining hostility which exists only in opinion, his intellect, sovigorous in immediate dangers, was not far-sighted enough to comprehend.More direct cause for apprehension would there have been to a suspiciousmind in the demeanour of the earl's colleague in the Protectorate,--theDuke of Clarence. It was obviously Warwick's policy to satisfy this weakbut ambitious person. The duke was, as before agreed, declared heirto the vast possessions of the House of York. He was invested with theLieutenancy of Ireland, but delayed his departure to his government tillthe arrival of the
Prince of Wales. The personal honours accorded him inthe mean while were those due to a sovereign; but still the duke's browwas moody, though, if the earl noticed it, Clarence rallied into seemingcheerfulness, and reiterated pledges of faith and friendship.

  The manner of Isabel to her father was varying and uncertain: at onetime hard and cold; at another, as if in the reaction of secret remorse,she would throw herself into his arms, and pray him, weepingly, toforgive her wayward humours. But the curse of the earl's position wasthat which he had foreseen before quitting Amboise, and which, more orless, attends upon those who from whatever cause suddenly desert theparty with which all their associations, whether of fame or friendship,have been interwoven. His vengeance against one had comprehended manystill dear to him. He was not only separated from his old companions inarms, but he had driven their most eminent into exile. He stoodalone amongst men whom the habits of an active life had indissolublyconnected, in his mind, with recollections of wrath and wrong. Amidstthat 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 aheavy blow to a heart already bruised and sore, when the fiery Raoul deFulke, 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 avassal, if thou wouldst wrestle with lewd Edward for the crown whichonly a manly brow should wear; and hadst thou now returned, as Henryof Lancaster returned of old, to gripe the sceptre of the Norman with aconqueror'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 throneyon monk-puppet, and to call on brave hearts to worship a patterer ofaves and a counter of beads; to fix the succession of England inthe adulterous offspring of Margaret, the butcher-harlot [One of thegreatest obstacles to the cause of the Red Rose was the popular beliefthat the young prince was not Henry's son. Had that belief not beenwidely spread and firmly maintained, the lords who arbitrated betweenHenry VI. and Richard Duke of York, in October, 1460, could scarcelyhave 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 hisheir. Ten years previously (in November, 1450), before the youngprince was born or thought of, and the proposition was really just andreasonable, it was moved in the House of Commons to declare Richard Dukeof York next heir to Henry; which, at least, by birthright, he certainlywas; but the motion met with little favour and the mover was sent tothe Tower.]; to give the power of the realm to the men against whom thouthyself hast often led me to strive with lance and battle-axe, is toopen a path which leads but to dishonour, and thither Raoul de Fulkefollows 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, andI bid thee farewell forever!"

  "I pardon thee," answered Warwick; "and if ever thou art wronged as Ihave been, thy heart will avenge me. Go!" But when this haughty visitorwas gone, the earl covered his face with his hands, and groaned aloud.A defection perhaps even more severely felt came next. Katherine deBonville had been the earl's favourite sister; he wrote to her at theconvent to which she had retired, praying her affectionately to come toLondon, "and cheer his vexed spirit, and learn the true cause, not tobe told by letter, which had moved him to things once farthest from histhought." The messenger came back, the letter unopened; for Katherinehad left the convent, and fled into Burgundy, distrustful, as it seemedto Warwick, of her own brother. The nature of this lion-hearted man was,as we have seen, singularly kindly, frank, and affectionate; and nowin the most critical, the most anxious, the most tortured period of hislife, confidence and affection were forbidden to him. What had he notgiven for one hour of the soothing company of his wife, the only beingin the world to whom his pride could have communicated the grief of hisheart, or the doubts of his conscience! Alas! never on earth should hehear that soft voice again! Anne, too, the gentle, childlike Anne, wasafar; but she was happy,--a basker in the brief sunshine, and blind tothe darkening clouds. His elder child, with her changeful moods, addedbut to his disquiet and unhappiness. Next to Edward, Warwick of allthe House of York had loved Clarence, though a closer and more domesticintimacy had weakened the affection by lessening the esteem. But lookingfurther into the future, he now saw in this alliance the seeds of manya 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 veryconnections which seemed most to strengthen his House, lay all whichmust destroy the hallowed unity and peace of family and home.

  The Archbishop of York had prudently taken no part whatever in themeasures that had changed the dynasty. He came now to reap thefruits; did homage to Henry VI., received the Chancellor's seals, andrecommenced intrigues for the Cardinal's hat. But between the boldwarrior and the wily priest there could be but little of the endearmentof brotherly confidence and love. With Montagu alone could the earlconfer in cordiality and unreserve; and their similar position, andcertain points of agreement in their characters, now more clearlybrought out and manifest, served to make their friendship for each otherfirmer and more tender, in the estrangement of all other ties, than everit had been before. But the marquis was soon compelled to depart fromLondon, to his post as warden of the northern marches; for Warwick hadnot the rash presumption of Edward, and neglected no precaution againstthe return of the dethroned king.

  So there, alone, in pomp and in power, vengeance consummated, ambitiongratified, 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 grayshowed more and more amidst the raven curls of the strong man.