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Red and White: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses

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Title: Red and White: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses

Creator: Emily Sarah Holt


        
Release date: December 18, 2013 [eBook #44463]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED AND WHITE: A TALE OF THE WARS OF THE ROSES ***




Produced by Al Haines.



[Illustration: "Nan!" broke from her father's lips, in tones more
eloquent than a volume would have been.  "Little Nan!" "I would I were
your little Nan again," she said.  "We were happy then, my Lord--at
least I was."  P. 140.]




                            _Red and White_

                               _A Tale of
                         The Wars of the Roses_


                                   BY

                            EMILY SARAH HOLT

              AUTHOR OF "THE WHITE ROSE OF LANGLEY," ETC.



    "If loving hearts were never lonely,
      If all they wish might always be,
    Accepting what they look for only,
      They might be glad, but not in Thee."
        --ANNA L. WARING.



                             _NEW EDITION_



                                 LONDON
                          JOHN F. SHAW AND CO.
                           48 PATERNOSTER ROW
                                  1882




                               *PREFACE.*

It is a proverbial truth that thunderstorms clear the air.  And it would
seem as though that eventful and terrible period of English history,
known as the Wars of the Roses, had cleared the political air for the
coming Reformation.  How little those who took part in it realised the
time to follow!  To the men of that day it was either a wrestle for
personal fame, or a passionate enthusiasm for the establishment of
Right. To the women with whom it was not the latter, it must have been a
meaningless agony--a passion with no visible end, and with no
conceivable moral purpose.  Alas for him who loses his faith in the
providence of God, for the key of the world has dropped out of his hand.
And happy are they who can calmly walk on in the dark by the side of the
Father, it may be feeling the atmosphere painfully oppressive, yet
willing to wait His time, and knowing that when they come forth into the
light of the Golden City, they will be satisfied with it.




                              *CONTENTS.*


CHAP.

      I. THE FLEDGLINGS LEAVE THE NEST
     II. LILIES AMONG THE THORNS
    III. FLIGHT
     IV. SCENE-SHIFTING
      V. HIS LITTLE NAN
     VI. THE MIST ON EASTER DAY
    VII. THE LAST BATTLE OF THE RIVAL ROSES
   VIII. THE END OF A WEDDING-DAY
     IX. DRAWING NEARER
      X. AT THE PARCHMENT-MAKER'S
     XI. A LAST INTERVIEW
    XII. IDONIA UNDERSTANDS
   XIII. THE LAST OF THE SILVER RING

HISTORICAL APPENDIX




                            *RED AND WHITE.*



                              *CHAPTER I.*

                    *THE FLEDGLINGS LEAVE THE NEST.*

    "Ah, God will never let us plant
      Our tent-poles in the sand,
    But ever, e'er the blossom buds,
      We hear the dread command,--
    'Arise and get thee hence away,
      Unto another land.'"


"Frid!" said little Dorathie in a whisper.

Frid held up a hushing finger with a smile.

"Frid!" came again; in a tone which showed that tears were not very far
from Dorathie's blue eyes.

Frid's hand was held out in reply, and little Dorathie, understanding
the gesture, sidled along the window-seat until she reached her sister
in the opposite corner.  There, nestled up close to Frideswide, and held
fast by her arm, Dorathie put the melancholy question which was
troubling her repose.

"Frid, be you going hence?--verily going?"

The answering nod was a decided affirmative.

"But both of you?--both thee and Agnes?"

Another silent, uncompromising nod from Frideswide.

"O Frid, I shall be all alone!  Whatever must I do?"

And the tears came running from the blue eyes.

"Serve my Lady my grandmother," Frideswide whispered back.

"But that is--only--being useful," sobbed Dorathie, "and I--want to--be
happy."

"Being useful is being happy," said her sister.

"I would being happy were being useful," was Dorathie's lugubrious
answer.  "They never go together--not with me."

"So do they alway with me," replied Frideswide.

"Oh, thou!  Thou art a woman grown," said Dorathie with a pout.

"Right an old woman," said Frideswide with a sparkle of fun in her eyes,
for she was not quite twenty.  Dorathie was only eight, and in her
estimation Frideswide had attained a venerable age.  "But list, Doll!
My Lady calleth thee."

Dorathie's sobs had attracted the notice of one of the four grown-up
persons assembled round the fire. They were two ladies and two
gentlemen, and the relations which they bore to Dorathie were father,
mother, grandmother, and grand-uncle.

It was her grandmother who had called her--the handsome stately old lady
who sat in a carved oak chair on the further side of the fire.  Her hair
was silvery white, but her eyes, though sunken, were lively, flashing
dark eyes still.

Dorathie slipped down from the window-seat, crossed the large room, and
stood before her grandmother with clasped hands and a deferential bob.
She was not much afraid of a scolding, for she rarely had one from that
quarter: still, in the days when girls were expected to be silent
statues in the august presence of their elders, she might reasonably
have feared for the result of her whispered colloquy with Frideswide.

"What ails my little Doll?" gently asked the old lady.

"An't please your good Ladyship, you said Frid and Annis[#] should both
go away hence."


[#] Annis, or more correctly Anneyse, is the old French form of Agnes,
and appears to have been used in the Middle Ages, in England, as an
affectionate diminutive.  Some have supposed Annis to be a variety of
Anne, and have therefore concluded that Anne and Agnes were considered
the same name.  This, I think, is a mistake.  Annas is the Scottish
spelling.


"We did, my little maid.  Is our Doll very sorry therefor?"

"I shall be all alone!" sobbed Dorathie.

"'All alone!'" repeated her grandmother with a smile, which was pitying
and a little sympathetic. "Little Doll, there be fourteen in this house
beside Frideswide and Agnes."

"But they are none of them _them_!" said Dorathie.

"Aye.  There is the rub," answered her grandmother. "But, little maid,
we all have to come to that some time."

"'Tis as well to begin early, Doll," said her uncle.

"Please it you, Uncle Maurice," replied Dorathie, rubbing the tears out
of her eyes with her small hands, "I'd rather begin late!"

Her father laughed.  "Folks must needs go forth into the world, Doll,"
said he.  "Thou mayest have to do the like thine own self some day."

"Shall I so?" asked Dorathie, opening her eyes wide.  "Then, an' it like
your good Lordship, may I go where Frid and Annis shall be?"

"Thou wilt very like go with Frid or Annis, it we can compass it,"
replied her father; "but they will not be together, Doll."

"Not together!" cried Dorathie in a tone of disappointed surprise.

"Nay: Frideswide goeth to my good Lady of Warwick at Middleham; and
Agnes to London town, to serve my Lady's Grace of Exeter in her
chamber."

"Then they'll be as unhappy as me!" said Dorathie, with a very sorrowful
shake of her head.  "I thought they were going to be happy."

"They shall be merry as crickets!" answered her father.  "My Lady of
Warwick hath two young ladies her daughters, and keepeth four maidens in
her bower; and my Lady's Grace of Exeter hath likewise a daughter, and
keepeth other four maids to wait of her.  They are little like to be
lonely."

Her grandmother understood the child's feeling, but her father did not.
And Dorathie was dimly conscious that it was so.  She dropped another
courtesy, and crept back to Frideswide in the window-seat,--not
comforted at all.  There they sat and listened to the conversation of
their elders round the fire.  Frideswide was sewing busily, but
Dorathie's hands were idle.

The season was early autumn, and the trees outside were just beginning
to show the yellow leaf here and there.  The window in which the two
girls sat, a wide oriel, opened on a narrow courtyard, in front of which
lay a garden of tolerable size, wherein pinks, late roses, and other
flowers were bowing their heads to the cool breeze of the Yorkshire
wolds.  The court-yard was paved with large round stones, not pleasant
to walk on, and causing no small clatter from the hoofs of the horses.
A low parapet wall divided it from the garden, which was approached by
three steps, thus making the court into a wide terrace.  Beyond the
garden, a crenellated wall some twelve feet high shut out the prospect.

What it shut out beside the prospect was a great deal, of which little
was known to Frideswide, and much less to Dorathie.  They lived at a
period of which we, sheltered in a country which has not known war for
two hundred years, can barely form an adequate idea.  For fourteen
years--namely, since Frideswide was five years old, and longer than
Dorathie's life--England had been torn asunder by civil warfare.  Nor
was it over yet.  The turbulent past had been sad enough, but the worst
was yet to come.

Never, since the cessation of the Heptarchy, had a more terrible time
been seen than the Wars of the Roses.  In this struggle above all
others, family convictions were divided, and family love rent asunder.
Father and son, brother and brother, uncle and nephew, constantly took
opposite sides: and every warrior on each side was absolutely sure that
all shadow of right lay with his candidate, and that the "rebel and
adversary" of his chosen monarch had not an inch of ground to stand on.

Nor was the question of right so clear and indisputable as in this
nineteenth century we are apt to think.  To our eyes, regarding the
matter in the light of modern law, it appears certain that Edward IV.
was the rightful heir of the crown, and that there was no room for
dispute in the matter.  But the real point in dispute was the very
important one, what the law of succession really was.  Was it any bar
that Edward claimed through a female? The succession of all the kings
from the Empress Maud might be fairly held to settle this item in
Edward's favour.  But the real difficulty, which lay beyond, was not so
easily solved.

Very little understood at present is the law of non-representation, the
old "custom of England," which was also the custom of Artois, and
several other provinces.  According to this law, if a son of the king
should predecease his father, leaving issue, that issue was barred from
the throne.  They were not to be allowed to represent their dead father.
The right of succession passed at once to the next son of the monarch.

Several of our kings tried to alter this law, but it was so dear to the
hearts of the English people that up to 1377 they invariably failed.
The most notable instance is that of Richard I., who tried hard to
secure the succession of Arthur, the son of his deceased brother
Geoffrey, in preference to his youngest brother John.  But the "custom
of England" was too strong for him: and though John was personally
neither liked nor respected by any one, England preferred his rule to
making a change in her laws.

It was Edward III. who succeeded in making the alteration.  His eldest
son, the famed Black Prince, had died leaving a son behind him, and the
old King strongly desired to secure the peaceable succession of his
grandson.  He succeeded, partly because of the popularity of the
deceased Prince, partly on account of the unpopularity of the next heir,
but chiefly because the next heir himself was willing to assist in the
alteration.  His reward for this self-abnegation is that modern writers
are perpetually accusing him of unbridled ambition, and of a desire to
snatch the crown from that nephew who would assuredly never have worn it
had he withheld his consent.

But though John of Gaunt was perfectly willing to be subject instead of
sovereign, his son Henry did not share his feelings.  He always
considered that he had been tricked out of his rights: and he never
forgave his father for consenting to the change.  After sundry futile
attempts to eject his cousin from the throne, he at last succeeded in
effecting his purpose.  The succession returned to the right line
according to the old "custom of England"; and since King Richard II.,
for whom it had been altered, left no issue, matters might have gone on
quietly enough had it been suffered to remain there.

They were quiet enough until the death of Henry V.  But a long minority
of the sovereign has nearly always been a misfortune to the country: and
the longest of all minorities was that of Henry VI., who was only eight
months old when he came to the throne.  Then began a restless and weary
struggle for power among the nobles, and especially the three uncles of
the baby King. The details of the struggle itself belong to general
history: but there are one or two points concerning which it will be
best to make such remarks as are necessary at once, in order to save
explanations which would otherwise be constantly recurring.

King Henry was remarkably devoid of relatives, and the nearest he had
were not of his own rank. He was the only child of his father, and on
the father's side his only living connections beside distant cousins
were an uncle--Humphrey Duke of Gloucester--and a grand-uncle--Cardinal
Beaufort--both of whom were, though different from each other, equally
diverse from the King in temperament and aim.  On the mother's side he
had two half-brothers and a sister, with whom he was scarcely allowed to
associate at all.  He wanted a wife: and he took the means to obtain one
which in his day princes usually took.  He sent artists to the various
courts of Europe, to bring to him portraits of the unmarried Princesses.
King Henry's truth-loving nature comes out in the instructions given to
these artists.  They were to be careful not to flatter any of the royal
ladies, but to draw their portraits just as they were.  Of the
miniatures thus brought to him, the King's fancy was attracted by the
lovely face of a beautiful blonde of sixteen--the Princess Marguerite of
Anjou, second daughter of Rene, the dispossessed King of Naples.  An
embassy, at the head of which was William Duke of Suffolk, was sent over
to demand, and if accepted, to bring home the young Princess.

The girl-Queen found herself a very lonely creature, flung into the
midst of discordant elements. She loved her husband, as she afterwards
showed beyond question, and she must have felt deep respect for his
pure, gentle, truthful, saintly soul. Yet, excellent as he was, he was
no adviser for her. It was simply impossible for her brilliant intellect
and brave heart to lean upon his dulled brain and timid nature.  How
could he, with the uttermost will to aid her, help his young wife to
keep out of snares laid for her which he could not even see, or counsel
her to beware of false friends whose falsehood he never so much as
suspected?  Is it any wonder that Marguerite in this sore emergency
turned to Suffolk, her first friend, a man almost old enough to be her
grandfather, with a wise head and a tender heart, and thoroughly
desirous to do his duty?  Poor, innocent girl! she paid dearly for it.
One word of cruel, contemptuous surmise dropped from the lips of a young
nobleman,--who very possibly had wished the fair young Queen to make him
her chief adviser--and all over the land, as with wings, the wicked
falsehood sped, till there was no possibility of undoing the evil, and
Marguerite woke up in horror to find her name defamed, and her innocent
friendship with Suffolk believed to be criminal.  She did not discover
for some time who was the author of this cruel slander: but when she
did, she never forgave Warwick.

There is not the shadow of probability that it was true.  Suffolk was
about fifty years of age[#] when Marguerite was married, and he had been
for nearly fifteen years the husband of one of the loveliest women in
England, to whom he was passionately attached.  His character is shown
further by the farewell letter written to his son,[#] one of the most
touching and pious farewell letters ever penned by man.


[#] He was born at Cotton, in Suffolk, and baptized in that church on
"The Feast of St. Michael in Monte Tumba" [Oct. 16] 1396. (_Prob.
AEtatit Willielmi Ducis Suffolk_, 5 H. V. 63.)

[#] Published among the Paston Letters.


But now another and a more serious complication was added to those
already existing.  The dispossessed heir of the elder branch, Richard
Duke of York, had much to forgive the House of Lancaster. He had the
memory of a murdered father and a long-imprisoned mother ever fresh
before him.  His claim was only through the female line, as the son of a
daughter of the son of a daughter of Lionel Duke of Clarence, the second
son of Edward III. who attained manhood, and who had predeceased his
father.  In respect of the male line, he was descended from a younger
brother[#] of the grandfather of Henry VI.  It was therefore only as the
representative of Duke Lionel that he could put forward any claim at
all.  But Richard was not good at forgiving.  And when, as if for the
purpose of further entangling matters, and suggesting to Richard the
very idea which he afterwards carried into action, Henry VI. was seized
with an attack of that temporary insanity which he inherited from his
maternal grandfather, Richard, as his next male relative, was placed in
the position of Regent: a state of things so entirely suited to his
wishes that when, the King having recovered, he was summoned to resign
his charge, Richard coolly expressed his perfect satisfaction with the
position of governor, and his intention to remain such, since he
considered himself to be, as heir general of Duke Lionel, much more
rightfully King of England than the cousin who had displaced him.


[#] Edmund Duke of York.


The first sensation of Henry VI., on hearing this calm assertion of
Richard, was simply one of unbounded amazement.

"My grandfather," said he, "held the crown for twelve years, and my
father for ten, and I have held it for twenty-three: and all that time
you and your fathers have kept silence, and not one word of this have I
ever heard before.  What mean you, fair cousin, to prefer such a claim
against the Lord's Anointed?"

It was not quite the fact that Richard's fathers had kept absolute
silence, since his uncle, Edmund Earl of March, had been put forward as
a claimant for the throne, just fifty years before:[#] but in all
probability the King was entirely justified in stating that the idea was
new to him.  It is not likely that those about him from infancy would
have allowed him to become familiar with it, since his delicate sense of
right and justice was--in their eyes--the most tiresome thing about him.
But the question was not in his hands for decision.  Had it been so, no
man would ever have heard of the Wars of the Roses.  King Henry "had no
sense of honour," which probably means that ambition, self-seeking, and
aggressiveness were feelings utterly unknown to him.  "Yea, let him take
all," would have been the language of his lips and heart, so long as he
had left to him a quiet home in some green nook of England, the wife and
child whom he dearly loved, a few books, and peace.  At times God's
providence decrees peace as the lot of such men.  At other rimes it
seems to be the one thing with which they must not be trusted.  They are
tossed perpetually on the waves of this troublesome world, "emptied from
vessel to vessel," never suffered to rest.  This last was the destiny of
Henry VI.  For him, it was the way home to the Land of Peace, where
there is no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.  For four hundred
years his spirit has dwelt in the eternal peace of Paradise; God has
comforted him for ever.


[#] A full account of this transaction will be found in "The White Rose
of Langley."


It was an unfortunate thing for Richard of York that he had married a
woman who acted toward his ambitious aspirations not as a bridle, but as
a spur. Cicely Neville, surnamed from her great beauty The Rose of Raby,
was a woman who, like two of her descendants, would have "died to-morrow
to be a queen to-day," and would have preferred "to eat dry bread at a
king's table, rather than feast at the board of an elector."[#]  Of all
members of the royal family of England, this lady is to my knowledge the
only one who ever styled herself in her own charters "the right high and
right excellent Princesse."  The Rose of Raby was not the only title
given her.  To the vulgar in the neighbourhood where her youth was spent
she was also known as Proud Cis.  And every act of her life tends to
show the truth of the title.


[#] The words first quoted were spoken by Anne Princess of Orange,
eldest daughter of George II.; the latter by Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia,
eldest daughter of James I.


It was at the battle of St. Albans--the first fought between the rival
Roses--that Dorathie's grandfather had been killed; the husband of the
stately old lady who remained head of the household at Lovell Tower.
His barony descended to his only daughter Margery, who, after a good
deal of hesitation among rival suitors who greatly admired her title and
fortune, had gradually awoke to the discovery that she liked nobody
quite so well as her old friend John Marston, though he was nearly twice
her age, and a widower with three children. So on him, with the full
consent of her mother, she bestowed hand and heart, title and fortune;
the former being in his eyes, alone of all her lovers, more valuable
than the latter.  In her right he became Lord Marnell of Lymington, for
until a comparatively recent period the title of a peeress in her own
right was held to become the property of her husband as absolutely as
her goods, and was conferred by courtesy, as a matter of necessity, upon
any second wife whom he might marry.  Two more children--Dorathie and
Ralph--were added to the family: but only the former now survived.  It
will thus be seen that Frideswide and Agnes were half-sisters of
Dorathie.  The other member of the family not yet introduced was Walter,
the eldest son.  He was at present a young squire in the household of
Queen Marguerite.

Every soul at Lovell Tower was passionately Lancastrian.  To them Henry
VI. was The King, and Edward IV. was "the rebel."  In the house of the
next knight, half a mile away, the conditions were reversed: and the two
families, who had been old and firm friends, now passed each other on
the road with no notice whatever.  Very painful was this state of things
to the Lady Idonia, the only sister of four brothers thus placed at
variance.  Her two younger brothers, Maurice and William, were still on
good terms with her, for they were Lancastrians like herself.  But the
Carew family was one of those which the political earthquake had
shattered, and Hugh and Thomas were determined Yorkists.  It was the
sadder--or should have been,--since the younger Lady Marnell had been
educated under the roof of her Uncle Hugh, during the prolonged
residence of her parents at the Court of Scotland.  Fortunately or
unfortunately, Uncle Hugh and Aunt Mabel had contrived to impress
themselves on the mind of young Margery in no other character than that
of live barricades against the accomplishment of all her wishes.  To be
otherwise than on speaking terms with them, therefore, was a much
smaller calamity to Margery than to her mother.  The Lady Idonia used to
sigh heavily when their names were mentioned.  Yet to keep up the
friendship would have been no easy matter. Hugh Carew was granite where
his convictions were concerned; and not content with following them
himself, he insisted on imposing them on every body who came near him.
It would have been in his eyes a matter of principle not to allow his
sister or his niece to speak of "the King" or "the rebel," without
letting them see that he wilfully misunderstood the allusion.  Idonia
merely sighed ever this piece of perversity, while yet their intercourse
remained unbroken: but Margery was apt to flare up and make an open
breach of the peace.  It certainly was trying, when she spoke of the
King (meaning Henry VI.) as in Scotland, to be reminded in a cold,
precise tone, slightly astonished, that she had unaccountably forgotten
that His Highness was at Westminster.  It is not therefore to be
wondered at, if Margery felt the open hostility rather a relief than a
burden, while her mother grieved over it in secret.

"'Tis strange gear," the Lady Idonia would sometimes say, "that men
cannot think alike."

"Nay, fair Sister, why should they so?" was her brother William's
answer.  "This were tame world if no man saw by his own eyes, but all
after a pattern."

"That were well, Ida," replied the graver Maurice, "could all men see
through God's eyes."

"Aye, and who shall dare say how He looketh on these matters?" rejoined
William.

"Know we not that?" said Maurice.  "'The righteous Lord delighteth in
righteousness; His countenance beholdeth equity.'"[#]


[#] Psalm xi. 8.


"On which side is the equity?" asked his brother with a shrug of his
shoulders.  "Somewhat scant on both, as methinks.  My Lords of Warwick
and Somerset are scarce they which, before giving battle, should look
through a speculation glass[#] to find the righteousness of the matter."


[#] Magnifier.


"Perhaps it were hardly so small as to need the same," was Maurice's dry
answer.

"Nay, fair Uncle William, but I cry you mercy!" broke in Margery.  "It
seems me you be but half-hearted toward our good King.  Surely his, and
none other, is the cause of right and justice."

"Gramercy, Madge!  I am well assured I never said they lay with that
rebel," returned her uncle, laughing.

"Methinks," said Maurice quietly, "that King David was the wisest, which
committed his cause unto God.  Never, truly, had king so clear and
perfect title as he.  But we find not that he laid siege to King Saul,
in order to come by it the sooner."

"Dear heart! prithee go tell that to the Queen," said William, still
laughing.  "Such reasoning were right after the King's heart."

"The Queen fights not for herself," responded Maurice.  "It is easier to
trust our own lot in God's hands, than the lot of them we love most. But
mind ye not, Will and Ida, what our Philip were wont to say--'They that
God keepeth be the best kept'?"

William made no reply.  He was silenced by the allusion to the dead
brother, on whom the Carews looked much as those around them did upon
the saints.

The interval between the battles of St. Albans and Wakefield--five years
and a half--had changed most of the _dramatis personae_, but had not in
any degree altered the sanguinary character of the struggle.  Richard
Duke of York was gone--killed at Wakefield: Suffolk was gone, a victim
to popular fury.  King Henry and Queen Marguerite were still the
prominent figures on the Lancastrian side, joined now by their son
Prince Edward.  On the York side were the three sons of Duke
Richard,--Edward, George, and Richard, whose ages when the story opens
were twenty-eight, nineteen, and seventeen.  Which of these three young
men possessed the worst character it is difficult to judge, though that
evil eminence is popularly assigned to Richard.  Edward was an
incorrigible libertine; not a bad organiser, nor devoid of personal
bravery, though it usually appeared by fits and starts.  He could do a
generous action, but he was irremediably lazy, and far weaker in
character than either of his brothers.  One redeeming point he had--his
personal love for his blood relations.  But it was not pure love, for
much selfishness was mixed with it. Perhaps really the worst of the
three was George, for he was not merely an ingrained self-seeker, but
also false to the heart's core.  No atom of trust could ever be placed
in him.  The most solemn oath taken to-day was no guarantee whatever
against his breaking through every engagement to-morrow.  The Dutchman's
maxim, "Every man for mineself," was the motto of George's life.  Each
of the brothers spent his life in sowing seeds of misery, and in each
case the grain came to perfection: though most of the harvest of George
and Richard was reaped by themselves, while Edward's was left for his
innocent sons to gather.

It may reasonably be asked why Warwick is counted among the
Lancastrians, when to a great extent Edward owed his throne to him, and
he had been a consistent Yorkist for years.  It is because, at the
period when the story opens, Warwick thought proper so to account
himself.  King Henry, never able to see through a schemer or a traitor,
had complacently welcomed him back to his allegiance: Queen Marguerite,
who saw through him to the furthest inch, and held him in unmitigated
abhorrence, felt that he was necessary at this moment to her husband's
cause, and locking her own feelings hard within her, allowed it to be
supposed that she was able to trust him, and kept sharp watch over every
movement.

It has already been said that the decision for peace or war was not left
in the hands of King Henry.  The woman who sat by his side on the throne
was no longer the timid, lonely dove of their early married life.
Marguerite of Anjou was now a woman of middle age, and a mother whose
very soul was wrapped around that bright-haired boy who alone shared her
heart with his father.  Could she but have looked forward a few years,
and have seen that for that darling son war meant an early and bloody
end, she might have been more ready to acquiesce in King Henry's
preference for an obscure but peaceful life.  What she saw was something
very different.  How was she to know that the golden vision which rose
so radiantly before her entranced eyes was but a mirage of the desert,
and that the silver stream which seemed to spread so invitingly before
her would only mock her parched lips with burning sand?

The fatal choice was made for war, and the war had now been raging for
fourteen years.  The wheel of Fortune had turned rapidly and
capriciously, but York had on the whole been uppermost.  To the majority
of ordinary Englishmen who cared at least as much for peace and
prosperity as politics, "the King" had meant Edward IV. since 1461.
England at that weary hour cared more for rest than she cared to know
who gave it to her.  Edward, on his part, had "indulged himself in ease
and pleasure"[#]--which was what he most valued--and might have
continued to do so if he had kept on good terms with Warwick.  For let
Edward or Henry be termed the King, it was Warwick who "had all Englond
at his bedyng," and the man who offended this master of kings was not
likely to be king much longer.  Edward had sent Warwick to France to
negotiate for his marriage to Bona of Savoy, the Queen's sister, and
while the envoy was away, the master fell into the toils of the fair
face and golden hair and sweet purring ways of the Lady Grey of Groby.
As Edward had passed his life on the easy principle of never denying
himself any thing, he acted consistently in marrying the lady.
Considering how few ever do so, he had probably not realised that this
easy principle is apt to turn in later life into the sharpest of
scourges.  Warwick came home in a furious passion, and carried his
power, influence, and army instantly over to the side of Lancaster.  No
man likes being made to "look small," and least of all could it be
brooked by a man of Warwick's character and position.  Edward paid very
dearly for his golden-haired bride, and whether the purchase was worth
the amount it cost may be considered extremely doubtful.  Elizabeth Grey
was not like Marguerite of Anjou, a far-seeing, self-less, large-hearted
woman.  Her mental horizon was exceedingly minute.  She was chiefly
concerned, like the creature she most resembled, to obtain the warmest
spot of the hearthrug for herself.  Very delightful to stroke and pet
when all goes well, such quadrupeds--and such women--are capable of
becoming extremely uncomfortable companions in certain combinations of
circumstances.


[#] Comines.


Edward was not the only person who paid that heavy bill which he ran up
with so light a heart. Only one small instalment of it was discharged by
him.  A heavier one was due from Queen Elizabeth, wrung out through long
years of anguish and desolation: another from their innocent boys,
discharged in their life's blood.  The least amount, perhaps, was
exacted from the most undeserving sharer in the penalty--that young
Warwickshire girl who was Edward's real wife by canon law, and whose
strong love proved equal to the fiery ordeal of saving his honour and
ensuring what seemed his happiness at the cost of all her own.  It cost
her life as well.  Edward had the cruelty and baseness to call her into
court to deny their marriage.  He knew her well enough to dare to do it.
And she came, calm and self-restrained, and perjured her soul because
she thought it would make him happier and save his good name.  Hers was
of no moment. Then she passed out of sight, and the overstrained string
snapped, and nothing was left to vex the triumphant monarch.  Only God
saw a nameless green grave in a country churchyard.  And when He comes
to make inquisition for blood, when every thing that was hidden shall be
known, I think it will be found that He did not forget Elizabeth Lucy.

Yet Edward did not escape quite without reproach. One person endeavoured
to prevent this sin and shame, and it was a very unlikely person.  The
voice of Proud Cis was the only one raised against it, and her
interference, futile though it was, is the best action of her life.
From the far north Edward received the passionate reproaches of his
mother for this dastardly action.  They did not deter him from its
accomplishment: but let the fact be remembered to Cicely's honour.[#]


[#] Some writers have disputed, and more have ignored, these miserable
transactions. Surely the interference of Cicely, and the language of
Comines, who was a personal acquaintance of the royal family, may fairly
be held to prove the point.


Two months before the story begins, Warwick had taken advantage of some
quarrel between Edward and his brother George of Clarence to allure the
latter to the Lancastrian cause.  He offered him an enormous bribe to
come over, being his elder daughter Isabel, with one half of her
mother's vast inheritance.  It must not be forgotten that all Warwick's
titles were derived from females.  He was Earl of Salisbury in
succession to his mother, and Earl of Warwick only by courtesy, in right
of his wife.  His two daughters, Isabel and Anne, were his only
children, and the richest heiresses in the kingdom.  They were both
extremely beautiful girls, but Isabel was considered the lovelier.
Clarence, who kept neither a heart nor a conscience, was ready to do any
thing, good, bad, or indifferent, which promised to promote his own
advancement in this world.  He accepted Warwick's offer; and was now
therefore in arms against his brother, and a member of Warwick's
household at Middleham Castle, of which household Frideswide Marston was
about to form an item.




                             *CHAPTER II.*

                       *LILIES AMONG THE THORNS.*

"Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."--WORDSWORTH.


"Aye, perchance that may serve.  What cost it by the yard?"

_That_ was a piece of superb purple satin, which the tailor was holding
up for inspection, in the best way to catch the light.

"Five nobles, an' it please my Lady."

Five nobles amounted to one pound thirteen and fourpence, and was the
price of the very best quality.  It is not easy to reduce it into modern
value, since authorities are disagreed on the multiple required.  Some
would go as high as sixteen times the value, while others would reduce
it to five.  Mv own opinion inclines to the highest number.

"And wherewith wouldst line it, good Whityngham?"

"With velvet, Madam?" suggested the tailor interrogatively.

"Aye.  Let it be black."

"At your Ladyship's pleasure."

"And I will have the cloak well furred with Irish fox.  Is my broched[#]
cloth of gold gown made ready?"


[#] Figured.


"Madam, it shall be meet for your Ladyship's wearing to-morrow."

"Well, see thou fail me not, for I would have it for our Lady Day in
harvest.--Well, Avice Hilton, what wouldst?"

Avice Hilton, who was a young lady of about eighteen years, had been
waiting the pleasure of her mistress for some minutes.

"An't like you, Madam, your new chamberer that shall be, is now come."

"The Lord Marnell his daughter?"

"She, Madam."

"Hath she eaten aught?"

"Aye, Madam, in the hall."

"Good.  Bring her hither."

Frideswide Marston was not a timid or nervous girl by any means, but her
heart beat somewhat faster as Avice Hilton introduced her to the
presence of the Countess of Warwick, the woman who had more of the
reality of queenship than either of those ladies whom the partisans of
the rival Roses termed the Queen.

She saw a pleasant upper chamber, about twenty feet square, whose
windows looked over the beautiful vale of Wensleydale.  It was hung with
tapestry on which scenes from the Quest of the Sangraal were delineated.
At the lower end three young ladies were busily at work of various
kinds: on the dais, or raised step at the further end, nearest the
windows, stood the tailor with his roll of satin over his arm, and two
ladies were seated, the elder in a chair of carved wood, the younger in
a more elaborate one inlaid with ivory.  In those days people did not
take the seat they found most comfortable, but were carefully restricted
to a certain fashion of chair, according to delicate gradations of rank.
Frideswide, being a well-educated young person, as education went in the
fifteenth century, had no difficulty in perceiving that she was in the
presence of the Countess of Warwick and her daughter, the bride of the
royal Clarence.

The Countess of Warwick was a rather slightly-made woman, but tall, with
a long pale face, haggard features bearing traces of great former
beauty, and a particularly prominent pair of blue eyes.[#]  As is often
the case with persons who exhibit the last-named feature, she was at no
loss for language. She was the daughter, and now the only surviving
child, of that Earl of Warwick who had held a conspicuous place in the
burning of the Maid of Orleans, and of Isabel, heiress of Le Despenser.
All the old prestige and associations of the House of Warwick centred in
her, not her husband.  How far her influence over him may have been for
good or evil, is not an easy question.  What evidence there is, is
mostly negative, and tends to show that the Countess Anne exercised but
little influence of any kind, and was of a type likely to be more
concerned about the burning of the marchpane in her own oven, than about
the burning of a city at some distance.  If this be so, she is much to
be pitied: for of the seed of future misery which Warwick sowed, the
heaviest portion of the harvest was reaped by her and by the best and
dearest of her daughters.


[#] All the members of the Warwick family, and also those of the royal
family, are described so far as is practicable from contemporary
portraits.


The young Duchess of Clarence, who was in her nineteenth year, was a
woman cast in another mould.  She resembled her father in character, and
her mother in features: but she was more beautiful than the Countess had
ever been, and was accounted "the finest young lady in England."  She
was fair, with blue eyes and shining light hair, over which she wore the
new head-dress, which consisted of a most elaborate erection of
wire-work, surmounted by a veil of transparent gauze, so that the hair,
for many years concealed, was left fully visible.

Head-dresses were now, and for a long time had been, the most important
portion of the female costume.  The variety was nearly as astounding as
the size.  Hearts, horns, crowns, and steeples, were all represented:
and a full-dressed lady, in all her paraphernalia, was a formidable
object both as to cost and dimensions.

Frideswide found herself put through a lively fire of interrogatories by
the Countess, who might have been projecting the writing of memoirs of
the whole Marnell family, to judge from the minute and numerous details
into which she descended.  The Duchess sat generally a silent listener,
but occasionally interjected a query.  At last the Countess looked
across the room, and summoned Avice.

"There, take the new maid to you, and show her what shall be her duty,"
said she.  "See that she wants for nought, and say to Bonham 'tis my
desire she be set a-work."

Frideswide followed Avice to the further end of the room, where she was
introduced to her remaining fellow-chamberers as Theobalda Salvin and
Eleanor Farley.  Beyond them, and hitherto concealed by a chair, she
suddenly perceived a fourth person, in the shape of a little old lady,
so very little as to be almost a dwarf, with the cheeriest and brightest
of faces.

"Mother Bonham," said Avice, "'tis my Lady's good pleasure you set
Mistress Frideswide a-work."

"Well, my lass, there's no pleasure in idlesse," was the answer.  "See
you here, my maid: would you rather a white seam, or some matter of
broidery?"

Frideswide, whose tastes inclined her rather to the useful than the
ornamental, chose the plain work, and sitting down among the chamberers,
was soon as busy as any of them.

Mother Bonham was the most important person at Middleham Castle, in the
sense that without her every thing would have gone furthest wrong.  She
was "mother," or official chaperone, to the chamberers, which accounted
for the title bestowed on her; she was general housekeeper to the
Countess; she had been nurse and governess to the young ladies; and she
was adviser in general to all the younger inmates of the house.  She was
as great a hand at proverbs as Sancho Panza himself: she mixed
marvellous puddings and concocted unimaginable cakes; she drew patterns
for embroidery, told stories of all kinds, nursed every body who was ill
(which often included prescribing for them), praised every body who did
well, smiled on, at, and through every thing that happened to her.  Only
one thing there was, as Eleanor confided to Frideswide, which Mother
Bonham could not do.  She was totally incapable of scolding!  The most
severe thing she ever said was a solemn proverb, prefaced by both
Christian and surname of the offender.  The use of both names instantly
informed a chamberer that she had fallen under Mother Bonham's grave
displeasure.  But so dearly loved was the little old lady that except in
strong emergencies, this was quite enough to recall the person addressed
to a sense of her delinquencies.

Frideswide was rather amused to find that she had again to run the
gauntlet of inquiries concerning her antecedents from the chamberers.
She certainly had never talked so much about herself and her relatives,
as she did that first afternoon of her stay at Middleham Castle.  The
fire of interrogations had slightly slackened, when a door opened in the
wall behind the tapestry, and pushing aside the latter, a girl of
fifteen came forward and sat down by Mother Bonham, who moved some
embroidery from a carved chair to make room for her.  The chair taken,
and the style of her dress, sufficiently pointed her out as one of the
Earl's daughters.

Though strongly resembling her mother and sister in colour and features,
the expression of her face was entirely different from either.  The
piquancy of the elder sister was wholly absent in the younger, and was
replaced by a mixture of gentleness and dignity.  Very queenly she
was--not in the false sense of pride, of which there was none about her:
but in the true sense of that innate kingliness of soul which can
tolerate nothing evil, and can stoop to nothing mean.  A lily among
thorns was sweet Anne Neville. And the thorns sprang up, and choked it.
She stood now just

    "Where the brook and river meet,
    Womanhood and childhood fleet"--

but in the path to be pursued a turn as yet hid the river from view, and
she who was so soon to be borne down it could see nothing of the roaring
cascade and the black pool beneath, where the young life was to be
crushed out, and the fair soul to be set free.  As Frideswide glanced at
her, where she sat with her head slightly bent over the broidery, and a
sunbeam lighting up her shining hair, she thought no face so attractive
had ever yet crossed her path in life.

"Tib, draw thou the curtain across," said Mother Bonham.  "The sun
cometh too hot on my Lady Anne, I reckon."

Theobalda obeyed in silence, while Lady Anne looked up and smiled
thanks.

"Tib is the best to do it," remarked Eleanor, laughing a little, "for
she is highest of all us.  I do believe she should mete to twice of you,
Mother."

"'Good stuff's lapped up in little parcels,' Nell," was Mother Bonham's
good-tempered answer.

Conversation flagged after this.  Perhaps work went on the better for
it.  Supper was announced in an hour, which was served in the hall,
Frideswide, as the newest arrival, being seated last of the chamberers,
and next to the Earl's squires.  She found her neighbour decidedly
communicative. From him she learned that the Countess was not ill to
please, which was more than could be said for my Lady of Clarence; but
my Lady Anne was the sweetest maid in the world.  As to my Lord,--with a
little shrug of the squire's shoulders--why, he was in his element in
the midst of a battle, and not anywhere else.  Rather just a little
queer-tempered--you had to find out in a morning whether he had got out
of bed on the right side or the wrong.  In the former case, he could be
very pleasant indeed: but in the latter--well, least said was soonest
mended.

Frideswide looked up at the potent nobleman thus described to her.  She
saw a man of moderate height and breadth, with strong features, a florid
complexion, rather dark hair and eyes, and a very quick, lively,
intelligent expression.  His limbs were well-knit and in good
proportion, giving the idea of great muscular strength.  It may be
added, though Frideswide of course could only learn this by degrees,
that Warwick was an extremely clever man, with that sort of serpentine
cleverness which regards any means as sanctified by the end proposed;
full of physical courage, but looking upon tenderness and compassion as
contemptible weaknesses only fit for a woman, and indicative of the
consummate inferiority of her sex.  He was one of those men in whose
eyes a good woman is simply a woman who has hitherto found no
opportunity of being otherwise.  When the opportunity comes in her way,
she must be expected to take advantage of it, as a matter of course.
Clear-sighted as Warwick was in some matters, he was strangely obtuse in
others.

A good deal of further information Frideswide heard from her next
neighbour, who told her that his name was John Wright.[#]  He informed
her that the King (by whom he meant Henry VI.) was in the Tower of
London, a prisoner in the hands of "Edward that rebel," who was not
permitted by zealous Lancastrians to enjoy even his ancestral title of
Duke of York.  The Queen was abroad, seeking fresh help, and intending
to take the first good opportunity afterwards to land in England.  The
Prince of Wales was with her.


[#] Name historical, character imaginary.


As for "that rebel," he of course was enjoying himself to the utmost,
residing in the palaces and squandering the finances which did not
belong to him: and as for "that witch his wife," Mr. Wright was ready to
believe anything of her--by which of course he meant, anything the
reverse of complimentary.

That Edward was squandering money, whether it were his own or not, was
only too true.  Never lived man in whose hands money melted in a more
instantaneous manner.  During that very summer, he had spent on dress
materials and "other necessaries" upwards of twelve hundred pounds, and
on jewellery and goldsmiths' work L744, inclusive of a gold collar which
cost L34.[#]  Nor as we shall presently see, had his extravagance
reached its highest point.  No King of England ever spent like him. The
degree to which he surpassed all his predecessors in this point was an
enormous one.  By most contemporary chroniclers, Richard II. is accused
of having been a shocking waster of money:[#] but the Issue Rolls of
Richard II. reveal a state of things which is economy itself when
compared with those of Edward IV.  Moreover, Richard's extravagance,
such as it was, was mainly in presents to other persons: but what Edward
spent was on his beloved self. This was the more noticeable, as Henry
VI. had not been at all given to spending money; and Queen Marguerite,
while lavish enough in her charities, was singularly frugal in respect
of her wardrobe. As for Edward's Queen, her lord and master, as his
Issue Rolls bear witness, took care she had not much to spend.  May not
this exhaustion of the royal treasury under the brothers of York,
account to some extent for the parsimony of which Henry VII. is accused?


[#] Issue Roll, Michis. 9 Edw. IV.

[#] A supposition not at all borne out by his Issue Rolls.


After supper the hall was cleared for dancing. Then followed vespers in
the Castle chapel, rear-supper, a little general conversation, cups of
wine handed round, and the Countess retired to her oratory, and the Earl
to his closet.  Last came the Countess's _coucher_, at which three of
the chamberers were expected to be present, one being told off to assist
the Lady Anne.  The Duchess of Clarence had her separate household.
Frideswide found herself summoned to the Countess's chamber, where
Theobalda instructed her in her duties, which were simply those of a
lady's maid.  The chamberera were then free to seek their own beds.

It was not until the next morning that Frideswide saw the Duke of
Clarence, who had been absent from the supper-table.  He was the least
good-looking of the handsome royal brothers.  "A great alms-giver and a
great builder" is the character given of him by the retainer of the
House of Warwick: but a more skilful hand than his, a hundred years
later, sketched a far truer portrait.

"False, fleeting, faithless Clarence!"

With the Duke came two other persons--the brothers of Warwick, John Lord
Montague and George Archbishop of York.  They were about as much given
to tergiversation as their better-known brother, with the proviso that
in their innermost hearts they were a shade more determinately Yorkist
than he. Montague in particular was remarkable for his power of
versatility.  His personal convictions were in favour of Edward, but the
least offence given to him by his chosen master was enough to make him
veer round like a weathercock to the opposite quarter.  At the present
moment some such annoyance was rankling in his narrow mind, and he was
therefore just in a fit state to lend an ear to the persuasive
representations of his brother of Warwick.  The marvel of the matter is
how these three crafty, changeable, unprincipled men contrived to trust
each other.

During two previous years, Warwick had been dexterously drawing his net
around his brothers. But now matters were almost ripe for action.  For
the whole of the autumn he had kept quiet and matured his plans.  His
reverend brother was quite as ready to his hand as the secular one.  Any
thing which involved a plot or a tumult seems to have been to the taste
of this gentleman, who in seeking holy orders had certainly not taken
the course for which nature intended him.

The four chamberers of the Countess of Warwick slept in one room, into
which opened the smaller one of Mother Bonham.  The furniture of the
chamber consisted of two beds, large square ones with a tester, or head,
the one having curtains of verder, or tapestry, and the other of dark
crimson say, which was a coarse silk chiefly used in upholstery.  In the
first bed slept Eleanor and Theobalda, in the second Frideswide and
Avice.  The remaining articles were a large chest at the bottom of each
bed, with a division across it, each young lady having a half to
herself; a chair, two stools, and a fire-fork.  Wardrobes were then kept
in a separate chamber; while dressing-tables and washstands were
luxuries of the future.  There was a mirror fixed to the wall, almost
too high to see--a position adopted for the discouragement of personal
vanity: while every morning a bowl of water and a towel (to serve all
four) was brought up by a slip-shod girl, one of half-a-dozen who did
the dirtiest work of the house.

One evening in November, after the lights were out, and Mother Bonham
and Theobalda were peacefully asleep, while Eleanor was perpetrating a
sound so nearly akin to snoring that her fastidious taste would have
been shocked had she known it, Frideswide, whose eyes were disinclined
to close, heard a soft whisper from Avice beside her.

"Are you waking?"

"Oh aye," she said in a similar tone, and turning round towards Avice to
hear the better what she wished to say.

"Your father, if I err not, is the Lord Marnell, that dwelleth at Lovell
Tower, on the wolds?"

"Aye so," said Frideswide.

"Were you loth I should know of what kin you be to the Lady Margery,
that died, an old man's life past, on Tower Hill?"

It was no wonder if Frideswide held her breath for a moment, and
listened whether all the rest were safely asleep.  The reference to a
Lollard and a martyr, in the past of any family, had been safe enough
during the latter half of Henry VI.'s reign, but it had already been
pretty plainly shown not to be equally wise in that of Edward IV.

"Look you," she said, after that momentary pause, "it is my step-dame,
not my father, that is verily a Marnell.  The lady whom you wot of was
her grandame--to wit, her father's mother."

"Of no kin to you, then?" asked Avice, in a tone in which Frideswide
fancied she heard a shade of disappointment.

"Nay, that can I not rightly say," was the reply: "for Dame Agnes
Lovell, the Lady's mother, which was by birth a Greenhalgh, was sister
unto Mistress Ladreyne Clitheroe, whose daughter Maud was my
grandmother.  So you shall see we are near of kin."

A cousin thrice removed would not now be thought a very near relation;
but in past times much more was made of "kindly blood" than at present.

Avice did not answer, and Frideswide, having recovered her courage,
spoke up boldly.  For a hundred years her ancestors had been of the
Lollard faith, and she was far more disposed to glory in the fact than
to be ashamed of it.

"Wherefore?  Are you of that learning?"

"Hush, gramercy!" cried Avice under her breath.

"Wherefore?" asked Frideswide again.

"Dear heart, if any should o'erhear us!" explained Avice.  "Know you not
that 'tis a dangerous matter to speak thereof?"

"It may be worse to let be," answered Frideswide thoughtfully.  She was
thinking of a story of twenty years ago, which she had heard most
sorrowfully told by the lips of the Lady Idonia, how she had at one time
fallen away for fear, and had never forgotten her defection nor forgiven
herself.

"Ah, Frideswide," said Avice earnestly, "you speak like to her that had
dwelt in a sure place, and knew nought of the world on the outside.
Look you, matters be no more as they were these twenty-five years back.
So long as the King were in power and of good wit, never man were
ill-used for speaking Lollardy, for he never would have creature harmed
in his realm an' he wist it, by his good-will. Have you ne'er heard how
he bade remove down from the Micklegate at York the one quarter of a
traitor there set, saying he would ne'er see Christian thus cruelly used
for his sake?  But the rebel is made of other metal.  Heard you not of
one Will Balowe, that was burned on Tower Hill scarce three years gone,
for that he would not make confession to no priest, but only unto God,
and had (said they) no conscience in eating of flesh during Lent?  Both
he and his wife had been afore abjured, so that he was a lapsed man.
There were no burnings whenso as King Henry were in power.  Nor know you
not, about the same time, some pixes were stole for the silver, and one
of them that stale them was heard for to say that he had a dainty morsel
to his supper, for he had eaten nine gods--to wit, the hosts that were
in the boxes?  There is more Lollardy about the realm than ever afore,
trust me: but 'tis not so safe to speak thereof as when you and I were
childre."

"Methinks," said Frideswide thoughtfully, "they were little credit unto
Lollardy that should steal a pix for the silver."

"There be men enough will make cloaks of new virtue to cover up old
sins," was the answer of Avice.

"You wot more hereof than I, as I may well see," said Frideswide.

"Aye, I have seen and heard, and I can reckon so much as twice two,"
replied Avice drily.  "Look you, I have been with my Lady but half a
year, and I came to her from London town, where I served my Lady of
Exeter.  So I saw and heard much, and I have not an ill memory."

"Pray you, tell me somewhat touching that my Lady of Exeter," said
Frideswide.  "My sister is but now entered of her chamber, and I would
fain wit what manner of mistress she shall have."

"Pray for her!" was the reply.

"Against what?" demanded Frideswide with considerable uneasiness.

"'Shield us fro the foule thing,'" quoted Avice, under her breath.

"But, dear heart, what mean you?" returned Frideswide, rising on her
elbow in her eager desire to comprehend these mysterious hints.  "Is it
my Lady of Exeter, or her Lord, or his squires, or where and what shall
it be that is thus foul and fearful?"

"Her Lord?--_No_," was the earnest answer.

"Herself?" repeated Frideswide.

"She and her Lord," said Avice, in a low, sad tone, "have not dwelt of
one house these seven years.  He, as you must wot, is of the King's
side, and she (which is sister to the rebel) brake with him shortly
after the war began.  There were sore discontents betwixt them, for two
years or more ere they parted for good: but now they never meet. His
lands be all confiscate and granted to her, and he is the man that shall
never win one penny of them at her hands.  I think she alway hated
him--they were wed being childre--but certes she hates him now.  In all
my life never saw I in one house so much of God, and so much of the
Devil.  But the Lord campeth round about them that fear Him. There is an
angel in the house, as your sister will early find to her comfort.
There are devils too."

"And her Lady is of them?" asked Frideswide.

"She is not the angel," drily responded Avice.

"And her Lord?"--said Frideswide.

"Ah, he is sore to be pitied," answered Avice in a compassionate tone.
"May-be he is not wholly an angel neither: yet methinks there is much in
him that is good; and he might have been a better man--had she been a
better woman.  The first sin is an easy matter, but it is hard most
times to see whither it will lead."

"Be any here well-affectioned toward Lollardy?" suddenly asked
Frideswide.

"Only one, to my knowing."

"And that is?"--

"Mother Bonham.

"Avice Hilton!" came at this moment in clear tones from the closet.

"I cry you mercy, Mother!" was the natural reply.

"Days for talk, nights for sleep," said the old lady sententiously.

With simply a "Good night, Frideswide," Avice turned on her pillow, and
no more was said.

This revelation by no means conduced to Frideswide's happiness.  She was
uneasy about Agnes, whom she knew to be a girl who would say little, but
suffer keenly.  Yet what could she do?--beyond taking Avice's counsel,
and praying for her.

The idea of writing, either to her father or sister, did not occur to
Frideswide.  Letters were serious affairs in those days, more especially
to women: and though Frideswide had learned to write, which was not too
common an accomplishment in ladies, yet it was to her a very laborious
and tedious business, requiring some decided reason to induce so great
an effort.  While there were at that time a sufficient number of women
who could write, yet not to have acquired the art was considered no
disgrace to a woman of any rank.  In that interesting contemporaneous
poem, "The Song of the Lady Bessy," we find the daughter of Edward IV.
assuring Lord Stanley that there is no need to send for a scribe to
write his important private letters, for she could write as well as any
scrivener.

    "You shall not need none such to call,
      Good Father Stanley--hearken to me,
    What my father, King Edward, that King royal,
      Did for my sister, my Lady Welles,[#] and me:
    He sent for a scrivener to lusty London,
      He was the best in that citie;
    He taught us both to write and read full soon--
      If it please you, full soon you shall see--
    Lauded be God, I had such speed
      That I can write as well as he,
    Both English and also French,
      And also Spanish, if you had need."[#]


[#] The Princess Cicely.

[#] Humphrey Brereton, Lord Stanley's squire, and the writer of the
poem, was present at the conference, and we may therefore take him to
record the exact statements made by the Princess Elizabeth.


Certainly, the black-letter hand was one requiring far more effort and
pains than the modern running or Italian hand.  The caligraphy of the
Lady Bessy (afterwards Queen Elizabeth of York) which has descended to
posterity, would lead to the melancholy conclusion that if she wrote as
well as the best scriveners in London, the productions of inferior
penmen must have been illegible indeed.  It really is the case; for of
all periods in English history (alas, excepting the present century!)
the worst writing is found in that which runs from the close of the Wars
of the Roses to the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth.  A document
dating from the reign of King John is like copper-plate in comparison
with the atrocious scrawls of some writers of the Reformation period.

Before that year was ended, Pope Paul thought proper to confer upon
Louis XI. of France the title of "Most Christian King."  It was no
sooner heard of than it was gleefully seized by Edward IV., under his
character of _soi-disant_ King of France.  We may also conclude that
Proud Cis snatched at it with considerable self-gratulation, since a
charter of hers, dated in this very year, adds it to her titles. She
styles herself "the excellent Princess, mother of the Most Christian
Prince, our Lord and son, Edward, and lately wife of the most excellent
Prince Richard, by right King of England and of France, and Lord of
Ireland."[#]  Further than this, even Cicely's ambition dared not to
venture; yet it seems almost surprising that she did not step across the
very little gulf which lay between all these high-sounding epithets and
the one which would have involved them all--the coveted name of Queen.


[#] Close Roll, 9 Edw. IV.


During this year, another daughter was born to Edward and Elizabeth.
They had three now--Elizabeth, Mary, and Cicely--but no son.  The eldest
daughter, however, was treated as Princess of Wales in her own right.
She is always styled "the Lady Princess"--a title which, until the
accession of the Stuarts, appertained alone to the Princess of Wales,
whether she were daughter or daughter-in-law of the monarch.  The King's
daughters, apart from this, were simply addressed as "Lady."  The
Princess had her own separate household, and judging from the amount of
money spent upon her, was rather better provided for than the Queen.

Another occurrence was taking place this year, of no moment to any but
the parties immediately concerned, yet which might have had very
considerable influence on the future history of England. William
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, had a boy of thirteen as his ward, the nephew
of Henry VI., whom at that time it was desirable for his own sake to
keep as much in obscurity as possible.  This was Henry Tudor, the young
Earl of Richmond, whose mother was next heir to the Crown after the
descendants of Henry IV.  The Earl, who liked his young ward, lent a
kindly ear to his pleading when a love-story came before him.  He was
not altogether sorry to find that he could provide for the eldest of his
very numerous family by betrothing her to the young Earl.  Very young
they both were; but boys and girls came early to the front, and
blossomed rapidly into men and women in the time of the rival Roses.  So
the Earl of Richmond was formally affianced to the Lady Maud Herbert, in
anticipation of a marriage which was never to be.  Would it have been
better if it had been? Humanly speaking, the course of English history
would assuredly have been different.  For Maud Herbert was a woman of
strong character, and did not faint in the weary march, as Elizabeth
Lucy had done.  But one thing is certain: that the change for the worse
which came over the character of Henry of Richmond dates from the time
of his parting from Maud Herbert.  He went into exile; and she wedded
the Earl of Northumberland, years before his triumphant return to wear
the crown of England.  Which of the two was to blame must be left an
open question.  Perhaps it was not either: for Maud's marriage was not
improbably forced upon her, and Henry could not have returned to claim
her without the most reckless risk of life. His marriage with "the Lady
Princess" gave peace to England, but he died a lonely, unloved man,
grown miserly and callous,--no longer the graceful and gallant Richmond
of those early years when he and Maud had lived and loved at Pembroke
Castle.




                             *CHAPTER III.*

                               *FLIGHT.*

    "My barque is wafted to the strand
      By breath Divine:
    And on the helm there rests a hand
      Other than mine."
        --DEAN ALFORD.


The Lady Idonia sat writing at a small table in the hall of Lovell
Tower.  She was the best writer in the family--which does not by any
means imply extraordinary fluency of diction or rapidity of penmanship.
The letters grew slowly under her hand, and she frequently paused to
look out of the window and think.  What lay on the desk before her was
the following unfinished letter.

"Jh'u.[#]

"MY NOWEN[#] DERE CHYLDE,

Thys shal be to give you to wyt, wt[#] all louyng comendac'ons from all
us, that wee well fare, and do hope in God that you be the same. And we
have not yett herde so much as one word from yr sistar.  Matters here
bee reasonable quyett at this present, onlie that Doratie has broke y'
powdre box of siluer, in good sooth a misaduenture and noe malice, wch
shall be wel amended ere yow com home.  The dun cowe hath a calfe of hir
veraye coloure.  And Lyard Carlile[#] and all the dogges fare wel.
Maistres Henley hir littel lad lyethe sicke of a fevare, but the leech
reckoneth he shal doe well.  Dorathie ys merrie, and gode withal. Yr
father thynkes to buy som pigges ayenst Xmas.[#] We shal bee fayn to
here of yr newes, the rather if you can give us any tydynges of such as
you wot of,[#] how they be now in men's reckonings, and if thei be lyke
to fare wel or noe.  The gode Lorde of his mercie kepe us all, and make
vs to bee hys trew seruantes.  Annis, I wold haue you, when conueniencie
serue, to sende mee from London towne viij ells gode clothe of skarlette
for a goune for yr moder, and so moche of greene kersay as shall be a
goun for Doratie: and dowlas to lyne the same, and silke frenge to guard
the skarlett goun, and fur of rabetts to guard ye grene: alsoe siluer
botons iij dozen, and black botons vj dosen and halfe.  And sende ye
same well packed vp to the Goldene Lyon by Powles,[#] to ye name of
Maister Anthanie Milborne, yt is a frend of mye broder Will, and cometh
into Yorksh: thys nexte monethe.  And let him that berethe ye same aske
of ye sayd Maister Anthanie for a token[#] yt he hath of mee for yow.
Annis, wee trust in God yt yow shal be a discrete mayd and gode, and
obedyent to yowr maistres, and kyndlie wt yr fellowes.[#] And above al,
my dere harte, kepe yow ye fayth yt ve have ben learned, nor let not
anie man beguile you therof."


[#] A contraction of Jesus, commonly used at the head of a letter by
pious persons.

[#] Mine own.

[#] With.

[#] The name of a horse.

[#] Against Christmas.

[#] The Lollards.

[#] St Paul's Cathedral.

[#] Present.

[#] Fellow-chamberers.


The pen had been laid down at this point, and left so long that the ink
was dry.  The Lady Idonia was speaking now to Another than Agnes,

"O Lord, keep the child!" went up from her inmost heart.  "Suffer the
unfaithful handmaid to plead with Thee, that the faithful one may be
preserved in the faith.  I may give her wrong cautions--I may fancy
dangers that will not assault her, and be blind to those that will.
Thou, who seest the end from the beginning, hold the child up, and
suffer her not, for any pains nor fears, to fall from Thee!"

She roused herself at last, and finished her letter.


"And so, with all louyng comendac'ons from al vs, I commend yow to God.

"Yr louyng grandame to my litel powar,
       "IDONIA MARNELL.

"Writyn at Louell Towre, this Wensday."


The letter was delivered by Mr. William Carew to a retainer of the Earl
of Warwick, who was also one of his friends, and from whom he had
understood that the Earl meant to go southwards before the week was
over.

The plot was ripe at last.  Warwick left Middleham with the first dawn
of 1470, and arrived in London without any suspicion of his proceedings
being excited at Court.  He left his brothers behind him in the north,
with strict injunctions to George to keep John out of mischief.  They
were very necessary.  Unfortunately (from Warwick's point of view) just
at that juncture King Edward took it into his head to create Lord
Montague's little son George a Duke--a title then shared by very few who
were not Princes of the Blood--with the object of marrying him to the
Princess Elizabeth, and thus making him, in case Edward himself left no
son, virtually the future King.  This high advancement for his boy
sorely tried Montague's new-born Lancastrian proclivities.  He swung
like a pendulum between the royal rivals: and all the efforts of his
brother George were needed to prevent him from going off to Edward, and
of course, revealing the plot in which Warwick was now engaged.  One
thing which had annoyed Warwick was the discovery, real or fancied, that
his influence with Edward was less powerful than of old.  But he went to
work darkly, as was his wont.  He was greatly assisted in his
proceedings by the fact that he held Edward's commission to raise troops
for his service in the north, and no suspicion would therefore be
excited by his gathering an army around him.[#]  When he arrived in
London, he reported himself at the Palace, and a long interview followed
in Westminster Hall between Edward, Clarence, and Warwick.  They parted
"worse friends than they met,"[#] but Edward still does not appear to
have suspected that Warwick was actually plotting against him, or he
would hardly have let him go so calmly.  Edward had left for Canterbury,
and Warwick and Clarence prepared to return northwards and continue
their amusement.  Before leaving London, Clarence dispatched Sir John
Clare to Lord Welles and his son Sir Robert, desiring them to "be ready
with all the fellowship they could, whenever he should send word; but to
tarry and not stir till my Lord of Warwick were come again from London,
for fear of his destruction."[#]  In the mean time they assiduously
spread a report that "the King was coming down with great power to
Lincolnshire, and his judges should sit, and hang and draw great numbers
of the commons."[#]  Of course this disposed the commons to rally round
Warwick, who represented himself in the light of a protector from the
impending terrors.  He sent messenger after messenger to bid Sir Robert
Welles be of good comfort, and go forward, promising to meet him at
Leicester on the twelfth of February with nineteen thousand men.[#]


[#] A very varied tale is told of Warwick's capturing Edward in his bed
at Wolvey in 1469, and sending him prisoner to Middleham, whence he
effected his escape in a romantic manner.  The accounts given are
contradictory, the story of the escape is disbelieved by Carte, and
intimations on the Rolls seem to show that the King had never left
Westminster; I therefore have thought it wiser to ignore this episode
entirely beyond the present mention of it.


[#] Sandford.

[#] Confession of Sir Robert Welles, Harl. Ms. 283, fol. 2.

[#] Confession of Sir Robert Welles, Harl. Ms. 283, fol. 2.


Clarence, meanwhile, was playing his own little game, independently of
his father-in-law.  His messengers had private orders to "move the host,
that at such time as the matter should come near the point of battle,
they should call upon my Lord of Clarence to be King, and destroy the
King that so was about to destroy them and all the realm."[#]


[#] Confession of Sir Robert Welles, Harl. Ms. 283, fol. 2.


Meanwhile, Edward continued his favours to Montague--not because he
trusted, but really because he suspected him, and was anxious to ensure
his fidelity.  A few days only after the meeting of Warwick and Welles,
he granted to John, Earl of Northumberland and Baron Montague, the
manors of Tiverton, Plympton, Okehampton, and many others in
Devonshire,[#] being a portion of the confiscated lands of the
Courtenays, Earls of Devon. Perhaps this timely gift prevented Montague
from openly siding with Warwick until a later date: but he was not
particularly grateful for it, since he contemptuously termed it "a
'pie's nest," and plainly intimated that it was not so much as might
have been expected.  However, for the present, he held aloof from the
actual struggle.


[#] Rot. Pat., 9 Edw. IV, Part 2.  The earldom of Morthumberland was not
immediately restored to the Percys on their submission in the previous
October.  A writer in the Paston Letters dates their restoration Mar.
25, 1470.


That was close at hand.  Some rumour of the transactions with Welles
must have reached Edward, for he sent a peremptory order to Lord Welles
to come to him.  It was obeyed; and the old man was then commanded to
write a letter to his son, charging him instantly to forsake Warwick and
to join his father.  The command was accompanied by a hint that the
writer's head would be the forfeit of his failure.  Sir Robert, who
seems to have been of an obstinate temper, since we are told that he
knew his power was too weak to grapple with Edward, refused to obey, and
moved southward to give battle.  Edward kept his word, and the father's
life paid for the son's imprudence.  Then he marched northwards, and the
two armies met at Stamford, on a place afterwards known as Loosecoat
Field. Welles had no chance against the overwhelming superiority of
Edward's forces, and Warwick was not there.  Sir Robert was taken, and
beheaded at Doncaster on the 13th of March.  Hearing that Warwick was
encamped about twenty miles from Doncaster, Edward went on to the latter
town.  The next morning, March 20, "at nine of the bell," Edward took
the field at Estrefield, and Warwick met him.  "Never were seen in
England so many goodly men, and so well arranged."  But no sooner did
Warwick and Clarence perceive that fortune was against them than they
fled the field, and went to seek succour from Lord Stanley.  They halted
first at a little town, so obscure that it was necessary to say that it
was in Lancashire, as otherwise few would have known whereabouts
Manchester might be.  Thence they sent messengers to Lathom, but my Lord
Stanley, most cautious of men, showed them little favour.  "And so men
say they went northward, and thence, men deem, to London."[#]


[#] Paston Letters.


Perceiving that his chief adversaries had escaped him, Edward stopped
pursuit of their troops, and went on to York.  He and his men had
probably had thirsty work, for we learn that "York was drunk dry when
the King was there."[#]  He was wise enough to send to Middleham for
Lord Montague.  When that trustworthy gentleman appeared, it was to be
created Marquis Montague, the earldom of Northumberland being now taken
from him and restored to its rightful owner.  It might have been
supposed that an earl would scarcely deem it a deplorable occurrence
that he should be made a marquis: but my gracious Lord of Montague was
evidently in an exceedingly bad temper.  He growled and grumbled as if
he were a deeply injured man,--managing, however, to keep up a contented
face in the presence of his master, who appears to have fancied that he
had secured Montague's fidelity.  Never were there more men than at that
time who were able to "smile, and smile, and be a villain": and all the
Warwick brothers were certainly of the number.


[#] Paston Letters.


From York was issued a long and curious proclamation, in which Edward
showed that he had at last fully realised that Warwick and Clarence were
his open enemies.  If the words of Edward were to be relied on to the
exclusion of his deeds, it would certainly be supposed that he was a man
of the tenderest and most affectionate nature.  In this respect he
somewhat resembled his predecessor, Henry III.  Both could use very
touching language--which the actions of both sorely contradicted.  In
this document the tone taken by Edward is that of a well-deserving man
who had been injured in his deepest affections.  He sets forth that "the
King granted to George Duke of Clarence and Richard Earl of Warwick his
pardon general for all offences before Christmas last," trusting thereby
to have caused them to have "shewed unto him their naturall loue,
ligeance, and duetee," for which purpose he had authorised them to
assemble his subjects in certain shires.  "Yet the said Duke and Earl,
unnaturally, unkindly, and truly intending his destruction and the
subversion of the kingdom, ... and to make the said Duke king of this
the said realm, against God's law, man's law, all reason, and
conscience, dissimuled with his said Highness."  Their proceedings are
then detailed, as deposed in the confessions of Sir Robert Welles and
others, concluding with their flight "with all their fellaship into
Lancastreshire, so as his said Highness with his hoste for lack of
vitayll might not follow."  Notwithstanding all these offences, "our
sovereign Lord considered the nighness of blood,[#] and tender love
which he hath aforetime borne to them, and was therefore loth to have
lost them if they would have submitted them to his grace."  Having
disobeyed the writs which allowed them to present themselves, under
promise of pardon, up to the 28th of March, the Duke and Earl are now
solemnly proclaimed rebels, to whom loyal subjects of King Edward are to
give no aid, favour, nor assistance, with meat, drink, money, or
otherwise, but are to take them and bring them to the King, upon pain of
death and forfeiture.  The reward announced for the capture of either is
L100 in land by the year, to the captor and his heirs, or L1000 in ready
money, at his election.  The capture of any knight of their following is
to be rewarded by L20 in land or a hundred marks in cash; and of a
squire, L10 in land or forty in money.[#]


[#] The Countess of Warwick was Edward's second cousin, and the Earl his
third cousin.

[#] Close Roll, 10 Edw. IV.; dated York, March 24, 1470.


The day after this proclamation, Montague received his marquis's
coronet, and was, in appearance at least, one of the most faithful
subjects of King Edward.  The news he brought on his return to Middleham
caused no little excitement there. The Countess ordered instant
preparations for departure.  Some of the household were left behind at
Middleham: some were suffered to return to their friends, among whom
were Theobalda and Eleanor. The only ladies she took with her, beside
her daughters, were Mother Bonham, Frideswide, and Avice.  There was
also a dresser, or lady's maid, and a scullion-girl.

About midnight, when the ladies were trying to get a little sleep before
their early journey on the morrow, the porter was awoke by small pebbles
thrown up at his window.

"Who goes there?" he inquired, opening the casement about an inch.

"It is I, John Wright," answered the familiar voice of the young squire.
"Pray thee, good Thomas, be hasteful and let me in privily, with all
silence, for I bring word from my Lord unto my Lady."

The porter cautiously unbarred the small wicket, and Wright stepped
inside.  He did not wait to satisfy the porter's curiosity, but sped
across the court-yard, and by means of a key which he carried, let
himself into the tower which contained the apartments of the Countess.
A minute later, he was softly rapping at the outer door of her rooms,
and Mother Bonham admitted him.

The Countess sent for him at once to her bedside.  She guessed that his
message was one of imminent import.

"Noble Lady," said Wright, with a low courtesy--for the courtesy was a
gentleman's reverence in those days,--"behold here my Lord's token, who
greets you well by me, and desires you to come unto him, and my young
ladies withal, at Dartmouth, in Devon, so speedily and secretly as you
may."

He held forth a diamond ring, which the Countess recognised as one
usually worn by her husband, and not sent as a token except on occasions
of serious moment.  She sent Mother Bonham at once to communicate the
news to her daughters, and to desire them to be ready to set forth two
hours earlier than the time originally fixed.  Her idea had been to seek
the Earl at Warwick Castle, though she hoped to receive more exact news
before her departure.  But she deemed it quite as well that that very
reliable person, the Marquis Montague, should be left in a little
uncertainty touching her departure.  She had already taken advantage of
a conveniently smoky chimney to move the Marquis into a tower which did
not overlook her own. She now gave further orders that the horses were
to be in waiting outside the Castle, on the grass, so as to avoid noise,
and in a position where they could not be seen from Montague's windows.
At two o'clock, wrapped in long travelling cloaks, and wearing list
slippers, the ladies crept out of the Castle into the fresh April night
air, and mounted their horses in silence.  Sir John Clare rode before
the Countess, Sir Walter Wretill before the Duchess of Clarence, and
John Wright before the Lady Anne.  Slowly and silently, at first, the
procession filed off from the Castle, not breaking into a trot till they
thought themselves beyond sight and hearing.  The Archbishop (just then
to be trusted) was keeping watch over his brother, and with him
Warwick's servant, Philip Strangeways, who was to follow an hour later,
in order to gallop on and warn the ladies if any pursuit were attempted.

Once out of Wensleydale, and joined by Philip, the journey changed into
a rapid flight.  They travelled by night.  They were afraid of being
pursued, not only on their own account, but on that of Warwick, to whose
locality theirs would give a clue, as it would instantly be surmised
that they were going to join him.  They kept as much as possible to the
bye-ways and moor roads, which were less frequented, and also less
capable of ambush, than the high roads: but they could not keep
altogether out of human sight and hearing. Many a cottager woke up in
the dark to hear a rush of horses, and to see the flash of the lanterns
as the fugitives fled past.  It was a wretched journey, especially for
the Duchess, who was by no means in health to stand it.  But the Duchess
had a spirit which carried her above all pain and languor.  She would
have no halts made for her.  She entertained a strong dislike and fear
of Edward personally, and if report spoke truly, not without good
reason.

Before Dartmouth was reached, Frideswide Marston had most heartily
wished herself, a score of times at least, within the safe shelter of
Lovell Tower.  Oh, if she could wake up from this hurried snatch of
sleep under an elderbush, to find herself in that little white bed in
the turret chamber, with Dorathie's head beside her on the pillow!  It
seemed to Frideswide as if, that wish granted, she could never complain
of any thing again.

Along the wild hill-passes of "the back-bone of England," winding round
the Peak, keeping clear of Stafford Castle, where the Yorkist Duke of
Buckingham had his home, skirting Shropshire and Hereford, taking the
ferry over the Severn, down through Somerset, avoiding alike the
uncivilised neighbourhood of Exmoor, where bandits loved to congregate,
and the too civilised neighbourhood of Exeter, they came into those
safer parts of Devon where the exiled Courtenays were lords of the
hearts, though they had lost the lands,--where once more "the King" was
Henry VI., and his adherents would meet with honour and help.  Near
Totness they were met by William Newark, Warwick's nuncio, who conducted
them to boats moored in the river awaiting them.  It was a great relief
to change their weary saddles for the boats in which they dropped down
the lovely Dart, and found Warwick's fleet, of eighty ships, ready to
weigh anchor the moment they arrived, lying off Kingswear.

The voyage, however, had not been long before they discovered that the
saddles had been the safer mode of conveyance.  The wind, though low,
was not unfavourable: but they had scarcely passed Portland when they
were met by the very enemy from whom they were endeavouring to escape.
As they rounded the little peninsula, ships of war stood before them,
with King Edward's standard and Lord Rivers' pennon flying from the
masthead.

An evil augury for Warwick was that pennon. With any weaker commander,
the fleet would have obeyed its Lord High Admiral, as Warwick had been
created a year before.  But Lord Rivers was a conscientious man of one
idea, and he thoroughly believed in Edward's right.  The ships joined
battle, and the ladies of course were kept below.

Oh for that little white bed and Dorathie!

Never till then had Frideswide Marston looked death in the face, and
never after that day could she be as she had been, again.

Warwick was a less honest and true-hearted man than Rivers, but he was
also a better general.  The battle was short and sharp, but the victory
remained in the hands of Warwick.  His ships got safely away, but they
were not by any means out of their troubles.  It seemed as though both
God and man were against them that night.  Before they could reach
Beachy Head, there came on them a terrific tempest, and they were tossed
up and down in the Channel like toys of the storm.  To add to all other
distresses, the Duchess of Clarence, whose mental energy had hitherto
borne her through her physical sufferings, sank beneath them at last,
and became alarmingly ill.  It was not until the morning of the fourth
day that they found themselves off Calais, and a few hours before, the
Duchess had given birth to a child which had not survived the event many
minutes.  But Calais was Warwick's old home; he had been Governor of the
town for years.  Here, at least, he might hope for rest and aid.

They cast anchor under shelter of Cape Grisnez, and sent John Wright
ashore in a little boat to notify to Vauclere, Warwick's deputy in
command, that his master was about to land.

Warwick himself paced the quarter-deck impatiently.  What were those
sluggards ashore doing, that his own state barge was not sent off at
once to land the ladies?  Why did Vauclere not appear, cap in hand, to
express his satisfaction at the return of his master?  When at last he
saw his squire return alone, Warwick's patience, never very extensive,
failed him utterly.

"What means all this?" he roared in a passion.

"My Lord," shouted John Wright back from the boat, "Messire de Vauclere
begs your Lordship will not essay a landing, for the townsmen will not
receive you."

"Not receive _me_!" cried the Earl in amazement. "Me, their own
Governor!  Lad, didst hear aright? Is Vauclere beside himself?"

"In good sooth, nay, my Lord, and he is sore aggrieved to have no better
welcome for your Lordship than so.  'Tis the townsmen, not he, as he
bade me for to say, and he earnestly desires your Lordship to make for
some other French port."

Warwick could hardly believe his ears.

"But surely," he answered in a rather crestfallen tone, "they will never
refuse to receive my Lady Duchess?  Have you told Vauclere in what case
she now is?"

"My Lord, I told him all things: and he replied that he was sore
troubled it should so fall out, but he had no power.  He hath, howbeit,
sent two flagons of wine for Her Grace."

"No power!" repeated the Earl.  "Wherefore then is he there?  Leave me
but land in safety, and Messire de Vauclere, and my masters the
townsmen, shall soon behold if I have any power or no!  No power,
quotha!  Well! better luck next time.  Get you up, lad, and bring the
wine, for 'tis sore needed. Bid the shipmaster stand southward.  Were we
in better case, they should find their ears tingle ere they were much
older!  Messire de Vauclere shall one day hear my name again, or I much
mistake!"

And away strode the Earl wrathfully, to communicate the disappointing
news to his suffering ladies.

Southwards, for two days more, they slowly sailed. The storm was over,
and the wind had dropped almost to a calm.  But at the end of two days,
with much difficulty, the vessel containing the Earl and his family was
run into the mouth of the Seine, and between Harfleur and Honfleur they
landed on the soil of Normandy.

In France the scene was changed.  Louis XI. had been pleased to take up
the Lancastrian cause--the cause of the King who had of old, as a child,
been made the rival of Louis's father, and whose troops had been so
ignominiously driven out of France by the Maid.  In France, therefore,
Warwick was received with honour and material help. Every provision was
made for the wearied ladies at Valognes, where they took up their
temporary abode: but for some weeks nothing would tempt Warwick from
Honfleur--not even the remonstrances of his friend the Duke of Burgundy,
who sent to entreat him to come to his Court.  One important point was
wanting--Queen Marguerite would make no move towards conciliation.  In
vain King Louis assured her that Warwick's help was absolutely essential
to the Lancastrian cause.  The Queen might have welcomed him, but the
cruel defamation of her name the woman knew not how to forgive.  She
only relented after long importunity, and then on the stern condition
that in the presence of the Kings of France and Naples, Warwick should
solemnly retract all his accusations, and beg her pardon for his
infamous falsehoods.  She also insisted on this retractation being
published in England.  Finding that no better terms could be obtained
from his insulted sovereign, Warwick was compelled to eat this most
unpalatable piece of humble-pie with what appetite he might.  He waited
on the Queen at Angers, where he begged her pardon on his knees, and
formally unsaid all the imputations which he had made upon her
character. Even then all present could see that Marguerite found it a
very bitter task to receive her enemy into favour.  After this
humiliating scene, the Earl rejoined his ladies, and some weeks later
they travelled together to the Castle of Amboise, where their royal
hosts were then residing.

The Castle of Amboise stands on one of those natural platforms of rock
which in and about Touraine gem the vale of the Loire; the little town
clustering at its foot, between it and the river, while the Palace
towers above all.  Were it not for them, the scenery would be as flat as
the sea.  But wherever they stand up there is a little oasis of beauty,
for they are generally clad in verdure, as well as crowned with some
picturesque edifice of the Middle Ages.

It was after dark when the barge which bore the fugitives was moored at
Amboise.  Royal footmen stood on each side of the landing-stage, bearing
large torches, and royal ushers handed the ladies from the barge, and
led them into the Castle.  As Frideswide was modestly following her
mistress, the last of the group, rather to her surprise, a hand was
offered her, and a voice asked her in English if she were not very
tired.

Frideswide looked up into the pleasant face of a man of some thirty
years of age, who wore the royal livery of England.  Livery, it must be
remembered, was not at that time any badge of servitude; all the King's
equerries, household officers, and gentlemen ushers, wore his livery.
This man was of fine proportions, had bright, dark, intelligent eyes,
and wore--what few then did--a long beard and moustache.  There was a
kind, friendly expression in his face which made Frideswide feel at her
ease. She answered the sympathising inquiry by a smiling affirmative.

"Well, here may you find good rest," said he. "At the least, after all
these stairs be clomb, which I fear shall yet weary you somewhat.  Shall
we, of your good pleasure, make acquaintance?  I am the Queen's
henchman."

"Master Combe?" asked Frideswide, looking up.

"John Combe, and your servant," said he. "Truly a lowly name--it could
scarce be shorter--but it hath serven me these thirty years, and yet
shall, if it please God."

The name was no unknown sound to Frideswide Marston, for John Combe had
been Queen Marguerite's personal attendant--equerry, secretary,
confidant, friend--ever since that dark and evil day when, stung by
Warwick's cruel stab in the dark, the beautiful young Queen, to avoid
all ground for evil surmisings, had selected a boy of fourteen to ride
before her.  Truest of the true had John Combe proved to his royal lady.
He was low down, indeed, in her household--no peerage ever adorned his
name, nor order glittered on his breast--but there was not a man about
her whom Marguerite would have trusted as she trusted him.  His feeling
towards her was one of reverential tenderness--the sentiment of a
devotee towards his chosen saint.  In fact, it was John Combe's nature
to look out for, to protect, to love, whatever he found in need of it.
"The man who wanted him was the man he wanted."  A timid, shrinking
girl, who looked frightened and uncomfortable, would have won John
Combe's notice, though a dozen luxuriously-appointed beauties were
fluttering about him in vain.  What had originally attracted him to
Marguerite herself was not the beauty nor the Queen, but the lonely,
helpless, calumniated woman.

The world holds a few John Combes.  Would there were more!

The long stretch of stairs came to an end at last, and John Combe led
Frideswide into the private closet of Queen Marguerite.  It was the
first time she had ever seen the royal lady who to her was the
incarnation of every thing that was fair and noble. While the Queen was
occupied with the Countess and her daughters, Frideswide had time to
look at her.

Marguerite of Anjou was now just forty years of age, but she still
retained, in every item but one, that wonderful beauty which had won her
the reputation of the loveliest woman in Europe.  The once brilliant
complexion was dimmed and faded by long years of anxiety and privation.
But the graceful figure, lithe and slender, was not changed--the
gracious bearing was no less fascinating than of old--the blue eyes were
bright and sparkling still, and the golden hair held its own without a
silver thread. She received the Countess with the affectionate concern
of an old friend who was sorry for her recent suffering, and her
daughters with motherly kindness. Perhaps there was just a shade more of
it for the Lady Anne than her sister.  But Anne was the younger, and was
at that moment looking the more wearied of the two.  Then the Queen
turned to the suite, greeted Mother Bonham as she might have done her
own old nurse, and gave her hand to kiss to Frideswide and Avice.  The
Earl, who had been first to wait on King Louis, made his appearance
last.  Marguerite received him with cold civility, very different from
her manner to the ladies.  But she condescended to converse with him on
political affairs, though it was in a grave and distant style.
Marguerite showed to most advantage when she spoke, for then her face
lighted up, her eyes were animated, and her natural vivacity made itself
apparent.  Let her be silent, and the face grew grave and sad, as she
had good cause to be.

Before much of this political converse had gone on, the Queen, by a
motion of her hand, summoned John Combe, who, whatever he might be
doing, always seemed to keep one eye upon every act and gesture of his
royal mistress.  She desired him to call the Lady de Vivonne, and a
plump, lively, gesticulating Frenchwoman accordingly sailed into the
room.  To her care the Queen committed the ladies who had accepted her
hospitality, desiring her to see that they wanted for nothing: and the
Lady de Vivonne carried them off to the apartments already prepared for
them.  Here were several other women, both French and English, who
busied themselves in offering help.  One of the latter, a girl of about
their own age, devoted herself to Frideswide and Avice.

"Gramercy, my damsels, but you must be a-weary!" said she.  "I wis I was
when we hither came.  You shall yet have seen none, as I reckon, save
our own Queen?"

"None at all," answered Avice.  "I would right fain see my Lord Prince."

"And the King and Queen of France--be they here?" said Frideswide.

"They be so," replied Christian, as they found the girl was named: "but,
gramercy! they be not much to look at."

"Ill-favoured both?"

Christian pulled an affirmative face.  She was evidently ready to
continue the conversation to any extent; but both the chamberers were so
tired that when their duties were over, they were only too thankful to
lie down in bed.  Only, before they dropped asleep, Frideswide said,--

"What shall be the next move?"

"God wot," said Avice, gravely.

"Know you if the Queen hath or no any leaning toward our doctrine?"

"Hush, prithee!  I cannot tell, in any wise. The King is good man and
holy--men say, holy as any saint.  The Queen, I have heard, is a great
almsgiver--or so were, when she had alms to give. Poor lady! now 'tis
well nigh come to asking alms, with her."

"Poor lady!" echoed Frideswide.

And then they went to sleep.




                             *CHAPTER IV.*

                           *SCENE-SHIFTING.*

"What a world this is!--a cur of a world, which fawns on its master, and
bites the beggar.  Ha, ha! it fawns on me now, for the beggar has bought
the cur."--EDWARD, EARL LYTTON.


A brilliant spring morning greeted Frideswide's eyes when she opened her
curtains in the little turret-room at Amboise where the chamberers were
lodged.  Avice was still asleep, but Frideswide, hearing sounds of life
without, and fearing it might be late, roused her, and they dressed
quickly, and hastened to the Countess's rooms. They found that lady
refreshed by her night's rest, and in the highest spirits.  From the
sanguine tone of her conversation, it might have been supposed that the
conquest of England was only a thing to ask and have.  They would soon
be back at Warwick or Middleham,--there could not be the least doubt of
it: King Henry would be restored amid the acclamations of a delighted
and loyal people, that rebel would have his head cut off, and all would
be smooth as a looking-glass, and sweet as a bouquet of roses, for ever
thenceforward.

It was not Frideswide's place to utter a word. But in her heart she
thought that she had no wish to return to Middleham.  Were it in her
power to return to Lovell Tower, that would have been a different
matter.

The process of dressing over, the ladies descended to Queen Marguerite's
drawing-room, there to wait till the chapel bell rang for matins.  The
Queen herself appeared in a few minutes, and gave them a kindly
greeting.  She was accompanied by a youth of seventeen years, in whom it
was easy to recognise the Prince of Wales.

Edward Prince of Wales was "only the child of his mother."  Neither in
person nor character did he bear any resemblance to the King.  He was
tall for his age, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and superlatively handsome.
His beauty, nevertheless, was of rather too feminine a cast--though
there was no shade of weakness in his character, unless too great a
tendency to fiery rashness be considered in that light.

It may be said that the Prince did not enter the room unattended.  A
little allegorical person accompanied him, Cupid by name, who is said to
take great delight in the making of mischief and the breaking of hearts.
In this instance he certainly came for the latter pursuit.  Well would
it have been for Warwick's youngest and sweetest daughter if the
electric spark had not been shot that day from heart to heart, which was
to end in so soon making her a widow indeed, with a heart which could
throb no more to any human love.

The King of France was now on his way to the chapel, as a loud ringing
of bells and a trumpet-blast informed every body within hearing.  Queen
Marguerite marshalled her guests, giving her own hand to Clarence, the
Prince conducting the Duchess. In pairs they slowly filed down the
stairs of the tower, and crossed the court-yard to the chapel, where the
English Queen and Prince sat in the royal traverse, the former on the
right hand of King Louis, and the latter on the left of Queen Carlotta.

Frideswide felt quite ready to echo Christian's opinion that neither
King nor Queen of France was much worth looking at.  King Louis had
strong and by no means beautiful features, and he stooped in the
shoulders to an extent which approached an appearance of deformity.  The
Queen's features were more regular, but her face had a horse-like
length, and every thing about her was on a large and rather coarse
scale.  From the constant glances of fear cast by the Queen upon her
husband, Frideswide readily guessed that her married life was not a
happy one.  In truth, poor Carlotta's brains had been frightened out of
her.  She was not naturally at all deficient in intellectual power: but
eighteen years spent under the influence of unceasing terror had so
completely broken her spirit and crushed her capacities of all kinds,
that Carlotta was now a simple nonentity--good to sit, clad in robes and
jewels, at a pageant, but in all other respects, outside her children's
nursery, good for nothing at all.

After matins, breakfast was served in the Queen's drawing-room.
Breakfast was only now beginning to be considered a social meal.
Hitherto it had been much what afternoon tea is now--a light repast, to
which people came or not as they chose, and chiefly affected by women
and invalids.  It had, therefore, mainly consisted of bread or cakes.
Now fish and meat made their appearance in addition, and also the
acceptable novelty of butter--novel, that is to say, in its new form of
bread and butter.  It had long been used in cooking: but about this time
it permanently took the place of dripping as a relish to bread.  Wine,
ale, and milk, were the beverages used.

Never, perhaps, to the same extent as at this time, did the staff of
life appear under so many different forms.  The more delicate kinds were
termed simnel and _pain de main_: wassel was the best kind of common
bread; cocket was a spongy loaf of cheaper flour; maslin was made of
wheat mixed with oats and barley.  Griddle-cakes were peculiar to Wales
and the counties bordering thereon. Spice-bread was plum-cake in all
varieties of richness.  There was also brown bread, and Christmas bread,
which last was made of fine flour, milk, and eggs.  Manchet bread, which
was of high class, seems to have borne its distinctive name rather in
reference to shape than to material, and probably resembled a Yorkshire
tea-cake.[#]  There were beside all these, rolls, biscuits and cakes of
all sorts, maccaroons, gingerbread, and marchpane--a sweet cake of the
maccaroon type.


[#] This is the explanation usually given by antiquaries; but in
Lancashire, within living memory, a manchet was a small square loaf of
very white bread.  Some writers make manchet (afterwards termed _chet_
bread) the name of the simnel loaf; this is perhaps the true
explanation.


After breakfast, Queen Marguerite proceeded to business.  She held a
long sitting of her council--for the King being a prisoner, she was
virtually and unavoidably the Lancastrian Sovereign.  The Prince was yet
too young to assume this position, though circumstances had forced him
to the front so early that his intellect was beyond his years. He had
inherited nothing of the mental weakness of his father.

The council consisted of the Prince, Warwick, Clarence, Oxford, Jaspar
Tudor Earl of Pembroke (brother of King Henry by the mother's side),
Walter Lyhart Bishop of Norwich (the Queen's Confessor), Ralph
Mackarell, her Chancellor, and several gentlemen of less note who were
in the Queen's suite.  The only ladies admitted in attendance on the
Queen were the Countess of Warwick and the Lady de Vivonne, the latter
of whom understood no English.  Any thing of serious consequence could
therefore be said in that tongue.

English had now almost entirely taken the place so many centuries held
by French as the Court language, and there is very little difference
between the English of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During the
reign of Elizabeth a polishing process was slowly progressing, which has
never ceased,--though how far all changes in this respect are
improvements, may reasonably be open to question.

The idea of a new campaign was now mooted. Marguerite was sure of help
from King Louis.  The Duke of Burgundy was a more doubtful ally, who
vacillated between the rivals as inclination or policy led him, and who
was at that time recently married to the youngest sister of Edward IV.,
and yet entertaining and pensioning a number of the Lancastrian fugitive
nobles.  Just now the Red Rose was in the ascendant at his Court.  His
personal liking for Edward was doubtful, and his fear and dislike of
Warwick were not doubtful.  Two of the most prominent Lancastrian
nobles, the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, both of whom were at his
Court, did their utmost to incline him in their own direction, and the
result was that he openly offered his assistance to Queen Marguerite,
while he privately sent underhand information to Edward of all her plans
so far as they were known to him.  This, at least, is generally
believed.  It is, nevertheless, very possible, that the Duchess Margaret
may be really responsible for much of her lord's apparent treachery.
She was a woman to whose soul conspiracy and scheming were as the breath
of life.

The preparations for the campaign were quietly maturing as the summer
advanced.  It was arranged that Warwick was to precede the Queen,
landing about September, and she was to follow with more troops, two
months later.  But in the mean time it was desirable that some means
should be found to make the interests of Warwick identical with those of
King Henry.  No one knew better than Marguerite that Warwick's fidelity
was an article that had its price, and that he might be expected to
serve any cause just so long as that cause served him.  He was
perpetually at see-saw, and a very little additional pressure at either
end would hoist or depress him in an instant.  The fact of his
daughter's marriage to Clarence made him more dubious than ever. True,
Clarence himself was at the present moment a Lancastrian: but how long
would he remain so? He was even less to be trusted of the two: for while
solid advantage was required to weigh with Warwick, caprice was enough
at any time to sway the actions of Clarence.  Something, therefore, must
be done to provide a make-weight for Warwick's family connection with
Edward: and while the Queen was considering how it could be done, King
Louis made a suggestion to her which showed the best way to do it.

Human hearts will break through all state trappings, and will insist on
being heard even through the roar of revolution.  The young Prince of
Wales, barely seventeen, had fallen passionately in love with the Lady
Anne Neville, Warwick's youngest daughter, who was a year younger than
himself. But people were grown up at that age in the eventful fifteenth
century, which acted like a hot-bed upon the intellect and judgment of
its children. That the Prince should marry the Lady Anne Neville was
politically most devoutly to be wished: it was ardently desired by both
the parties most concerned, by Warwick himself, and by every body but
the one person into whose hands the matter had to come for decision.
But so well were the feelings of Queen Marguerite known to all around
her, that no one but the King of France himself dared to suggest to her
the marriage of her son with Warwick's daughter.  And when suggested,
the proposal was at first received by the Queen with a blaze of
indignation.  The wrath was all for Warwick,--certainly not for the
innocent Anne, whom she loved dearly for her own sake.

"What!" cried the Queen passionately, "does he ask to marry his daughter
to the son of the woman he traduced?  The wounds that he has inflicted
on me will bleed till the day of judgment."[#]


[#] These are the Queen's own words.


King Louis had need of all his craft and cajolery (in both which he was
an adept when he chose) to bring the insulted woman to what he
considered reason.  Perhaps, after all, she yielded rather to the
pleading eyes of her darling than to any political argument.  But she
did yield: and usually, when Marguerite resolved to do any thing, she
did it graciously.

The marriage of the Prince of Wales and the Lady Anne was celebrated in
the chapel of Amboise, in July or August, 1470.  It was attended by the
usual ludicrous stratagems on the part of King Louis, who loved grand
pageants only less than he detested paying bills for them.  Accordingly,
when hangings were to be put up, he bought new velvet for those parts
where they could be seen, and made old serve wherever they could not.
On the present occasion, His Majesty had new robes made for himself and
the Queen, but the fronts only were of previously unused material,--for,
as the King very truly observed, "when we are sitting in the traverse in
chapel, who will see the backs of our clothes?"  On this economical
principle, the gold trimmings on Queen Carlotta's dress were gold in
front, but at the back tinsel was employed.  A splendid diamond served
as a button to fasten the ostrich feather in His Majesty's hat (which
was of a round form turned up with fur, like a tall "pork-pie" hat), but
the velvet of which the back portion was composed was creased and worn,
and the back fur had been cut from an old cloak of the Queen's.

Queen Marguerite practised her economies in another fashion.  Economy
was far more necessary to her than to Louis, for she literally lived
upon alms: but when she found velvet beyond her purse, she dressed
herself in honest camlet, or, had it come to that, in uncompromising
serge.  In truth, Marguerite was too high-souled to measure a man's
worth by that of his clothes.  In velvet or in serge, she was still the
Queen of England.  By a little pinching, in this instance, velvet was
obtained for the bridegroom's dress: but there was not enough for the
Queen also, and she therefore appeared contentedly in sendal, which cost
less, nor was she so mean a soul as to feel one pang in doing so.
Warwick, who acquired wealth not as he ought, but as he could, had cash
enough, and exhibited the fact by showering jewellery on the bride.

The ceremony over, congratulations were offered in abundance, and all
the suite knelt to kiss the hand of the Princess.  It was the general
opinion that a splendid future lay before the young pair,--how could it
be otherwise?  They were already dowered with rank, beauty, intellect,
and devoted love.  What did they lack except wealth and success, which
the approaching campaign would undoubtedly confer on them?  O blind
eyes, which saw not the Angel of Death stand with folded wings behind
the bridegroom!--which read not the scroll, written within and without,
with desolation, and mourning, and woe, to be crushed into those few and
evil years which were the portion of the bride!  Woe unto them that
laughed now, for they should weep!

The remainder of the summer was busily filled with preparations for the
approaching campaign. On an early day in September, the Duke of
Clarence, and the Earls of Warwick and Oxford, took leave of the ladies,
and with banners flying, at the head of a mercenary host, set out for
England.

"God guard you, my Lady!" said Warwick, with his last kiss to his wife.
"Farewell, my pretty ones!" to his daughters.  "Only a short farewell.
We meet at Westminster, two months hence, if His will be."

It was not.  Never again were they to see his face.

Queen Marguerite did not remain long at Amboise after Warwick's
departure.  She removed to Paris, to be nearer the scene of action,
accompanied by the Prince and Princess, the Countess of Warwick, the
Countess of Wiltshire, and the rest of her ladies.  A very comical story
is told of the husband of this Countess of Wiltshire at the battle of
St. Albans, where, says the sly old chronicler, "the said James set the
King's banner again an house end, and fought manly with the heels, for
he was afeared of losing of beauty, for he was named the fairest knight
of this land."[#]


[#] Gregory's Chronicle.


On the thirteenth of September, Warwick and his army landed at Plymouth,
some at Dartmouth and Exmouth.  The Duke of Burgundy tried in vain to
intercept him, his vessels being scattered by a great storm through
which Warwick passed safely. Burgundy, however, sent word to Edward of
the port and time of Warwick's choice: but Edward was on a hunting
expedition, and, true to his character, he left matters to look out for
themselves. A man of no foresight, vigilance, nor strength of character,
but capable of sudden rushes of violent bravery, it was Edward's habit
to trust to the chapter of circumstances, which hitherto had usually
turned in his favour.  Moreover, he had in this instance a secret source
of hopefulness, of which Warwick was not aware.  Private overtures had
been going on between him and Clarence, by means of a lady in the
household of the Duchess, whom Edward had sent over primed with
instructions.  Ostensibly she came, of her own accord, to join her
mistress, and her _role_ of envoy was never suspected, for "she was no
fool, nor loquacious."[#]  Beyond this, Edward placed trust in Warwick's
brothers, of whose fidelity he felt no doubt.  The past was apparently
forgotten.


[#] Comines.--Who this ambassadress was is not known.


Warwick had not landed a week when he found the whole country pouring in
to aid him.  He set his face towards Bristol, where he had left his
heavy baggage when he fled to France.  Here he was well received; and
after three days spent in collecting forces, he marched upon Nottingham
at the head of sixty thousand men.

King Edward was now at Lynn, in a fortified house, to which there was no
access except by one bridge.  He had "begun to look about him" when he
heard of Warwick's approach, but he does not appear to have done much
beyond it.[#]  As he sat at dinner, news was brought to him that his
trusted partisan, the Marquis Montague, had mounted his horse, and was
crying, along with others, "God save King Henry!"  Edward treated the
first rumour as mere nonsense: but when it was repeated, and Lord Rivers
shook his head with the remark that "things did not look well," Edward
despatched Lord Hastings to see if it were true.  He returned with the
news that it was less than the truth.  Nearly the whole army had
deserted to Warwick, as represented by his brother Montague.  If Edward
meant to save himself at all, he must escape now.


[#] Several chroniclers state that Edward fled from Nottingham to Lynn
when he heard of Warwick's coming: but no hint of this movement is given
by Comines, who tells us that he received his version of the narrative
from Edward's own lips.


At anchor off Lynn lay one English and two Dutch ships, ready to sail,
having come laden with provisions for Edward's army.  He hastily
summoned such of his nobles as were faithful to him, and about seven
hundred of the army, and fled on board one of the Dutch ships.  Lord
Hastings stayed behind to give a piece of deceitful advice to his
men--namely, that they should join Warwick, but retain their allegiance
to King Edward and himself--and then followed his master.  So hurried
was the flight that Edward had no money, and no clothes but those he
wore, and a cloak "lined with beautiful martens," which he had probably
caught up in departing.  The three ships sailed away from Lynn with all
the speed they could make, and the day, which had opened on the tenth
year of Edward IV., closed on the forty-ninth of Henry VI.

Once more--and though he knew it not, for the last time--Warwick "had
all England at his bidding."  He was king in all but name, for King
Henry still lay a prisoner in the Tower, and Queen Marguerite was in
France.  Warwick sent off Sir John Clare with hasty triumphant
despatches to the Queen, and himself marched on London.

Of course the news of his coming reached the capital before him, and the
citizens turned out to greet their favourite.  Warwick's popularity with
them is said to have been due to three causes: first, he flattered them;
secondly, he allowed them to engage in any acts of piracy they pleased
with impunity; and lastly, he took care to be always heavily in debt to
various citizens.[#]  It became therefore the interest of London that
Warwick should triumph.


[#] Comines.


Warwick's first act was to march on the Tower, and summon it to
surrender.  The terrified Constable delivered his keys to the Lord
Mayor, who opened the gates for Warwick.  Jaspar Earl of Pembroke and
John Earl of Oxford entered with him.  They went straight to the chamber
in which the King was confined, and found that simple-minded man calmly
reading his Psalter, and not more disturbed by the tumult than to look
up and say,--"Pray you, Master Gaoler, what noise is this without?"

But Henry's tone changed the next instant, and the prisoner became the
king.

"Ha! my Lord of Warwick here!--and Jaspar--my dear brother!" and he gave
him his hand affectionately.  "My Lord of Oxford--God give you good
morrow all!  What means this?"

Warwick knelt at the feet of the King.

"It means, my Lord, that God hath saved King Henry."

And from all around rose the chorus.  The King gazed from one to another
as though he scarcely believed the evidence of his senses.

"Where are my wife and son?" was his next query.

"At Paris, my Lord, and soon to come hither, if God be serven."

"And the Earl of March?"

This was Edward's proper title in the eyes of a Lancastrian.

"Fled, my Lord,--fled the realm: and his wife is in sanctuary with her
childre."

It would not have been Henry VI. if he had not answered, "Poor souls!"

"All is o'er of the rebellion," broke in Oxford, always fiery and rash:
"all is o'er, your Highness; and we pray you give us leave to conduct
you to your own lodging."

"Nay," said the King, kneeling down at the table; "tarry till I have
thanked God."

Then, the rest kneeling around bareheaded, he poured forth a fervent
thanksgiving.  Very simple as this man was in worldly wisdom, he was
eloquent when he spoke to God.  Then they took from him the prison garb,
and attired him in royal robes, and led him to "the King's lodgings" in
the White Tower.

Here a singular ceremony took place.  Warwick and his colleagues were
not content with merely restoring King Henry, but deemed it a better
safeguard to give him the additional advantage of popular election.
Accordingly they held a formal _plebiscite_--of whom composed we are not
told,--whether simply of the little group of Lancastrian nobles, or of
their army of four thousand men, or generally of the citizens of London.
This process completed, the King was set on horseback, and conducted to
the Bishop of London's palace.

But Warwick soon discovered that he had an account to settle with his
intensely discontented son-in-law.  The deposition of Edward, in the
eyes of Clarence, was not at all equivalent to the restoration of Henry.
He had been ready enough to displace his brother, but his
intention--which Warwick had frustrated--had been to set himself, not
Henry, on the vacant throne.  Clarence was in a very sulky temper, and
required a tiresome amount of smoothing.  This desirable end was at last
accomplished; and having been joined by his excellent brother, the
Archbishop of York, who was always constant to one side--the winning
one--Warwick proceeded to get up a splendid procession to St. Paul's
Cathedral, which King Henry entered in state on the thirteenth of
October.  He wore his crown, and Warwick carried his train, while Oxford
bore the sword before him.  After the procession, Edward of March was
solemnly proclaimed a usurper through London.

Meanwhile, Edward, deserted and destitute, chased by Esterlings across
the sea, ran his vessel into Alkmaar, and landed, accompanied by his
brother Richard and his few faithful adherents.  He had no money to pay
the captain, and he gave him all that he had, his fur-lined cloak.  The
Lord of Gruthuse, Governor of Holland for the Duke of Burgundy, received
the fugitives kindly, provided them with clothing, and conducted them to
the Hague, whence Edward sent a messenger to the Duke to notify his
arrival.  This news was by no means a source of pleasure to that royal
trimmer, Duke Charles, whose endeavours to keep in with both parties are
as amusing to readers of history as they were troublesome to himself.
He did, however, grant to his brother-in-law a pension of five hundred
crowns per month; but he gave him little encouragement to come on to his
court, whither Edward nevertheless proceeded at once, as soon as he had
money to do so.  When Edward presented himself at St. Pol, where the
Court was then residing, the poor Duke was in a ludicrous state of
indecision. On his one hand was his wife Margaret, to whom he was really
attached, as he showed by marrying her as soon as he became his own
master--his father having set his face against the marriage for
political reasons: on the other side, the Lancastrian Dukes of Exeter
and Somerset, who had resided for some years at his Court, and were his
chosen friends. On both sides, as it seemed, was his own interest. At
last he contrived to find a way out of the difficulty, which, as usual
in such circumstances, was a crooked one.  He publicly proclaimed his
intention of giving no assistance to Edward, and forbade any of his
subjects to enlist with him: while privately he presented him with fifty
thousand florins, and quietly made ready at Ter Veere four or five large
ships of his own navy, and fourteen more hired from the Esterlings, or
merchants of the Hanse Towns.

These preparations of course took time; and during that time Queen
Marguerite would have been energetically working in England, had she
found it possible.  But winds and waves were against her.  She came down
to the French coast in November, as had been agreed with Warwick: but
she could go no further.  In an agony of impatience and longing, she was
compelled to waste at Harfleur time more precious than jewels.  Her
husband wanted her, in every sense of the word. The Lancastrian party,
deprived of her, was a body without a soul.  Even Warwick, clever man as
he was, and little love as was lost between him and her, condescended to
express a wish for the Queen's presence.

On the fourth of November, 1470, while things were in this condition, a
little life began in the sanctuary at Westminster, which was to end,
fifteen years later, as sorrowfully as it had opened, in the Tower of
London.  The long wished for son of Edward IV. came at last.  But the
news does not seem to have lightened the discouraged hearts of the
Yorkists.  Before the month was over, Sir Richard Widville, Queen
Elizabeth's own brother, had made his submission to King Henry.

The King was residing, quietly enough, at Westminster Palace, which he
never quitted during his short tenure of power.  Large grants were made
to the three Warwick brothers; and Henry, who could not conceive the
idea of any body playing him false, seems to have placed himself
entirely in their hands. His sagacious wife would have taken a truer
view of the situation.  But she was a virtual prisoner on the French
coast, bound there by the winds and waves of God.

Warwick was created afresh Lord High Admiral of England, Ireland, and
Aquitaine, with enormous powers: Clarence was made Viceroy of Ireland,
and letters patent granted enabling him to do any thing he chose.  The
whole tone of the grants shows them to have really proceeded from the
persons to whom they were ostensibly made, and in whose hands the King
was an innocent toy, skilfully moved at pleasure.  O for the wise head
and the true heart of his one real friend!--of her who loved _him_
first, and the crown and sceptre second.  There were other friends, true
in a sense: but to them the crown was the point of importance, and Henry
was interesting merely as the man who ought to be wearing it.

One of these last was with him--his brother Jaspar,--and early in
February, another fought his way to his side.  The winds and waves, soon
to have so dire a message for him, yielded now to the eager importunity
of Exeter.  The sight of Edward at the Court of Burgundy was more than
his Lancastrian heart could bear.  The bitter cruelty which he had
received at the hands of Edward's sister, his own wife, came back upon
him too vividly to be endured.  Half driven by the one reason, half
drawn by the other, he hastily left St. Pol, and journeyed across France
to the port where Queen Marguerite waited for a fair wind from the east.
And then it was that Frideswide Marston first saw the face which she
should never forget again.

Henry Duke of Exeter was a Holand, but not one of the handsome Holands
of Kent, who were characterised by their lofty height, their stately
carriage, and their magnificent beauty.  His grandfather, John de
Holand, the first Duke of Exeter, had stepped out of the family ranks in
respect of personal appearance, being a short, dark-haired man, with
pendulous cheeks and no good looks of any kind.  Duke Henry had improved
upon this pattern, having inherited some of the attractiveness of his
beautiful grandmother, the Princess Elizabeth of Lancaster.  Two Holand
qualities were his, derived from his grandfather--the fiery fervour and
the silver tongue.  From both sides of his ancestry came his impulsive
bravery; from the Plantagenet side his chivalrous generosity, his
delicate courtesy: from all, the unswerving loyalty and faithfulness
which formed the most prominent feature of his character.  Yet they were
joined by that shrinking from pain, and that despondent hopelessness,
which an eminent psychologist tells us are manly, not womanly
characteristics, inconsistently mingled with weakness of a type much
more feminine than masculine.  A strangely complex and inconsistent
character was this: a brave man who never feared disgrace nor death; a
true man, who would have died with his hand upon his banner and his face
to the foe; a man with distinct convictions, and courage to avow
them--yet a weak man.  A voice that he loved would lead him in the teeth
of his own convictions, though a voice that he did not love could not
make him swerve for an instant.  In this respect he was unlike all his
family,--most of all unlike his bluff and cruel father, the last act of
whose life had been the invention of the rack, long popularly known in
England as "The Duke of Exeter's daughter."

In a popular ballad of the day, wherein the state is described under the
figure of a ship, Exeter is selected as the lantern at the mast-head.
The idea was doubtless originally taken from his badge--the fiery
cresset set aloft upon the pole--yet it was equally true to the fervent,
devoted, transparent character of the man.

    "The ship hath closed hym a lyght
    To kepe her course in way of ryght,
    A fyre cressant that bernethe bryght,
      With fawte was never spyed.
    That good lyght that is so clere
    Call Y the Duke of Exceter,
    Whos name in trouthe shyned clere,
      His worship spryngethe wyde."


The memory of the wife at whose hands he had endured what few husbands
would have borne, much less have pardoned, was to Exeter one of unmixed
pain and bitterness.  It could scarcely be said that he had loved her.
He had liked her, and he would have loved her with very little
encouragement. But so far from encouraging the affection, she had
smothered it in its cradle.  She gave him no chance to love her.
Repulsed and mortified, his heart--to which love of something was an
absolute necessity--had turned to their one child, the fair-haired
little daughter who resembled her mother in face, but her father in
character.  For her sake he had borne all this suffering inflicted by
her mother; for her sake he had continued to live in the same house with
his wife, long after her company had become intolerable.  Nay, not to be
parted from Anne, he had done, and would have done, almost any thing
required from him.  They were parted now.  The Duchess knew her
daughter's power over her husband, and she therefore insisted on keeping
the daughter by her side.  She might become a useful tool some day, if
she received proper training, which her mother meant to give her.

All that Exeter knew was that the only creature whom he loved, and who
loved him, was in the hands of enemies who would try hard to make her
hate him.  She was his one comfort in all the world, and she was kept
away from him.  This was the bitterest drop in his bitter cup--and his
wife meant it to be so.  Few men had suffered in the Wars of the Roses
as he had.  To-day in prison, and to-morrow in sanctuary; forsaken by
his own soldiers, reduced to beg his bread barefooted until the Duke of
Burgundy took compassion upon him, robbed of every penny of his
inheritance by the woman who had sworn in God's presence to love and
cherish him--all these painful memories were less to Exeter than the
cruel separation from his only child.  Deep down in his heart, scarcely
confessed even to himself, was the hope that would break out of that
passionate longing for her.  If he could cross the Channel, if he could
get to London, perhaps, some day, at a window or through the curtains of
a litter, he might catch a glimpse of Anne.  Even a wilder hope than
this he cherished; for it might be possible to bribe one of his own
servants to obtain for him a secret and stolen interview with his own
child.  But would he ever find his child again?  He might see the Lady
Anne de Holand: but would she be the little Nan that he had left years
ago--the little Nan that used to climb upon his knee and kiss him and
tell him that she "loved him so"?  Better to keep that sweet remembrance
undimmed, though it called up such hopeless yearning, than to meet a
cold, haughty maiden who would courtesy to him and call him "my gracious
Lord," and take the first opportunity of getting away from him.  That
would be to lose his darling indeed, in a far worse sense than he had
lost her now.

It was not for Frideswide Marston to read all this.  But she saw the
weary, wistful look in the dark eyes, and she wondered whence it came.

How Exeter contrived to do what the Queen could not do, and make his way
to England, has not been explained.  We only know that he did it, and
that on the fourteenth of February, 1471, he rode into London--where
King Henry VI. reigned in the Palace of Westminster, where Queen
Elizabeth Widville pined in the Sanctuary, and where the Duchess Anne of
Exeter held royal state at Coldharbour--safe from both rival Roses, for
what Lancastrian would harm the wife of his King's most faithful
councillor, and what Yorkist would dare to touch the favourite sister of
his sovereign?

In anticipation of the Duke's journey, Queen Marguerite had kindly
suggested that any of the suite who wished to do so might send letters
by him. Frideswide, who was longing for communication with home,
undertook the tremendous task of writing both to her father and sister.
The Duke turned over the letters which were put into his hands, and
paused suddenly when he came to the one addressed to his own home.

"Who writ this?" he asked of John Combe, who had brought the letters to
him.

Combe glanced at the address--"_To the hands of Mistress Agnes Marston,
at Coldharbour, in the City of London, le these delivered._"

"I reckon, my gracious Lord, it shall be Mistress Frideswide Marston,
that is of my Lady of Warwick's following."

"Pray you, desire Mistress Frideswide to come hither, for I would fain
have speech of her."

She came, and stood courtesying within the doorway.

"Come nigh, I pray you, Mistress," said the Duke, "and tell me, is this
fair dame of your kin?"

He held up her letter to Agnes, as he spoke.

"An' it like you, aye, my gracious Lord: it is my sister, that is
chamberer unto your Lady."

The Duke looked thoughtfully at the letter.

"Think not my words strange," said he, "but answer me, if this your good
sister be of gent and pitying kind?"

"That is she, right surely."

"One that should do a kind deed for a man in need, an' it fell in her
way?"

"I am assured of that, my gracious Lord."

"Then pray you, Mistress Frideswide, do me so much grace as to write
outside your letter, that you do beseech her, for the love of you, to
grant that the bearer thereof shall ask of her."

Frideswide looked, as she felt, astonished.

"Mistress Frideswide," said the Duke sadly, "you are here, as I, cut off
from home and friends.  But you have hope to return thither when God
will, and I have none.  My maid, I have one only child, that is the very
jewel of my heart, and they keep her from me.  (He did not say who
"they" were.)  If you will do so much for me, I will myself deliver your
letter, an' it may be compassed, and pray your good sister to let me
have a word with my darling."

Frideswide Marston looked up into the sad earnest eyes, and then,
without another word, stooped down and added the request to her letter.
There was more wet on the cover than ink, when she had done.




                              *CHAPTER V.*

                           *HIS LITTLE NAN.*

    "Some feelings are to mortals given
    With less of earth in them than Heaven;
    And if there be a human tear
    From passion's dross refined and clear,
    A tear so limpid and so meek
    It would not stain an angel's cheek,
    'Tis that which pious fathers shed
    Upon a duteous daughter's head."
      --SIR WALTER SCOTT.


"Be sure, Jane, to tell Valentine that I will have my gown of motley
velvet ready for my wearing on the morrow; and bid him set silver
buttons thereto--and good plenty."

"Please it your Grace, Master Valentine did desire of me that I should
say unto you that he could not make ready the gown of motley as
to-morrow, nor afore Thursday come."

"Could not?"  The Duchess of Exeter's chiselled eyebrows were slightly
raised.  "Could not?  But he must."

"Please it your Grace, thus said he."

"Tell him it skills not[#] what he can.  I say he shall."


[#] Matters not.


"Then belike there shall be more tailors had?"

"I care not how it be done, so it cost no money."

"But, an't like your Grace, the tailors will not work without money: and
unless more be had, Master Valentine can never, his own self--without he
sit up all night, nor scarce then--make an end of your Grace's gown by
to-morrow."

"Let him sit up, then.  Good lack! what ado is here over a sely[#]
tailor!"


[#] Simple, mean.


"Your Grace mindeth, maybe, that you were set to have the murrey[#] gown
by next Sunday?--and both two cannot be done."


[#] Plum-coloured.


"Cannot! always at _cannot_!  Hold thine idle tongue.  Of course it can
be done if I will have it so."

"Doubtless, Madam, if it please your Grace to pay more tailors."

"I will pay nobody.  Ye will clean ruin me amongst you.  "'Twas but
yesterday I paid four thousand marks to a Lombard for jewelling.  Ye
would leave me never a cross[#] in my purse."


[#] Penny, divided by a cross that it might be easily broken into
fourthings=farthings.


"Then, an' it please your Grace, what is to be done?" demanded the
practical Jane, who was one of the four chamberers of the Duchess.

"Gramercy, maid, burden not me withal!" testily exclaimed her royal
mistress.  "Go and ask at Dame Elizabeth Darcy, an' thou wist not what
to do.  I tell thee, the motley must be made ready for to-morrow, and
the murrey by Sunday next: and how it shall be is no business of mine,
so it cost not money.  _It shall be_.  See to it."

Poor Jane, who felt herself ordered to do the impossible, made one more
faint struggle with destiny.

"It should not like your Grace to bear that gown to-morrow?"

"This?" returned the Duchess contemptuously, glancing down at her dress,
which was of dark blue satin, heavily trimmed with minever.  "'Tis not
fit to be seen.  Hast lost thy wit?  I tell thee, I must have a decent
gown to put on.  That idle Valentine hath left me never a one in my
wardrobe.  He is the laziest tyke that ever set needle."

"Please it your Grace, there is the broched[#] cloth of silver"----


[#] Figured.


"'Tis all frayed at the bottom.  I warrant he hath not hemmed it anew."

"And the tawny velvet"----

"The which yon rascal Fulk spilt a glass of malmsey o'er.  Tell Dame
Elizabeth it must be docked of his wages."

"And the changeable[#] green velvet"----


[#] We retain changeable silk, under the name of shot silk; but
changeable velvet is lost.


"With a rent across the front breadth as wide as mine arm, and none of
you idle hussies hath thought to mend it."

"And the russet figury velvet"----

"All the pile worn off--as shabby as can be."

"And the crimson and blue damask, and the purple tartaryn,[#] and the
mustredevilers,[#] and"----


[#] A kind of satinette, or satin Turk.

[#] A cloth, of which the name was derived either from _moitie de
velours_, or from being manufactured at Villars.


"Go thy ways for an impudent ne'er-do-well!  I tell thee I will have
those two gowns--I _will have_ them!  Let me hear no more of thy
foolery."

And away marched the Duchess, and left poor Jane standing in the middle
of the room.

"It shall cost Master Valentine his place an' he do it not," muttered
she to herself.  "And he cannot do it--'tis not possible in the time."

"Then, were I Master Valentine, catch me essaying to compass it!" said a
voice beside her.

"Dear heart, Marion! wouldst lose thy place?"

"I would lose this place, and be rare thankful to do it," responded the
girl addressed as Marion, who was another of the chamberers.  "I
oft-times wish we were as the meynie,[#] and could be hence if we
would."


[#] Household servants.


The expression of Jane's face indicated that she thought such a
sentiment treasonable.

"What with her Grace, and what with Tamzine, it is not a dog's life we
lead!" continued Marion. "If the thing lay in mine hands, you should
see, but I would wed the first man that asked me, just to be out of it."

"So might you be worser off than now," suggested Jane.

"Could not!" said Marion expressively.

Jane shook her head as if she thought that very questionable.

"Men be queer matter," said she.  "Now you can make out a woman."

"Good lack! think you making out is all?" replied Marion.  "She is easy
enough to make out, is Her Grace.  So is Tamzine.  But I love their
company never a whit the more for that.  Gramercy, there goeth my Lady's
handbell!  I must away."


In an upper room in the same house two other girls were sitting.  One,
who sat at work in the window-seat, was so like Frideswide that we can
easily guess her to be Agnes Marston.  She was a little quieter than her
sister in manner, and a shade less good-looking.

The other girl sat in a large, handsome, curule chair, with an
illuminated manuscript open on the table before her.  Her face was a
remarkable one. Her figure was extremely slender, thin almost to
emaciation: but more striking than this was the wan white face, where
two hectic spots burned in the hollow cheeks, and the large dark blue
eyes seemed of unnatural size and brilliance.  A long-drawn sigh made
Agnes look up.

"Your Ladyship is weary, methinks," she said.

"I may well be thus," was the answer, as the head was leaned on the thin
hand.  "I was doing that which would weary an angel, for I was trying to
understand God."

"How, dear my Lady?"

The white-faced girl lifted her head, and let her eyes meet those of
Agnes.

"It were to no good to speak in riddles," she said.  "Agnes, you have
dwelt in this house a full year, and you know the sorrows thereof as
well as I.  Specially, you know my sorrows--you know that I live a life
wherein there is nothing to make the present happy, and the future is
all full of a great dread.  There is only one in all the world that
loves me, and I cannot go to him: and one that I love not, and that
loves not me, is about to be forced upon me whether I will or no.  Why
should I try to hide these things from you?  You know them all.  In all
the whole world that is, and in the life that is to be, there is not one
ray of sunlight for me.  Do you marvel, Agnes, if life looks black to
mine eyes?  Are you one of those surface seers, that reckon a woman
should be comforted for a breaking heart by a necklace of pearl, and
that she is a fool to weep for a lost friend if she have a new gown of
crimson velvet?"

"No, indeed, Lady mine."

"Aye me!" sighed the Lady Anne.  "If I had but been a carpenter's child,
or of a gardener----that I could have welcomed him back at eve from his
daily work, and kept his hearth bright, and might have loved and been
loved!  I could have done without the pearls and the velvet, Agnes. But
I have them: and they be poor exchange for the other."

"Things will change one of these days, sweet my Lady.  ''Tis a long lane
has no turning.'"

"It has been a long one, and there be eight years now since it turned
last.  Eight years, Agnes--more than half my life!  And folks think it
strange that I care.  They looked for me, it should seem, to set mine
heart on gewgaws, and to think more of the bidding to a dance than of
the loss of a father.  If I could see an end to it, I might take less
thought.  But I can behold no turn coming save one, and that is for the
worser."

Agnes knew that this allusion was to her approaching marriage.
Certainly that was no source of congratulation.  In the eyes of the
waiting-woman no less than the mistress, the handsome young Baron of
Groby, Thomas Grey, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth, who had been
chosen as the future husband of the Lady Anne de Holand, was not a man
to be regarded with any other sentiment than repugnance.  Agnes had seen
him kick his dog out of the way, and never look whether he had hurt it,
when the poor little spaniel, unaware of its master's mood, had presumed
to request his attention when he was not disposed to give it.

"There is only one comfort thereanent.  I shall, may-be, never live to
be wedded."

"Dear my Lady, pray you"----

"Does it look likely, Agnes?" said Lady Anne with a quiet
smile,--scarcely a sad one this time.

The tears came to Agnes's eyes.  She could not say that it did.

"No," resumed Lady Anne, after a short pause, and in a low voice, "I
never loved any thing yet that did not either die or go away from me."

"Except Jesus Christ," said Agnes softly.  She knew that she was safe in
saying it--that however the black clouds might hide the Sun of
Righteousness, He had risen, with healing in His wings, upon the young
lonely heart beside her.

"Except Jesus Christ," echoed the girl reverently. "And yet--O Agnes,
does He not know how hard it is to see nothing? to have nothing at all
that one can feel and touch, and clasp close to the heart? He had
friends in this life--even He, the Man of Sorrows, was not quite without
them."

"Yet they all forsook Him, and fled."

"Aye.  That was worse.  But they came back again."

There were tears behind the voice.

"Dear my Lady, what causeth you be thus sorrowful this even?"

She broke down when that was asked.  Pushing away the book, she bent her
head down on her clasped hands on the table, and sobbed as though her
heart would break.

"Oh, it is all so dark!" she sobbed.  "If we might have gone to Heaven
together, and have had each other there!  Why are we kept parted? Agnes,
I hate these signs of mine high estate, which seem as if they came
betwixt me and him--betwixt me and peace.  If I had not been King
Edward's niece--Oh, if this awful war had never begun!"

Agnes had dropped her work, and sat looking out of the window.  She did
not know what to say. Well enough she knew that religious platitudes
would do no good here.  The Lady Anne was nearer God than she was, but
just now she was in the dark.  She had dropped the conscious holding of
the Father's hand, and she felt like a lost child left out in the cold.
Agnes did not realise that much of her depression was physical; but she
did feel the necessity for offering some cheerful diversion to her
thoughts.

"Dear my Lady, pray you, think on pleasanter gear."

"Wilt find it for me, Agnes?"

That was not an easy task.  Agnes hesitated. But in a few moments more
the sorrowing girl had found it for herself.

"I suppose," she said more quietly, "I must lift up mine eyes unto the
hills, above all the turns in the long road.  We shall be together one
day, and with God.  I shall not be long first.  And set down at Christ's
feet in the light of the Golden City, I count it shall not seem long to
wait for him."

The child was coming back into the light. Physically, the burst of tears
had relieved her.

"And yet, after all," she said, "I shall miss him, till he comes.  One
cannot love one instead of another, even if God be that One.  And to
love once is to love for ever."

"You can tell the Lord so, dear my Lady."

Lady Anne looked up with an expression of child-like trust and
simplicity in her eyes.

"Agnes, I am always telling Him."

"And is He not, then, always hearing you?"

Light came into the sad blue eyes.

"Aye, He must be always hearing.  I thank thee."

The door opened, and Marion came in.

"Agnes, here is--O my Lady, I cry you mercy. I wist not you were
hither."

"Make an end, Marion," said Lady Anne, with a smile.

"Under your Ladyship's pleasure.--Agnes, here is one that would have
speech of you.  He hath brought a letter, if I err not, and for some
cause is desirous to deliver the same into your own hand."

"Go and see to it, Agnes," said Lady Anne kindly: and Agnes left the
room, and descended a long flight of stairs to the base court, where the
stranger awaited her.

The stranger!  Ah, what a stranger he felt, standing there in the
meanest part of his own house, among strange menials to whom his face
was unknown, for whom his voice had no authority. Did he think of
Another who was Lord and Master of all, and who came unto His own, and
His own received Him not?

"You would speak with Agnes Marston, my master?" said a gentle voice
close to him.  "I am she."

The Duke turned quickly.  He wore a long cloak, and a hat which could be
pulled down so as to hide his face.  For any eyes to recognise him would
probably be fatal to his errand.  Yet the sensation of utter isolation
was oppressive, notwithstanding that.

"Gentle Mistress," said he, in a tone and manner which instantly
revealed to Agnes that her visitor was of her own rank or above it, "I
bring you a letter from Mistress Frideswide Marston, in France, and I
pray you of your courtesy to give heed to that which is writ on the
outside thereof."

Agnes held the letter up to the lamp, and read--

"Good Sister, I do beseech you to do that which this bearer shall
request of you; and herein fail you not, for the love of me."

"My sister desires me that I will do what you shall ask," she said.
"What ask you?"

"May I ask it with fewer ears by?" returned the Duke in a low tone.

Agnes nodded.  That was a request only too intelligible in the fifteenth
century.  She took him aside to a small chamber where no other person
was at that moment.

"Now, Master, your will with me?"

"I am the Duke of Exeter," he said simply. "And I pray you, Mistress
Agnes, as you ever loved any human soul, that you will win for me privy
speech of the only one that loveth me--the Lady Anne, my daughter."

Agnes looked up, and saw the yearning, passionate hunger in the poor
father's eyes.  She saw nothing more for a minute.

"Sir," she said then, "if I do it not, be assured that it shall be only
because I can no way compass it."

"God go with you!" was the reply.

Agnes hastened back to the room where she had left Lady Anne alone with
Marion, and heard to her dismay the sharp tones of the Duchess as she
came near the door.

"Heard any ever the like!" cried Her Royal Highness.  "'An' it please
me!'  I do you plainly to wit, my dainty mistress, that it doth not
please me.  I will have thee come down and speak with Master Grey.  And
I will have thee don a better gown for it, belike.--Agnes Marston, go
this minute and lay out the Lady Anne's gown of purple velvet.--And go
thou and don it.  Dost hear?"

Lady Anne said no more, but her whole face betrayed intense dislike to
the task imposed upon her, when she caught the eye of Agnes.  The
language of the eye was well understood at that time, when the language
of the lips was often dangerous.  Lady Anne saw in an instant that Agnes
knew of some reason why she had better leave the room, and she followed
her without another word.

Meanwhile the Duke of Exeter stood below, waiting to know the result of
his appeal.  Could Agnes convey it at all? and if she did, would Anne
come? Last and saddest question of all, if she came, would it be the
child he knew, altered of course in person, but unchanged in heart?  At
last he could keep still no longer.  Plantagenet blood was in his veins,
and it was a habit of all the race, when suffering from mental
excitement, to pace up and down like caged tigers.  He had sufficient
excuse in the cold of a February evening, and he yielded to the impulse,
pausing at every sound to listen--till the door was flung open suddenly,
and a tall, slight maiden, robed in violet velvet and decked with
jewels, dashed into the room, and flung herself into his arms with a
burst of passionate tears.  Enough! Enough for the father's heart!  His
little Nan had come back to him.

When the first wave had broken, he lifted the young head with one hand,
and looked long and tenderly on the beloved face.  And at the first
glance his heart sank down, lower than it had ever been.

Come, but not to stay.  Bound on a longer journey than from England to
France--than from earth to stars.  He held his darling close clasped in
his arms, but it was probably for the last time.  Verily for her the
Bridegroom waited, but the bridal was not of earth.

"Nan!" broke from the father's lips, in tones more eloquent than a
volume would have been. "Little Nan!"

"I would I were your little Nan again," she said. "We were happy then,
my Lord--at least I was."

"I never was," was the sad answer.  "I only came near enough to see that
I could have been. If it had been God's will!"

"It will be, my Lord," replied Anne, brightly. "'_Satiabor cum
apparuerit gloria tua_.[#]'"


[#] Psalm xvii. 15.


"Dost know, little Nan, that thou didst learn that Psalm at mine
instance?  But when will it be, my darling?--when?  It is such a long
dark night without thee."

Yet as he said the words, the thought smote him to the heart,--Not long,
not long for one of them!

"When God's will is," she responded simply. "We must wait, my Lord.  Oh,
this awful war! had it never begun!"

She did not realise that they were parted by any but political
reasons--mournful necessities, which might come to an end some time.  It
was better she should not.

"Little Nan," said the Duke, "I love not 'my Lord' from thy lips.  Call
me Father."

The request was an unusual one.  But she looked up and responded as he
wished, with tears glistening in the violet eyes.

"You will come and see me again, Father?"

"I will come and see thee again," he echoed--well knowing, as he spoke,
that the interview was not likely to be held on the earthly side of the
cold river.  But surely he would meet her again; and it would be he that
should come to her.  There would be room in the halls above, and no need
to employ a third person, nor to use secrecy and stratagem in order to
meet.  Up from the core of his soul went the passionate cry, "Let us go
together! Make no tarrying, O my God!"  He knew now at least, if he had
never known it before, that there was to be no paradise for him outside
the Paradise of God.

"My Lady!" said the rather nervous voice of Agnes at the door.  "I cry
you verily mercy, but--Her Grace is calling for you."

None of them dared to disregard that summons.

One more last embrace!  One more last look! From the Duke's eyes

    "No tears fell, but a gaze fixed, long,
      That memory might print the face
      On the heart's ever-vacant space
    With a sun-finger, sharp and strong."


His very soul seemed to dissolve itself upon her head as he gave her the
last blessing.  She tore herself away, and stumbling with tear-blinded
eyes over her velvet train, went up to receive a sharp scolding for
loitering from the Duchess, and some very cold ceremonial speeches from
her affianced.

All was over.  There was nothing left for that desolate man.  Nothing to
which he could look forward!  There had been just that one hope, and it
was gone.  Nothing was left now to hope or fear.

He had come on foot and unattended, in order to avoid recognition.
Mechanically he turned to the river stairs, called a boat, and was rowed
up to Westminster.  As he wearily mounted the Palace stairs, the Earl of
Pembroke met him.

"Ah, my very good Lord of Exeter!  Whither away?"

"I know not, and care less."

"Gramercy! what aileth you this starlight even?"

"Is it starlight?" and the Duke lifted his eyes to the glowing heavens,
clear in the frosty atmosphere.  "I had not observed it."

"Good lack! you must be in the blues to-night. More shame for you!  Here
is nought but making ready for the Queen, whom my Lord of Warwick rideth
for to meet as to-morrow.  'Tis thought the wind may give her leave to
come across to-night."

"I do desire it, right heartily."

"Heigh-ho! do you desire anything right heartily, with that face?" said
Earl Jaspar, laughing. "Come, my good Lord, what aileth you?"

"My Lord, I cry you mercy, for I wis well I am not merry company.  I
have this night spoken, as I think, a long farewell to mine only child.
Let me pass, I pray you, till I can be more like my fellows, and come
into your company without spoiling your mirth--if I ever can."

Jaspar stood looking at his friend with eyes of utter want of
comprehension.  Exeter "spoke to him who never had a child," and who,
moreover, had but little sympathy with human sorrow.  It was
inconceivable to Jaspar why a man should bring his private sorrows into
his political rejoicings, while to Exeter the difficulty would have been
to allow the political joy to temper the private sorrow. Nor was Warwick
a whit more sympathising. To weep for a woman, or anything that
concerned one, was his emblem for masculine weakness of the extremest
type.  Exeter passed on, and sought refuge in his own chamber, where he
lay down, but did not sleep, that night.

But when, the next morning, he presented himself as usual in the
presence-chamber, he found that the Palace of Westminster held one
Christ-like heart--a heart more at home in the house of mourning than in
the house of feasting,--

    "A heart at leisure from itself,
    To soothe and sympathise."


Through the score of eager, triumphant faces in the presence-chamber,
the face upon which grief was written was instantly visible to those
eyes which were worth so little for earthly foresight, and were so rich
toward God.

"My Lord of Exeter!  The King calls for you."

The King himself was that day at his happiest--with the last earthly
happiness which he was ever to know.  He was at home again--and his was
a nature which clung to accustomed things; and he was expecting the
daily arrival of his wife and son, when--as he and every body
believed--all would again flow smoothly, and they would live happily
ever after.  But Henry was one of those rare souls who cannot be happy
till they have made others so.

"I pray you, come this way, my good Lord," said the King.  "There is
trouble in your eyes. Is it aught I may remedy?"

"I thank your Highness heartily; but I fear not. There be evils that
none save the King of kings may deal withal."

Exeter had not meant to say another word.  But in five minutes--he
scarcely knew how--he found himself telling the whole story of his
sorrow to the tender soul which shone in those royal eyes.

"I need not tell you, my good Lord," said the gentle comforter, "that he
were an ill soldier that should lie down to sleep ere the battle were
won. It will not be long ere the battle is over.  It seems to me at
times"--and the dark eyes grew dreamy, as they were very wont to do--"as
if it were only such a little while!  And then God shall give us back to
each other.  We have only to wait for Him."

"My Lord, I cry your Highness mercy, but it looks to me this night a
very, very long while."

The King smiled on his godson.  The spiritual relationship between them
made it only natural that the one should offer instruction and comfort
to the other.  He said, "_Unus dies apud Dominum sicut mille anni, et
mille anni sicut dies unus_."[#]


[#] 2 Peter iii. 8.


"Ah, Sire!" said Exeter sadly, "the one day for Him, but for us the
thousand years."

The response came quickly.  "'_Ego vobiscum sum omnibus dielus_.'"[#]


[#] Matt. xxviii. 20.


"We cannot see our Lord, Sire."

"He can see us."

"True: yet, my gracious Lord"----

"My son," said the King tenderly, "He hath written down a word of set
purpose for thee. '_Quomodo miseretur pater jiliorum, misertus est
Dominus timentibus se_.'  Muse thou thereon, and God lead thee into His
peace."[#]


[#] Psalm ciii. 13.


He had said enough, for the Word of God in his lips had reached the
heart of the mourner.  It was nothing new--it had been sung in Exeter's
hearing a hundred times--but it came this time with power.  Did God feel
for him just as he felt for that one darling child over whom he was
yearning and lamenting?  It said just that.  What right had he to water
it down, and make it mean something vague and metaphysical?  At last he
had found the man who understood him.  The King was a father himself,
and a very loving one.  And had he not at last found the God who
understood him?--who was indeed his Father, who loved him as he loved
his little Nan?

Yes, it would be only a little while.  Ah, how little for him who spoke!
Three short months, into which was to be poured an ocean of living
agony, and then he should see God, and be at peace for ever.  And to him
who heard, only a little longer.  He had but to wait for God.




                             *CHAPTER VI.*

                       *THE MIST ON EASTER DAY.*

      "Such a day,
    An old man sees but once in all his time."
        --EDWIN ARNOLD.


In vain the "King-Maker" waited at Dover for the Queen.  The west wind
which had fallen a little in London, and thus excited their hopes, set
in with more violence than before, and Marguerite, notwithstanding her
agony of impatience, was bound hopelessly at Harfleur.

But though winds and waves fought against the coming of her who was so
sorely needed, they seemed powerless to deter him against whose return
all Lancastrians were praying.  Backed by the secret machinations of the
Duke of Burgundy, Edward embarked at Ter Veere on the second of March:
and after twelve days' tossing, landed at Ravenspur on the fourteenth of
that month.  Did it strike him as a parallel coincidence that under the
same circumstances, and at the same place, seventy years before, Henry
of Lancaster had landed, softly announcing to the populace that he had
no designs upon the Crown, and came only to recover his own inheritance?
Probably it did, for he imitated his predecessor's tactics in every
particular. He came only to secure his duchy of York, as he sweetly
assured the people of Holderness when they opposed his landing.  Surely
they would allow him to proceed to his own property--to his own city? He
was the truest subject King Henry had, nor would he ever have been
otherwise but for the inciting of that wicked Earl of Warwick.  He stuck
the ostrich feather in his cap--the badge of Prince Edward,--and
solemnly swore eternal allegiance to King Henry.  The honest folks in
Holderness were completely won by this fine-spoken man.  They fell back,
and let him ride on to York.

But York was held by a Clifford,--sternest of all families adherent to
the House of Lancaster. It was the head of that House--the "Bloody
Clifford,"--who, just ten years before, had gleefully cut off the head
of Edward's father, had crowned it with a paper crown, and set it high
on Micklegate Bar.  He, too, had stabbed young Rutland--the best of the
York brothers--in cold blood after the battle of Wakefield.  As Edward
came up to York, the ghastly heads upon Micklegate Bar, the foremost of
which was his own father's, seemed to be the only friends to welcome
him.  But though Edward could assume sentiment exquisitely, when he
expected it to pay, he was not in reality much under its influence.
There was no softening at his heart when he rode up to Micklegate, and
sounded his horn for a parley, and proudly desired York to open her
gates to her Duke.  The old Lord Clifford would have known better than
to rest any faith on the fair words of the Rose of Rouen.  But his
kinsman Mr. Thomas was not so wary.  He consented to a parley.  And when
Edward, at the close of his eloquent and well-studied speech, ended by
flinging up the ostrich-feathered cap into the air, with the loyal cry
of "A, King Harry!  A, King and Prince Edward!" the Governor and
citizens of York were won.  Beguiled, not conquered, they offered to let
him pass southward on condition that he would swear his allegiance.
Edward, Jesuit to the core, was ready to swear any thing.  Had they
promised to escort him to London with an army on condition of his
swearing to restore the worship of Jupiter, the probability is that he
would have accepted the oath with graceful complacency.  Micklegate was
thrown open, and Edward with his band passed through, and marched
towards London.

The reconquest of England was an easier matter to Edward of York than it
had been to Henry of Lancaster.  Three months had elapsed between the
landing and coronation of the former; one was enough for the latter.
There were traitors in the Lancastrian camp, whose hearts were always
ready to desert, and who only required to hear that Edward had landed to
induce an immediate and public declaration in his behalf.  Foremost of
these was the heavily perjured Clarence, with whom his sister of
Burgundy had been secretly tampering. Edward was now at the head of a
very small band, consisting of nine hundred English and three hundred
Flemings.  With him were his faithful friend Lord Hastings, Lord Say,
and a few more distinguished persons.  But by the time he came to
Nottingham, Sir William Stanley and Sir William Norris had joined him
with four hundred more; and with men slowly coming in to him along the
line of march, he arrived at Leicester. Here was Warwick waiting for
him.  A battle was imminent, when letters from Clarence reached Warwick,
stating that he was on his way from London to join him, and begging him
not to fight until he came.  Warwick committed the fatal blunder of
compliance.  Humanly speaking, had he engaged in battle at once, the
probability is that Edward would have been easily driven out of England.

It was not until the 25th of March that the news of Edward's landing
reached London.  The language of the grant of Tutbury and many other
manors to Clarence on the 23rd, intimates that no such information had
reached King Henry on that day.  But on Lady Day a proclamation was
issued appointing Clarence, Warwick, and others, to gather the King's
subjects and to defend the kingdom, "against our enemies and adversaries
of Flanders, Burgundy, and other parts, by the excitation, procuration,
and inducement of our great adversary and rebel, Edward, of late the
false, traitorous, and usurping occupant of our crown and dignity."[#]
Two days later, the young Prince of Wales was created Viceroy of England
against "Edward our rebel, who, with subjects of Burgundy and Flanders,
has landed in the north."[#]


[#] Patent Roll, 49 Hen. VI.

[#] Patent Roll, 49 Hen. VI.


This is the only occasion on which the language used by, or in the name
of, Henry VI. departs from the calm dignity which characterises it on
all others in making mention of Edward IV.  Edward can never allude to
Henry without a spiteful addition of "late in dede and nat of ryght
King:"[#] but Henry's allusions to Edward are always content with,
"Edward IV., late _de facto_ King of England."  There is a kind of
feverish spite about Edward's notices of his rival, which is exchanged
for quiet matter-of-fact in his rival's notices of him. It is easy to
see that Henry had the better title--because he makes so little fuss
over it!


[#] Ib., 9 Edw. IV. and many others.


Late on the evening of the 10th of April, George Neville, Archbishop of
York, sat writing in the Bishop of London's Palace.  To this place the
Court had been removed, under the impression that the City would be
easier to defend than the less protected town of Westminster.  In an
adjoining chamber King Henry slept the quiet sleep of the just, with his
Latin Psalter[#] lying on the table beside his bed.  The Archbishop had
paused in his writing, and was thinking deeply, his head resting on his
hand; "when a slight sound caused him to lift his eyes, and he looked up
into the unexpected face of Master John Shorter, sometime varlet of the
chamber to King Edward IV.


[#] This Latin Psalter, originally the property of Richard II., and
afterwards of Henry VI., is now in the British Museum (Cott. MS.,
Domit., A., xvii.), a beautifully illuminated and most interesting
volume.


"Whence camest thou?" was the astonished query.

"Out of the street," said Shorter, drily.

"To what end?"

"To tell your Lordship a thing."

"What thing?  Prithee, have on with thy matters, and be done.  I am
busy."

"Your Grace may yet be busier, when King Edward cometh."

"My Lady Saint Mary!  What mean you?"

"I left him, my Lord, on the hither side of Herts."

"Gramercy!  When?"

"This morrow at day-break."

"Is he on his way to London town?"

"Certes, my Lord."

The Archbishop's face might have furnished, not one, but several studies
for a painter, as successive and diverse emotions swept across it.
Foremost was the true Neville sentiment--How will this affect _me_?  He
was silent for a moment, pondering that deeply interesting question.

"Did he send thee to me?"

"He did so, my good Lord."

"What would he have of me?"

Shorter came close to the desk, and quietly laid down before the
Archbishop a parchment to which a seal was affixed.  It was a document,
couched in highly flattering terms, addressed by Edward, by the Grace of
God King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, to his dearly
beloved and faithful, the Most Reverend Father in God, George, by Divine
permission Archbishop of York, conveying his royal pardon to the said
Archbishop, for all treasons, felonies, and offences whatsoever,
committed before the thirteenth day of April, 1471.  In other words, the
Archbishop was pardoned beforehand for the sins of the three days next
ensuing.  Some people might have felt puzzled as to the ulterior meaning
of such a document.  Not so Archbishop Neville.  He comprehended to
perfection that he was expected to purchase that parchment, by some
tremendous act of service still to be performed, and requiring official
forgiveness from the _de facto_ sovereign.

"What would he?"

An expressive pantomime from Shorter pointed first to the door of King
Henry's chamber, then to a bunch of keys which lay on the desk, and
lastly to the prelate himself.  The latter pursed up his lips for a
moment.

"Rather ugly work!" he muttered, as if to himself.

"Necessity," shortly suggested the messenger.

"Where?" was the equally short answer.

"Here.  There is, of course, one unconvenient matter."

The Archbishop looked up for explanation.

"That all suspiciousness may be diverted from your Grace, it shall be
needful to arrest you with the other."

A nod of intelligence from the Archbishop.

"Your captivity shall be matter but of a few days."

The prelate nodded again.

"Go you back to His Highness?"

"I have first to speak with Master Recorder, which hath promised me the
key of Aldersgate."

"Ha!--when shall this matter be?"

"Maundy Thursday, in the even.  'The better day, the better deed.'"

The Archbishop received the wicked proverb with a grim smile.  "Very
good: I undertake it."

"I thank your Grace for my master.  God give you good even."

"The peace of Christ be upon you!  Amen."

Which benediction really meant the expression of a wish that the
diabolical bargain just concluded might not be successful, for surely
the last thing likely to come upon its actors was the peace of Christ.

Another sort of peace they had.  The City was perfectly calm, and its
guardians utterly unsuspicious, when on the following night, Mr.
Urswick, the Recorder of London, came down with a few more to
Aldersgate, and quietly let in about a dozen men who were waiting
outside.  They were wrapped in long cloaks, in which they muffled their
faces; and, accompanied by Urswick, they took their way to the Bishop's
Palace.  Behind the postern door the Archbishop's servant was waiting,
and they were allowed to enter as silently as possible.

Upstairs, in the royal chamber, King Henry sat with that devout prelate
who has been already mentioned.  They had been discussing political
matters for a short time, and then the King, turning to a subject more
congenial to himself, had requested the Archbishop's opinion as to the
meaning of a passage in the Psalms.  Both by intuition and education,
George Neville was about as well fitted to judge of the meaning of King
David as a snail to decide the intentions of an eagle.  But he was a
priest; therefore of course he must be competent to expound Scripture.
The prelate began glibly to explain that of which he had not the
remotest idea, and the King meekly to receive instruction on a subject
with which he was far better acquainted than his instructor.  The notion
that he could be better than any body in any possible sense, outside the
mere fact of social position, never occurred to the mind of King Henry,
one of the humblest Christians that ever breathed.

A slight click of the door-lock made the prelate look up.  The King was
too much interested in his subject, and his head was bent over the
Psalter. In the doorway stood the Recorder of London, and several others
were dimly visible behind him.  The traitor knew that the hour of his
treachery had come.

"What is this?" he exclaimed, with well feigned astonishment.  "Master
Urswick, who be these with you?  The blessed saints be about us!
Treachery, my gracious Lord, treachery!  Here is my Lord of March!"

Aye, treachery enough!  Henry lifted his head, rose, and confronted
Edward with a steady gaze as he came forward boldly into the room.

They stood fronting each other, the two Kings, the cousins and rivals,
each of whom saw in the other an unprincipled usurper.  Only, in the one
case, the conviction was a calm certainty that the thing was so, and in
the other a feverish determination that it must and should be.

"What dost thou here in my place, thou rebel?" was the insolent demand
of Edward, who had sworn many an oath of allegiance to the man whom he
addressed.

"I am here in mine own, as God wot," was the dignified reply.  "What
would you with me?"

Edward turned to his followers without deigning a reply.  "Take the
rebel," said he, "and this priest with him."

The Archbishop, with well counterfeited terror, began to implore mercy.
The King asked none, nor did he waste another word on Edward.  He lifted
his calm dark eyes heavenward, and merely said, to the sole Friend who
was with him, "_Fiat voluntas Tua!_"

An hour later, he was once more secured in his old dungeon in the Tower.

The gates of London were thrown open, and the northern army of Edward
poured into the City. The Sanctuary was visited, and the Countess of
March and her infant son, now suddenly become the Queen and the Prince,
were installed in Westminster Palace with fitting ceremony.  The reign
of Henry VI. was over, and the eleventh year of Edward IV. had begun.

The restored monarch was grace and graciousness to all around him.
While he took care to propitiate and make friends of those who had
hitherto been enemies, Edward did not, like his descendant Charles II.,
commit the fatal mistake of overlooking and neglecting to reward his
friends.  He gave away twenty tuns of wine (not forgetting to spend some
L2800 on himself), replaced his old officers in their respective state
positions, and made up for the forced abstinence and shabbiness of his
recent life by buying a new service of plate, ordering twenty-one gold
collars (doubtless for presents to his friends who had proved faithful
in adversity), purchasing horses, and providing six new and gorgeous
garments--a robe of tawny satin, a doublet of purple satin, two jackets
of cloth of gold, and two "habits" of black damask and crimson
velvet--for his wardrobe.  He further expended in alms the munificent
sum of L3 3*s*. 4*d*.  The Queen does not appear to have required any
new clothes, since provisions and wood are alone bought for her.[#]


[#] Issue Roll, Easter term, 11 Edw. IV.


So quietly had this mighty reversion of state affairs been effected,
that the citizens of London were unconscious that any thing was
happening until they saw the army of Edward IV. marching along their
streets.  Then, of course, it was too late to express an adverse
opinion, had they wished to do so.

The necessary imprisonment of that honourable man, Archbishop Neville,
extended only to a few days.  He was received into favour on the day to
which his pardon reached, but was not released from the Tower until a
little later.

And then, when it was too late, the wind changed.  Three times had Queen
Marguerite set forth from Harfleur, and three times was she driven back
on the French coast.  Now, just when all was over which her coming might
have prevented, on the 24th of March, she was able to embark, and she
landed at Weymouth on Saturday night, the 13th of April, which was
Easter Eve.  Can we come to any conclusion but that of the contemporary
letter-writer, that "God hath showed Himself marvellously like Him that
made us all, and can undo again when Him list?"  It was not immediately
upon landing that the mournful news of her husband's capture and
deposition met her.  The news was to be far worse before it should reach
her.  She proceeded inland about thirteen miles, as far as the Abbey of
Cerne, and there awaited the ceremonies of Easter.  The Prince was with
her--unconscious of his proclamation as Viceroy of England, as well as
of the downfall of all his hopes--the Princess, and their respective
suites.

While Marguerite and her companions knelt at mass that Easter morning in
the chancel of Cerne Abbey, with the last hope springing in their hearts
which they were ever to know, scenes very unbefitting Easter-tide were
taking place in and near the metropolis.

No sooner had Warwick heard of the return of Edward than he came dashing
down from the north, and with Exeter,[#] Somerset, Montague, Oxford, and
forty thousand men, marched to take the field at Barnet.  Exeter and
Somerset wished to wait until the Prince should come up, as they had
heard of his landing: but this Warwick refused to do.  He was doubtful
of the good faith of Somerset, who had ere this shown himself remarkably
devoid of that quality; to which motive on Warwick's part Comines adds
another--"the hatred he bore to Queen Marguerite."


[#] Where and when Exeter had joined Warwick we have no information.  It
is only known that he was in London on the 14th of February, and that he
came with Warwick from the north on the 13th of April.


As soon as Edward heard of Warwick's approach, he and his brother of
Gloucester went out to meet him.  They took with them carefully one
person whom they might have been expected to leave behind. This was King
Henry.  Was there in the minds of the royal brothers of York any
sinister intention of exposing their rival to the fate of Uriah the
Hittite? Had Henry fallen, perchance by a stray shot from his own side,
would the pair have mournfully and hypocritically condoled with each
other on the fact that "the sword devoureth one as well as another?"

The little town of Barnet was occupied by Edward, Warwick remaining on
the plain without.

Late on that Saturday night, without any previous despatch of a herald,
as was usual, to request an interview, the Duke of Clarence, encamped on
Gladmore Heath, received a visit from his brother of Gloucester.  They
held a long conversation; after which Clarence returned with Gloucester
to the town, and humbly implored pardon from his brother Edward.  He was
likely to be welcomed and forgiven, for he brought with him twelve
thousand men.  This little business arranged, Clarence sent a message to
Warwick, informing him of the very interesting occurrence which had just
taken place, and offering to make peace for him also.  The envoy
returned with an answer from Warwick which breathed scorn in every
syllable.

"I choose rather," said the King-Maker, "to be consistent with myself
than to follow the example of thy perfidy!"

The night was now wearing towards morning--the morning of Easter Sunday.
But no sun danced, nor even shone, upon that awful Easter Day.  At four
o'clock in the morning the armies met, but in so thick a mist that no
man could see the banner of his feudal lord.  Since the battle of
Mortimer's Cross, where three mock suns had been considered a happy
augury, Edward had borne as his badge a sun with rays: and the Earl of
Oxford's men, mistaking this sun for the star of the Veres, made the
blunder of the Midianites, and turned their arms against each other.
They engaged with Warwick's men, and a cry of "Treachery!" was raised by
both sides.  Oxford fled, carrying with him eight hundred men.  At this
juncture Montague (another "honourable man"), who had been in private
correspondence with Edward ever since he landed, thought it time to turn
coat, and did so literally, donning Edward's livery under cover of the
mist.  But some of Warwick's men caught a glimpse of the hated blue and
murrey, and falling upon Montague, exacted the penalty of his treachery
in his life.  Warwick saw that the field was lost. Montague was dead;
Exeter was not to be found; Oxford had fled the field.  He mounted his
horse, and tried to make his own escape through the intricacies of a
neighbouring wood.  Even here fate met him in the persons of two of
Edward's men, who after a short sharp struggle, unhorsed and slew the
foremost man of their age--the man who, more or less, for twenty years
had had all England at his bidding.

It was now four o'clock in the afternoon.  King Edward--king in a sense
he had never been till then,--as the first regal act of his restoration,
took his revenge upon the commons of England for their Lancastrian
proclivities.  Hitherto, following the ancient humane custom peculiar to
this country (a source of considerable astonishment to French generals),
after a battle, Edward had been accustomed to mount his horse, and cry
loudly over the field, "Quarter for the commons!"  The nobles and gentry
of the defeated side were of course put to the sword.  But at Barnet
Edward forsook his usual custom.  He mounted, indeed, but he left the
commons quarterless to the fury of his soldiers, and he spurred fast to
London.

That evening, after Edward had entered his metropolis in triumph, King
Henry was brought, attired in a long gown of blue velvet, from the fatal
field of Gladmore Heath, to that silent dungeon in the Tower which he
had occupied so long that it must have borne almost a homelike look to
him, and which he was never to leave again, except for the better Home
above.

When the military grave-diggers came to bury the dead, they found lying
on Gladmore Heath the body of the Duke of Exeter.  He had fought
manfully, and had fallen at seven o'clock, since which time he had lain
insensible on the field.  They took him at first for dead: but on
careful consideration they came to the conclusion that life was not
quite extinct.  The party of workers were either Lancastrians, or they
were for their time inexplicably tolerant and humane.  Instead of
stamping out the little spark of life, they respected it, and carried
the Duke to the house of one Ruthland, an old servant of his own, who
nursed his master back to that life which was worth so little to him.
He was then, on the 26th of May, carried a prisoner to Westminster,
where he was allowed the service of a chaplain, cook, page, and varlet,
with three servants to wait on them.  He was detained in this captivity
until the fifteenth of September.[#]  Six shillings and eightpence per
week were allowed for the Duke's board, two shillings for the chaplain,
twenty pence each for the cook, page, and varlet, and sixteen pence each
for the inferior domestics.


[#] Issue Roll, Easter term, 11 Edw. IV.--Rymer is apparently under a
mistake in stating that Exeter fled to Westminster Sanctuary, about two
months after Barnet. The language of the Roll is decisive that Exeter
was a prisoner, and not in sanctuary, between the dates named.


King Henry was rather better treated.  Dispute his title as he might,
Edward provided for him as for a captive prince.  About half-a-crown per
day was allowed for his "diet;" but a strong guard of thirty-six
persons, afterwards gradually reduced to eleven, was thought necessary
for his safe keeping.

The corpses of Warwick and Montague were exposed to popular view, with
uncovered faces, in St. Paul's Cathedral, for four days: and on the
eighteenth of April they were laid with their Montacute fathers in the
church at Bisham. The day after their funeral, the royal pardon was
renewed to their brother the Archbishop.  His offence was that of
"taking oath to Harry our great adversary, as to his Sovereign Lord, and
to Margaret, calling her Queen, which if a French woman born, and
daughter to him that is extreme adversary and mortal enemy to all this
our land and people," and "assembling unto him numbers of French men
beside other traitors and rebels."[#]


[#] Close Roll, 11 Edw. IV.


Considering that Edward himself had married the daughter of a French
lady, had negotiated previously for his marriage with an Italian
Princess, and had reconquered England with the assistance of Flemings,
this taunt upon Queen Marguerite's foreign extraction and alien troops
is rather amusing, and marked with as much consistency as usually
characterised his actions.  What poor King Rene of Naples had done, to
be singled out beyond all other persons as the special adversary to the
English land and people, may reasonably be questioned, particularly by
those who know his quiet, rather lazy, artistic disposition.  But people
in a passion, and people trying to impress others with a conviction, are
not in all cases consistent and truthful.

On the 27th of April a solemn proclamation was issued by name of "the
King's rebels and traitors."  The announcement of the names was not made
with particular courtesy.  They were "Margaret (with no other
distinctive appellation); Edward, her son; Henry, late Duke of Exeter
(whose wife continued to be styled Duchess); Edmund Beaufort, calling
himself Duke of Somerset; John, Earl of Oxford; John Courtenay, calling
himself Earl of Devon; William late Viscount Beaumont; John Beaufort and
Hugh Courtenay, knights."  It was solemnly commanded that none should
"give them help, favour, or succour, on pain of death and forfeiture of
all held of us: we calling Almighty God to record that it shall be
against our will and intent."[#]


[#] Close Roll, 11 Edw. IV.


Did it ever strike the man who dictated these words, that God Almighty
had kept a record concerning him, and did he ever think what his
feelings would be, when that record was read out before men and angels?
The Nemesis for the sins of Henry IV. was descending with dire vengeance
on the House of Lancaster.  But did he imagine that the House of York
should escape the judgment of God--that the Jehu who had been raised up
to destroy the innocent sons of Ahab, should be permitted to walk with
impunity in the sins of Jeroboam?




                             *CHAPTER VII.*

                 *THE LAST BATTLE OF THE RIVAL ROSES.*

    "May this be borne?  How much of agony
    Hath the heart room for?"
      --FELICIA HEMANS.


One enemy remained for Edward IV. to vanquish, and it was a woman: a
woman whose hand he had kissed upon the knee, and whom his Queen had
served in her chamber. So long as husband and son were left to fight
for, so long Marguerite of Anjou was irrepressible and invincible.  When
they were not, the complete indifference of despair with which she let
the sceptre drop from her hand, proved that it was not it which she had
loved, but them.

Yet the dreadful news which met her at Cerne Abbey for one moment
overwhelmed the eager and resolute spirit.  King Henry was once more a
captive, and Warwick--who united the strange characters of her worst
enemy in private, and her sole reliable friend in public--could be
neither enemy nor friend any more for ever.  The bright head was bowed
down, and tears, such as Marguerite was rarely seen to shed, came
rushing from her eyes.

"Oh, let us give it up!" she cried.  "Edward, let us go back to France,
and give up the struggle!"

"I cry you mercy, Madame my mother!" was the ringing answer of the
Prince.  "Never, while another battle may retrieve all!  Look, I pray
you--have we not yet the Duke of Somerset"----

"Not to be trusted," said Marguerite, under her breath.

"And my Lord of Oxford"----

"Who fled from us at Barnet."

"And my Lord of Devon"----

"Well, yes--I think _he_ may be."

The Prince dropped on one knee, and clasped his mother's hand in his.

"And, sweet Mother, have you not _me_?"

The Queen clasped her darling in her arms, and bent her fair head low
upon his darker locks.

"_Mon cheri, mon mignon!_" she cried tenderly, in her own language, not
often used now, for English had become almost the mother-tongue to the
woman who had been Queen of England since she was a maiden of sixteen
years.  "Aye, my streak of sunlight, I have thee!--and never will I let
thine inheritance calmly fall into the hands of thine enemies!  Come,
let us be up and doing. When, on the day of mine espousals, I set the
Rose of England in my bosom, did I not know that I must wear it with all
its thorns?"[#]


[#] The last sentence is in the actual words of the Queen, though not
spoken on this occasion.


The momentary sensation of irresolute hopelessness was passed, and
Marguerite was herself again. She held a council of war, at which it was
decided that they should march on the western provinces, which were more
loyal than the midland wherein Warwick had held sway, or the northern of
which Edward was Duke.  The ladies were to be left behind in sanctuary,
except the one or two in personal attendance on the Queen, who knew well
enough that whoever might constitute the body of the Lancastrian party,
she was and had always been its soul: and that however her forces might
acquit themselves with her, they were not likely to do well without her.
The Countess of Warwick, with her daughter of Clarence and their suites,
had crossed the Channel separately from the Queen, and had taken refuge
at Beaulieu Abbey.  But nothing would tempt the young Princess of Wales
to join them.  Whether in life or in death, where her heart's lord was,
there also would she be.

The Countess of Devon, in attendance on the Queen, and Lady Katherine
Vaux, in waiting on the Princess, were the sole women who accompanied
the army.  From Bath they marched on to Bristol, intending to join the
Earl of Pembroke, Jaspar Tudor, who was coming from Gloucester with his
men.  But when the Queen's army attempted to pass the Severn, they found
themselves intercepted by the men of Gloucester, who urged their
necessary "obeissance to their Duke."  Marguerite turned aside, and went
on to Tewkesbury.

Perhaps few places in England are less changed than Tewkesbury from the
appearance they presented in the fifteenth century.  Not only the grand
old Abbey (alas! restored), but the Bell Inn within a stone's throw, the
old winding High Street and its hostelry the Bear, are very little
altered in outward seeming from what they were on that night of the
third of May, when Marguerite of Anjou drew up her troops in "the Bloody
Field" outside the town.  Edward was at Tewkesbury in person, awaiting
what either side felt instinctively would be the last and decisive
battle in the Wars of the Roses.

Early the next morning, the Prince of Wales, who was to command the
army, took leave of the royal ladies.

Clasp him close, poor mother! cling to him, young wife!  You will do it
never, never any more. It was no act of the Prince, whether of
commission or omission, that lost the day.  Victory hung yet in the
balance, when Somerset, traitor to his last breath, fled from his young
gallant master, followed by Hugh Courtenay: and from that moment the
field was King Edward's.

The Prince was taken.  The craven Somerset fled to the sanctuary of a
church, and he was followed by Humphrey Audley (who had York blood in
his veins), Henry de Ros, James Gower, the Prince's standard-bearer, and
many more.  But Prince Edward, most valuable prisoner of all, was taken
before the conqueror in his royal pavilion. What followed is well
known,--King Edward's contemptuous query--

"How camest thou, young man, to bear sword against me?"

It was met by Prince Edward's defiant reply--

"I came to recover my father's kingdom, and mine own inheritance, out of
the hands of them that had no right to hold it."[#]


[#] Only the opening words of this speech are commonly quoted.


Some chroniclers say that Edward dashed his gauntleted hand in the face
of his young cousin. Others assert that he merely flung a sign to those
around him.  Either action was well understood. Hastings, the King's
faithful servant, and Thomas Grey, his step-son, the affianced of Anne
of Exeter, hurried Prince Edward out of his presence to the next tent,
where the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester were standing.  There they
flung him down. One cry of pitiful appeal rang through the evening
air--"Clarence!  _Brother!_" but Clarence stood deaf and motionless.
Gloucester was equally still, but from a very different motive.  Then
came a second and a lower moan--"_Jesu, Doming!_"  That was heard.
Another instant, and they had no more that they could do.  Edward
Plantagenet was with God.

Not that night did Marguerite of Anjou learn all the awful news in store
for her.  She heard--from the gentle lips of John Combe--that her army
was routed, and the day lost: heard it, with the young Princess by her
side, seated in that charette in which it had been so difficult to keep
her, for she suspected already that fate was going against her, and she
was scarcely restrained from mounting her horse, and taking the command
of her troops.  The one worst item--the loss of her boy--did not reach
her then. But what she did hear made her sink down in the charette,
"half-dead."

Those about the Queen--very few they were--felt the necessity of doing
for her what she was not in a position to do for herself.  They hurried
the royal ladies away from their dangerous place to a little religious
house outside Tewkesbury, where they entered them in sanctuary.  Alas
for their innocence, if they expected Edward of York to keep promises or
reverence sanctuary!  At that moment he was presenting himself with
drawn sword at the door of the church where so many of the Lancastrian
nobles had taken refuge.  All honour be to the brave priest who, pix in
hand, resolutely barred the victor's entrance, until he had given a
solemn promise of pardon to the fugitives.  Alas for the fugitives, that
they trusted it!  All might have escaped, but trusting to that honour of
which Edward knew so little, they remained in their asylum until the
Monday, when they were marched out and beheaded before the door.
Somerset richly deserved his fate: but this cannot be said of many
others.  Even Humphrey Audley was not spared, though King Edward and he
were second cousins.[#]


[#] He was the younger son of Alianora de Holand, Lady Audley, daughter
of Constance of York, King Edward's grand-aunt.


Notwithstanding all his specious words, ties of blood, no less than
those of gratitude, weighed as nothing with Edward of York when a man
stood in his way.

There was a long funeral procession that day in Tewkesbury Abbey.  The
Duke of Somerset, as we are told by his herald, who was present, was
buried "before the image of Saint Jame at an autar in ye said monastery
churche on the northe parte."[#]  But it was in the very midst of the
church, just under the tower, that they laid the flower of the Red Rose,
"the gallant-springing young Plantagenet," who in the endeavour to
recover his father's kingdom had sacrificed himself.  The rest were
buried in one great grave, dug close to that of the Prince in the nave
of the Abbey.


[#] Harl. MS. 545.--This tomb was removed at a later date, and is now on
the south side of the chancel.


The next step on the part of Edward was to capture the two hapless
ladies who had taken refuge in the little nunnery.  Sir William
Stanley--an old enemy of the Queen--was sent to do this; and he is said
to have behaved as brutally as he well could, and in particular to have
broken to the bereaved mother the news of her boy's death in the most
inhuman manner.  Driven almost to frenzy by the suddenness and anguish
of the blow, Marguerite broke forth into passionate execrations upon
Edward and all his posterity, which Stanley had the cruelty to repeat to
the conqueror, when, on the 11th of May, he brought his prisoners to
Coventry. The royal mourners were conveyed southwards together, captives
in the victorious train of the Rose of Rouen.

One more attempt, however, was to be made in the Lancastrian cause, like
the last expiring gleam of a candle ere it dies out.  The Governors of
Calais, Sir Walter Wretill and Sir Geoffrey Gates, despatched the brave,
if somewhat rash, Thomas Fauconbridge "to raise Kent, and deliver King
Henry from the Tower."  It was only a dying flash, but it roused the
Yorkists to instant action. Lord Rivers was sent down to Kent and Lord
Bourchier to Essex by the Council; Lord Dudley, with a hundred soldiers,
was put in charge of the Tower, where defensive works were cast up in
haste in less than a week; Lord Hastings was despatched to supersede the
Governor of Calais, and Lord Pembroke sent to South Wales "to capture
rebels, and reduce the King's castles to his obedience."  The citizens
of London, that unknown and difficult quantity, were complimented by the
gift of two tuns of red wine, "expended on them after the conflict at
Mile-end against the rebels."[#]  For the safe custody of Rochester
Castle, a squire of the body was sent down, by name Thomas St. Leger, of
whom we shall hear again.


[#] Issue Roll, Easter term, 11 Edw. IV. This Roll is one of the most
interesting state papers ever penned.


The insurrection was quashed.  But how many more might arise?  It was no
doubt extremely inconvenient to be perpetually in risk of another; and
Henry VI. had still friends enough to make Edward's throne a very uneasy
seat.  So long as the Lancaster King lived, the York King would have a
thorny time of it.  There was only one way to end the difficulty: and
there was one man who was ready to take it.

On the twenty-first of May, King Edward, accompanied by his brother of
Gloucester, and carrying his captives in his victorious train, made his
triumphal entry into the City of London.  The Queen and Princess were
lodged in the Tower. They were now under the same roof as King Henry. If
any ray of hope ever entered Marguerite's heart after Tewkesbury, it
must have been that night, at the thought of a possible meeting with the
husband from whom she had been parted for six weary years.  She may well
have imagined that fate had done its worst, and no further sorrows could
yet be in reserve for her.  But the worst had only begun to come.
Whether it were that night or a few days later,--within one week from
her imprisonment in the Tower, Marguerite of Anjou was a widow.

When and how did Henry VI. die?  The how has often been disputed: but
the when has generally been considered less doubtful.  The popular
belief for centuries was that, weary of the continual risk and fear,
Gloucester went to the Tower on that same night of his arrival in
London, and with one stroke of his dagger ended the Wars of the Roses,
and the sorrows of Henry of Lancaster. The courtier Comines writes
cautiously: Henry was killed by Gloucester, "if what was told me be
true."  Had he in his heart believed it untrue, would he have thus
mentioned it?  One dry old chronicler remarks that Henry died on the
twenty-first of May, "the Duke of Gloucester and his men being in the
Tower that night."  Stow says that his body was carried to St. Paul's in
an open coffin on the 22nd.  Stow, Sandford, Baker, and Mezeray have no
doubt of the murder.  It was not until the last century that it was ever
questioned, and then by writers who were desirous to whitewash the
decidedly black character of Richard III.  But so far as I know, no one
has ever noticed on either side the singular fact recorded on the Issue
Roll, that Henry did not die on the twenty-first at all. There may have
been some reason--now perhaps inscrutable--why Edward wished to convince
the public that Henry did die on that day: but his own Roll, meant for
no eyes but those of safe persons, unquestionably indicates that Henry
was living until the 27th of May, six days later.  His "diet" is charged
until the latter day.  There may have been some show of reason, as
putt

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