for her relations, that she made her father an earl and a great
officer of state; married her five sisters to young noblemen of the
highest rank; and provided for her younger brother, a young man of
twenty, by marrying him to an immensely rich old duchess of eighty.
The Earl of Warwick took all this pretty graciously for a man of
his proud temper, until the question arose to whom the King’s
sister, MARGARET, should be married. The Earl of Warwick said, ‘To
one of the French King’s sons,’ and was allowed to go over to the
French King to make friendly proposals for that purpose, and to
hold all manner of friendly interviews with him. But, while he was
so engaged, the Woodville party married the young lady to the Duke
of Burgundy! Upon this he came back in great rage and scorn, and
shut himself up discontented, in his Castle of Middleham.
A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was patched up
between the Earl of Warwick and the King, and lasted until the Earl
married his daughter, against the King’s wishes, to the Duke of
Clarence. While the marriage was being celebrated at Calais, the
people in the north of England, where the influence of the Nevil
family was strongest, broke out into rebellion; their complaint
was, that England was oppressed and plundered by the Woodville
family, whom they demanded to have removed from power. As they
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were joined by great numbers of people, and as they openly declared
that they were supported by the Earl of Warwick, the King did not
know what to do. At last, as he wrote to the earl beseeching his
aid, he and his new son-in-law came over to England, and began to
arrange the business by shutting the King up in Middleham Castle in
the safe keeping of the Archbishop of York; so England was not only
in the strange position of having two kings at once, but they were
both prisoners at the same time.
Even as yet, however, the King-Maker was so far true to the King,
that he dispersed a new rising of the Lancastrians, took their
leader prisoner, and brought him to the King, who ordered him to be
immediately executed. He presently allowed the King to return to
London, and there innumerable pledges of forgiveness and friendship
were exchanged between them, and between the Nevils and the
Woodvilles; the King’s eldest daughter was promised in marriage to
the heir of the Nevil family; and more friendly oaths were sworn,
and more friendly promises made, than this book would hold.
They lasted about three months. At the end of that time, the
Archbishop of York made a feast for the King, the Earl of Warwick,
and the Duke of Clarence, at his house, the Moor, in Hertfordshire.
The King was washing his hands before supper, when some one
whispered him that a body of a hundred men were lying in ambush
outside the house. Whether this were true or untrue, the King took
fright, mounted his horse, and rode through the dark night to
Windsor Castle. Another reconciliation was patched up between him
and the King-Maker, but it was a short one, and it was the last. A
new rising took place in Lincolnshire, and the King marched to
repress it. Having done so, he proclaimed that both the Earl of
Warwick and the Duke of Clarence were traitors, who had secretly
assisted it, and who had been prepared publicly to join it on the
following day. In these dangerous circumstances they both took
ship and sailed away to the French court.
And here a meeting took place between the Earl of Warwick and his
old enemy, the Dowager Queen Margaret, through whom his father had
had his head struck off, and to whom he had been a bitter foe.
But, now, when he said that he had done with the ungrateful and
perfidious Edward of York, and that henceforth he devoted himself
to the restoration of the House of Lancaster, either in the person
of her husband or of her little son, she embraced him as if he had