Earl of Warwick

“ This was the visit, ordered by the king, of the earl of Warwick to St. Paul's Cathedral; thus to contradict to the eyes of all men the pretender in Ireland. Warwick had spent a year in the Tower, in almost solitary imprisonment. Hopeless of freedom, worn in health, dejected from the overthrow of all the wild schemes he had nourished at Sheriff Hutton, linked with the love he bore his cousin, the Lady Elizabeth, now queen of England, he could hardly be recognized as the same youth who had been her companion during her residence there. ”

“ The proud earl had stepped in to prevent his marriage with his sister. But Hastings, if a foe, could be a noble one.
"Beau sire," said he, "thou knowest how little cause I have to love the Earl of Warwick. But in this council I must be all and only the king's servant. I say first, then, that Warwick's faith to the House of York is too well proven to become suspected because of the courtesies of King Louis. Moreover, we may be sure that Warwick cannot be false if he achieve the object of his embassy and detach Louis from the side of Margaret and Lancaster by close alliance with Edward and York. ”

“ Warwick becomes Edward's prime minister.
The next great personage to be named is the Earl of Warwick. He was the man, as you will doubtless recollect, who was in command of the sea between England and the Continent at the time when Lady Cecily wished to send her children, George and Richard, away after their father's death, and who assisted in arranging their flight. He was a man of great power and influence, and of such an age and character that he exerted a vast ascendency over all within his influence. ”

“ No great occurrence of a military or catastrophic character disturbed its sunny hills and fertile vales. And even during the reign of Edward VI., which witnessed the historical struggle between the Duke of Somerset and Earl of Warwick for power, Warwickshire enjoyed a period of rest and tranquillity, unaffected by the schemes and plotting of John Dudley, who had been created Earl of Warwick by the King. ”

“ These Earls of Warwick appear always to have been remarkably stirring men in their day and generation, and foremost in whatever was going on in the world, whether political or religious. To begin, there was Guy, Earl of Warwick, who lived somewhere in the times of the old dispensation, before King Arthur, and who distinguished himself, according to the fashion of those days, by killing giants and various colored dragons, among which a green one especially figures. ”

“ At least two thirds of them received the popular name, and for many centuries it remained in favor, until disgrace was brought upon it by the York proctor’s son, whose effigy still glides through our streets on each recurring 5th of November.
I will not pause on this matter. I will only add that the Earl of Warwick, finding Guy a man whom the King delighted to honor, accepted him for a son-in-law; and then, ever wise, and civil, and proper, he discreetly died. The King made Guy Earl of Warwick, in his place, and our hero being now a married man, he of course ceased to be Master Guy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Warwick asked that Prince Edward should marry his daughter Anne, as the reward of his assistance. At first the Queen positively refused, but she at last gave a conditional and very unwilling assent, moved by the importunities of Louis XI. and her relations. The marriage was not to take place until after Henry VI. was restored to the throne and, if Warwick failed, the agreement was at an end. 'The said marriage shall not be perfyted until the Earl of Warwick has recovered the realm of England for King Henry.' [7] They were never married. ”

“ The Beauchamps, successors of Henry of Newburgh as earls of Warwick, held the borough of the king in chief. Although the borough owed its early importance to the castle of the earls of Warwick as well as to its position, and received a grant of a fair from John, earl of Warwick, in 1261, it seems to have developed independently of them, and received no charter until it was incorporated under the title of the burgesses of Warwick in 1546 after it had come into the king's hands by the attainder of Edward, earl of Warwick, in 1499. ”

“ An armed troop was approaching. When they drew near the gate their scarlet coats embroidered with the figure of a boar proved them to be the men of the earl of Warwick. The earl himself was behind them. ”

“ When the times of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth came, an Earl of Warwick was high admiral of England, and fought valiantly for the Commonwealth, using the navy on the popular side; and his grandson married the youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell. When the royal family was to be restored, an Earl of Warwick was one of the six lords who were sent to Holland for Charles II. The earls of this family have been no less distinguished for movements which have favored the advance of civilization and letters than for energy in the battle field. ”

“ The king ordered up these fresh troops, and led them to the assault. Warwick fronted this new peril with haughty disdain; and, in accents of encouragement, appealed to his remaining adherents to persevere. "This," said he, "is their last resource. If we withstand this one charge the field will yet be ours." But the earl's men, jaded and fatigued, could not encounter such fearful odds with success; and Warwick had the mortification of finding that his call was no longer answered by his friends, and that his battle-cry no longer sounded terrible to his foes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The bridal of the prince and Anne Neville having been celebrated, Warwick and Oxford prepared to return to England. Fortune, with fickle smile, cheered the king-maker's enterprise. Every thing was promising; for the English people, since Warwick had been exiled to a foreign strand, complained that England without "The Stout Earl" was like a world without a sun; and day after day came messengers to tell that thousands of men were ready to take up arms in his cause whenever he set foot on his native soil. ”

“ Caius, about 1552, saw a bone of a bonassus (cow) at Warwick Castle kept with the arms of Guy. In 1636 the rib of the dun cow was exhibited at Warwick. Guy's armour is a medley: a bassinet of Edward III.; breast-plate, fifteenth and seventeenth century; sword, Henry VIII.; staff, an ancient tilting-lance, very curious; the horse-armour, and "Fair Phillis' slippers" (strap-irons) , are fifteenth century. In conclusion, "the renowned Guy" is considered to be a myth.
The first historical Earl of Warwick was so created by the Conqueror. The history of the castle has some strange episodes. ”

“ It was otherwise, Lord Warwick, when Edward first swayed; for you then made yourself dear to the people by your justice. Still men talk, hereabouts, of the golden rule of Earl Warwick; but since you have been, though great in office, powerless in deed, absent in Calais, or idle at Middleham, England hath been but the plaything of the Woodvilles, and the king’s ears have been stuffed with flattery as with wool. ”

“ In 1648 he was sent to the Earl of Warwick, then in command of the parliamentary fleet, to tempt him into communication with the royalists; but in spite of his relationship to Warwick he was sent back without an interview (Clarendon, xi. 70) . ”

“ His body was brought home and buried at Warwick. His tomb in St Mary's church is one of the most splendid specimens of English art in the 15th Century. Warwick married (1) Elizabeth Berkeley, (2) Isabella Despenser. By his second wife he left an only son Henry, afterwards duke of Warwick, who died in 1445, and a daughter Anne, who as her brother's sister of the whole blood brought the title and chief share of the estates to her husband Richard Neville, the kingmaker. By his first wife he had three daughters, of whom the eldest, Margaret, married John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. ”

“ In the campaign in Scotland, and especially at the battle of Pinkie, Warwick had appeared the real achiever of victory, and now he was suffered to reap the easily-won distinction of suppressing the rebels. He returned from Norfolk like a victor, and his reputation rose remarkably from that moment. He was looked up to as the able and successful man, and his ambitious views were warmly seconded by the wily old ex-chancellor, Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who hated Somerset for having dismissed him from office, and for a time banished him from the Council. ”

“ The chroniclers might with propriety have described this as a second "dissimulated love-day." No true reconcilement could take place between the king and the king-maker. Warwick considered Edward the most ungrateful of mankind; and the king thought of the earl, as the Regent-Duke of Albany said of the third Lord Home, that "he was too great to be a subject." The king regarded Warwick's patriotic counsel with aversion: the earl's discontent could be read by the multitude in his frank face. Each, naturally, began to calculate his strength. ”

“ Abergavenny, and Latimer. The vast power which such an accumulation of wealth and honours placed at the Earl's disposal was wielded with consummate ability. In outer seeming Warwick was the very type of the feudal baron. He could raise armies at his call from his own earldoms. Six hundred liveried retainers followed him to Parliament. Thousands of dependants feasted in his courtyard. But few men were really further from the feudal ideal. Active and ruthless warrior as he was, his enemies denied to the Earl the gift of personal daring. ”

“ The last notices of it are at Leicester, Plymouth, and Ipswich in 1562–3.
At a later date, however, this Earl was clearly interested in things dramatic. He took part in a Shrovetide device at Court in 1579, and is recorded in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (1598) to have been himself a playwright and one of ‘the best for comedy amongst us’ (App. C, No. lii) . In 1580 the Duttons and the rest of the Earl of Warwick’s men transferred themselves to his service, and thereby laid themselves open to satire upon their fickleness (cf. supra) . ”

“ Nevertheless, the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords was a measure too extreme for Warwick to approve, nor could the independents leave the control of the fleet in his hands. On 23 Feb. 1649 parliament repealed the act constituting Warwick lord high admiral, and transferred the government of the navy to the council of state. His interposition on behalf of the life of his brother, the Earl of Holland, met with no success (Clarendon, Rebellion, xi. 504) . ”

“ Warwick did not, however, apprehend any serious results from the passive distaste of the trading towns. His martial spirit led him to despise the least martial part of the population. He knew that the towns would not rise in arms so long as their charters were respected; and that slow, undermining hostility which exists only in opinion, his intellect, so vigorous in immediate dangers, was not far-sighted enough to comprehend. More direct cause for apprehension would there have been to a suspicious mind in the demeanour of the earl's colleague in the Protectorate,—the Duke of Clarence. ”

“ Well; these Northumbrian Guys having lived extremely fast, and being compelled to compound with their creditors, by plundering the latter, and paying them zero in the pound, migrated southward, and finally settled in Warwickshire. Now, the head of the house had a considerable share of common sense about him, and after much suffering in a state of shabby gentility, he not only sent his daughters out to earn their own livelihood, but, to the intense disgust of his spouse, hired himself as steward to that noble gentleman the Earl of Warwick. ”

“ The opportunity for a quarrel was too favorable to be neglected. One day, when Warwick was attending the council at Westminster, a yeoman of his retinue, having been struck by one of the royal household, wounded his assailant. The king's servants assembling at the news watched until the earl was returning from the council to his barge, and set upon him with desperate intentions. A fray ensued, and Warwick, with some difficulty, escaped in a wherry to London. ”

“ Warwick’s men give way, his brother is slain, and there is only safety for the great earl in flight. He leaps on horseback and gallops to a neighbouring wood, from which there is no egress. He is followed and surrounded, and though he plies his great battle-axe fiercely he is overborne by superior numbers and slain. The king-maker will never make or unmake kings again. ”

“ On the north side of the entrance to the Beauchamp Chapel is a marble slab, on which are the incised brass effigies of the second Earl of Warwick, Thomas Beauchamp, and his Countess Margaret, who died in 1401 and 1406 respectively. The monument is an interesting one, as the effigies show the Earl clad in full armour, with his feet resting on a bear, whilst the Countess wears a low–bodied gown, over which is a long mantle–like garment fastened at the breast; on her head is a cap with her hair falling in long ringlets on to her shoulders; at her feet is a dog, wearing a collar of bells. ”