Edward of York

“ All his beauty, all his fascination, could not root from her mind the remembrance of the exiled prince; nay, the brilliancy of his qualities made her the more averse to him. It darkened the prospects of Edward of Lancaster that Edward of York should wear so gracious and so popular a form. She hailed with delight the hour when she was conducted to her chamber, and dismissing gently the pompous retinue allotted to her, found herself alone with the young maiden whom she had elected to her special service.
"And you remember me, too, fair Sibyll?" said Anne, with her dulcet and endearing voice. ”

“ On the 3d of March, 1461, while Margaret of Anjou was leading her army toward the Humber, and the citizens of London were awakening from fearful dreams of northern men plundering their warehouses with lawless violence, and treating their women with indelicate freedom, Edward of York entered the capital at the head of his victorious army. Accompanied by the Earl of Warwick, by whom he had been joined at Chipping Norton, the conqueror of the Tudors rode through the city, and was welcomed with the utmost enthusiasm. ”

“ Fortune, which seldom does things by halves, seemed to have conducted the earl to a triumph too complete to be reversed; and if any one, with the gift of political prophecy, had ventured to predict that, within six months, King Edward would ride into London amid the applause of the populace, he would have been regarded as a madman. Every circumstance rendered such an event improbable in the extreme. The fickle goddess appeared to have forever deserted the White Rose, and to have destined the sun of York never more to shine in merry England. ”

“ 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. ”

“ King Edward advanced to York on Monday, March 30, 1461, where he was received with great solemnity by the mayor and commons of the city, in procession. They obtained grace through the intercession of Lords Montagu and Berners. The heads of the Duke of York, the Earl of Rutland, and the Earl of Salisbury were removed from the gates of York, and placed with the bodies at Pomfret, preparatory to the subsequent magnificent obsequies at Fotheringhay and Bisham. ”

“ Edward met him with inferior forces in the neighbourhood of Barnet, and there a battle was fought, in which Warwick was entirely defeated, and himself and his brother Montague killed. Probably the great bulk of the people cared but little who was their ruler. York’s army was very small—less than 10,000 men. A series of accidents gave him the victory. The indifference of the nation, weary of the squabble, explains the rapid success of these revolutions. ”

“ Without presuming to decide which policy, upon the whole, would have been the happier for England,—the one that based a despotism on the middle class, or the one that founded an aristocracy upon popular affection,—it was clear to the more enlightened burgesses of the great towns, that between Edward of York and the Earl of Warwick a vast principle was at stake, and the commercial king seemed to them a more natural ally than the feudal baron ”

“ Eanswith at Folkestone, till Lent had begun, and the first fresh tidings that they met were that Edward had landed in Yorkshire, but his fleet had been dispersed by storms, and the people did not rise to join him, so that he was fain to proclaim that he only came to assert his right to his father’s inheritance of the Dukedom of York.
At the Minoresses’ Convent they found that a messenger had arrived, bidding Anne go to meet her father at his castle in Bedfordshire. He was coming over with the Queen whenever she could obtain a convoy from King Louis of France. ”

“ Edward of York, forsooth, was a great trader! It was a sorry hour for England when such as ye, Nick Alwyn, left your green villages for loom and booth. But thus far have I spoken to you as a brave fellow, and of the north countree. I have no time to waste on words. Wilt thou accept mine offer, or name another boon in my power? The man who hath served me wrongs me,—till I have served him again!”
“My lord, yes; I will name such a boon,—safety, and, if you will, some grace and honour, to a learned scholar now in the Tower, one Adam Warner, whom—”
“Now in the Tower! Adam Warner! ”

“ The blow was absolutely fatal. The Yorkists disperse. The lords at once abandoned all thought of further resistance. Leaving their banners in the field, they withdrew at midnight. York and his second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, fled into Wales, from whence they sailed into Ireland. His eldest, Edward, Earl of March, accompanied by the two other earls, Warwick and Salisbury, and by Sir John Wenlock, made his way into Devonshire. There by the friendly aid of one John Dynham, afterwards Lord Dynham, and Lord High Treasurer to Henry VII., they bought a ship at Exmouth and sailed to Guernsey. ”

“ Alban's, and there defeated him, after which the poor captive King was released and brought to his Queen in Lord Clifford's tent. But Edward, the quondam Earl of March, now Duke of York, had come up and joined Warwick, who, together, entered London and were welcomed by the citizens, who favoured the house of York. Margaret, fearing to meet their united forces, returned northward, her strongholds and most devoted friends being in the northern counties, especially on the Scottish borders, whither she was followed by Duke Edward. ”

“ New power is ever gentle and douce. What matters to us York or Lancaster?—all we want is good laws. Get the best we can from Lancaster, and when King Edward returns, as return he will, let him bid higher than Henry for our love. Worshipful my lords and brethren, while barons and knaves go to loggerheads, honest men get their own. Time grows under us like grass. York and Lancaster may pull down each other,—and what is left? ”

“ Then, when York found it was of no use to wait, he began to make war, backed up by Warwick, and, after much fighting, they made the king prisoner, and forced him to make an agreement that he should reign as long as he lived, but that after that Richard of York should be king, and his son Edward be only Duke of Lancaster. This made the queen furiously angry. She would not give up her son's rights, and she gathered a great army, with which she came suddenly on the Duke of York near Wakefield, and destroyed nearly his whole army. He was killed in the battle ”

“ Edward was Earl of March and Ulster, and Lord of Wigmore and Clare, and afterwards King Edward IV.; and, although not usually called Duke of York by historians, there does not seem to be any reason why he was not so called, between the time of his father’s death, and his accession to the throne of England. Edward was the eldest son of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and Cecily his wife, and was born at Rouen, in Normandy, on the 29th of April, 1441. ”

“ At an early age, however, he was brought to England, to be educated in Ludlow Castle, under the auspices of Sir Richard Croft, a warlike Marchman, who had married a widow of one of the Mortimers. Under the auspices of Croft and of his spouse, who, at Ludlow, was known as "The Lady Governess," Edward grew up a handsome boy, and was, from the place of his birth, called "The Rose of Rouen," as his mother had been called "The Rose of Raby." Early plunged into the wars of the Roses, the heir of York never acquired any thing like learning, but became a warrior of experience in his teens ”

“ Chained by an attraction yet more powerful than slaughter, he had lingered at Middleham, while Warwick led his army to York; and when the earl arrived at the capital of Edward's ancestral duchy, he found that the able and active Hastings—having heard, even before he reached the Duke of Gloucester's camp, of Edward's apparent seizure by the earl and the march to Middleham—had deemed it best to halt at York, and to summon in all haste a council of such of the knights and barons as either love to the king or envy to Warwick could collect. ”

“ But Edward, who, in common with all the princes of the House of York, carried dress to a passion, had not only reintroduced many of the most effeminate modes in vogue under William the Red King, but added to them whatever could tend to impart an almost oriental character to the old Norman garb. His gown (a womanly garment which had greatly superseded, with men of the highest rank, not only the mantle but the surcoat) flowed to his heels, trimmed with ermine, and broidered with large flowers of crimson wrought upon cloth-of-gold. ”

“ If in this thou succeedest, know that thou mayst restore the royalty of Lancaster to the purple and the throne; that thou wilt have princes and earls for favourers and protectors to thy learned life; that thy fortunes and fame are made! Fail, be discovered,—and Edward of York never spares!—thy guerdon will be the nearest tree and the strongest rope!”
“Robert,” said Adam, who had listened to this address with unusual attention, “thou dealest with me plainly, and as man should deal with man. I know little of stratagem and polity, wars and kings ”

“ While the Lancastrians were forming their line of battle, King Edward gave the order to advance; and, with banners displayed, with clarions and trumpets sounding a march, and with Gloucester leading the van, and perhaps even then dreaming of a crown, the Yorkist army moved forward, gay with knights and nobles in rich armor and broidered vests, their lances gleaming in the merry sunshine, their plumes and pennons dancing in the morning breeze, and their mailed steeds, with chaffrons of steel projecting from barbed frontals, caracoling at the touch of the spur. ”

“ The royal fleurs-de-lis and lions on the surcoat, with an escocheon of pretence bearing the arms of Leon and Castilla—the princely coronet surrounding the helmet—were enough to tell the tale. Other men might come alive out of the fight of Agincourt, but Edward Duke of York would only leave it a corpse.
He stands on the page of history, a beacon for all time. No man living in his day better knew the way of righteousness; no man living took less care to walk in it. ”

“ Mort Dieu! how often did he complain of slight and insult from Elizabeth and her minions, of open affront from Edward, of parsimony to his wants as prince,—of a life, in short, humbled and made bitter by all the indignity and the gall which scornful power can inflict on dependent pride. If he gain not the throne, he will gain, at least, the succession in thy right to the baronies of Beauchamp, the mighty duchy, and the vast heritage of York, the vice-royalty of Ireland. Never prince of the blood had wealth and honours equal to those that shall await thy lord. ”

“ It was an age, however, when men sported with oaths as children do with playthings; and Edward's conscience was by no means more [Pg 273] tender than those of his neighbors. To smooth his way, he solemnly swore only to claim the dukedom of York, not to make any attempt to recover the crown; and, moreover, he carried his dissimulation so far as to proclaim King Henry and assume the ostrich feather, which was the cognizance of the Lancastrian Prince of Wales.
After leaving York, however, a formidable obstacle presented itself in the shape of Pontefract Castle, where Montagu lay with an army. ”

“ After the acceptance of Richard of York as heir to the crown, Edward returned to the Welsh marches, where early in the new 996 year he heard of his father’s defeat and death at Wakefield. Hastily gathering an army he defeated the earls of Pembroke and Wiltshire at Mortimer’s Cross on the 2nd of February 1461, and then marched on London. He was acclaimed by the citizens in an assembly at Clerkenwell, declared king by a Yorkist council, and took possession of the regality on the 4th of March. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Parliament met after this affair, theoretical allegiance was sworn to the king and prince, but practical contempt of their position was exercised. York was declared protector until Edward, the heir to the throne, attained his majority; but Henry was superannuated at once, for he was liable, like a hare in the month of March, to fits of insanity. He was sometimes sensible enough, but no one could elucidate the date of his lucid intervals; and as the sceptre is little better than a red-hot poker in a madman's hands, he was very properly deprived of that powerful instrument. ”

“ No; as Heaven shall judge me, I think that the policy King Edward hath chosen, and which costs him his crown to-day, ought to make the House of York dear to burgess and trader. He hath sought to break up the iron rule of the great barons,—and never peace to England till that be done. He has failed; but for a day. He has yielded for a time; so must we. ‘There’s a time to squint, and a time to look even.’ I advise that we march out to the earl, that we make honourable terms for the city, that we take advantage of one faction to gain what we have not gained with the other ”