CHAPTER II.
THE CAMP AT OLNEY.
It was some weeks after the citizens of London had seen their gallant
king, at the head of such forces as were collected in haste in the
metropolis, depart from their walls to the encounter of the rebels.
Surprising and disastrous had been the tidings in the interim. At
first, indeed, there were hopes that the insurrection had been put
down by Montagu, who had defeated the troops of Robin of Redesdale,
near the city of York, and was said to have beheaded their leader.
But the spirit of discontent was only fanned by an adverse wind. The
popular hatred to the Woodvilles was so great, that in proportion as
Edward advanced to the scene of action, the country rose in arms, as
Raoul de Fulke had predicted. Leaders of lordly birth now headed the
rebellion; the sons of the Lords Latimer and Fitzhugh (near kinsmen of
the House of Nevile) lent their names to the cause and Sir John
Coniers, an experienced soldier, whose claims had been disregarded by
Edward, gave to the insurgents the aid of a formidable capacity for
war. In every mouth was the story of the Duchess of Bedford's
witchcraft; and the waxen figure of the earl did more to rouse the
people than perhaps the earl himself could have done in person. [See
"Parliamentary Rolls," vi. 232, for the accusation of witchcraft, and
the fabrication of a necromantic image of Lord Warwick, circulated
against the Duchess of Bedford. She herself quotes and complains of
them.] As yet, however, language of the insurgents was tempered with
all personal respect to the king; they declared in their manifestoes
that they desired only the banishment of the Woodvilles and the recall
of Warwick, whose name they used unscrupulously, and whom they
declared they were on their way to meet. As soon as it was known that
the kinsmen of the beloved earl were in the revolt, and naturally
supposed that the earl himself must countenance the enterprise, the
tumultuous camp swelled every hour, while knight after knight, veteran
after veteran, abandoned the royal standard. The Lord d'Eyncourt (one
of the few lords of the highest birth and greatest following over whom
the Neviles had no influence, and who bore the Woodvilles no grudge)
had, in his way to Lincolnshire,--where his personal aid was necessary
to rouse his vassals, infected by the common sedition,--been attacked
and wounded by a body of marauders, and thus Edward's camp lost one of
its greatest leaders. Fierce dispute broke out in the king's
councils; and when the witch Jacquetta's practices against the earl
travelled from the hostile into the royal camp, Raoul de Fulke, St.
John, and others, seized with pious horror, positively declared they
would throw down their arms and retire to their castles, unless the
Woodvilles were dismissed from the camp and the Earl of Warwick was
recalled to England. To the first demand the king was constrained to
yield; with the second he temporized. He marched from Fotheringay to
Newark; but the signs of disaffection, though they could not dismay
him as a soldier, altered his plans as a captain of singular military
acuteness; he fell back on Nottingham, and despatched, with his own
hands, letters to Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and Warwick. To
the last he wrote touchingly.
"We do not believe" (said the letter) "that ye should be of any such
disposition towards us as the rumour here runneth, considering the
trust and affection we bear you,--and cousin, we think ye shall be to
us welcome." [Paston Letters, ccxcviii. (Knight's edition), vol. ii.
p. 59. See also Lingard, vol. iii. p. 522 (4to edition), note 43, for
the proper date to be assigned to Edward's letter to Warwick, etc.]
But ere these letters reached their destination, the crown seemed
well-nigh lost. At Edgecote the Earl of Pembroke was defeated and
slain, and five thousand royalists were left on the field. Earl
Rivers and his son, Sir John Woodville, [This Sir John Woodville was
the most obnoxious of the queen's brothers, and infamous for the
avarice which had led him to marry the old Duchess of Norfolk, an act
which according to the old laws of chivalry would have disabled him
from entering the lists of knighthood, for the ancient code
disqualified and degraded any knight who should marry any old woman
for her money! Lord Rivers was the more odious to the people at the
time of the insurrection because, in his capacity of treasurer, he had
lately tampered with the coin and circulation.] who in obedience to
the royal order had retired to the earl's country seat of Grafton,
were taken prisoners, and beheaded by the vengeance of the insurgents.
The same lamentable fate befell the Lord Stafford, on whom Edward
relied as one of his most puissant leaders; and London heard with
dismay that the king, with but a handful of troops, and those lukewarm
and disaffected, was begirt on all sides by hostile and marching
thousands.
From Nottingham, however, Edward made good his retreat to a village
called Olney, which chanced at that time to be partially fortified
with a wall and a strong gate. Here the rebels pursued him; and
Edward, hearing that Sir Anthony Woodville, who conceived that the
fate of his father and brother cancelled all motive for longer absence
from the contest, was busy in collecting a force in the neighbourhood
of Coventry, while other assistance might be daily expected from
London, strengthened the fortifications as well as the time would
permit, and awaited the assault of the insurgents.
It was at this crisis, and while throughout all England reigned terror
and commotion, that one day, towards the end of July, a small troop of
horsemen were seen riding rapidly towards the neighbourhood of Olney.
As the village came in view of the cavalcade, with the spire of its
church and its gray stone gateway, so also they beheld, on the
pastures that stretched around wide and far, a moving forest of pikes
and plumes.
"Holy Mother!" said one of the foremost riders, "good the knight and
strong man though Edward be, it were sharp work to cut his way from
that hamlet through yonder fields! Brother, we were more welcome, had
we brought more bills and bows at our backs!"
"Archbishop," answered the stately personage thus addressed, "we bring
what alone raises armies and disbands them,--a NAME that a People
honours! From the moment the White Bear is seen on yonder archway
side by side with the king's banner, that army will vanish as smoke
before the wind."
"Heaven grant it, Warwick!" said the Duke of Clarence; for though
Edward hath used us sorely, it chafes me as Plantagenet and as prince
to see how peasants and varlets can hem round a king."
"Peasants and varlets are pawns in the chessboard, cousin George,"
said the prelate; "and knight and bishop find them mighty useful when
pushing forward to an attack. Now knight and bishop appear themselves
and take up the game. Warwick," added the prelate, in a whisper,
unheard by Clarence, "forget not, while appeasing rebellion, that the
king is in your power."
"For shame, George! I think not now of the unkind king; I think only
of the brave boy I dandled on my knee, and whose sword I girded on at
Towton. How his lion heart must chafe, condemned to see a foe whom
his skill as captain tells him it were madness to confront!"
"Ay, Richard Nevile, ay," said the prelate, with a slight sneer, "play
the Paladin, and become the dupe; release the prince, and betray the
people!"
"No! I can be true to both. Tush! brother, your craft is slight to
the plain wisdom of bold honesty. You slacken your steeds, sirs; on!
on! see the march of the rebels! On, for an Edward and a Warwick!"
and, spurring to full speed, the little company arrived at the gates.
The loud bugle of the new comers was answered by the cheerful note of
the joyous warder, while dark, slow, and solemn over the meadows crept
on the mighty crowd of the rebel army.
"We have forestalled the insurgents!" said the earl, throwing himself
from his black steed. "Marmaduke Nevile, advance our banner; heralds,
announce the Duke of Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and the Earl of
Salisbury and Warwick."
Through the anxious town, along the crowded walls and housetops, into
the hall of an old mansion (that then adjoined the church), where the
king, in complete armour, stood at bay, with stubborn and disaffected
officers, rolled the thunder cry, "A Warwick! a Warwick! all saved! a
Warwick!"
Sharply, as he heard the clamour, the king turned upon his startled
council. "Lords and captains!" said he, with that inexpressible
majesty which he could command in his happier hours, "God and our
Patron Saint have sent us at least one man who has the heart to fight
fifty times the odds of yon miscreant rabble, by his king's side, and
for the honour of loyalty and knighthood!"
"And who says, sire," answered Raoul de Fulke, "that we, your lords
and captains, would not risk blood and life for our king and our
knighthood in a just cause? But we will not butcher our countrymen
for echoing our own complaint, and praying your Grace that a grasping
and ambitious family which you have raised to power may no longer
degrade your nobles and oppress your commons. We shall see if the
Earl of Warwick blame us or approve."
"And I answer," said Edward, loftily, "that whether Warwick approve or
blame, come as friend or foe, I will sooner ride alone through yonder
archway, and carve out a soldier's grave amongst the ranks of
rebellious war, than be the puppet of my subjects, and serve their
will by compulsion. Free am I--free ever will I be, while the crown
of the Plantagenet is mine, to raise those whom I love, to defy the
threats of those sworn to obey me. And were I but Earl of March,
instead of king of England, this hall should have swum with the blood
of those who have insulted the friends of my youth, the wife of my
bosom. Off, Hastings!--I need no mediator with my servants. Nor
here, nor anywhere in broad England, have I my equal, and the king
forgives or scorns--construe it as ye will, my lords--what the simple
gentleman would avenge."
It were in vain to describe the sensation that this speech produced.
There is ever something in courage and in will that awes numbers,
though brave themselves. And what with the unquestioned valour of
Edward; what with the effect of his splendid person, towering above
all present by the head, and moving lightly, with each impulse,
through the mass of a mail that few there could have borne unsinking,
this assertion of absolute power in the midst of mutiny--an army
marching to the gates--imposed an unwilling reverence and sullen
silence mixed with anger, that, while it chafed, admired. They who in
peace had despised the voluptuous monarch, feasting in his palace, and
reclining on the lap of harlot-beauty, felt that in war all Mars
seemed living in his person. Then, indeed, he was a king; and had the
foe, now darkening the landscape, been the noblest chivalry of France,
not a man there but had died for a smile from that haughty lip. But
the barons were knit heart in heart with the popular outbreak, and to
put down the revolt seemed to them but to raise the Woodvilles. The
silence was still unbroken, save where the persuasive whisper of Lord
Hastings might be faintly heard in remonstrance with the more powerful
or the more stubborn of the chiefs, when the tread of steps resounded
without, and, unarmed, bareheaded, the only form in Christendom
grander and statelier than the king's strode into the hall.
Edward, as yet unaware what course Warwick would pursue, and half
doubtful whether a revolt that had borrowed his name and was led by
his kinsmen might not originate in his consent, surrounded by those to
whom the earl was especially dear, and aware that if Warwick were
against him all was lost, still relaxed not the dignity of his mien;
and leaning on his large two-handed sword, with such inward resolves
as brave kings and gallant gentlemen form, if the worst should befall,
he watched the majestic strides of his great kinsman, and said, as the
earl approached, and the mutinous captains louted low,--
"Cousin, you are welcome! for truly do I know that when you have aught
whereof to complain, you take not the moment of danger and disaster.
And whatever has chanced to alienate your heart from me, the sound of
the rebel's trumpet chases all difference, and marries your faith to
mine."
"Oh, Edward, my king, why did you so misjudge me in the prosperous
hour!" said Warwick, simply, but with affecting earnestness: "since in
the adverse hour you arede me well?"
As he spoke, he bowed his head, and, bending his knee, kissed the hand
held out to him.
Edward's face grew radiant, and, raising the earl, he glanced proudly
at the barons, who stood round, surprised and mute.
"Yes, my lords and sirs, see,--it is not the Earl of Warwick, next to
our royal brethren the nearest subject to the throne, who would desert
me in the day of peril!"
"Nor do we, sire," retorted Raoul de Fulke; "you wrong us before our
mighty comrade if you so misthink us. We will fight for the king, but
not for the queen's kindred; and this alone brings on us your anger."
"The gates shall be opened to ye. Go! Warwick and I are men enough
for the rabble yonder."
The earl's quick eye and profound experience of his time saw at once
the dissension and its causes. Nor, however generous, was he willing
to forego the present occasion for permanently destroying an influence
which he knew hostile to himself and hurtful to the realm. His was
not the generosity of a boy, but of a statesman. Accordingly, as
Raoul de Fulke ceased, he took up the word.
"My liege, we have yet an hour good ere the foe can reach the gates.
Your brother and mine accompany me. See, they enter! Please you, a
few minutes to confer with them; and suffer me, meanwhile, to reason
with these noble captains."
Edward paused; but before the open brow of the earl fled whatever
suspicion might have crossed the king's mind.
"Be it so, cousin; but remember this,--to councillors who can menace
me with desertion at such an hour, I concede nothing."
Turning hastily away, he met Clarence and the prelate midway in the
hall, threw his arm caressingly over his brother's shoulder, and,
taking the archbishop by the hand, walked with them towards the
battlements.
"Well, my friends," said Warwick, "and what would you of the king?"
"The dismissal of all the Woodvilles, except the queen; the revocation
of the grants and land accorded to them, to the despoiling the ancient
noble; and, but for your presence, we had demanded your recall."
"And, failing these, what your resolve?"
"To depart, and leave Edward to his fate. These granted, we doubt
little but that the insurgents will disband. These not granted, we
but waste our lives against a multitude whose cause we must approve."
"The cause! But ye know not the real cause," answered Warwick. "I
know it; for the sons of the North are familiar to me, and their
rising hath deeper meaning than ye deem. What! have they not decoyed
to their head my kinsmen, the heirs of Latimer and Fitzhugh, and bold
Coniers, whose steel calque should have circled a wiser brain? Have
they not taken my name as their battle-cry? And do ye think this
falsehood veils nothing but the simple truth of just complaint?"
"Was their rising, then," asked St. John, in evident surprise, "wholly
unauthorized by you?"
"So help me Heaven! if I would resort to arms to redress a wrong,
think not that I myself would be absent from the field! No, my lords,
friends, and captains, time presses; a few words must suffice to
explain what as yet may be dark to you. I have letters from Montagu
and others, which reached me the same day as the king's, and which
clear up the purpose of our misguided countrymen. Ye know well that
ever in England, but especially since the reign of Edward III.,
strange, wild notions of some kind of liberty other than that we enjoy
have floated loose through the land. Among the commons, a half-
conscious recollection that the nobles are a different race from
themselves feeds a secret rancour and mislike, which, at any fair
occasion for riot, shows itself bitter and ruthless,--as in the
outbreak of Cade and others. And if the harvest fail, or a tax gall,
there are never wanting men to turn the popular distress to the ends
of private ambition or state design. Such a man has been the true
head and front of this commotion."
"Speak you of Robin of Redesdale, now dead?" asked one of the
captains.
"He is not dead. [The fate of Robin of Redesdale has been as obscure
as most of the incidents in this most perplexed part of English
history. While some of the chroniclers finish his career according to
the report mentioned in the text, Fabyan not only more charitably
prolongs his life, but rewards him with the king's pardon; and
according to the annals of his ancient and distinguished family (who
will pardon, we trust, a license with one of their ancestry equally
allowed by history and romance), as referred to in Wotton's "English
Baronetage" (Art. "Hilyard"), and which probably rests upon the
authority of the life of Richard III., in Stowe's "Annals," he is
represented as still living in the reign of that king. But the whole
account of this famous demagogue in Wotton is, it must be owned, full
of historical mistakes.] Montagu informs me that the report was
false. He was defeated off York, and retired for some days into the
woods; but it is he who has enticed the sons of Latimer and Fitzhugh
into the revolt, and resigned his own command to the martial cunning
of Sir John Coniers. This Robin of Redesdale is no common man. He
hath had a clerkly education, he hath travelled among the Free Towns
of Italy, he hath deep purpose in all he doth; and among his projects
is the destruction of the nobles here, as it was whilome effected in
Florence, the depriving us of all offices and posts, with other
changes, wild to think of and long to name."
"And we would have suffered this man to triumph!" exclaimed De Fulke:
"we have been to blame."
"Under fair pretence he has gathered numbers, and now wields an army.
I have reason to know that, had he succeeded in estranging ye from
Edward, and had the king fallen, dead or alive, into his hands, his
object would have been to restore Henry of Windsor, but on conditions
that would have left king and baron little more than pageants in the
state. I knew this man years ago. I have watched him since; and,
strange though it may seem to you, he hath much in him that I admire
as a subject and should fear were I a king. Brief, thus runs my
counsel: For our sake and the realm's safety, we must see this armed
multitude disbanded; that done, we must see the grievances they with
truth complain of fairly redressed. Think not, my lords, I avenge my
own wrongs alone, when I go with you in your resolve to banish from
the king's councils the baleful influence of the queen's kin. Till
that be compassed, no peace for England. As a leprosy, their avarice
crawls over the nobler parts of the state, and devours while it
sullies. Leave this to me; and, though we will redress ourselves, let
us now assist our king!"
With one voice the unruly officers clamoured their assent to all the
earl urged, and expressed their readiness to sally at once from the
gates, and attack the rebels.
"But," observed an old veteran, "what are we amongst so many? Here a
handful--there an army!"
"Fear not, reverend sir," answered Warwick, with an assured smile; "is
not this army in part gathered from my own province of Yorkshire? Is
it not formed of men who have eaten of my bread and drunk of my cup?
Let me see the man who will discharge one arrow at the walls which
contain Richard Nevile of Warwick. Now each to your posts,--I to the
king."
Like the pouring of new blood into a decrepit body seemed the arrival,
at that feeble garrison, of the Earl of Warwick. From despair into
the certainty of triumph leaped every heart. Already at the sight of
his banner floating by the side of Edward's, the gunner had repaired
to his bombard, the archer had taken up his bow; the village itself,
before disaffected, poured all its scanty population--women, and age,
and children--to the walls. And when the earl joined the king upon
the ramparts, he found that able general sanguine and elated, and
pointing out to Clarence the natural defences of the place.
Meanwhile, the rebels, no doubt apprised by their scouts of the new
aid, had already halted in their march, and the dark swarm might be
seen indistinctly undulating, as bees ere they settle, amidst the
verdure of the plain.
"Well, cousin," said the king, "have ye brought these Hotspurs to
their allegiance?"
"Sire, yes," said Warwick, gravely; "but we have here no force to
resist yon army."
"Bring you not succours?" said the king, astonished. "You must have
passed through London. Have you left no troops upon the road?"
"I had no time, sire; and London is well-nigh palsied with dismay.
Had I waited to collect troops, I might have found a king's head
blackening over those gates."
"Well," returned Edward, carelessly, "few or many, one gentleman is
more worth than a hundred varlets. 'We are eno' for glory,' as Henry
said at Agincourt."
"No, sire; you are too skilful and too wise to believe your boast.
These men we cannot conquer,--we must disperse them."
"By what spell?"
"By their king's word to redress their complaints."
"And banish my queen?"
"Heaven forbid that man should part those whom God has joined,"
returned Warwick. "Not my lady, your queen, but my lady's kindred."
"Rivers is dead, and gallant John," said Edward, sadly; "is not that
enough for revenge?"
"It is not revenge that we require, but pledges for the land's
safety," answered Warwick. "And to be plain, without such a promise
these walls may be your tomb."
Edward walked apart, strongly debating within himself. In his
character were great contrasts: no man was more frank in common, no
man more false when it suited; no man had more levity in wanton love,
or more firm affection for those he once thoroughly took to his heart.
He was the reverse of grateful for service yielded, yet he was warm in
protecting those on whom service was conferred. He was resolved not
to give up the Woodvilles, and after a short self-commune, he equally
determined not to risk his crown and life by persevering in resistance
to the demand for their downfall. Inly obstinate, outwardly yielding,
he concealed his falsehood with his usual soldierly grace.
"Warwick," he said, returning to the earl's side, "you cannot advise
me to what is misbeseeming, and therefore in this strait I resign my
conduct to your hands. I will not unsay to yon mutinous gentlemen
what I have already said; but what you judge it right to promise in my
name to them or to the insurgents, I will not suppose that mime honour
will refuse to concede. But go not hence, O noblest friend that ever
stood by a king's throne!--go not hence till the grasp of your hand
assures me that all past unkindness is gone and buried; yea, and by
this hand, and while its pressure is warm in mine, bear not too hard
on thy king's affection for his lady's kindred."
"Sire," said Warwick, though his generous nature well-nigh melted into
weakness, and it was with an effort that he adhered to his purpose,--
"sire, if dismissed for a while, they shall not be degraded. And if
it be, on consideration, wise to recall from the family of Woodville
your grants of lands and lordships, take from your Warwick--who, rich
in his king's love, hath eno' to spare--take the double of what you
would recall. Oh, be frank with me, be true, be steadfast, Edward,
and dispose of my lands, whenever you would content a favourite."
"Not to impoverish thee, my Warwick," answered Edward, smiling, "did I
call thee to my aid; for the rest, my revenues as Duke of York are at
least mine to bestow. Go now to the hostile camp,--go as sole
minister and captain-general of this realm; go with all powers and
honours a king can give; and when these districts are at peace, depart
to our Welsh provinces, as chief justiciary of that principality.
Pembroke's mournful death leaves that high post in my gift. It cannot
add to your greatness, but it proves to England your sovereign's
trust."
"And while that trust is given," said Warwick, with tears in his eyes,
"may Heaven strengthen my arm in battle, and sharpen my brain in
council! But I play the laggard. The sun wanes westward; it should
not go down while a hostile army menaces the son of Richard of York."
The earl rode rapidly away, reached the broad space where his
followers still stood, dismounted, but beside their steeds,--
"Trumpets advance, pursuivants and heralds go before! Marmaduke,
mount! The rest I need not. We ride to the insurgent camp."
