BOOK XI.
THE NEW POSITION OF THE KING-MAKER
CHAPTER I.
WHEREIN MASTER ADAM WARNER IS NOTABLY COMMENDED AND ADVANCED--AND
GREATNESS SAYS TO WISDOM, "THY DESTINY BE MINE, AMEN."
The Chronicles inform us, that two or three days after the entrance of
Warwick and Clarence,--namely, on the 6th of October,--those two
leaders, accompanied by the Lords Shrewsbury, Stanley, and a numerous
and noble train, visited the Tower in formal state, and escorted the
king, robed in blue velvet, the crown on his head, to public
thanksgivings at St. Paul's, and thence to the Bishop's Palace, [not
to the Palace at Westminster, as some historians, preferring the
French to the English authorities, have asserted,--that palace was out
of repair] where he continued chiefly to reside.
The proclamation that announced the change of dynasty was received
with apparent acquiescence through the length and breadth of the
kingdom, and the restoration of the Lancastrian line seemed yet the
more firm and solid by the magnanimous forbearance of Warwick and his
councils. Not one execution that could be termed the act of a private
revenge stained with blood the second reign of the peaceful Henry.
One only head fell on the scaffold,--that of the Earl of Worcester.
[Lord Warwick himself did not sit in judgment on Worcester. He was
tried and condemned by Lord Oxford. Though some old offences in his
Irish government were alleged against him, the cruelties which
rendered him so odious were of recent date. He had (as we before took
occasion to relate) impaled twenty persons after Warwick's flight into
France. The "Warkworth Chronicle" says, "He was ever afterwardes
greatly behated among the people for this disordynate dethe that he
used, contrary to the laws of the lande."] This solitary execution,
which was regarded by all classes as a due concession to justice, only
yet more illustrated the general mildness of the new rule.
It was in the earliest days of this sudden restoration that Alwyn
found the occasion to serve his friends in the Tower. Warwick was
eager to conciliate all the citizens, who, whether frankly or
grudgingly, had supported his cause; and, amongst these, he was soon
informed of the part taken in the Guildhall by the rising goldsmith.
He sent for Alwyn to his house in Warwick-lane, and after
complimenting him on his advance in life and repute, since Nicholas
had waited on him with baubles for his embassy to France, he offered
him the special rank of goldsmith to the king.
The wary, yet honest, trader paused a moment in some embarrassment
before he answered,--
"My good lord, you are noble and gracious eno' to understand and
forgive me when I say that I have had, in the upstart of my fortunes,
the countenance of the late King Edward and his queen; and though the
public weal made me advise my fellow-citizens not to resist your
entry, I would not, at least, have it said that my desertion had
benefited my private fortunes."
Warwick coloured, and his lip curled. "Tush, man, assume not virtues
which do not exist amongst the sons of trade, nor, much I trow,
amongst the sons of Adam. I read thy mind. Thou thinkest it unsafe
openly to commit thyself to the new state. Fear not,--we are firm."
"Nay, my lord," returned Alwyn, "it is not so. But there are many
better citizens than I, who remember that the Yorkists were ever
friends to commerce. And you will find that only by great tenderness
to our crafts you can win the heart of London, though you have passed
its gates."
"I shall be just to all men," answered the earl, dryly; "but if the
flat-caps are false, there are eno' of bonnets of steel to watch over
the Red Rose!"
"You are said, my lord," returned Alwyn, bluntly, "to love the barons,
the knights, the gentry, the yeomen, and the peasants, but to despise
the traders,--I fear me that report in this is true."
"I love not the trader spirit, man,--the spirit that cheats, and
cringes, and haggles, and splits straws for pence, and roasts eggs by
other men's blazing rafters. 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! And wanting a friend, I no more an
exile! That is my affair, not thine. Grace, honour,--ay, to his
heart's content. And his noble daughter? Mort Dieu! she shall choose
her bridegroom among the best of England. Is she, too, in the
fortress?"
"Yes," said Alwyn, briefly, not liking the last part of the earl's
speech.
The earl rang the bell on his table. "Send hither Sir Marmaduke
Nevile."
Alwyn saw his former rival enter, and heard the earl commission him to
accompany, with a fitting train, his own litter to the Tower. "And
you, Alwyn, go with your foster-brother, and pray Master Warner and
his daughter to be my guests for their own pleasure. Come hither, my
rude Northman,--come. I see I shall have many secret foes in this
city: wilt not thou at least be Warwick's open friend?"
Alwyn found it hard to resist the charm of the earl's manner and
voice; but, convinced in his own mind that the age was against
Warwick, and that commerce and London would be little advantaged by
the earl's rule, the trading spirit prevailed in his breast.
"Gracious my lord," he said, bending his knee in no servile homage,
"he who befriends my order, commands me."
The proud noble bit his lip, and with a silent wave of his hand
dismissed the foster-brothers.
"Thou art but a churl at best, Nick," said Marmaduke, as the door
closed on the young men. "Many a baron would have sold his father's
hall for such words from the earl's lip."
"Let barons sell their free conduct for fair words. I keep myself
unshackled to join that cause which best fills the market and reforms
the law. But tell me, I pray thee, Sir Knight, what makes Warner and
his daughter so dear to your lord?"
"What! know you not?--and has she not told you?--Ah, what was I about
to say?"
"Can there be a secret between the earl and the scholar?" asked Alwyn,
in wonder.
"If there be, it is our place to respect it," returned the Nevile,
adjusting his manteline; "and now we must command the litter."
In spite of all the more urgent and harassing affairs that pressed
upon him, the earl found an early time to attend to his guests. His
welcome to Sibyll was more than courteous,--it was paternal. As she
approached him, timidly and with a downcast eye, he advanced, placed
his hand upon her head,--
"The Holy Mother ever have thee in her charge, child!--This is a
father's kiss, young mistress," added the earl, pressing his lips to
her forehead; "and in this kiss, remember that I pledge to thee care
for thy fortunes, honour for thy name, my heart to do thee service, my
arm to shield from wrong! Brave scholar, thy lot has become
interwoven with my own. Prosperous is now my destiny,--my destiny be
thine! Amen!"
He turned then to Warner, and without further reference to a past
which so galled his proud spirit, he made the scholar explain to him
the nature of his labours. In the mind of every man who has passed
much of his life in successful action, there is a certain, if we may
so say, untaught mathesis,--but especially among those who have been
bred to the art of war. A great soldier is a great mechanic, a great
mathematician, though he may know it not; and Warwick, therefore,
better than many a scholar comprehended the principle upon which Adam
founded his experiments. But though he caught also a glimpse of the
vast results which such experiments in themselves were calculated to
effect, his strong common-sense perceived yet more clearly that the
time was not ripe for such startling inventions.
"My friend," he said, "I comprehend thee passably. It is clear to me,
that if thou canst succeed in making the elements do the work of man
with equal precision, but with far greater force and rapidity, thou
must multiply eventually, and, by multiplying, cheapen, all the
products of industry; that thou must give to this country the market
of the world; and that thine would be the true alchemy that turneth
all to gold."
"Mighty intellect, thou graspest the truth!" exclaimed Adam.
"But," pursued the earl, with a mixture of prejudice and judgment,
"grant thee success to the full, and thou wouldst turn this bold land
of yeomanry and manhood into one community of griping traders and
sickly artisans. Mort Dieu! we are over-commerced as it is,--the bow
is already deserted for the ell-measure. The town populations are
ever the most worthless in war. England is begirt with mailed foes;
and if by one process she were to accumulate treasure and lose
soldiers, she would but tempt invasion and emasculate defenders.
Verily, I avise and implore thee to turn thy wit and scholarship to a
manlier occupation!"
"My life knows no other object; kill my labour and thou destroyest
me," said Adam, in a voice of gloomy despair. Alas, it seemed that,
whatever the changes of power, no change could better the hopes of
science in an age of iron! Warwick was moved. "Well," he said, after
a pause, "be happy in thine own way. I will do my best at least to
protect thee. To-morrow resume thy labours; but this day, at least,
thou must feast with me."
And at his banquet that day, among the knights and barons, and the
abbots and the warriors, Adam sat on the dais near the earl, and
Sibyll at "the mess" of the ladies of the Duchess of Clarence. And
ere the feast broke up, Warwick thus addressed his company:--
"My friends, though I, and most of us reared in the lap of war, have
little other clerkship than sufficed our bold fathers before us, yet
in the free towns of Italy and the Rhine,--yea, and in France, under
her politic king,--we may see that a day is dawning wherein new
knowledge will teach many marvels to our wiser sons. Wherefore it is
good that a State should foster men who devote laborious nights and
weary days to the advancement of arts and letters, for the glory of
our common land. A worthy gentleman, now at this board, hath deeply
meditated contrivances which may make our English artisans excel the
Flemish loons, who now fatten upon our industry to the impoverishment
of the realm. And, above all, he also purposes to complete an
invention which may render our ship-craft the most notable in Europe.
Of this I say no more at present; but I commend our guest, Master Adam
Warner, to your good service, and pray you especially, worshipful sirs
of the Church now present, to shield his good name from that charge
which most paineth and endangereth honest men. For ye wot well that
the commons, from ignorance, would impute all to witchcraft that
passeth their understanding. Not," added the earl, crossing himself,
"that witchcraft does not horribly infect the land, and hath been
largely practised by Jacquetta of Bedford, and her confederates,
Bungey and others. But our cause needeth no such aid; and all that
Master Warner purposes is in behalf of the people, and in conformity
with Holy Church. So this wassail to his health and House."
This characteristic address being received with respect, though with
less applause than usually greeted the speeches of the great earl,
Warwick added, in a softer and more earnest tone, "And in the fair
demoiselle, his daughter, I pray you to acknowledge the dear friend of
my beloved lady and child, Anne, Princess of Wales; and for the sake
of her highness and in her name, I arrogate to myself a share with
Master Warner in this young donzell's guardianship and charge. Know
ye, my gallant gentles and fair squires, that he who can succeed in
achieving, either by leal love or by bold deeds, as best befit a
wooer, the grace of my young ward, shall claim from my hands a
knight's fee, with as much of my best land as a bull's hide can cover;
and when heaven shall grant safe passage to the Princess Anne and her
noble spouse, we will hold at Smithfield a tourney in honor of Saint
George and our ladies, wherein, pardie, I myself would be sorely
tempted to provoke my jealous countess, and break a lance for the fame
of the demoiselle whose fair face is married to a noble heart."
That evening, in the galliard, many an admiring eye turned to Sibyll,
and many a young gallant, recalling the earl's words, sighed to win
her grace. There had been a time when such honour and such homage
would have, indeed, been welcome; but now ONE saw them not, and they
were valueless. All that, in her earlier girlhood, Sibyll's ambition
had coveted, when musing on the brilliant world, seemed now well-nigh
fulfilled,--her father protected by the first noble of the land, and
that not with the degrading condescension of the Duchess of Bedford,
but as Power alone should protect Genius, honoured while it honours;
her gentle birth recognized; her position elevated; fair fortunes
smiling after such rude trials; and all won without servility or
abasement. But her ambition having once exhausted itself in a diviner
passion, all excitement seemed poor and spiritless compared to the
lonely waiting at the humble farm for the voice and step of Hastings.
Nay, but for her father's sake, she could almost have loathed the
pleasure and the pomp, and the admiration and the homage, which seemed
to insult the reverses of the wandering exile.
The earl had designed to place Sibyll among Isabel's ladies, but the
haughty air of the duchess chilled the poor girl; and pleading the
excuse that her father's health required her constant attendance, she
prayed permission to rest with Warner wherever he might be lodged.
Adam himself, now that the Duchess of Bedford and Friar Bungey were no
longer in the Tower, entreated permission to return to the place where
he had worked the most successfully upon the beloved Eureka; and, as
the Tower seemed a safer residence than any private home could be,
from popular prejudice and assault, Warwick kindly offered apartments,
far more commodious than they had yet occupied, to be appropriated to
the father and daughter. Several attendants were assigned to them,
and never was man of letters or science more honoured now than the
poor scholar who, till then, had been so persecuted and despised.
Who shall tell Adam's serene delight? Alchemy and astrology at rest,
no imperious duchess, no hateful Bungey, his free mind left to its
congenial labours! And Sibyll, when they met, strove to wear a
cheerful brow, praying him only never to speak to her of Hastings.
The good old man, relapsing into his wonted mechanical existence,
hoped she had forgotten a girl's evanescent fancy.
But the peculiar distinction showed by the earl to Warner confirmed
the reports circulated by Bungey,--"that he was, indeed, a fearful
nigromancer, who had much helped the earl in his emprise." The earl's
address to his guests in behalf both of Warner and Sibyll, the high
state accorded to the student, reached even the Sanctuary; for the
fugitives there easily contrived to learn all the gossip of the city.
Judge of the effect the tale produced upon the envious Bungey! judge
of the representations it enabled him to make to the credulous
duchess! It was clear now to Jacquetta as the sun in noonday that
Warwick rewarded the evil-predicting astrologer for much dark and
secret service, which Bungey, had she listened to him, might have
frustrated; and she promised the friar that, if ever again she had the
power, Warner and the Eureka should be placed at his sole mercy and
discretion.
The friar himself, however, growing very weary of the dulness of the
Sanctuary, and covetous of the advantages enjoyed by Adam, began to
meditate acquiescence in the fashion of the day, and a transfer of his
allegiance to the party in power. Emboldened by the clemency of the
victors, learning that no rewards for his own apprehension had been
offered, hoping that the stout earl would forget or forgive the old
offence of the waxen effigies, and aware of the comparative security
his friar's gown and cowl afforded him, he resolved one day to venture
forth from his retreat. He even flattered himself that he could
cajole Adam--whom he really believed the possessor of some high and
weird secrets, but whom otherwise he despised as a very weak creature
--into forgiving his past brutalities, and soliciting the earl to take
him into favour.
At dusk, then, and by the aid of one of the subalterns of the Tower,
whom he had formerly made his friend, the friar got admittance into
Warner's chamber. Now it so chanced that Adam, having his own
superstitions, had lately taken it into his head that all the various
disasters which had befallen the Eureka, together with all the little
blemishes and defects that yet marred its construction, were owing to
the want of the diamond bathed in the mystic moonbeams, which his
German authority had long so emphatically prescribed; and now that a
monthly stipend far exceeding his wants was at his disposal, and that
it became him to do all possible honour to the earl's patronage, he
resolved that the diamond should be no longer absent from the
operations it was to influence. He obtained one of passable size and
sparkle, exposed it the due number of nights to the new moon, and had
already prepared its place in the Eureka, and was contemplating it
with solemn joy, when Bungey entered.
"Mighty brother," said the friar, bowing to the ground, "be merciful
as thou art strong! Verily thou hast proved thyself the magician, and
I but a poor wretch in comparison,--for lo! thou art rich and
honoured, and I poor and proscribed. Deign to forgive thine enemy,
and take him as thy slave by right of conquest. Oh, Cogsbones! oh,
Gemini! what a jewel thou hast got!"
"Depart! thou disturbest me," said Adam, oblivious, in his absorption,
of the exact reasons for his repugnance, but feeling indistinctly that
something very loathsome and hateful was at his elbow; and, as he
spoke, he fitted the diamond into its socket.
"What! a jewel, a diamond--in the--in the--in the--MECHANICAL!"
faltered the friar, in profound astonishment, his mouth watering at
the sight. If the Eureka were to be envied before, how much more
enviable now. "If ever I get thee again, O ugly talisman," he
muttered to himself, "I shall know where to look for something better
than a pot to boil eggs."
"Depart, I say!" repeated Adam, turning round at last, and shuddering
as he now clearly recognized the friar, and recalled his malignity.
"Darest thou molest me still?"
The friar abjectly fell on his knees, and, after a long exordium of
penitent excuses, entreated the scholar to intercede in his favour
with the earl.
"I want not all thy honours and advancement, great Adam, I want only
to serve thee, trim thy furnace, and hand thee thy tools, and work out
my apprenticeship under thee, master. As for the earl, he will listen
to thee, I know, if thou tellest him that I had the trust of his foe,
the duchess; that I can give him all her closest secrets; that I--"
"Avaunt! Thou art worse than I deemed thee, wretch! Cruel and
ignorant I knew thee,--and now mean and perfidious! I work with thee!
I commend to the earl a living disgrace to the name of scholar!
Never! If thou wantest bread and alms, those I can give, as a
Christian gives to want; but trust and honour, and learned repute and
noble toils, those are not for the impostor and the traitor. There,
there, there!" And he ran to the closet, took out a handful of small
coins, thrust them into the friar's hands, and, pushing him to the
door, called to the servants to see his visitor to the gates. The
friar turned round with a scowl. He did not dare to utter a threat,
but he vowed a vow in his soul, and went his way.
It chanced, some days after this, that Adam, in one of his musing
rambles about the precincts of the Tower, which (since it was not then
inhabited as a palace) was all free to his rare and desultory
wanderings, came by some workmen employed in repairing a bombard; and
as whatever was of mechanical art always woke his interest, he paused,
and pointed out to them a very simple improvement which would
necessarily tend to make the balls go farther and more direct to their
object. The principal workman, struck with his remarks, ran to one of
the officers of the Tower; the officer came to listen to the learned
man, and then went to the earl of Warwick to declare that Master
Warner had the most wonderful comprehension of military mechanism.
The earl sent for Warner, seized at once upon the very simple truth he
suggested as to the proper width of the bore, and holding him in
higher esteem than he had ever done before, placed some new cannon he
was constructing under his superintendence. As this care occupied but
little of his time, Warner was glad to show gratitude to the earl,
looking upon the destructive engines as mechanical contrivances, and
wholly unconscious of the new terror he gave to his name.
Soon did the indignant and conscience-stricken Duchess of Bedford
hear, in the Sanctuary, that the fell wizard she had saved from the
clutches of Bungey was preparing the most dreadful, infallible, and
murtherous instruments of war against the possible return of her son-
in-law!
Leaving Adam to his dreams, and his toils, and his horrible
reputation, we return to the world upon the surface,--the Life of
Action.
