The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

"Yesterday the earl feasted the king, and as, in discharge of mine office, I carved for my lord, I heard King Louis say, 'Pasque Dieu, my Lord Warwick, our couriers bring us word that Count de Charolais declares he shall yet wed the Lady Margaret, and that he laughs at your embassage. What if our brother King Edward fall back from the treaty?' 'He durst not,' said the earl."

"'Durst not!'" exclaimed Edward, starting to his feet, and striking the table with his clenched hand. "'Durst not!' Hastings, heard you that?"

Hastings bowed his head in assent.

"Is that all, Lord Rivers?"

"All! And, methinks, enough!"

"Enough, by my halidame!" said Edward, laughing bitterly. "He shall see what a king dares when a subject threatens."

Lord Rivers had not read the whole of the letter. The sentence read: "He durst not, because what a noble heart dares least is to belie the plighted word, and what the kind heart shuns most is to wrong the confiding friend."

When Warwick returned, with the object of his mission achieved, it was to find Margaret of England the betrothed of the Count de Charolais, and his embassy dishonoured. He retired in anger and grief to his castle of Middleham, and though the king declared that "Edward IV. reigns alone," most of the great barons forsook him to rally round their leader in his retirement.

III.--The Scholar and his Daughter

Sybill Warner had been at court in the train of Margaret of Anjou. Her father, Adam Warner, was a poor scholar, with his heart set upon the completion of an invention which should inaugurate the age of steam. They lived together in an old house, with but one aged serving-woman. Even necessaries were sacrificed that the model of the invention might be fed. Then one day there came to Adam Warner an old schoolfellow, Robert Hilyard, who had thrown in his lot with the Lancastrians, and become an agent of the vengeful Margaret. Hilyard told so moving a tale of his wrongs at the hands of Edward that the old man consented to aid him in a scheme for communicating with the imprisoned Henry.

Henry was still permitted to see visitors, and Hilyard's proposal was that Warner should seek permission to exhibit his model, in the mechanism of which were to be hidden certain treasonable papers for Henry to sign.

As we have seen, from Hastings' remark to the king, the plot failed. Hilyard escaped, to stir up the peasantry, who knew him as Robin of Redesdale. Warner's fate was inclusion in the number of astrologers and alchemists retained by the Duchess of Bedford, who also gave a place amongst her maidens to Sybill, to whom Hastings had proffered his devoted attachment, though he was already bound by ties of policy and early love to Margaret de Bonville.

Meanwhile, it became the interest of the king's brothers to act as mediators between Edward and his powerful subject. The Duke of Clarence was anxious to wed the proud earl's equally proud elder daughter Isabel; the hand of the gentle Anne was sought more secretly by Richard of Gloucester. At last the peacemakers effected their object.

But the peace was only partial, the final rupture not far off. The king restored to Warwick the governorship of Calais--outwardly as a token of honour; really as a means of ridding himself of one whose presence came between the sun and his sovereignty. Moreover, he forbade the marriage between Clarence and Isabel, to the mortification of his brother, the bitter disappointment of Isabel herself, and the chagrin of the earl.

However, Edward had once more to experience indebtedness at the hands of the man whom he treated so badly, but whose devotion to him it seemed that nothing could destroy. There arose the Popular Rebellion, and Warwick only arrived at Olney, where the king was sorely pressed, in time to save him and to secure, on specific terms, a treaty of peace.

Again Edward's relief was but momentary. Proceeding to Middleham as Warwick's guest, when he beheld the extent of the earl's retinue his jealous passions were roused more than ever before; and he formed a plan not only for attaching to himself the allegiance of the barons, but of presenting the earl to the peasants in the light of one who had betrayed them.

Smitten, too, by the charms of the Lady Anne, he meditated a still more unworthy scheme. Dismissing the unsuspecting Warwick to the double task of settling with the rebels and calling upon his followers to range themselves under the royal banner, he commanded Anne's attendance at court.

Events leading to the final breach between king and king-maker followed rapidly. One night the Lady Anne fled in terror from the Tower--fled from the dishonouring addresses of her sovereign, now grown gross in his cups, however brave in battle. The news reached Warwick too late for him to countermand the messages he had sent to his friends on the king's behalf. And, so rapid were Edward's movements that Warwick, his eyes at length opened to Edward's true character, was compelled to flee to the court of King Louis at Amboise, there to plan his revenge, hampered in doing so by his daughter Isabel's devotion to Clarence, who followed him to France, and by the fact that, in regard to his own honour, he could communicate to none save his own kin the secret cause of his open disaffection.