_ BOOK XII
CHAPTER VII. THE LAST PILGRIMS IN THE LONG PROCESSION TO THE COMMON BOURNE.
The king and his royal brothers, immediately after the victory, rode back to London to announce their triumph. The foot-soldiers still stayed behind to recruit themselves after the sore fatigue. And towards the eminence by Hadley church, the peasants and villagers of the district had pressed in awe and in wonder; for on that spot had Henry (now sadly led back to a prison, never again to unclose to his living form) stood to watch the destruction of the host gathered in his name; and to that spot the corpses of Warwick and Montagu were removed, while a bier was prepared to convey their remains to London; [The bodies of Montagu and the earl were exhibited bareheaded at St. Paul's church for three days, "that no pretence of their being alive might stir up any rebellion afterwards;... they were then carried down to the Priory of Bisham, in Berkshire, where among their ancestors by the mother's side (the Earls of Salisbury), the two unquiet brothers rest in one tomb.... The large river of their blood, divided now into many streams, runs so small, they are hardly observed as they flow by." (Habington's "Life of Edward IV.," one of the most eloquent compositions in the language, though incorrect as a history).--"Sic transit gloria mundi."] and on that spot had the renowned friar conjured the mists, exorcised the enchanted guns, and defeated the horrible machinations of the Lancastrian wizard.
And towards the spot, and through the crowd, a young Yorkist captain passed with a prisoner he had captured, and whom he was leading to the tent of the Lord Hastings, the only one of the commanders from whom mercy might be hoped, and who had tarried behind the king and his royal brothers to make preparations for the removal of the mighty dead.
"Keep close to me, Sir Marmaduke," said the Yorkist; "we must look to Hastings to appease the king: and, if he hope not to win your pardon, he may, at least, after such a victory, aid one foe to fly."
"Care not for me, Alwyn," said the knight; "when Somerset was deaf save to his own fears, I came back to die by my chieftain's side, alas, too late! too late! Better now death than life! What kin, kith, ambition, love, were to other men was Lord Warwick's smile to me!"
Alwyn kindly respected his prisoner's honest emotion, and took advantage of it to lead him away from the spot where he saw knights and warriors thickest grouped, in soldier-like awe and sadness, round the Hero-Brothers. He pushed through a humbler crowd of peasants and citizens, and women with babes at their breast; and suddenly saw a troop of timbrel-women dancing round a leafless tree, and chanting some wild but mirthful and joyous doggerel.
"What obscene and ill-seasoned revelry is this?" said the trader to a gaping yeoman.
"They are but dancing, poor girls, round the wicked wizard whom Friar Bungey caused to be strangled, and his witch daughter."
A chill foreboding seized upon Alwyn: he darted forward, scattering peasant and tymbestere with his yet bloody sword. His feet stumbled against some broken fragments; it was the poor Eureka, shattered, at last, for the sake of the diamond! Valueless to the great friar, since the science of the owner could not pass to his executioner,--valueless the mechanism and the invention, the labour and the genius; but the superstition and the folly and the delusion had their value, and the impostor who destroyed the engine clutched the jewel!
From the leafless tree was suspended the dead body of a man; beneath, lay a female, dead too; but whether by the hand of man or the mercy of Heaven, there was no sign to tell. Scholar and Child, Knowledge and Innocence, alike were cold; the grim Age had devoured them, as it devours ever those before, as behind, its march, and confounds, in one common doom, the too guileless and the too wise!
"Why crowd ye thus, knaves?" said a commanding voice.
"Ha, Lord Hastings! approach! behold!" exclaimed Alwyn.
"Ha, ha!" shouted Graul, as she led her sisters from the spot, wheeling, and screaming, and tossing up their timbrels, "ha! the witch and her lover! Ha, ha! Foul is fair! Ha, ha! Witchcraft and death go together, as thou mayest learn at the last, sleek wooer."
And, peradventure, when, long years afterwards, accusations of witchcraft, wantonness, and treason resounded in the ears of Hastings, and, at the signal of Gloucester, rushed in the armed doomsman, those ominous words echoed back upon his soul!
At that very hour the gates of the Tower were thrown open to the multitude. Fresh from his victory, Edward and his brothers had gone to render thanksgivings at St. Paul's (they were devout, those three Plantagenets!), thence to Baynard's Castle, to escort the queen and her children once more to the Tower. And, now, the sound of trumpets stilled the joyous uproar of the multitude, for in the balcony of the casement that looked towards the chapel the herald had just announced that King Edward would show himself to the people. On every inch of the courtyard, climbing up wall and palisade, soldier, citizen, thief, harlot, age, childhood, all the various conditions and epochs of multiform life, swayed, clung, murmured, moved, jostled, trampled,--the beings of the little hour!
High from the battlements against the weltering beam floated Edward's conquering flag,--a sun shining to the sun. Again, and a third time, rang the trumpets, and on the balcony, his crown upon his head, but his form still sheathed in armour, stood the king. What mattered to the crowd his falseness and his perfidy, his licentiousness and cruelty? All vices ever vanish in success! Hurrah for King Edward! THE MAN OF THE AGE suited the age, had valour for its war and cunning for its peace, and the sympathy of the age was with him! So there stood the king; at his right hand, Elizabeth, with her infant boy (the heir of England) in her arms, the proud face of the duchess seen over the queen's shoulder. By Elizabeth's side was the Duke of Gloucester, leaning on his sword, and at the left of Edward, the perjured Clarence bowed his fair head to the joyous throng! At the sight of the victorious king, of the lovely queen, and, above all, of the young male heir, who promised length of days to the line of York, the crowd burst forth with a hearty cry, "Long live the king and the king's son!" Mechanically Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to Edward's brother, and suddenly, as with a mother's prophetic instinct, clasped her infant closer to her bosom, when she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (York's young hero of the day, Warwick's grim avenger in the future), fixed upon that harmless life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the ambition of a ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!
NOTES.
I. The badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff was so celebrated in the fifteenth century, that the following extract from a letter addressed by Mr. Courthope, Rouge Croix, to the author, will no doubt interest the reader, and the author is happy in the opportunity afforded of expressing his acknowledgments for the courteous attention with which Mr. Courthope has honoured his inquiries:--
"COLLEGE OF ARMS. As regards the badge of Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick,--namely, the Bear and Staff,--I agree with you, certainly, as to the probability of his having sometimes used the whole badge, and sometimes the Staff only, which accords precisely with the way in which the Bear and Staff are set forth in the Rous Roll to the early earls (Warwick) before the Conquest. We there find them figured with the Staff upon their shields and the Bear at their feet, and the Staff alone is introduced as a quartering upon their shields.
"The story of the origin of these badges is as follows:
"Arth, or Arthgal, is reputed to have been the first Earl of Warwick, and being one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, it behooved him to have a cognizance; and Arth or Narth signifying in British the same as Ursus in Latin, he took the Bear for such cognizance. His successor, Morvidus, Earl of Warwick, in single combat, overcame a mighty giant (who had encountered him with a tree pulled up from the root, the boughs of which had been torn from it), and in token of his success assumed the Ragged Staff. You will thus see that the origins of the two were different, which would render the bearing of them separately not unlikely, and you will likewise infer that both came through the Beauchamps. I do not find the Ragged Staff ever attributed to the Neviles before the match with Beauchamp.
"As regards the crest or cognizance of Nevile, the Pied Bull has been the cognizance of that family from a very early time, and the Bull's head, its crest, and both the one and the other may have been used by the king-maker, and by his brother, the Marquis Montagu; the said Bull appears at the feet of Richard Nevile in the Rous Roll, accompanied by the Eagle of Monthermer; the crests on either side of him are those of Montagu and Nevile. Besides these two crests, both of which the Marquis Montagu may have used, he certainly did use the Gryphon, issuant out of a ducal coronet, as this appears alone for his crest, on his garter plate, as a crest for Montagu, he having given the arms of that family precedence over his paternal coat of Nevile; the king-maker, likewise, upon his seal, gives the precedence to Montagu and Monthermer, and they alone appear upon his shield."
II. Hume, Rapin, and Carte, all dismiss the story of Edward's actual imprisonment at Middleham, while Lingard, Sharon Turner, and others, adopt it implicitly. And yet, though Lingard has successfully grappled with some of Hume's objections, he has left others wholly unanswered. Hume states that no such fact is mentioned in Edward's subsequent proclamation against Clarence and Warwick. Lingard answers, after correcting an immaterial error in Hume's dates, "that the proclamation ought not to have mentioned it, because it was confined to the enumeration of offences only committed after the general amnesty in 1469;" and then, surely with some inconsistency, quotes the attainder of Clarence many years afterwards, in which the king enumerates it among his offences, "as jeopardyng the king's royal estate, person, and life, in strait warde, putting him thereby from all his libertye after procuring great commotions." But it is clear that if the amnesty hindered Edward from charging Warwick with this imprisonment only one year after it was granted, it would, a fortiori, hinder him from charging Clarence with it nine years after. Most probable is it that this article of accusation does not refer to any imprisonment, real or supposed, at Middleham, in 1469, but to Clarence's invasion of England in 1470, when Edward's state, person, and life were jeopardized by his narrow escape from the fortified house, where he might fairly be called "in straite warde;" especially as the words, "after procuring great commotions," could not apply to the date of the supposed detention in Middleham, when, instead of procuring commotions, Clarence had helped Warwick to allay them, but do properly apply to his subsequent rebellion in 1470. Finally, Edward's charges against his brother, as Lingard himself has observed elsewhere, are not proofs, and that king never scrupled at any falsehood to serve his turn. Nothing, in short, can be more improbable than this tale of Edward's captivity,--there was no object in it. At the very time it is said to have taken place, Warwick is absolutely engaged in warfare against the king's foes. The moment Edward leaves Middleham, instead of escaping to London, he goes carelessly and openly to York, to judge and execute the very captain of the rebels whom Warwick has subdued, and in the very midst of Warwick's armies! Far from appearing to harbour the natural resentment so vindictive a king must have felt (had so great an indignity been offered to him), almost immediately after he leaves York, he takes the Nevile family into greater power than ever, confers new dignities upon Warwick, and betroths his eldest daughter to Warwick's nephew. On the whole, then, perhaps some such view of the king's visit to Middleham which has been taken in this narrative, may be considered not the least probable compromise of the disputed and contradictory evidence on the subject.
[THE END]
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's Novel: Last Of The Barons
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