The Last Of The Barons, Complete - Edward Bulwer Lytton
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THE LAST OF THE BARONS
by Edward Bulwer Lytton
DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me to
attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own Records,
and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is too often
compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and the Poet.
Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher than mere
romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who employs it
worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the characters he
selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the general historian,
whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be expected to bestow
upon the things and the men of a single epoch. His descriptions should
fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines of the rapid chronicler;
and in spite of all that has been argued by pseudo-critics, the very
fancy which urged and animated his theme should necessarily tend to
increase the reader's practical and familiar acquaintance with the
habits, the motives, and the modes of thought which constitute the true
idiosyncrasy of an age. More than all, to Fiction is permitted that
liberal use of Analogical Hypothesis which is denied to History, and
which, if sobered by research, and enlightened by that knowledge of
mankind (without which Fiction can neither harm nor profit, for it
becomes unreadable), tends to clear up much that were otherwise obscure,
and to solve the disputes and difficulties of contradictory evidence by
the philosophy of the human heart.
My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited me
made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of English
historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by the most
brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later writers of high
and merited reputation. But however the annals of our History have been
exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject you finally pressed on
my choice is unquestionably one which, whether in the delineation of
character, the expression of passion, or the suggestion of historical
truths, can hardly fail to direct the Novelist to paths wholly untrodden
by his predecessors in the Land of Fiction.
Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I venture, on
concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of that
established compromise between the modern and the elder diction, which
Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more rugged
phraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhaps
somewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespass upon
ground which others have already redeemed from the waste. Whatever the
produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least, to have cleared
it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own heifer.
The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerations and
unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it. Then commenced
the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken up the great
elements of the old feudal order; a new Nobility was called into power,
to aid the growing Middle Class in its struggles with the ancient; and in
the fate of the hero of the age, Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick,
popularly called the King-maker, "the greatest as well as the last of
those mighty Barons who formerly overawed the Crown," [Hume adds, "and
rendered the people incapable of civil government,"--a sentence which,
perhaps, judges too hastily the whole question at issue in our earlier
history, between the jealousy of the barons and the authority of the
king.] was involved the very principle of our existing civilization. It
adds to the wide scope of Fiction, which ever loves to explore the
twilight, that, as Hume has truly observed, "No part of English history
since the Conquest is so obscure, so uncertain, so little authentic or
consistent, as that of the Wars between the two Roses." It adds also to
the importance of that conjectural research in which Fiction may be made
so interesting and so useful, that "this profound darkness falls upon us
just on the eve of the restoration of letters;" [Hume] while amidst the
gloom, we perceive the movement of those great and heroic passions in
which Fiction finds delineations everlastingly new, and are brought in
contact with characters sufficiently familiar for interest, sufficiently
remote for adaptation to romance, and above all, so frequently obscured
by contradictory evidence, that we lend ourselves willingly to any one
who seeks to help our judgment of the individual by tests taken from the
general knowledge of mankind.
Round the great image of the "Last of the Barons" group Edward the
Fourth, at once frank and false; the brilliant but ominous boyhood of
Richard the Third; the accomplished Hastings, "a good knight and gentle,
but somewhat dissolute of living;" [Chronicle of Edward V., in Stowe] the
vehement and fiery Margaret of Anjou; the meek image of her "holy Henry,"
and the pale shadow of their son. There may we see, also, the gorgeous
Prelate, refining in policy and wile, as the enthusiasm and energy which
had formerly upheld the Ancient Church pass into the stern and persecuted
votaries of the New; we behold, in that social transition, the sober
Trader--outgrowing the prejudices of the rude retainer or rustic
franklin, from whom he is sprung--recognizing sagaciously, and supporting
sturdily, the sectarian interests of his order, and preparing the way for
the mighty Middle Class, in which our Modern Civilization, with its
faults and its merits, has established its stronghold; while, in contrast
to the measured and thoughtful notions of liberty which prudent Commerce
entertains, we are reminded of the political fanaticism of the secret
Lollard,--of the jacquerie of the turbulent mob-leader; and perceive,
amidst the various tyrannies of the time, and often partially allied with
the warlike seignorie, [For it is noticeable that in nearly all the
popular risings--that of Cade, of Robin of Redesdale, and afterwards of
that which Perkin Warbeck made subservient to his extraordinary
enterprise--the proclamations of the rebels always announced, among their
popular grievances, the depression of the ancient nobles and the
elevation of new men.]--ever jealous against all kingly despotism,--the
restless and ignorant movement of a democratic principle, ultimately
suppressed, though not destroyed, under the Tudors, by the strong union
of a Middle Class, anxious for security and order, with an Executive
Authority determined upon absolute sway.
Nor should we obtain a complete and comprehensive view of that most
interesting Period of Transition, unless we saw something of the
influence which the sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy began to
exercise over the councils of the great,--a policy of refined stratagem,
of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of ruthless, but secret
violence; a policy which actuated the fell statecraft of Louis XI.; which
darkened, whenever he paused to think and to scheme, the gaudy and jovial
character of Edward IV.; which appeared in its fullest combination of
profound guile and resolute will in Richard III.; and, softened down into
more plausible and specious purpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of
Henry VII., finally attained the object which justified all its villanies
to the princes of its native land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled
State, and the establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.
Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great invention
that gave to Letters and to Science the precision and durability of the
printed page, it is interesting to conjecture what would have been the
fate of any scientific achievement for which the world was less prepared.
The reception of printing into England chanced just at the happy period
when Scholarship and Literature were favoured by the great. The princes
of York, with the exception of Edward IV. himself, who had, however, the
grace to lament his own want of learning, and the taste to appreciate it
in others, were highly educated. The Lords Rivers and Hastings [The
erudite Lord Worcester had been one of Caxton's warmest patrons, but that
nobleman was no more at the time in which printing is said to have been
actually introduced into England.] were accomplished in all the "witte
and lere" of their age. Princes and peers vied with each other in their
patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his brief reign, spared no
pains to circulate to the utmost the invention destined to transmit his
own memory to the hatred and the horror of all succeeding time. But when
we look around us, we see, in contrast to the gracious and fostering
reception of the mere mechanism by which science is made manifest, the
utmost intolerance to science itself. The mathematics in especial are
deemed the very cabala of the black art. Accusations of witchcraft were
never more abundant; and yet, strange to say, those who openly professed
to practise the unhallowed science, [Nigromancy, or Sorcery, even took
its place amongst the regular callings. Thus, "Thomas Vandyke, late of
Cambridge," is styled (Rolls Parl. 6, p. 273) Nigromancer as his
profession.--Sharon Turner, "History of England," vol iv. p. 6. Burke,
"History of Richard III."] and contrived to make their deceptions
profitable to some unworthy political purpose, appear to have enjoyed
safety, and sometimes even honour, while those who, occupied with some
practical, useful, and noble pursuits uncomprehended by prince or people,
denied their sorcery were despatched without mercy. The mathematician
and astronomer Bolingbroke (the greatest clerk of his age) is hanged and
quartered as a wizard, while not only impunity but reverence seems to
have awaited a certain Friar Bungey, for having raised mists and vapours,
which greatly befriended Edward IV. at the battle of Barnet.
Our knowledge of the intellectual spirit of the age, therefore, only
becomes perfect when we contrast the success of the Impostor with the
fate of the true Genius. And as the prejudices of the populace ran high
against all mechanical contrivances for altering the settled conditions
of labour, [Even in the article of bonnets and hats, it appears that
certain wicked falling mills were deemed worthy of a special anathema in
the reign of Edward IV. These engines are accused of having sought, "by
subtle imagination," the destruction of the original makers of hats and
bonnets by man's strength,--that is, with hands and feet; and an act of
parliament was passed (22d of Edward IV.) to put down the fabrication of
the said hats and bonnets by mechanical contrivance.] so probably, in the
very instinct and destiny of Genius which ever drive it to a war with
popular prejudice, it would be towards such contrivances that a man of
great ingenuity and intellect, if studying the physical sciences, would
direct his ambition.
Whether the author, in the invention he has assigned to his philosopher
(Adam Warner), has too boldly assumed the possibility of a conception so
much in advance of the time, they who have examined such of the works of
Roger Bacon as are yet given to the world can best decide; but the
assumption in itself belongs strictly to the most acknowledged
prerogatives of Fiction; and the true and important question will
obviously be, not whether Adam Warner could have constructed his model,
but whether, having so constructed it, the fate that befell him was
probable and natural.
Such characters as I have here alluded to seemed, then, to me, in
meditating the treatment of the high and brilliant subject which your
eloquence animated me to attempt, the proper Representatives of the
multiform Truths which the time of Warwick the King-maker affords to our
interests and suggests for our instruction; and I can only wish that the
powers of the author were worthier of the theme.
It is necessary that I now state briefly the foundation of the Historical
portions of this narrative. The charming and popular "History of Hume,"
which, however, in its treatment of the reign of Edward IV. is more than
ordinarily incorrect, has probably left upon the minds of many of my
readers, who may not have directed their attention to more recent and
accurate researches into that obscure period, an erroneous impression of
the causes which led to the breach between Edward IV. and his great
kinsman and subject, the Earl of Warwick. The general notion is probably
still strong that it was the marriage of the young king to Elizabeth
Gray, during Warwick's negotiations in France for the alliance of Bona of
Savoy (sister-in-law to Louis XI.), which exasperated the fiery earl, and
induced his union with the House of Lancaster. All our more recent
historians have justly rejected this groundless fable, which even Hume
(his extreme penetration supplying the defects of his superficial
research) admits with reserve. ["There may even some doubt arise with
regard to the proposal of marriage made to Bona of Savoy," etc.--HUME,
note to p. 222, vol. iii. edit. 1825.] A short summary of the reasons
for this rejection is given by Dr. Lingard, and annexed below. ["Many
writers tell us that the enmity of Warwick arose from his disappointment
caused by Edward's clandestine marriage with Elizabeth. If we may believe
them, the earl was at the very time in France negotiating on the part of
the king a marriage with Bona of Savoy, sister to the Queen of France;
and having succeeded in his mission, brought back with him the Count of
Dampmartin as ambassador from Louis. To me the whole story appears a
fiction. 1. It is not to be found in the more ancient historians. 2.
Warwick was not at the time in France. On the 20th of April, ten days
before the marriage, he was employed in negotiating a truce with the
French envoys in London (Rym. xi. 521), and on the 26th of May, about
three weeks after it, was appointed to treat of another truce with the
King of Scots (Rym. xi. 424). 3. Nor could he bring Dampmartin with him
to England; for that nobleman was committed a prisoner to the Bastile in
September, 1463, and remained there till May, 1465 (Monstrel. iii. 97,
109). Three contemporary and well-informed writers, the two continuators
of the History of Croyland and Wyrcester, attribute his discontent to the
marriages and honours granted to the Wydeviles, and the marriage of the
princess Margaret with the Duke of Burgundy."--LINGARD, vol. iii. c. 24,
pp. 5, 19, 4to ed.] And, indeed, it is a matter of wonder that so many
of our chroniclers could have gravely admitted a legend contradicted by
all the subsequent conduct of Warwick himself; for we find the earl
specially doing honour to the publication of Edward's marriage, standing
godfather to his first-born (the Princess Elizabeth), employed as
ambassador or acting as minister, and fighting for Edward, and against
the Lancastrians, during the five years that elapsed between the
coronation of Elizabeth and Warwick's rebellion.
The real causes of this memorable quarrel, in which Warwick acquired his
title of King-maker, appear to have been these.
It is probable enough, as Sharon Turner suggests, [Sharon Turner: History
of England, vol. iii. p. 269.] that Warwick was disappointed that, since
Edward chose a subject for his wife, he neglected the more suitable
marriage he might have formed with the earl's eldest daughter; and it is
impossible but that the earl should have been greatly chafed, in common
with all his order, by the promotion of the queen's relations, [W. Wyr.
506, 7. Croyl. 542.] new men and apostate Lancastrians. But it is clear
that these causes for discontent never weakened his zeal for Edward till
the year 1467, when we chance upon the true origin of the romance
concerning Bona of Savoy, and the first open dissension between Edward
and the earl.
In that year Warwick went to France, to conclude an alliance with Louis
XI., and to secure the hand of one of the French princes [Which of the
princes this was does not appear, and can scarcely be conjectured. The
"Pictorial History of England" (Book v. 102) in a tone of easy decision
says "it was one of the sons of Louis XI." But Louis had no living sons
at all at the time. The Dauphin was not born till three years
afterwards. The most probable person was the Duke of Guienne, Louis's
brother.] for Margaret, sister to Edward IV.; during this period, Edward
received the bastard brother of Charles, Count of Charolois, afterwards
Duke of Burgundy, and arranged a marriage between Margaret and the count.
Warwick's embassy was thus dishonoured, and the dishonour was aggravated
by personal enmity to the bridegroom Edward had preferred. [The Croyland
Historian, who, as far as his brief and meagre record extends, is the
best authority for the time of Edward IV., very decidedly states the
Burgundian alliance to be the original cause of Warwick's displeasure,
rather than the king's marriage with Elizabeth: "Upon which (the marriage
of Margaret with Charolois) Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick, who had for
so many years taken party with the French against the Burgundians,
conceived great indignation; and I hold this to be the truer cause of his
resentment than the king's marriage with Elizabeth, for he had rather
have procured a husband for the aforesaid princess Margaret in the
kingdom of France." The Croyland Historian also speaks emphatically of
the strong animosity existing between Charolois and Warwick.--Cont.
Croyl. 551.] The earl retired in disgust to his castle. But Warwick's
nature, which Hume has happily described as one of "undesigning frankness
and openness," [Hume, "Henry VI.," vol. iii. p. 172, edit. 1825.] does
not seem to have long harboured this resentment. By the intercession of
the Archbishop of York and others, a reconciliation was effected, and the
next year, 1468, we find Warwick again in favour, and even so far
forgetting his own former cause of complaint as to accompany the
procession in honour of Margaret's nuptials with his private foe.
[Lingard.] In the following year, however, arose the second dissension
between the king and his minister,--namely, in the king's refusal to
sanction the marriage of his brother Clarence with the earl's daughter
Isabel,--a refusal which was attended with a resolute opposition that
must greatly have galled the pride of the earl, since Edward even went so
far as to solicit the Pope to refuse his sanction, on the ground of
relationship. [Carte. Wm. Wyr.] The Pope, nevertheless, grants the
dispensation, and the marriage takes place at Calais. A popular
rebellion then breaks out in England. Some of Warwick's kinsmen--those,
however, belonging to the branch of the Nevile family that had always
been Lancastrians, and at variance with the earl's party--are found at
its head. The king, who is in imminent danger, writes a supplicating
letter to Warwick to come to his aid. ["Paston Letters," cxcviii. vol.
ii., Knight's ed. See Lingard, c. 24, for the true date of Edward's
letters to Warwick, Clarence, and the Archbishop of York.] The earl again
forgets former causes for resentment, hastens from Calais, rescues the
king, and quells the rebellion by the influence of his popular name.
We next find Edward at Warwick's castle of Middleham, where, according to
some historians, he is forcibly detained,--an assertion treated by others
as a contemptible invention. This question will be examined in the
course of this work; [See Note II.] but whatever the true construction of
the story, we find that Warwick and the king are still on such friendly
terms, that the earl marches in person against a rebellion on the
borders, obtains a signal victory, and that the rebel leader (the earl's
own kinsman) is beheaded by Edward at York. We find that, immediately
after this supposed detention, Edward speaks of Warwick and his brothers
"as his best friends;" ["Paston Letters," cciv. vol. ii., Knight's ed.
The date of this letter, which puzzled the worthy annotator, is clearly
to be referred to Edward's return from York, after his visit to Middleham
in 1469. No mention is therein made by the gossiping contemporary of any
rumour that Edward had suffered imprisonment. He enters the city in
state, as having returned safe and victorious from a formidable
rebellion. The letter goes on to say: "The king himself hath (that is,
holds) good language of the Lords Clarence, of Warwick, etc., saying
'they be his best friends.'" Would he say this if just escaped from a
prison? Sir John Paston, the writer of the letter, adds, it is true,
"But his household men have (hold) other language." very probably, for
the household men were the court creatures always at variance with
Warwick, and held, no doubt, the same language they had been in the habit
of holding before.] that he betroths his eldest daughter to Warwick's
nephew, the male heir of the family. And then suddenly, only three
months afterwards (in February, 1470), and without any clear and apparent
cause, we find Warwick in open rebellion, animated by a deadly hatred to
the king, refusing, from first to last, all overtures of conciliation;
and so determined is his vengeance, that he bows a pride, hitherto
morbidly susceptible, to the vehement insolence of Margaret of Anjou, and
forms the closest alliance with the Lancastrian party, in the destruction
of which his whole life had previously been employed.
Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosity is
the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, and seeks
to detect and to guess the truth. And then Fiction, accustomed to deal
with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance of a Fact
which the modern historian has been contented to place amongst dubious
and collateral causes of dissension. We find it broadly and strongly
stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attempted the virtue
of one of the earl's female relations. "And farther it erreth not from
the truth," says Hall, "that the king did attempt a thing once in the
earl's house, which was much against the earl's honesty; but whether it
was the daughter or the niece," adds the chronicler, "was not, for both
their honours, openly known; but surely such a thing WAS attempted by
King Edward," etc.
Any one at all familiar with Hall (and, indeed, with all our principal
chroniclers, except Fabyan), will not expect any accurate precision as to
the date he assigns for the outrage. He awards to it, therefore, the
same date he erroneously gives to Warwick's other grudges (namely, a
period brought some years lower by all judicious historians) a date at
which Warwick was still Edward's fastest friend.
Once grant the probability of this insult to the earl (the probability is
conceded at once by the more recent historians, and received without
scruple as a fact by Rapia, Habington, and Carte), and the whole
obscurity which involves this memorable quarrel vanishes at once. Here
was, indeed, a wrong never to be forgiven, and yet never to be
proclaimed. As Hall implies, the honour of the earl was implicated in
hushing the scandal, and the honour of Edward in concealing the offence.
That if ever the insult were attempted, it must have been just previous
to the earl's declared hostility is clear. Offences of that kind hurry
men to immediate action at the first, or else, if they stoop to
dissimulation the more effectually to avenge afterwards, the outbreak
bides its seasonable time. But the time selected by the earl for his
outbreak was the very worst he could have chosen, and attests the
influence of a sudden passion,--a new and uncalculated cause of
resentment. He had no forces collected; he had not even sounded his own
brother-in-law, Lord Stanley (since he was uncertain of his intentions);
while, but a few months before, had he felt any desire to dethrone the
king, he could either have suffered him to be crushed by the popular
rebellion the earl himself had quelled, or have disposed of his person as
he pleased when a guest at his own castle of Middleham. His evident want
of all preparation and forethought--a want which drove into rapid and
compulsory flight from England the baron to whose banner, a few months
afterwards, flocked sixty thousand men--proves that the cause of his
alienation was fresh and recent.
If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and others,
seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such abrupt
hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed where it is
in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl's revolt. The next question
is, who could have been the lady thus offended, whether a niece or
daughter. Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one married brother, Lord
Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters were married to lords who
remained friendly to Edward, [Except the sisters married to Lord Fitzhugh
and Lord Oxford. But though Fitzhugh, or rather his son, broke into
rebellion, it was for some cause in which Warwick did not sympathize, for
by Warwick himself was that rebellion put down; nor could the aggrieved
lady have been a daughter of Lord Oxford, for he was a stanch, though not
avowed, Lancastrian, and seems to have carefully kept aloof from the
court.] and Montagu seems to have had no daughter out of childhood,
[Montagu's wife could have been little more than thirty at the time of
his death. She married again, and had a family by her second husband.]
while that nobleman himself did not share Warwick's rebellion at the
first, but continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward. We cannot
reasonably, then, conceive the uncle to have been so much more revengeful
than the parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honour of a daughter.
It is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maiden should have been
one of Lord Warwick's daughters; and this is the general belief. Carte
plainly declares it was Isabel. But Isabel it could hardly have been.
She was then married to Edward's brother, the Duke of Clarence, and
within a month of her confinement. The earl had only one other daughter,
Anne, then in the flower of her youth; and though Isabel appears to have
possessed a more striking character of beauty, Anne must have had no
inconsiderable charms to have won the love of the Lancastrian Prince
Edward, and to have inspired a tender and human affection in Richard Duke
of Gloucester. [Not only does Majerus, the Flemish annalist, speak of
Richard's early affection to Anne, but Richard's pertinacity in marrying
her, at a time when her family was crushed and fallen, seems to sanction
the assertion. True, that Richard received with her a considerable
portion of the estates of her parents. But both Anne herself and her
parents were attainted, and the whole property at the disposal of the
Crown. Richard at that time had conferred the most important services on
Edward. He had remained faithful to him during the rebellion of
Clarence; he had been the hero of the day both at Barnet and Tewksbury.
His reputation was then exceedingly high, and if he had demanded, as a
legitimate reward, the lands of Middleham, without the bride, Edward
could not well have refused them. He certainly had a much better claim
than the only other competitor for the confiscated estates,--namely, the
perjured and despicable Clarence. For Anne's reluctance to marry
Richard, and the disguise she assumed, see Miss Strickland's "Life of
Anne of Warwick." For the honour of Anne, rather than of Richard, to
whose memory one crime more or less matters but little, it may here be
observed that so far from there being any ground to suppose that
Gloucester was an accomplice in the assassination of the young prince
Edward of Lancaster, there is some ground to believe that that prince was
not assassinated at all, but died (as we would fain hope the grandson of
Henry V. did die) fighting manfully in the field.--"Harleian
Manuscripts;" Stowe, "Chronicle of Tewksbury;" Sharon Turner, vol. iii.
p. 335.] It is also noticeable, that when, not as Shakspeare represents,
but after long solicitation, and apparently by positive coercion, Anne
formed her second marriage, she seems to have been kept carefully by
Richard from his gay brother's court, and rarely, if ever, to have
appeared in London till Edward was no more.