Last of the Barons | Page 6

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.