This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
and David Widger
We must pass over some months. Warwick and his family had returned toLondon, and the meeting between Edward and the earl had been cordialand affectionate. Warwick was reinstated in the offices which gavehim apparently the supreme rule in England. The Princess Margaret hadleft England as the bride of Charles the Bold; and the earl hadattended the procession in honour of her nuptials. The king,agreeably with the martial objects he had had long at heart, had thendeclared war on Louis XI., and parliament was addressed and troopswere raised for that impolitic purpose. [Parliamentary Rolls, 623.The fact in the text has been neglected by most historians.] To thiswar, however, Warwick was inflexibly opposed. He pointed out themadness of withdrawing from England all her best-affected chivalry, ata time when the adherents of Lancaster, still powerful, would requireno happier occasion to raise the Red Rose banner. He showed howhollow was the hope of steady aid from the hot but reckless andunprincipled Duke of Burgundy, and how different now was the conditionof France under a king of consummate sagacity and with an overflowingtreasury to its distracted state in the former conquests of theEnglish. This opposition to the king's will gave every opportunityfor Warwick's enemies to renew their old accusation of secret andtreasonable amity with Louis. Although the proud and hasty earl hadnot only forgiven the affront put upon him by Edward, but had soughtto make amends for his own intemperate resentment, by publicattendance on the ceremonials that accompanied the betrothal of theprincess, it was impossible for Edward ever again to love the ministerwho had defied his power and menaced his crown. His humour and hissuspicions broke forth despite the restraint that policy dictated tohim: and in the disputes upon the invasion of France, a second andmore deadly breach between Edward and his minister must have yawned,had not events suddenly and unexpectedly proved the wisdom ofWarwick's distrust of Burgundy. Louis XI. bought off the Duke ofBretagne, patched up a peace with Charles the Bold, and thusfrustrated all the schemes and broke all the alliances of Edward atthe very moment his military preparations were ripe. [W. Wyr, 518.]
Still the angry feelings that the dispute had occasioned betweenEdward and the earl were not removed with the cause; and underpretence of guarding against hostilities from Louis, the kingrequested Warwick to depart to his government of Calais, the mostimportant and honourable post, it is true, which a subject could thenhold: but Warwick considered the request as a pretext for his removalfrom the court. A yet more irritating and insulting cause of offencewas found in Edward's withholding his consent to Clarence's often-urged demand for permission to wed with the Lady Isabel. It is truethat this refusal was accompanied with the most courteousprotestations of respect for the earl, and placed only upon thegeneral ground of state policy.
"My dear George," Edward would say, "the heiress of Lord Warwick iscertainly no mal-alliance for a king's brother; but the safety of thethrone imperatively dem