LOUIS XI. AND THE HERALD. (See p. [38].)
Edward, therefore, lost no time in putting in his most decided opposition. In this cause he was zealously seconded by Gloucester. But if ever there was a choice of a rival most unfortunate, and even insulting, it was that put forward by Edward against Clarence, in the person of Lord Rivers, the queen's brother. This match was rejected by the court of Burgundy with disdain, and only heightened the hatred of the queen in England—an odium which fell heavily on her in after years. She was now regarded as a woman who, not content with filling all the chief houses of England with her kin, aimed at filling the highest Continental thrones with them. The result was that Edward succeeded in defeating Clarence without gaining his own, or rather his wife's, object.
From this moment Clarence became at deadly feud with Edward and all his family. The king, the queen, and Gloucester, united in a league against him, which, where such men were concerned—men never scrupling to destroy those who opposed them—boded him little good. The conduct of Clarence was calculated to exasperate this enmity, and to expose him to its attacks. He vented his wrath against all the parties who had thwarted him, king, queen, and Gloucester, in the bitterest and most public manner; and on the other side, occasions were found to stimulate him to more disloyal conduct. They began with attacking his friends and members of his household. John Stacey, a priest in his service, was charged with having practised sorcery to procure the death of Lord Beauchamp, and being put to the torture was brought to confess that Thomas Burdett, a gentleman of Arrow, in Warwickshire, also a gentleman of the duke's household, and greatly beloved by Clarence, was an accomplice. It was well understood why this confession was wrung from the poor priest. Thomas Burdett had a fine white stag in his park, on which he set great value. Edward in hunting had shot this stag, and Burdett, in his anger at the deed, had been reported to have said that he wished the horns of the deer were in the stomach of the person who had advised the king to insult him by killing it. This speech, real or imaginary, had been carefully conveyed to the king, and he thus took his revenge. Thomas Burdett was accused of high treason, tried, and, by the servile judges and jury, condemned, and beheaded at Tyburn.
Clarence had exerted himself to save the lives of both these persons in vain. They both died protesting their innocence, and the next day Clarence entered the council, bringing Dr. Goddard, a clergyman, who appeared on various occasions in those times as a popular agitator. Goddard attested the dying declarations of the sufferers; and Clarence, with an honourable but imprudent zeal, warmly denounced the destruction of his innocent friends. Edward and the court were at Windsor, and these proceedings were duly carried thither by the enemies of Clarence. Soon it was reported that, having for many days sat sullenly silent at the council-board, with folded arms, he had started up and uttered the most disloyal words, accusing the queen of sorcery, which she had learned of her mother, and even implicating the king in the accusation.
The fate of Clarence was sealed. The queen and Gloucester were vehement against him. Edward hurried to Westminster; Clarence was arrested and conducted by the king himself to the Tower. On the 16th of January a Parliament was assembled, and Edward himself appeared as the accuser of his brother at the bar of the Lords. He charged him with a design to dethrone and destroy him and his family. He retorted upon him the charge of sorcery, and of dealing with masters of the black art for this treasonable purpose; that to raise a rebellion he had supplied his servants with vast quantities of money, wine, venison, and provisions, to feast the people, and to fill their minds at such feasts with the belief that Burdett and Stacey had been wrongfully put to death; that Clarence had engaged numbers of people to swear to stand by him and his heirs as rightful claimants of the throne—asserting that Edward was, in truth, a bastard, and had no right whatever to the crown; that to gain the throne, and support himself upon it, he had had constant application to the arts for which his queen and her mother were famous, and had not hesitated to poison and destroy in secret. As for himself—Clarence—he pledged himself to restore all the lands and honours of the Lancastrians, when he gained his own royal rights.
To these monstrous charges Clarence made a vehement reply, but posterity has no means of judging of the truth or force of what he said, for the whole of his defence was omitted in the rolls of Parliament. Not a soul dared to say a word on his behalf. Edward brought forward witnesses to swear to everything he alleged; the duke was condemned to death; and the Commons being summoned to attend, confirmed the sentence. No attempt was made to put the sentence into execution, but about ten days later it was announced that Clarence had died in the Tower. The precise mode of his death has never been clearly ascertained. The generally received account is that of Fabyan, a cotemporary, who says that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.
Edward now again gave himself up to his pleasures, and would have been glad, in the midst of his amorous intrigues, to have forgotten public affairs altogether. But for this the times were too much out of joint. It was not in England alone that the elements of faction had been in agitation. Nearly the whole of Europe had witnessed the contentions of overgrown nobles and vassal princes by which almost every crown had been endangered, and the regal authority in many cases brought into contempt. The changes consequent on the accession of Henry IV. we have fully detailed; those storms which raged around the throne of France we have partially seen; but similar dissensions betwixt the Electors of Germany and the Emperor Sigismund prevailed; the Netherlands were divided against each other; and Spain was equally disturbed by the conspiracies of the nobles against the crown. Edward of England, as if sensible of the weakness of his position, strove anxiously to strengthen it by foreign alliances. Though his children were far too young to contract actual marriages, he made treaties which should place his daughters on a number of the chief thrones. Some of these contracts were entered into almost as soon as those concerned in them were born. Elizabeth, the eldest, was affianced to the Dauphin of France; Cecilia, the second, to the eldest son and heir of the King of Scotland; Anne, to the infant son of Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, and husband of Mary of Burgundy; Catherine, to the heir of the King of Spain. His eldest son was engaged to the eldest daughter of the Duke of Brittany. On the other hand, all these royal negotiators appear to have been equally impressed with the precarious character of Edward's power, and were ready at the first moment to annul the contracts.
That subtle monarch, Louis of France, never from the first moment seriously meant to adhere to his engagement; and in a very few years all these anxiously-planned marriages were blown away like summer clouds. Edward was not long in suspecting the hollowness of the conduct of Louis XI. Though repeatedly reminded that the time was come to fetch the Princess of England, in order to complete her education in France, preparatory to her occupying the station assigned to her there, Louis took no measures for this purpose; and when Edward remonstrated on the subject, threatened to withdraw the payment of the annual 50,000 crowns. Edward boiled with indignation, and vowed, amongst his immediate courtiers that he would hunt up the old fox in his own cover if he did not mind. But that wily prince was not so easily dealt with. He saw with chagrin the proposed alliances betwixt Edward and his dangerous neighbours, the Duke of Brittany and Maximilian of Austria, now, through his wife, the ruler of Burgundy. Edward, in his resentment at the threat of Louis to withdraw his annual payment, made offers of closer union with Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, and engaged, on condition that they should pay him the 50,000 crowns which he now had from Louis, to assist them against that monarch. But Louis was not to be out-manœuvred in this manner; he was a profounder master in all the arts of diplomatic stratagem than Edward. He, therefore, made secret and tempting advances to Maximilian and Mary, one article of which devoted the Dauphin to their infant daughter, despite of her engagement to the English heir. At the same time he stirred up sufficient trouble in Scotland to occupy Edward for some time.
The circumstances of Scotland were at this time very favourable to the mischievous interference of Louis. James III. was a monarch far beyond his age. He was of a pacific and philosophic turn. Surrounded by a rude and ignorant nobility, he conceived an infinite contempt for them, and was not politic enough to conceal it. They were received at court with coldness and neglect, while they saw men of science and letters admitted to the king's most intimate conversation. To avenge their slighted dignity, they stirred up the king's two brothers, the Duke of Albany, and the Earl of Mar, to rebellion. James, however, showed that, though pacifically disposed, he did not lack energy. He seized Mar and Albany, and confined them—Mar in Craigmillar Castle, and Albany in that of Edinburgh. Albany managed to escape, and made his way, by means of a French vessel, to France. Mar, who was of a vehement temper, was seized in his prison with fever and delirium. He was, therefore, removed from Craigmillar to a house in the Canongate, at Edinburgh, where, having been bled, he is said on a return of the paroxysm to have torn off his bandages while in a warm bath, and died from loss of blood. The incident was suspicious; but public opinion, for the most part, exonerated the king from the charge of any criminal intention; and even when he was afterwards deposed, no such charge was preferred against him by the hostile faction.