The Last of the Barons — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“Is it possible,” cried Raoul de Fulke, “that we have heard aright, noble earl? And has Edward IV. suffered the base Woodvilles to triumph over the bulwark of his realm?”

“Knights and gentles!” said Warwick, with a bitter smile, “is it so uncommon a thing that men in peace should leave the battle-axe and brand to rust? I am but a useless weapon, to be suspended at rest amongst the trophies of Towton in my hall of Middleham.”

“Return with us,” said the Lord of St. John, “and we will make Edward do thee justice, or, one and all, we will abandon a court where knaves and varlets have become mightier than English valour and nobler than Norman birth.”

“My friends,” said the earl, laying his hand on St. John’s shoulder, “not even in my just wrath will I wrong my king. He is punished eno’ in the choice he hath made. Poor Edward and poor England! What woes and wars await ye both, from the gold and the craft and the unsparing hate of Louis XI! No; if I leave Edward, he hath more need of you. Of mine own free will I have resigned mine offices.”

“Warwick,” interrupted Raoul de Fulke, “this deceives us not; and in disgrace to you the ancient barons of England behold the first blow at their own state. We have wrongs we endured in silence while thou wert the shield and sword of yon merchant-king. We have seen the ancient peers of England set aside for men of yesterday; we have seen our daughters, sisters,—nay, our very mothers, if widowed and dowered,—forced into disreputable and base wedlock with creatures dressed in titles, and gilded with wealth stolen from ourselves. Merchants and artificers tread upon our knightly heels, and the avarice of trade eats up our chivalry as a rust. We nobles, in our greater day, have had the crown at our disposal, and William the Norman dared not think what Edward Earl of March hath been permitted with impunity to do. We, Sir Earl—we knights and barons—would a king simple in his manhood and princely in his truth. Richard Earl of Warwick, thou art of royal blood, the descendant of old John of Gaunt. In thee we behold the true, the living likeness of the Third Edward, and the Hero-Prince of Cressy. Speak but the word, and we make thee king!”

The descendant of the Norman, the representative of the mighty faction that no English monarch had ever braved in vain, looked round as he said these last words, and a choral murmur was heard through the whole of that august nobility, “We make thee king!”

“Richard, descendant of the Plantagenet, [By the female side, through Joan Beaufort, or Plantagenet, Warwick was third in descent from John of Gaunt, as Henry VII., through the male line, was fourth in descent.] speak the word,” repeated Raoul de Fulke.

“I speak it not,” interrupted Warwick; “nor shalt thou continue, brave Raoul de Fulke. What, my lords and gentlemen,” he added, drawing himself up, and with his countenance animated with feelings it is scarcely possible in our times to sympathize with or make clear—“what! think you that Ambition limits itself to the narrow circlet of a crown Greater, and more in the spirit of our mighty fathers, is the condition of men like us, THE BARONS who make and unmake kings. What! who of us would not rather descend from the chiefs of Runnymede than from the royal craven whom they controlled and chid? By Heaven, my lords, Richard Nevile has too proud a soul to be a king! A king—a puppet of state and form; a king—a holiday show for the crowd, to hiss or hurrah, as the humour seizes; a king—a beggar to the nation, wrangling with his parliament for gold! A king!—Richard II. was a king, and Lancaster dethroned him. Ye would debase me to a Henry of Lancaster. Mort Dieu! I thank ye. The Commons and the Lords raised him, forsooth,—for what? To hold him as the creature they had made, to rate him, to chafe him, to pry into his very household, and quarrel with his wife’s chamberlains and lavourers. [Laundresses. The parliamentary rolls, in the reign of Henry IV., abound in curious specimens of the interference of the Commons with the household of Henry’s wife, Queen Joan.] What! dear Raoul de Fulke, is thy friend fallen now so low, that he—Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick, chief of the threefold race of Montagu, Monthermer, and Nevile, lord of a hundred baronies, leader of sixty thousand followers—is not greater than Edward of March, to whom we will deign still, with your permission, to vouchsafe the name and pageant of a king?”

This extraordinary address, strange to say, so thoroughly expressed the peculiar pride of the old barons, that when it ceased a sound of admiration and applause circled through that haughty audience, and Raoul de Fulke, kneeling suddenly, kissed the earl’s hand. “Oh, noble earl,” he said, “ever live as one of us, to maintain our order, and teach kings and nations what WE are.”

“Fear it not, Raoul! fear it not,—we will have our rights yet. Return, I beseech ye. Let me feel I have such friends about the king. Even at Middleham my eye shall watch over our common cause; and till seven feet of earth suffice him, your brother baron, Richard Nevile, is not a man whom kings and courts can forget, much less dishonour. Sirs, our honour is in our bosoms,—and there is the only throne armies cannot shake, nor cozeners undermine.”