Red and White: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses

by Emily Sarah Holt

Then, the rest kneeling around bareheaded, he poured forth a fervent thanksgiving. Very simple as this man was in worldly wisdom, he was eloquent when he spoke to God. Then they took from him the prison garb, and attired him in royal robes, and led him to "the King's lodgings" in the White Tower.

Here a singular ceremony took place. Warwick and his colleagues were not content with merely restoring King Henry, but deemed it a better safeguard to give him the additional advantage of popular election. Accordingly they held a formal plébiscite—of whom composed we are not told,—whether simply of the little group of Lancastrian nobles, or of their army of four thousand men, or generally of the citizens of London. This process completed, the King was set on horseback, and conducted to the Bishop of London's palace.

But Warwick soon discovered that he had an account to settle with his intensely discontented son-in-law. The deposition of Edward, in the eyes of Clarence, was not at all equivalent to the restoration of Henry. He had been ready enough to displace his brother, but his intention—which Warwick had frustrated—had been to set himself, not Henry, on the vacant throne. Clarence was in a very sulky temper, and required a tiresome amount of smoothing. This desirable end was at last accomplished; and having been joined by his excellent brother, the Archbishop of York, who was always constant to one side—the winning one—Warwick proceeded to get up a splendid procession to St. Paul's Cathedral, which King Henry entered in state on the thirteenth of October. He wore his crown, and Warwick carried his train, while Oxford bore the sword before him. After the procession, Edward of March was solemnly proclaimed a usurper through London.

Meanwhile, Edward, deserted and destitute, chased by Esterlings across the sea, ran his vessel into Alkmaar, and landed, accompanied by his brother Richard and his few faithful adherents. He had no money to pay the captain, and he gave him all that he had, his fur-lined cloak. The Lord of Gruthuse, Governor of Holland for the Duke of Burgundy, received the fugitives kindly, provided them with clothing, and conducted them to the Hague, whence Edward sent a messenger to the Duke to notify his arrival. This news was by no means a source of pleasure to that royal trimmer, Duke Charles, whose endeavours to keep in with both parties are as amusing to readers of history as they were troublesome to himself. He did, however, grant to his brother-in-law a pension of five hundred crowns per month; but he gave him little encouragement to come on to his court, whither Edward nevertheless proceeded at once, as soon as he had money to do so. When Edward presented himself at St. Pol, where the Court was then residing, the poor Duke was in a ludicrous state of indecision. On his one hand was his wife Margaret, to whom he was really attached, as he showed by marrying her as soon as he became his own master—his father having set his face against the marriage for political reasons: on the other side, the Lancastrian Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, who had resided for some years at his Court, and were his chosen friends. On both sides, as it seemed, was his own interest. At last he contrived to find a way out of the difficulty, which, as usual in such circumstances, was a crooked one. He publicly proclaimed his intention of giving no assistance to Edward, and forbade any of his subjects to enlist with him: while privately he presented him with fifty thousand florins, and quietly made ready at Ter Veere four or five large ships of his own navy, and fourteen more hired from the Esterlings, or merchants of the Hanse Towns.

These preparations of course took time; and during that time Queen Marguerite would have been energetically working in England, had she found it possible. But winds and waves were against her. She came down to the French coast in November, as had been agreed with Warwick: but she could go no further. In an agony of impatience and longing, she was compelled to waste at Harfleur time more precious than jewels. Her husband wanted her, in every sense of the word. The Lancastrian party, deprived of her, was a body without a soul. Even Warwick, clever man as he was, and little love as was lost between him and her, condescended to express a wish for the Queen's presence.

On the fourth of November, 1470, while things were in this condition, a little life began in the sanctuary at Westminster, which was to end, fifteen years later, as sorrowfully as it had opened, in the Tower of London. The long wished for son of Edward IV. came at last. But the news does not seem to have lightened the discouraged hearts of the Yorkists. Before the month was over, Sir Richard Widville, Queen Elizabeth's own brother, had made his submission to King Henry.

The King was residing, quietly enough, at Westminster Palace, which he never quitted during his short tenure of power. Large grants were made to the three Warwick brothers; and Henry, who could not conceive the idea of any body playing him false, seems to have placed himself entirely in their hands. His sagacious wife would have taken a truer view of the situation. But she was a virtual prisoner on the French coast, bound there by the winds and waves of God.

Warwick was created afresh Lord High Admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine, with enormous powers: Clarence was made Viceroy of Ireland, and letters patent granted enabling him to do any thing he chose. The whole tone of the grants shows them to have really proceeded from the persons to whom they were ostensibly made, and in whose hands the King was an innocent toy, skilfully moved at pleasure. O for the wise head and the true heart of his one real friend!—of her who loved him first, and the crown and sceptre second. There were other friends, true in a sense: but to them the crown was the point of importance, and Henry was interesting merely as the man who ought to be wearing it.

One of these last was with him—his brother Jaspar,—and early in February, another fought his way to his side. The winds and waves, soon to have so dire a message for him, yielded now to the eager importunity of Exeter. The sight of Edward at the Court of Burgundy was more than his Lancastrian heart could bear. The bitter cruelty which he had received at the hands of Edward's sister, his own wife, came back upon him too vividly to be endured. Half driven by the one reason, half drawn by the other, he hastily left St. Pol, and journeyed across France to the port where Queen Marguerite waited for a fair wind from the east. And then it was that Frideswide Marston first saw the face which she should never forget again.

Henry Duke of Exeter was a Holand, but not one of the handsome Holands of Kent, who were characterised by their lofty height, their stately carriage, and their magnificent beauty. His grandfather, John de Holand, the first Duke of Exeter, had stepped out of the family ranks in respect of personal appearance, being a short, dark-haired man, with pendulous cheeks and no good looks of any kind. Duke Henry had improved upon this pattern, having inherited some of the attractiveness of his beautiful grandmother, the Princess Elizabeth of Lancaster. Two Holand qualities were his, derived from his grandfather—the fiery fervour and the silver tongue. From both sides of his ancestry came his impulsive bravery; from the Plantagenet side his chivalrous generosity, his delicate courtesy: from all, the unswerving loyalty and faithfulness which formed the most prominent feature of his character. Yet they were joined by that shrinking from pain, and that despondent hopelessness, which an eminent psychologist tells us are manly, not womanly characteristics, inconsistently mingled with weakness of a type much more feminine than masculine. A strangely complex and inconsistent character was this: a brave man who never feared disgrace nor death; a true man, who would have died with his hand upon his banner and his face to the foe; a man with distinct convictions, and courage to avow them—yet a weak man. A voice that he loved would lead him in the teeth of his own convictions, though a voice that he did not love could not make him swerve for an instant. In this respect he was unlike all his family,—most of all unlike his bluff and cruel father, the last act of whose life had been the invention of the rack, long popularly known in England as "The Duke of Exeter's daughter."