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

by Emily Sarah Holt

And certainly, in Edward's case, the beauty of the outward man was very far from corresponding with the inner man of the heart.

A rather peculiar smile curled the lip of the squire after the King's departure.

"His Highness would fain do me some grace—would he so?" he inquired half aloud, and to all appearance addressing himself to a fly which was marching up the diamond-shaped panes of the window. "What should he say, trow, an' he wist of the grace which another thinks to do me?"

The same evening saw Mr. St. Leger a visitor at Coldharbour, for the purpose of carrying on that wooing which was now beginning to be thought decorous even in these cases where the lady was not free to refuse—though, of course, capable of omission if preferred. Half an hour he spent with Mistress Jane Grisacres in the hall—a half-hour which was a weary weight to him, and a moment of enchantment to her, for—alas for poor Jane Grisacres!—she loved the handsome suitor who cared so little about her. This business well over, Mr. St. Leger slipped out of the hall, and passed lightly up a spiral staircase, to do his real wooing in another chamber, to a lady who had double the beauty, and ten times the position, but not one per cent. of the heart, of poor Jane Grisacres.

Men and women do not leap, but grow, into monsters of iniquity. Dionysius the Tyrant, Pope Alexander the Sixth, Judge Jeffries, and Robespierre, were all innocent babies once. The heart not yet hardened in sin shrinks back from the first touch of what it recognises as evil, with the cry, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?"[#]

[#] These words have passed into an English proverb, and are here used in their current sense: but it should be remembered that in that sense they are not a Scriptural quotation, the key-note word being omitted from the sentence. Hazael really said, "Thy servant the dog, shall he do this great thing?" In other words, Is so mean a creature as I to attain to so high a position as you intimate? His feeling, therefore, was not righteous indignation, but rather rapturous astonishment.

But when the evil is not recognised, how then? There is no shrinking from Satan when he comes to us clad in the robes of an angel of light. One of the most skilful touches of the wonderful tinker is that passage where Christian and Hopeful admit that they were forewarned to beware of the Flatterer. "But we did not imagine (said they) that this fine-spoken man had been he."

When the Lady Anne of York, in her innocent girlhood, scarcely more than a child, stood at the altar with Henry Duke of Exeter, she would probably have repulsed with indignant horror the prophet who should have told her that ere twenty years were over, she would fling overboard, careless what fate he met, the husband who would have loved her if she had given him leave, for the sake of a young man who was merely attracted by her beauty, rank, and wealth. She was ready to do it now. Beginning by simply amusing herself with the young squire, then regarding him as a friend, she had reached a point at which she was willing to abnegate rank, and sacrifice even her hoarded wealth, sooner than part with him. The matter was easily managed. A Princess would find it no hard matter to obtain a divorce. Of course the King must be amused with some other reason than the true one, as he might not fancy a marriage between his sister and his servant. But it was easy enough to take him in, by a little virtuous indignation about the wicked Lancastrian proclivities of the Duke, which made it utterly impracticable for the Duchess ever to bear him again. Edward's own constancy was not so remarkable that he could afford to be severe upon Anne.

And what of the delicate maiden whose one tie to life was that father who was thus to be cast away and left to his fate? Her mother did not find it convenient to consider her. She was to be married to Thomas Grey. If she did not like him, worse luck! What more could be said? She must put up with her fate, as others had done before her.

It did, however, strike the Duchess that it might be as well to get her daughter's marriage over before her own. The divorce could take place any time—the sooner the better. She had already induced her royal brother to make sundry small grants of minor offices and inexpensive manors to St. Leger: and His Majesty was just now very busy—partly occupied in settling political difficulties, and partly in recruiting his recent heavy exertions. Among the former were a quantity of pardons to Lancastrians who had submitted themselves—among whom was a mercer of London, by name William Caxton, whose thoughts were busy on the setting up of that quiet little printing-press at Westminster which was to revolutionise the world; the removal of Clarence from Court (where he was eternally quarrelling with Gloucester) by creating him Viceroy of Ireland; the re-arrest of Archbishop Neville, under cover of a friendly visit from the King, who gleefully appropriated his £20,000 worth of personalty, and broke up his mitre to make a crown for himself. Edward was still worried on the subject of Richmond, whom he was trying hard to induce to come to England, alleging as his sole object the desire to restore his dear young kinsman to his forfeited inheritance: but the Duke of Burgundy—with whom Richmond had now taken refuge—at the last moment stopped the negotiations, on hearing from the proverbial little bird that what Edward really wanted with his dear young kinsman was to show him the same civility which Herod did to John the Baptist. King Edward's recourse, under these accumulated annoyances, for rest and refreshment, was as usual to a sylvan recreation which was a mixture of picnic and hunting tour, gorgeous pavilions being pitched for that galaxy of Court ladies without whom life would in his eyes have been a howling wilderness.