"Bella gerunt alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!
Nam quae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus."
Under the Lorrain Emperors came the Seven Years' War, which lost Austria Silesia; the Napoleonic wars, which lost much territory in the west; 1859, which lost part of her Italian possessions; 1866, which tore away the rest, and, moreover, turned Austria out of Germany. But the Lorrain Emperors have not forgotten their old virtue of hospitality. It may seem a strange whim of fate that at the present time the principal among those dispossessed sovereigns and unrecognised Pretenders who have flocked for protection under the hospitable "Double Cross," now carried back almost to its Eastern birthplace, should be the direct descendant and representative, six generations down, of the relentless and troublesome rival of that same Stuart James, whom, with not a little risk and cost to himself, the last really Lorrain Duke generously sheltered in the years from 1713 to 1716.
II.—RICHARD DE LA POLE, "WHITE ROSE."[4]
English visitors at Metz—there ought to be more, for there is not a little that is interesting to be seen in and around the old imperial city—are likely to have pointed out to them some venerable house or other, which, their guides will tell them, was nearly four hundred years ago the residence of a great English noble, a pretender to the crown, and the terror of Henry VIII.—the "Duke of Suffolk." Some guides may even style him "The King of England," since their distinguished townsman, Philippe de Vigneulles, gives him that title. In all probability the house shown will be the wrong one. For there is a great deal of loose and inaccurate archæology prevalent in these parts, and one old house is very apt to be confounded with another. I myself have had a leading French archæologist in Metz indicating to me an old Merovingian palace—highly interesting, to be sure—as the "Duc de Sciffort's" quarters. Once the building was plainly ancient, the trifling difference of eight hundred or a thousand years in the several dates made no odds to him. With the kind assistance, however, of the present archivist, Dr. Wolfram, my friend M. des Robert and the help of some old documents preserved in the local library—which in spite of repeated pilferings for the enrichment of Paris, still contains many valuable old manuscripts, I have been able pretty clearly to trace the movements in Metz of our distinguished countryman—who was indeed a claimant to the English crown, and over whose death in the battle of Pavia, in 1525, Henry VIII. exulted with such exuberance of gratitude to Providence, that he ordered a second public thanksgiving to be held "with great joy" on the 16th of March, the triumph proper for the victory of Pavia having—somewhat rashly, as it afterwards turned out—been celebrated on the 9th day of that month.
The story of this Englishman's exploits abroad affords some features of interest. It is a rather curious tale of adventure, love and war, strange escapades, intrigues, and ambition. And it may be worth telling, because I find that in English historical writings there is a gaping hiatus on the subject—which is not a little remarkable. For, considering what an ever-present weight Richard evidently was on the minds of the two last Henrys, to what all but incredible lengths those kings carried their unscrupulous persecution of him—how they offered bribes to kings to deliver him up, and to meaner men to assassinate him—how not a treaty was proposed to foreign potentates but contained a special clause forbidding the harbouring of this dangerous character—one might have supposed that our chroniclers of the time would have deemed it expedient to tell posterity something about him. Their silence is explained by a strange want of materials. So little turns out to have been known in this country about the great marpeace, that Mr. Burton, in his 'History of Scotland,' actually assigns to him the wrong christian name, calling him "Reginald." Mr Gairdner in his interesting preface to one of the volumes of 'Chronicles and Memorials' goes at some length into the history of Richard's brother Edmund. What became of Richard himself—except that he fell at Pavia—he confesses that he "cannot trace at all accurately." Napier in his 'Notices of Swyncombe and Ewelme' supplies fuller information than any other English writer. But he, too, is evidently at fault for materials. It is practically only foreign sources, very little studied in this country, to which we have to look for information on the subject of how "White Rose" employed the time of his exile, be it self-imposed or involuntary, which made up the main portion of his life.
The chief of such writers is Philippe de Vigneulles, a contemporary of Richard's, and a citizen of Metz, who has left rather curious and pretty full memoirs written in that strange-sounding, uncouth Lorrain French, which was at his time spoken at Metz. The original manuscript, formerly in the possession of Count Emmery, was some time ago purchased at a sale by M. Prost, the well-known Lorrain archæologist. From it M. des Robert, another well-known writer, specifically connected with the ancient city of Metz—which only patriotic considerations have led him to desert—has drawn the information which some years ago he incorporated in a little monograph. Even this monograph leaves some gaps. And the author falls into one or two odd mistakes—which are no doubt excusable in a foreigner. For instance, he confounds the "rebel and traitor" Richard de la Pole with one of the most faithful followers of the Tudor kings, Sir Richard Pole, of Lordington, in ascribing to his hero, first, the office of Chamberlain to Prince Arthur, and later on the fatherhood of Reginald Pole the cardinal. But his pamphlet is decidedly useful, as supplying clues, which I have been able to follow up successfully on the spot.
Richard de la Pole was the last member of a family which, within the space of about a century of strange vicissitudes, ran through all the stages of rapid rise, almost to the height of the throne, and no less sudden, humiliating descent, to attainder, execution, confiscation, and dishonour. I cannot stop here to tell their history at length. Genealogists have been careful to point out that the French prefix de la proves no Norman descent. There is no "de la Pole," nor any name resembling it, to be met with in the Battle Roll. The De la Poles' origin was, in fact, so humble, that their first distinguished member, Michael, the prosperous merchant—to whom his native town, Hull, raised a monument in 1871—afterwards Lord Chancellor of England and Knight of the Garter, is described in Camden as "basely born." His "base birth," it is true, has been disproved. But that only makes a difference of two or three generations. When Richard and his brothers came into the world, the family had had five generations of titled distinction and notoriety—partly of honour and partly of disgrace. Only one Suffolk of this creation—Richard's father—seems to have died at home and in his bed. And even his death was caused by "grief for the ruin of his family." The Lord Chancellor expired almost exactly a century before of "a broken heart" in exile. His son fell a victim to "dissentery" before Harfleur. The next Earl was honourably killed at Agincourt. His son, again, the "Duke of Suffolk" denounced in early ballads, lived to disgrace that dukedom which he had first obtained, and to die by lynch law under the form of a trial, for having had a hand in the murder of Humphrey, the "good" Duke of Gloucester, and in the surrender of Normandy and Aquitaine to France. This "bad" Duke's son rose once more to high distinction. King Edward IV. actually conferred upon him the hand of his sister Elizabeth; and Richard III., on the death of his own only son, appointed his eldest son John—created Earl of Lincoln—next heir to the throne. That appointment proved in after-time a rather questionable boon to the family. For it involved both John and his brothers in perils, and intrigues, and persecution. The Earl of Lincoln fell in the battle of Stoke, fighting for Simnel, the pretending Earl of Warwick, and by his treason and disgrace caused the death of his father. Of course his estates and titles were held to be forfeited. That forfeiture notwithstanding, the Earl of Lincoln's next brother was admitted to some part of the succession, both of estate and of title, by amicable arrangement with King Henry VII. These peerage cases were dealt with in those days in a very different manner from what they are now, as appears from the fact, that only some eight years previously, in Edward IV.'s reign, the De la Poles' rather distant cousin, the then Duke of Bedford—a Neville, not a Russell—had been deprived of his peerage by Act of Parliament on the score of poverty.
Edmund de la Pole bargained with Henry VII., and recovered part of his brother's possessions and also the humbler of his titles in the peerage, by sacrificing the higher. He was admitted to the peerage as "Earl of Suffolk." Notwithstanding his renunciation, he, later on, when in exile, again claimed the dukedom. Edmund had in his youth been reported by the University of Oxford in a letter addressed to his uncle, King Edward IV., "a penetrating, eloquent, and brilliant genius"—anything but which he proved himself to be. His letters read like the writing of a man of very poor education, even judged by the standard of those unlettered days. And at Court he played his cards so unskilfully, that he soon became, from a rather petted hanger-on, a declared "rebel and traitor," persecuted with all the unrelenting meanness and malice that the two first Tudor kings—the first, at any rate, not feeling very secure on his throne—were masters of. That almost necessarily involved his younger brother Richard in a like fate—which Richard did nothing to evade. Edmund, we read, had the misfortune to kill a "mean" person, whom he presumed to chastise for insulting him. For this he was brought before the King's Bench and adjudged guilty. The king readily granted a pardon. But the Earl took the indignity of his mere trial so much to heart, that he very unwisely fled die country. People said that he had taken refuge at the Court of his aunt Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, which was then notoriously the gathering-place of malcontent Yorkists. This turned out incorrect. But the rumour may have helped to prejudice Henry against him. Edmund returned home for Prince Arthur's wedding in 1501, and appears to have been at pains to make his loyalty know, and to have been outwardly well received. But almost immediately afterwards he ran away a second time. And as he forthwith proclaimed himself a pretender to the throne, and obtained from the Emperor Maximilian a promise of material help—the loan of 4000 of his troops, wherewith to make good his pretention—it is not surprising that Henry should have set all his ample apparatus of crafty persecution at work against a man become so dangerous a foe. But it is surprising to find him stooping so very low in his recourse to dirty expedients. The State Papers show that bribes were offered all round—to the Emperor, to the King of France, Louis XII., to Philip of Castile and Burgundy—as much as twelve thousand crowns in gold—for Edmund's surrender or despatch. At length, in 1506, Fortune put Philip into Henry's power—a storm driving him on our coast. And Henry meanly took advantage of that opportunity to extort from the Spaniard an undertaking to surrender Edmund—then detained at Namur—agreeing, in return, to Philip's stipulation, that the prisoner's life should be spared. That promise he kept to the letter. Edmund was detained in the Tower until Henry's death—and then executed on Tower Hill by Henry VIII., in obedience to a direction set down with incredible rancour in his father's will. Dugdale suggests that, Edmund being so popular as a pretender, Henry VIII. did not like to leave the kingdom for a war projected in France, with his rival remaining in England alive. Another report says, that he was beheaded on the ground of correspondence proved to have taken place between himself and his brother, then a general in the French army.