At last the secret distrust which they felt toward each other broke out openly. Warwick's brother, the Archbishop of York, made an entertainment at one of his manors for a party of guests, in which were included the king, the Duke of Clarence, and the Earl of Warwick. It was about three months after the treaties were signed that this entertainment was made, and the feast was intended to celebrate and cement the good understanding which it was now agreed was henceforth to prevail. The king arrived at the manor, and, while he was in his room making his toilet for the supper, which was all ready to be served, an attendant came to him and whispered in his ear,
"Your majesty is in danger. There is a band of armed men in ambush near the house."
The king frightened.
The king was greatly alarmed at hearing this. He immediately stole out of the house, mounted his horse, and, with two or three followers, rode away as fast as he could ride. He continued his journey all night, and in the morning arrived at Windsor Castle.
The quarrel renewed.
New reconciliations.
Then followed new negotiations between Warwick and the king, with mutual reproaches, criminations, and recriminations without number. Edward insisted that treachery was intended at the house to which he had been invited, and that he had barely escaped, by his sudden flight, from falling into the snare. But Warwick and his friends denied this entirely, and attributed the flight of the king to a wholly unreasonable alarm, caused by his jealous and suspicious temper. At last Edward suffered himself to be reassured, and then came new treaties and a new reconciliation.
New rebellions.
This peace was made in the fall of 1469, and in the spring of 1470 a new insurrection broke out. The king believed that Warwick himself, and Clarence, were really at the bottom of these disturbances, but still he was forced to send them with bodies of troops to subdue the rebels; he, however, immediately raised a large army for himself, and proceeded to the seat of war. He reached the spot before Warwick and Clarence arrived there. He gave battle to the insurgents, and defeated them. He took a great many prisoners, and beheaded them. He found, or pretended to find, proof that Warwick and Clarence, instead of intending to fight the insurgents, had made their arrangements for joining them on the following day, and that he had been just in time to defeat their treachery. Whether he really found evidence of these intentions on the part of Warwick and Clarence or not, or whether he was flushed by the excitement of victory, and resolved to seize the occasion to cut loose at once and forever from the entanglement in which he had been bound, is somewhat uncertain. At all events, he now declared open war against Warwick and Clarence, and set off immediately on his march to meet them, at the head of a force much superior to theirs.
Warwick comes to open war with the king.
Warwick and Clarence marched and countermarched, and made many manœuvres to escape a battle, and during all this time their strength was rapidly diminishing. As long as they were nominally on the king's side, however really hostile to him, they had plenty of followers; but, now that they were in open war against him, their forces began to melt away. In this emergency, Warwick suddenly changed all his plans. He disbanded his army, and then taking all his family with him, including Clarence and Isabella, and accompanied by an inconsiderable number of faithful friends, he marched at the head of a small force which he retained as an escort to the sea-port of Dartmouth, and then embarked for Calais.