Having thus received Warwick with the honors usually paid to royalty, Louis entertained the great earl in a style corresponding with the reception; and even ordered the queen and princesses to come to Rouen to testify their respect. The crafty king, meantime, did not refrain from those mischievous tricks at which he was such an adept. While Warwick staid at Rouen Louis lodged in the next house, and visited the earl at all hours, passing through a private door with such an air of mystery, as might, when reported to Edward, raise suspicions that some conspiracy had been hatching.
After the conference at Rouen had lasted for twelve days, Louis departed for Chartres, and Warwick set sail for England. The earl had been quite successful in the object of his mission; and he was accompanied home by the Archbishop of Narbonne, charged by Louis to put the finishing stroke to the treaty which was to detach the French king forever from the Lancastrian alliance.
Meanwhile, the Woodvilles had not been idle. Far from submitting patiently to the earl's triumph, they had labored resolutely to mortify his pride and frustrate his mission. The business was artfully managed. Anthony Woodville, in the name of the ladies of England, revived an old challenge to Anthony, Count de la Roche, an illegitimate son of the Duke of Burgundy; and the count, commonly called "The Bastard of Burgundy," having accepted the challenge, with the usual forms, intimated his intention to come to England without delay.
The news crept abroad that a great passage of arms was to take place; and the highest expectations were excited by the prospect. The king himself entered into the spirit of the business, consented to act as umpire, and made such arrangements as, it was conceived, would render the tournament memorable. Several months were spent in adjusting the preliminaries; and the noblest knights of France and Scotland were invited to honor the tournament with their presence.
At length the Bastard of Burgundy arrived in London with a splendid retinue; and lists were erected in Smithfield, with pavilions for the combatants, and galleries around for the ladies of Edward's court and other noble personages who had been invited to witness the pageant. On the 11th of June, all the ceremonies prescribed by the laws of chivalry having been performed, the combatants prepared for the encounter, and advanced on horseback from their pavilions into the middle of the inclosed space. After having answered the usual questions, they took their places in the lists, and, at the sound of trumpet, spurred their steeds and charged each other with sharp spears. Both champions, however, bore themselves fairly in the encounter, and parted with equal honor.
On the second day of the Smithfield tournament, the result was somewhat less gratifying to the Burgundian. On this occasion the champions again fought on horseback; and, as it happened, the steed of Anthony Woodville had a long and sharp pike of steel on his chaffron. This weapon was destined to have great influence on the fortunes of the day; for, while the combatants were engaged hand to hand, the pike's point entered the nostrils of the Bastard's steed, and the animal, infuriated by the pain, reared and plunged till he fell on his side. The Bastard was, of course, borne to the ground; and Anthony Woodville, riding round about with his drawn sword, asked his opponent to yield. At this point, the marshals, by the king's command, interfered, and extricated the Burgundian from his fallen steed. "I could not hold me by the clouds," exclaimed the brave Bastard; "but, though my horse fail me, I will not fail my encounter." The king, however, decided against the combat being then renewed.
Another day arrived, and the champions, armed with battle-axes, appeared on foot within the lists. This day proved as unfortunate for the Bastard as the former had been. Both knights, indeed, bore themselves valiantly; but, at a critical moment, the point of Woodville's axe penetrated the sight-hole of his antagonist's helmet, and, availing himself of this advantage, Anthony was on the point of so twisting his weapon as to bring the Burgundian to his knee. At that instant, however, the king cast down his warder, and the marshals hastened to sever the combatants. The Bastard, having no relish for being thus worsted, declared himself far from content, and demanded of the king, in the name of justice, that he should be allowed to perform his enterprise. Edward thereupon appealed to the marshals; and they, having considered the matter, decided that by the laws of the tournament the Burgundian was entitled to have his demand granted; but that, in such a case, he must be delivered to his adversary in precisely the same predicament as when the king interfered—in fact, with the point of Anthony Woodville's weapon thrust into the crevice of his visor: "which," says Dugdale, "when the Bastard understood, he relinquished his farther challenge."
The tournament at Smithfield, unlike "the gentle passage at Ashby," terminated without bloodshed. Indeed, neither Anthony Woodville nor his antagonist felt any ambition to die in their harness in the lists; and the Bastard, in visiting England, had a much more practical object in view than to afford amusement to gossiping citizens. He was, in fact, commissioned by the Count of Charolois to press the English king on the subject of a match with Margaret of York; and he played his part so well as to elicit from Edward, notwithstanding Warwick's embassy, a promise that the hand of the princess should be given to the heir of Burgundy. When Warwick returned from France and found what had been done in his absence, he considered that he had been dishonored. Such usage would, at any time, have grated hard on the earl's heart; and the idea of the Woodvilles having been the authors of this wrong made his blood boil with indignation. He forthwith retired to Middleham, in a humor the reverse of serene, and there brooded over his wrongs in a mood the reverse of philosophic.
The king did not allow the king-maker's anger to die for want of fuel. On the contrary, having given Warwick serious cause of offense, he added insult to injury by pretending that the earl had been gained over by Louis to the Lancastrian cause, and that the state was in no small danger from his treasonable attempts. At the same time, he abruptly deprived George Neville, Archbishop of York,[8] of the office of chancellor—thus indicating still farther distrust of the great family to whose efforts he owed his crown.
While rumors as to Warwick's new-born sympathies with the house of Lancaster were afloat, the Castle of Harleck fell into the king's hands. Within the fortress was taken an agent of Margaret; and he, on being put to the rack, declared that Warwick, during his mission to France, had, at Rouen, spoken with favor of the exiled queen, during a confidential conversation with Louis. Warwick treated the accusation with contempt, and declined to leave his castle to be confronted with the accuser.