Vauclerc, however, gave the earl information by no means valueless, in the shape of a warning that on putting to sea he must beware where he landed, as the myrmidons of Burgundy were on the watch to seize him. At the same time, he took occasion secretly to send an apology to Warwick, and to represent his conduct as being entirely guided by zeal for the earl's safety. "Calais," said he, "is ill-supplied with provisions; the garrison can not be depended on; the inhabitants, who live by the English commerce, will certainly take part with the established government; and the city is in no condition to resist England on one side and Burgundy on the other. It is better, therefore, that I should seem to declare for Edward, and keep the fortress in my power till it is safe to deliver it to you." Warwick was not, probably, in a very credulous mood; but he took Vauclerc's explanation for what it was worth, ordered the anchors to be hauled up, and, having defied Burgundy's enmity by seizing some Flemish ships that lay off Calais, sailed toward the coast of Normandy.
King Edward, on hearing of Vauclerc's refusal to admit Warwick, expressed himself highly pleased with the deputy-governor, and manifested his approval by sending the Gascon a patent as Captain-general of Calais. Burgundy, not to be behind his brother-in-law, dispatched Philip de Comines to announce to Vauclerc that he should have a pension of a thousand crowns for life, and to keep him true to his principles. Vauclerc must have laughed in his sleeve at all this. "Never man," says Sir Richard Baker, "was better paid for one act of dissembling."
Meanwhile, Warwick landed at Harfleur, where his reception was all that could have been wished. The governor welcomed the exiles with every token of respect, escorted the ladies to Valognes, and hastened to communicate Warwick's arrival to the king. Louis exhibited the most unbounded confidence in the earl's fortunes. Indeed, so confident in the king-maker's alliance was the crafty monarch, that he prepared to brave the united enmity of Edward of England and Charles of Burgundy. Without delay he invited the great exile to court; and, as Warwick and Clarence—whom Warwick then intended to place on the English throne—rode toward Amboise, their journey excited the utmost curiosity. Every where the inhabitants were eager to see "The Stout Earl;" and Jacques Bonnehomme came from his cabin to gaze on the man who made and unmade kings, and who, unlike the nobles of France, took pride in befriending the people in peace and sparing them in war.
At Amboise Warwick met with a reception which must have been gratifying to his pride. Louis was profuse of compliments and lavish of promises. The French king, however, took occasion to suggest to Warwick the expediency of finding some more adequate instrument than Clarence wherewith to work out his projects; and the English earl, bent on avenging England's injuries and his own, listened with patience, even when Louis proposed an alliance with Lancaster.
Ere this Margaret was on the alert. When, in the autumn of 1469, the exiled queen learned that the house of York was divided against itself, and that the king and the king-maker were mortal foes, she left her retreat at Verdun, and, with her son, repaired to the French king at Tours. Thither, to renew their adhesion to the Red Rose, came, among other Lancastrians, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, who had been wandering over Europe like a vagabond, and Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, and Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, with his brother John, who, since the rout of Hexham, had been lurking in Flanders, concealing their names and quality, and suffering all those inconveniences that arise from the ill-assorted union of pride and poverty. A man bearing a nobler name, and gifted with a higher intellect than Tudors, Hollands, or Beauforts, now joined the Lancastrian exiles. It was John De Vere, Earl of Oxford.
At the beginning of the contentions of York and Lancaster, the De Veres naturally took part against the misleaders of the monk-monarch, and as late, at least, as 1455, John, twelfth Earl of Oxford, was a friend of the duke. Oxford, however, was not prepared for a transfer of the crown; and when the dispute assumed the form of a dynastic war, he took the losing side, and in 1461 was beheaded on Tower Hill, with his eldest son, Aubrey. At the time of the old earl's execution, his second son, John, was twenty-three; and, being husband of Margaret Neville, the sister of Warwick, he was allowed to remain undisturbed in England, to bear the title of Oxford, and, without taking any part in politics, to maintain feudal state at Wyvenhoe and Castle Hedlingham. Oxford, however, was "linked in the closest friendship with Warwick;" and when the Yorkist king shook off the influence of "The Stout Earl," England was no longer a place of safety for the chief of the De Veres. In 1470 Oxford followed his great brother-in-law to France, hoping, perhaps, to mediate between Warwick and the Lancastrian queen who had ever hated the earl as her mightiest foe.
At this period Margaret of Anjou had seen forty summers, and, doubtless, felt somewhat less strongly than in earlier days the ambition which had animated her before Wakefield and Hexham. But the Prince of Wales was now in his eighteenth year, and, inspired by maternal love, she was ready, in order to regain the crown for him, to brave new dangers and endure fresh hardships.
Young Edward was, indeed, a prince on whom a mother might well look with pride. Every thing had been done to make him worthy of the throne he had been born to inherit. Fortescue had instructed the royal boy in the duties necessary for his enacting the part of "a patriot king;" and, while engaged in studies so grave, the prince had not neglected those accomplishments essential to his rank. Ere leaving Verdun he had become a handsome and interesting youth. His bearing was chivalrous; his manner graceful; his countenance of almost feminine beauty, shaded with fair hair, and lighted up with a blue eye that sparkled with valor and intelligence. Such, arrayed in the short purple jacket trimmed with ermine, the badge of St. George on his breast, and a single ostrich feather—his cognizance as Prince of Wales—in his high cap, was the heir of Lancaster, whom Margaret of Anjou presented to the devoted adherents of the Red Rose, who, having lost every thing else, came to the French court to place their swords at his disposal.
Louis was now in his element; and to reconcile the Yorkist earl and the Lancastrian queen, he exerted all his powers of political intrigue. His task, indeed, was not easy. Warwick had accused Margaret of plotting against his life, and murdering his father. Margaret had charged Warwick—whom she hated more bitterly even than she had hated the Duke of York—with depriving her of a crown, and destroying her reputation. The earl's wish, in the event of deposing Edward, still was to place Clarence on the throne; and, even since quarreling with the Yorkist king, he had taken part against the Lancastrians. The queen was, on her part, utterly averse to friendship with her ancient adversary. "My wounds," she exclaimed, "must bleed till doomsday, when to God's justice I will appeal for vengeance!"
Most men would have regarded the case as desperate. But Louis viewed it in another light. Between the queen and the earl, indeed, there was a wide gulph, in which ran the blood of slaughtered friends and kinsmen; but one sentiment the queen without a crown and the earl without an earldom had in common—an intense antipathy to Edward of York. Moreover, the Prince of Wales had, on some festive occasion, seen Anne Neville, the earl's daughter, and the sight had inspired him with one of those romantic attachments which call into action the tenderest sympathies and the noblest aspirations. A fear that Margaret and Warwick would never consent to a union might have daunted young Edward, but Louis had seen more of the world. He knew that Warwick could hardly see the prince without being covetous to have him as a son-in-law; and he knew that Margaret would be prompted by the ambition of a queen, and the tenderness of a mother, to recover by compromise the crown which she had been unable to gain by force. In one important respect the mind of Louis was made up—that, on all points, he would intrigue and negotiate with an eye to his own profit.