Chapter II: Reign of Edward IV (3)

The fate of Clarence was sealed. The queen and Gloucester were vehement against him. Edward hurried to Westminster; Clarence was arrested and conducted by the king himself to the Tower. On the 16th of January a Parliament was assembled, and Edward himself appeared as the accuser of his brother at the bar of the Lords. He charged him with a design to dethrone and destroy him and his family. He retorted upon him the charge of sorcery, and of dealing with masters of the black art for this treasonable purpose; that to raise a rebellion he had supplied his servants with vast quantities of money, wine, venison, and provisions, to feast the people, and to fill their minds at such feasts with the belief that Burdett and Stacey had been wrongfully put to death; that Clarence had engaged numbers of people to swear to stand by him and his heirs as rightful claimants of the throne--asserting that Edward was, in truth, a bastard, and had no right whatever to the crown; that to gain the throne, and support himself upon it, he had had constant application to the arts for which his queen and her mother were famous, and had not hesitated to poison and destroy in secret. As for himself--Clarence--he pledged himself to restore all the lands and honours of the Lancastrians, when he gained his own royal rights.

To these monstrous charges Clarence made a vehement reply, but posterity has no means of judging of the truth or force of what he said, for the whole of his defence was omitted in the rolls of Parliament. Not a soul dared to say a word on his behalf. Edward brought forward witnesses to swear to everything he alleged; the duke was condemned to death; and the Commons being summoned to attend, confirmed the sentence. No attempt was made to put the sentence into execution, but about ten days later it was announced that Clarence had died in the Tower. The precise mode of his death has never been clearly ascertained. The generally received account is that of Fabyan, a cotemporary, who says that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

Edward now again gave himself up to his pleasures, and would have been glad, in the midst of his amorous intrigues, to have forgotten public affairs altogether. But for this the times were too much out of joint. It was not in England alone that the elements of faction had been in agitation. Nearly the whole of Europe had witnessed the contentions of overgrown nobles and vassal princes by which almost every crown had been endangered, and the regal authority in many cases brought into contempt. The changes consequent on the accession of Henry IV. we have fully detailed; those storms which raged around the throne of France we have partially seen; but similar dissensions betwixt the Electors of Germany and the Emperor Sigismund prevailed; the Netherlands were divided against each other; and Spain was equally disturbed by the conspiracies of the nobles against the crown. Edward of England, as if sensible of the weakness of his position, strove anxiously to strengthen it by foreign alliances. Though his children were far too young to contract actual marriages, he made treaties which should place his daughters on a number of the chief thrones. Some of these contracts were entered into almost as soon as those concerned in them were born. Elizabeth, the eldest, was affianced to the Dauphin of France; Cecilia, the second, to the eldest son and heir of the King of Scotland; Anne, to the infant son of Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, and husband of Mary of Burgundy; Catherine, to the heir of the King of Spain. His eldest son was engaged to the eldest daughter of the Duke of Brittany. On the other hand, all these royal negotiators appear to have been equally impressed with the precarious character of Edward's power, and were ready at the first moment to annul the contracts.

That subtle monarch, Louis of France, never from the first moment seriously meant to adhere to his engagement; and in a very few years all these anxiously-planned marriages were blown away like summer clouds. Edward was not long in suspecting the hollowness of the conduct of Louis XI. Though repeatedly reminded that the time was come to fetch the Princess of England, in order to complete her education in France, preparatory to her occupying the station assigned to her there, Louis took no measures for this purpose; and when Edward remonstrated on the subject, threatened to withdraw the payment of the annual 50,000 crowns. Edward boiled with indignation, and vowed, amongst his immediate courtiers that he would hunt up the old fox in his own cover if he did not mind. But that wily prince was not so easily dealt with. He saw with chagrin the proposed alliances betwixt Edward and his dangerous neighbours, the Duke of Brittany and Maximilian of Austria, now, through his wife, the ruler of Burgundy. Edward, in his resentment at the threat of Louis to withdraw his annual payment, made offers of closer union with Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, and engaged, on condition that they should pay him the 50,000 crowns which he now had from Louis, to assist them against that monarch. But Louis was not to be out-manoeuvred in this manner; he was a profounder master in all the arts of diplomatic stratagem than Edward. He, therefore, made secret and tempting advances to Maximilian and Mary, one article of which devoted the Dauphin to their infant daughter, despite of her engagement to the English heir. At the same time he stirred up sufficient trouble in Scotland to occupy Edward for some time.

The circumstances of Scotland were at this time very favourable to the mischievous interference of Louis. James III. was a monarch far beyond his age. He was of a pacific and philosophic turn. Surrounded by a rude and ignorant nobility, he conceived an infinite contempt for them, and was not politic enough to conceal it. They were received at court with coldness and neglect, while they saw men of science and letters admitted to the king's most intimate conversation. To avenge their slighted dignity, they stirred up the king's two brothers, the Duke of Albany, and the Earl of Mar, to rebellion. James, however, showed that, though pacifically disposed, he did not lack energy. He seized Mar and Albany, and confined them--Mar in Craigmillar Castle, and Albany in that of Edinburgh. Albany managed to escape, and made his way, by means of a French vessel, to France. Mar, who was of a vehement temper, was seized in his prison with fever and delirium. He was, therefore, removed from Craigmillar to a house in the Canongate, at Edinburgh, where, having been bled, he is said on a return of the paroxysm to have torn off his bandages while in a warm bath, and died from loss of blood. The incident was suspicious; but public opinion, for the most part, exonerated the king from the charge of any criminal intention; and even when he was afterwards deposed, no such charge was preferred against him by the hostile faction.

It was at this crisis that Edward--roused to indignation by the conduct of the French king, who neglected to fetch the Princess of England, and withdrew his annual payment of the 50,000 crowns, and still more by tracing Louis' hand in Scottish affairs--invited over Albany from Paris, promising to set him on the throne of Scotland. Albany, smarting with his brother's treatment, was but too ready to accept the proposal. Edward launched reproaches against the King of Scotland for his perfidy in listening to Louis of France, whilst under the closest engagements with himself. Three years' payments of the dowry of Edward's daughter, Cecilia, had already been paid to the Scottish monarch, and yet he had thrown constant obstacles in the way of a marriage agreed upon between the sister of James and the Earl Rivers, the brother-in-law of Edward. In reply to Edward's reproaches, James flung at him the epeithet of reiver, or robber, alluding to his seizure of the English crown.

Edward despatched an army to the borders of Scotland, under his brother Gloucester and Albany. He engaged to place Albany on the throne of James, and, in return, Albany, who was believed already to have two wives, was to marry one of Edward's daughters. With upwards of 22,000 men Gloucester and Albany reached Berwick, which speedily surrendered, though the castle held out.

James, to meet this formidable attack, summoned the whole force of his kingdom to meet him on the Burghmuir, near Edinburgh, and at the head of 50,000 men advanced first to Soutra, and thence to Lauder. But sedition was in his camp. Edward and Albany had opened communications with the discontented nobles. Albany, at the treaty of Fotheringay, where the Scottish scheme was made matter of compact, had assumed the title of Alexander, King of Scotland, and the adhesion of the principal chiefs of Scotland was confirmed by the impolicy of James, who had not only given to his favourite Cochrane, the architect, the bulk of the estates, along with the title of the Earl of Mar, but now placed him in command of the artillery, and permitted him to excite the envy and indignation of the great barons by the splendour of his appointments. Cochrane was, therefore, put to death by a band of conspirators, headed by Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, known, therefore, as Archibald "Bell-the-Cat."

Albany and Gloucester quickly followed the conspirators to the Scottish capital, and there appeared now every prospect of the crown being placed on the head of Albany; but this was suddenly prevented by a new movement. The whole body of the Scottish nobles had joined in the destruction of the favourites, but there was a strong party of them who contemplated nothing further. The loyalty of this section of the aristocracy being well known to Angus and his friends, they had not ventured to communicate to them their design of deposing James. The moment that this became known to them, they quitted Edinburgh, collected an army, and planted themselves near Haddington, determined to keep in check any proceedings against the king. At the head of this loyal party were the Archbishop of St. Andrews, the Bishop of Dunkeld, the Earl of Argyll, and Lord Evandale. They called on all loyal Scots to gather to their standard, and, being posted betwixt Edinburgh and the English border, threw Gloucester and his adherents into considerable anxiety as to their position. Albany, Gloucester, and the insurgent lords were glad to come to an accommodation. It was agreed that James should retain the crown; that Albany should receive a pardon and the restoration of his rank and estates; that the money paid by Edward as part of the dowry of Cecilia should be repaid by the citizens of Edinburgh, and that Berwick and its castle should be ceded to England. Gloucester thereupon marched homeward, and Albany laid siege to the castle of Edinburgh, where the Earls of Atholl and Buchan still detained the king. He soon compelled them to capitulate, and James being now in the hands of Albany, the two brothers, in sign of perfect reconciliation, rode together on the same horse to the palace of Holyrood, and slept together in the same bed. The treason of Albany, however, only hid itself in his bosom for a season.

The Scottish difficulty being settled, Edward now turned his attention to Louis of France. Whilst the Scottish campaign had been proceeding, an occurrence had taken place which raised Edward's wrath to its pitch. Mary of Burgundy had one day gone out hawking in the neighbourhood of Bruges, when her horse, in leaping a dyke, broke his girths, and threw her violently against a tree. She died in consequence, leaving three infant children, one of whom, Margaret, was a little girl two years old. Mary herself was only twenty-five at the time of her death. No sooner did Louis hear of this, than he immediately demanded the infant Margaret for his son the Dauphin, totally regardless of the long-standing engagement with Edward for the Princess Elizabeth. Maximilian of Austria, the father of Margaret, was strongly opposed to the match, seeing too well that Louis only wanted to make himself master of the territories of the children. Louis, however, had intrigued with the people of Ghent, and they would insist upon the alliance. Margaret was delivered to the commissioners of Louis, who settled on her the provinces which he had taken from her mother. The French, who regarded this event as bringing to the kingdom some very fine territories, without the trouble and expense of a conquest, received the infant princess with great rejoicings.

The rage of Edward knew no bounds. He had been so often warned, both by his courtiers and by Parliament, that the crafty Louis would play him false, that he now vowed to take the most consummate vengeance upon him. The best means of inflicting the severest punishment on the King of France engrossed his whole soul, and occupied him day and night. This violent excitement, operating upon a constitution ruined by sensual indulgence, brought on an illness, which, not attended to at first, soon terminated his existence. He died on the 9th of April, 1483, in the twenty-third year of his reign and the forty-first of his age. The approach of death awoke in him feelings of deep repentance. He ordered full restitution to be made to all whom he had wronged, or from whom he had extorted benevolences. But such orders were not likely to receive much attention from Gloucester, who became the source of power. Immediately after his death he was exposed on a board, naked from the waist upwards, for ten hours, so that the lords spiritual and temporal, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London, might see that he had received no violence. He was then buried in Westminster Abbey, with great pomp and ceremony.

Edward IV. was a man calculated to make a great figure in rude and martial times. He was handsome, lively of disposition, affable, and brave. So long as circumstances demanded daring and exertion in the field, he was triumphant and prosperous. Rapid in his resolves and in his movements, undaunted in his attacks, he was uniformly victorious; but peace at once unmanned him. With the last stroke of the sword and the last sound of the trumpet he flung down his arms, and flew to riot and debauchery. Ever the conqueror in the field, he was always defeated in the city. He never could become conqueror over himself. By unrestrained indulgence he destroyed his constitution, and hurried on to early death. Whether in the battle-field or in the hour of peace, he was unrestrained by principle, and sullied his most brilliant laurels with the blood of the young, the innocent, and the victim incapable of resistance. He was magnificent in his costume, luxurious at table, and most licentious in his amours. As he advanced in years he grew corpulent and unhealthy. He had the faculty of never forgetting the face of any one whom he had once seen, or the name of any one who had done him an injury. There was no person of any prominence of whom he did not know the whole history; and he had a spy in almost every officer of his government, even to the extremities of his kingdom. By this means he was early informed of the slightest hostile movement, and by a rapid dash into the enemy's quarters he soon extinguished opposition. Such a man might be a brilliant, but could never be a good monarch. He attached no one to his fortunes; therefore all his attempts to knit up alliances and his other projects failed; and his sons, left young and unprotected, speedily perished.

His children were Edward, his eldest son and successor, born in the Sanctuary in 1470; Richard, Duke of York; Elizabeth, who was contracted to the Dauphin, but who became the queen of Henry VII.; Cecilia, contracted to James, afterwards IV. of Scotland, but married to John, Viscount Wells; Anne, contracted to the son of Maximilian of Austria, but married to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk; Bridget, who became a nun at Dartford; and Catherine, contracted to the Prince of Spain, but married to William Courtney, Earl of Devonshire.