Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/636

622 information of the extent of the insurrection, and to engage them to exert their influence to check it. Both these gentlemen, as if conscious of guilt, fled to sanctuary, but, on a promise of pardon, repaired to court. Edward insisted that Lord Welles should command his son to lay down his arms, and disperse his followers, with which order Lord Welles complied; but Sir Robert Welles received at the same time letters from Warwick and Clarence, encouraging him to hold out, assuring him that they were on the march to support him. When Edward reached Stamford, bearing Lord Welles and Dymoke with him, he found Sir Robert still in arms, and in his anger he wreaked his vengeance on his father, Lord Welles, and on Dymoke, beheading them in direct violation of his promise. He then sent a second order to Sir Robert to lay down his arms, but he replied that he scorned to surrender to a man destitute of honour, who had murdered his father. Edward then fell upon the insurgents at Uppingham, in Rutlandshire, and made a terrible slaughter of them. The leaders, Welles, and Sir Thomas Delalaunde, were taken and immediately executed. The inferior prisoners, as dupes to the designs of others, were dismissed.

The confessions of Sir Robert and of Dymoke made manifest the treason of Warwick and Clarence. They admitted that the insurrection was their work; that a confidential agent of Clarence regulated all the movements of troops; that the avowed object was to place Clarence on the throne. They had been directed to march into Leicestershire to meet the two heads of the rebellion; but being met by the royal army, and brought prematurely to an engagement, the plans of Warwick and Clarence were defeated. They now advanced towards York, calling on all the people to arm and follow them. But the inhabitants were Lancastrians, and refused to rise in support of any branch of the house of York. The king came within twenty miles of them as they reached Esterfield, and summoned them to appear before him and explain their conduct; but they again altered their course for Lancashire, in the hope that Lord Stanley, who had married a sister of Warwick, would join him. In that, however, they were disappointed, and, finding no support in the north, they hastened southward. Edward pursued them briskly. He restored to Lord Percy his titles and estates, of which he had been deprived at the battle of Towton, taking them from Warwick's brother, who was again reduced to the empty dignity of Lord Montacute. He declared Clarence no longer Lieutenant of Ireland, conferring that office on the Earl of Worcester.

The disappointed chiefs made a hasty retreat to the south, being proclaimed traitors by the king. At Southampton they attempted to escape to sea in a large vessel of Warwick's called the Trinity, but were attacked and defeated by Lord Scales. They were more successful at Dartmouth; and Edward, finding on reaching Exeter that they had escaped him, vented in his savage way his rage on the prisoners taken by Lord Scales in the recent engagement. They were delivered to Tiptoff, the Earl of Worcester, the new Lieutenant of Ireland, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and for three weeks such gross indignities were practised on their remains, that Tiptoff was thenceforth named "the butcher," and he did not escape his share of the obloquy.

Warwick and Clarence made for Calais. But there Warwick's lieutenant, Vauclerc, a Gascon knight, to whom he had entrusted the care of the city, refused to admit them. When they attempted to enter, the batteries were opened upon them; and when they remonstrated on this strange conduct, Vauclerc sent secretly to inform Warwick that the garrison, aware of what had taken place in England, were ill affected, and would certainly seize him if he entered; that his only chance of preserving the place for him was to appear at present hostile; and he prayed him to retire till a more favourable opportunity. To Edward, however, Vauclerc sent word that he would hold the town for him as his sovereign against all attempts—for which Edward rewarded him with the government of the place, and the Duke of Burgundy added a pension of a thousand crowns. Warwick and Clarence, enraged at this unexpected repulse, sailed along the coast towards Normandy, seizing every Flemish merchantman that fell in their way in revenge to Burgundy, and entered Harfleur, where they were received with all honour by the admiral of France.

Low as were now the fortunes of Warwick and Clarence, decided as had been the failure of their attempts against Edward IV., Louis of France thought he had, in the possession of these great leaders, a means of consolidating a formidable party against Edward, who had treated his alliance with such contempt, and who entered into the closest relations with his most formidable opponent, the Duke of Burgundy. He therefore received them at Amboise, where he was holding his court, with the most marked honours, and ordered them and their ladies to have the best accommodations that could be procured in the neighbourhood. He proposed to these two chiefs to coalesce with the Lancastrian party, by which means they would be sure to gain the instant support of all that faction. He sent for Queen Margaret, who was then at Angers, and assured her that Providence had at length prepared the certain means of the restoration of King Henry and his family.

Warwick engaged, by the assistance of Louis and of the Lancastrians, to replace Henry again upon the throne. By this means Warwick was to depose, and if possible to destroy, Edward of York. But Warwick never forgot the suggestions of his ambition. He must, if possible, sit on the throne of England in the persons of his descendants. For this he had married one daughter to Clarence. When the success of Edward had enfeebled his chance, he had succeeded in affiancing his nephew to the daughter of Edward, so that if not a Warwick at least a Neville might reign. He now sacrificed both these hopes to that of placing another daughter on the throne, as the queen of Margaret's son, the Prince of Wales. This alliance was the price of Warwick's assistance, and, however bitter might be the necessity, Margaret submitted to it, and the young Prince of Wales was forthwith married to Ann, the daughter of Warwick. Warwick then acknowledged Henry VI. as the rightful sovereign of England, and at the same time entered into solemn engagements to exert all his power to reinstate and maintain him on the throne. Margaret on her part swore on the holy Gospels never to reproach Warwick with the past, but to esteem him as a loyal and faithful subject. The French king, on the completion of this reconciliation,