Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/300

 looking for the arrival of the queen and her son, but, wind-bound or waiting on events, they delayed to come (, p. 660). When Louis drew the new government into open war with Burgundy and attacked the Somme towns, promising Warwick Holland and Zealand as his share, the English merchants interested in the Flemish trade took alarm (, ed. Dupont, iii. 196; ib. ed. Hardy, v. 608, 613). Warwick only maintained his position in London by the support of the masses, and by severe repression of adverse opinion (, p. 660;, v. 489, 499; Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 2).

Charles the Bold, too, as soon as he realised that the foreign policy of the new government in England was entirely directed by Louis XI, launched the exiled Edward IV, in March 1471, back upon its shores. Warwick was not caught unprepared, as Edward had been the previous summer. He had provided for the defence of all the coasts, retaining a general superintendence for himself as admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine (Fœdera, pp. 676–80). Edward was thus prevented from landing in Norfolk, and but for the timid, if not treacherous, conduct of Montagu, to whom his brother had entrusted the defence of the north coast, might never have gained a footing in Yorkshire [see under ]. The news that Edward had slipped past Montagu greatly angered Warwick, who at once set out northwards, and from Warwick on the 25th sent a summons to Henry Vernon of Haddon Hall to join him at Coventry against ‘the man Edward,’ with an urgent postscript in his own hand, ‘Henry, I praye you ffayle me not now, as ever I may do ffor yow’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. pt. iv. vol. i. pp. 3, 4). He advanced to Leicester; but on hearing that Oxford's force from the eastern counties had failed to arrest Edward's progress through Nottinghamshire, and that he was moving on Leicester with rapidly increasing numbers, the earl on the 27th fell back upon Coventry, and stood at bay behind its walls, waiting for the forces which Clarence and Somerset were raising in the southern midlands (Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 8;, p. 14; , iii. 282). On 29 March Edward appeared before Coventry and invited him to a pitched battle (Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 9; cf., v. 650). The earl declining to come out, Edward went on to Warwick, and, knowing that Clarence was bringing over to him the forces he had raised for Henry VI, had himself proclaimed king. Warwick, who must have suspected Clarence's treason, sought to come to some arrangement with Edward, but was offered a bare promise of his life. He was now joined by Montagu and Oxford, but Clarence had taken over his forces to Edward, and Warwick clearly feared Edward's superiority in the field. After again vainly offering battle, the king set off for London (Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 13), which the earl, who followed, allowed him to reach without molestation at midday on Thursday, 11 April. Warwick is said to have hoped that London would have shut Edward out, or, if not, that he would have kept Easter, and so enabled Warwick to take him by surprise. But Edward's friends had already got the upper hand in the city, and, acting with the decisive rapidity of which he was capable at crises, he marched out to Chipping Barnet on Saturday afternoon, 12 March, and reached it about nightfall. Warwick, who had by this time recognised that a battle was inevitable, had advanced in the course of the day from St. Albans to Gladsmuir Heath, or, as it is now called, Hadley Green, just to the north of Barnet. Here he drew up his forces ‘under a hedge-side,’ about half a mile out of Barnet, along the road to Hatfield, from which the ground slopes down both to west and east. In this position he commanded the narrow entrance to the town, from which he calculated the royal forces must emerge. But again, as at St. Albans, his calculations were at fault. Edward was too wily a strategist to be caught in a trap, and, after driving Warwick's advance-guard out of the town, he moved his army under cover of the darkness to the slope of Enfield Chase, just east of and parallel to Warwick's line. Warwick, discovering the movement, though he could not see the enemy, opened fire on their supposed position; but the two armies were much nearer than either supposed, and the ‘earl's guns overshot the king's host’ (Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 18). At dawn on Easter Sunday, 14 April, the two armies closed with each other in a mist so thick (the superstitious ascribed it to the incantations of Friar Bungay) that Warwick's line outflanked the king's on its right, and was itself outflanked on the left. Edward's left was driven off the field by the Earl of Oxford, while Gloucester turned Warwick's left (ib. p. 19). The centres, from whom the fortunes of the wings were hidden by the mist, fought desperately for three hours, but at last Warwick's men gave way, Montagu was slain, and Warwick leapt on horseback and fled to a neighbouring wood, but he was pursued and slain (, p. 16). The bodies of the two Nevilles were carried to London and, by the