Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/301

 king's orders, exposed, ‘open and naked,’ for two days in St. Paul's, lest rumour should be spread abroad that his powerful opponent was still alive (Arrivall of Edward IV, p. 21). They were then transferred to Bisham Abbey, in Berkshire, the ancient burial-place of the Montagus, which was destroyed at the dissolution of the monasteries (, Sepulchral Monuments, ii. 223).

Warwick had some of the qualities that make a great ruler of men. He stands out as a living figure among the shadows who strove and fell in that dreary time of civil strife. But he was neither a great constitutional statesman nor a great general. The military reputation he had won when dash and energy alone were needed he failed to maintain when he was thrown upon his own resources and strategy was called for. His signal mismanagement of the second battle of St. Albans justified Edward IV's contempt for his military abilities, a contempt which led him to treat Warwick as an opponent too lightly. The earl's personal abstention from this battle may have given currency to imputations upon his personal courage which were exaggerated by the unfriendly Burgundian chroniclers Chastellain (v. 486) and Commines (i. 260). They openly accuse him of cowardice, Commines asserting that he always fought on horseback to secure a safe retreat. If he was not a butcher like Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, he rarely spared his enemies when they fell into his hands. Of Worcester's love of learning there is no trace in Warwick, and beyond joining his brother George Neville, then bishop of Exeter, in founding in 1460 St. William's College, opposite the east end of York Minster, we do not hear of his devoting any part of his great wealth to public purposes. Warwick was in no way superior to the prejudices and ambitions of his class, and devoted himself with single aim to the acquisition of power for himself and his family. His popularity did not essentially differ from that enjoyed by other great nobles before him who had made use of the reform cry against weak and unpopular royal ministers to secure control of the crown for themselves. Hume's appellation of ‘last of the barons’ is not wholly inapplicable to the last representative of the class of great nobles in opposition to the crown—a class to which Thomas of Lancaster and Richard of Gloucester had belonged. Warwick enjoyed the advantages of a popular bearing, and of vast wealth spent in lavish hospitality; he had, too, touched the imagination of the nation by some slight successes when the nation's fortunes abroad had sunk to their lowest ebb. These advantages, united with singular energy, knowledge of men, and a genuine diplomatic talent, and favoured by opportunity, enabled him to grasp and utilise a power which was almost royal. The extraordinary impression that such a career made upon his own contemporaries is not surprising, and the dramatic story of his fall has retained a perennial interest. The unwavering support of the Nevilles, and of the Nevilles alone among the great magnates, had placed the Yorkist king on the throne and justified Warwick's title of ‘kingmaker.’ This title does not seem traceable in our authorities further back than the Latin history of Scotland of John Major (1469–1550) [q. v.], who calls Warwick ‘regum creator,’ and it is not used by any of the sixteenth-century English historians (, De Gestis Scotorum, p. 330, apud, ii. 374; cf. , ed. Beaucourt, i. 294). But Commines (ii. 280) had already expressed the fact—‘à la verité dire le [Edward] feit roy.’ Edward, however, presently declined to play the part of roy fainéant to Warwick's mayor of the palace, and, in order to retain his power, the earl did not refrain from plunging his country once more into civil war and joining hands with those he had pursued with inveterate hostility.

For Warwick's personal appearance there is no authority but Polydore Vergil's vague mention of ‘animi altitudo cum paribus corporis viribus.’ Nothing can be built upon the figure representing Warwick with the Neville bull at his feet in John Rous's ‘Roll of the Earls of Warwick’ (now in the Duke of Manchester's collection), although Rous died as early as 1496. This figure is reproduced in Mr. Oman's ‘Warwick,’ and in the illustrated edition of Green's ‘Short History.’ The portrait given by Rowland, and copied by Swallow, is a work of imagination. Warwick's fine seal, picked up on Barnet field and now in the British Museum, is figured by Swallow (p. 326).

Among the commemorations of Warwick in literature may be mentioned the well-known portrait in ‘King Henry VI,’ doubtfully ascribed to Shakespeare, and a tragedy by La Harpe, which was the basis of two adaptations published in 1766–7, one by T. Francklin and the other by P. Hifferman. Lord Lytton's historical romance, ‘The Last of the Barons’ (1843), is based upon such authorities as were accessible to him, but he speaks of Saxons and Normans in the fifteenth century, and makes the final breach between the king and the earl turn upon an outrage upon the honour of Warwick's family by the profligate king, which has only such authority as Polydore Vergil and Hall can give it.