Richard The Chird (8 page)

Thus was the sun of the Renaissance rising above the horizon to gild this court with its first rays. The King himself glowed most brightly, perhaps, with the spirit of the coming time— in his zest for living, in the catholicity of his pleasures, in the versatility of his interests and talents, in the adventurous sensuality of his temperament.

Such was the court in which young Richard, fresh from his knightly training on the hardy moors of Yorkshire, had taken up yet another new life.

Meanwhile, what of the House of Neville, once sole occupants of that place in the heavens into which the House of Woodville was so vigorously thrusting itself? Though rumor persisted on the Continent that Warwick had become the enemy of his royal master, the Nevilles seemed to retain their old power over the realm, if not over the King. The Earl, rich in high offices and busy with affairs, still appeared to be what the Scots Bishop of

St. Andrews had called him in 1463: "Conduiseur du royaume d'Angleterre dessoubz le roy Edouart." 5 The three brothers had recently negotiated a truce with the Scots which was to endure until 1519; Warwick continued to head embassies to Burgundy and France. After the birth of Princess Elizabeth, George Neville, Archbishop of York, baptized her, and the Earl stood as the only masculine sponsor at the font. Yet an entertainment given about the same time more nearly reveals Warwick's feelings. When, in the early spring of 1466, King Edward impressed a visiting group of Bohemian knights by a fifty-course dinner, Warwick immediately after dazzled them with one of sixty courses. 6

To the Earl, things were not the same. Edward was no longer his protege; he, no longer the avuncular mentor. He began to doubt—and, what was to him far worse, others including his friend Louis XI began to doubt—that he was still "Conduiseur du royaume." His position had become ambiguous, and he had neither the inclination nor the quality of mind to study the ambiguity coolly.

The Earl of Warwick lived, more intensely than most men, by his vision of himself and the reflection of that vision in the eyes of others. Heir though he was, in so many ways, to the arrogant, king-rivaling barons of the past, the hazy picture he drew of his place in the world was tinged with the colors of a coming age. It was magnificence he groped for as much as power, a many-faceted excellence which would catch the light of admiration from every direction. Having put Edward on the throne, as he conceived, by his conquering sword, he delighted in clapping harness on his back at all hours to keep him there; he was equally zealous to play the master statesman and let foreign kings behold his greatness; and he must be bountiful, too, as he hoped to be loved beyond the limits of ordinary acclaim. His castles were thronged with retainers, tenants, suitors. At his London establishment six oxen might be roasted for a breakfast; any acquaintance of his servants was free to bear away from the kitchens as much meat as he could thrust upon a long dagger. When the Earl rode through the streets of London or passed through villages on errands of diplomacy or war, crowds of people cried, "Warwick!

Warwick!'' as if he were a deity dropped from the skies. No one was so splendidly arrayed as he, and none bowed so low in courteous salutation to the meanest bystander who would shout a greeting. He perpetually wooed the world, and for a time, he won it.

He was indeed genuinely amiable, generous, abounding in energy. Small wonder that he had deeply impressed one frail and earnest apprentice in knighthood who had dwelt for a time in his castle of Middleham. Yet the Earl's charm and elan, the grandeur of his estates and offices, and the smile of fortune had hitherto concealed his serious disabilities. His genius was a plant that could flower only in the noonday sun; the wintry touch of adversity caused it to shrivel. At the second battle of St. Albans his faculties had been stunned by Queen Margaret's unexpected flank attack. It appears that he had been badly rattled at the beginning of the battle of Towton. 7 * He possessed, indeed, scarcely more than ordinary talents, and' he was both intellectually and emotionally naive. Consequently he was terribly vulnerable to attacks of hurt vanity, being unable to distinguish his desires from his prerogatives. He could imagine himself no other than what he had become, and thus he confused his resources with his honors. Because the people of England manifestly admired him, he failed to realize that their devotion might have limits.

Like Hotspur, he could conceive no end to the gratitude which the man on the throne owes to the man who put him there. But it was more than a matter of gratitude. His political horizon was bounded by the reign of Henry the Sixth. Government was an attribute of power. To Warwick, the ills of England had grown not from the fact that a clique of magnates had wielded Henry's scepter in their own interests but from the fact that they were the wrong magnates.

By flouting the Earl's marriage schemes Edward had wounded Warwick's vanity; by elevating the Woodvilles he had punctured his pride; by asserting his independence he had challenged the foundations of his greatness. To the very quick Warwick felt that he had been monstrously assailed; it never occurred to him that it was the King's right, and it was impossible for him to con-

ceive that it might be the King's duty, to exercise the royal prerogative. Edward must be taught his place—that was the sum of it.

The crumbling of Warwick's character began almost at once. He sought directly to strike back at the ungrateful King by suborning his brothers—particularly George, for George, now sixteen years of age, was still heir male to the throne. If Warwick could win over the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, the King, supported only by the Woodvilles and a few favorites, would soon be glad to return to the Neville fold, or would be forced to return to it.

George of Clarence was an easy conquest. He had become dissatisfied with his lot before Edward married; he hated the Woodvilles as upstart competitors of his greatness; and his shallow nature was quickly captivated by the flattering attentions of the Earl When Warwick proposed that Clarence marry his elder daughter, the Duke was utterly his. The thought of being allied to the greatest power in the realm as well as standing next in line to the throne unfolded before George's eyes hazy vistas of glory. By the summer of 1466 King Edward had got wind of the scheme. He had long ago taken George's measure, and he was of no mind to countenance so potentially dangerous an alliance. He bluntly told his brother to give up all thought of the match. Warwick and Clarence, however, continued to spin plans in secret.

The Earl was also seeking to detach Richard from the King. At a great festival which George Neville held in 1466 to celebrate his enthronization as Archbishop of York, George of Clarence did not appear—perhaps by design; but RicharcAvas there. No doubt the boy wore his splendid Garter, which had been fashioned by Matthew Philip, goldsmith and former Mayor of London, and cost three times as much as the one which John Brown later made for Charles of Burgundy. Richard did not dine at the Archbishop's board in the great hall. Instead, he was installed at the head table in the chief chamber of estate, the only male of rank to be seated with ladies. On his right hand sat his sister Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk; on his left, his aunt, the Countess of Westmorland; the others at the table were War-

wick's Countess and her daughters Isabel and Anne. The arrangement savored strongly of a "family" grouping. Perhaps it was meant to remind Richard that the Nevilles were happy to consider him one of them and that, though George was to have Isabel and half her mother's inheritance, there remained Anne, a slight girl of ten, who should have the other half.

The banquet itself was one of the most sumptuous of the age, proclaiming the undiminished opulence of the Nevilles and pointedly exceeding the splendor of King Edward. The great Earl himself performed the office of steward, and brother John of Northumberland, that of treasurer, while Hastings, Edward's Lord Chamberlain, was comptroller. Sixty-two cooks had labored to prepare a hundred and four oxen, six wild bulls, some four thousand sheep, calves, and pigs, five hundred stags, four hundred swans, and a galaxy of other meats, which were washed down with three hundred tuns of ale, a hundred tuns of wine, and a pipe of hippocras. Then came thirteen thousand sweet dishes, climaxed by an array of "subtleties"—sculptured confections, of which one depicted St. George slaying a dragon of "marchpane" and another, a pastry Samson pulling down candy pillars. Well might this extravagant display suggest to the guests that the destiny of England lay with the House of Neville. 8

Perhaps, on the other hand, the Earl of Warwick, beginning feverishly to juggle with the future, was holding out to young Richard quite different but even more glittering marital prospects.

The man who had caught George of Clarence in a web of promises had himself fallen victim to the very Father of Flattery, Louis XI of France. It was that monarch's settled policy to win over—by bribes, favors, or honeyed words—the chief officers of his neighbors 1 realms. Not long after he mounted the throne in 1461 he had set his cap for the all-powerful Earl. He ventured to send to him for a dog; he did favors for his Lieutenant at Calais; soon he was writing letters to Warwick, informal and artlessly admiring. The Earl found them a heady draught: they helped stimulate him to the conclusion that since France was the perpetual springboard for Lancastrian assaults, England must make a treaty of peace which would put an end to Queen Mar-

garet's hopes. With Louis' enthusiastic concurrence he had arranged the preliminaries, in the spring of 1464, for a marriage alliance between Edward and Louis' sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy. When the ungrateful Edward announced his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, King Louis, sensing that this apparent reverse might open up promising possibilities, continued to protest his friendship and show his esteem for the injured Warwick.

In the spring of 1467, Louis confided to the Milanese ambassadors that by the help of Warwick he had reached a secret agreement with the King of England. Edward would renounce his claims to France and become Louis' brother-in-arms in a war to exterminate the Duke of Burgundy and his son Charles, Count of Charolais. Warwick's reward was to be the marriage of Isabel to the Duke of Clarence; Edward's sister Margaret would wed Philip of Bresse; while Richard, Duke of Gloucester, would receive the hand of Louis' second daughter, whose dowry would be Holland, Zealand, and Brabant—spoils of the extermination of the House of Burgundy! The work of a master tale-spinner, it was a fantastic yarn, except in so far as it doubtless reflected something of Warwick's grandiose visions and Louis' eagerness to let the world know that the mighty Earl was his devoted friend. 9

Of Richard's actual involvement in the web which Warwick and Clarence were weaving, there exists only the testimony of a lurid rumor which reached France about this time. 10 * George and Richard, so it ran, skipped away from court to visit Warwick at Cambridge and concert plans for George's marriage to Isabel. Discovering their whereabouts, the King commanded his brothers instantly to appear before him. He rated them severely and then ordered four knights of his household to put them under arrest. 11 * If there shines any gleam of truth in the murk of this gossip, it is that Richard, cherishing a deep admiration for the radiant and martial Warwick, had been happy to find himself courted by the Earl and his brother George—until he discovered what they were about.

In the Woodville court Richard could not have been at ease. Edward doubtless gave him tasks—when he remembered—and warmed him with his dazzling smile of affection, his exuberant

habit of clasping round the shoulders, 12 an occasional word of approbation. But the sun of York was usually withdrawn these days into soft clouds of luxury; the martial hero whose campaigns Richard must have known by heart spent his hours tilting, hunting, carousing, dancing, charming pretty faces—except when, suddenly all business, he closeted himself with his advisers to grapple with the problems of policy.

In the halls of Westminster Palace, on the terraces of Greenwich and Shene, young Richard could not find, amidst the laughter and the whispers and the innuendo of intrigue, the means of making a home for himself. The North was in his blood. He knew that he was meant for service and not for pleasure. He was not subtle of mind or malleable of temperament. He could not bring himself to enjoy the company of the Woodvilles, whose arrogance shone as bright as the newness of their fortunes. The Queen's elder son, Sir Thomas Grey (later, the Marquess of Dorset), a lad of about Richard's age, was already in training to become a boon companion to the King. In the tiltyard the talk was all of Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, who dominated the tourneys well-nigh as much by the ingenuity of his harness as by^ the skillful play of his weapons. The Queen, beautiful and rapacious, would know how to show her haughtiness to the undersized lad from Yorkshire with the awkward torso and solemn face. She viewed the King's two brothers only as rivals of her family for the favors of her lord. Woodvilles surrounded Edward like a glittering hedge, barbed with glances, insinuations, and the small, icy maneuvers of ambition.

Would Richard not eagerly welcome what measure of companionship he was offered by George of Clarence, to whose golden attraction he had long ago succumbed, whose petulant charm still hid from him the hard and heedless egotism beneath? Clarence was not only three years older now; he was a man, old enough to talk of marriage, to busy himself with important affairs and have important friends. Clarence despised the Woodvilles. Clarence was the companion and ally of the Earl of Warwick.

The geniality and splendor and virile energy which had won

the admiration of the world could not have left young Richard unmoved. Middleham had been his home; Warwick, his lord. The Nevilles were deep-rooted in the North. Richard and John and George were his mother's nephews. Warwick would know how to enchant the lad, to play upon his distaste for the Wood-villes and his unease at court.

When the companion of his childhood and the great Lord of the North were poised against the Queen and her kindred, the scales of Richard's mind could register only one choice. Gradually Clarence and Warwick drew him, flatteringly, into their confidence. Under the benevolent auspices of the Nevilles, Clarence would marry Isabel and Richard too would make a great marriage; the Woodvilles, the unlovely intruders, would be sent away, and King Edward and his two brothers would live happily ever after with the Earl of Warwick and his two brothers, as was obviously intended by Providence for the weal of the kingdom. It was a vision which Richard, groping for stability, harboring deep loyalties, was ripe to appreciate. Only ... a small part of the vision remained blurred. For Richard, however, that part was the center. When it began to clear, he instantly rejected the whole dream. Mining facilely the ore of Richard's simplicity, Clarence and Warwick suddenly ran against adamantine.