An attempt, therefore, even an inadequate9 attempt, to trace out with accuracy his career and his habits of[Pg 2] mind from the original authorities cannot fail to be of some use to the general reader as well as to the student of history. The result will perhaps appear meagre to those who are accustomed to the biographies of the men of later centuries. We are curiously10 ignorant of many of the facts that should aid us to build up a picture of the man. No trustworthy representation of his bodily form exists. The day of portraits was not yet come; his monument in Bisham Abbey has long been swept away; no writer has even deigned11 to describe his personal appearance—we know not if he was dark or fair, stout12 or slim. At most we may gather from the vague phrases of the chroniclers, and from his quaint13 armed figure in the Rous Roll, that he was of great stature14 and breadth of limb. But perhaps the good Rous was thinking of his fame rather than his body, when he sketched15 the Earl in that quaint pictorial16 pedigree over-topping all his race save his cousin and king and enemy, Edward the Fourth.
But Warwick has only shared the fate of all his contemporaries. The men of the fifteenth century are far less well known to us than are their grandfathers or their grandsons. In the fourteenth century the chroniclers were still working on their old scale; in the sixteenth the literary spirit had descended17 on the whole nation, and great men and small were writing hard at history as at every other branch of knowledge. But in the days of Lancaster and York the old fountains had run dry, and the new flood of the Renaissance18 had not risen. The materials for reconstructing history are both scanty19 and hard to handle. We dare not swallow Hall and Hollingshead whole, as was the custom for two[Pg 3] hundred years, or take their annals, coloured from end to end with Tudor sympathies, as good authority for the doings of the previous century. Yet when we have put aside their fascinating, if somewhat untrustworthy, volumes, we find ourselves wandering in a very dreary20 waste of fragments and scraps21 of history, strung together on the meagre thread of two or three dry and jejune22 compilations23 of annals. To have to take William of Worcester or good Abbot Whethamsted as the groundwork of a continuous account of the times is absolutely maddening. Hence it comes to pass that Warwick has failed to receive his dues.
Of all the men of Warwick's century there are only two whose characters we seem thoroughly24 to grasp—the best and the worst products of the age—Henry the Fifth and Richard the Third. The achievements of the one stirred even the feeble writers of that day into a fulness of detail in which they indulge for no other hero; the other served as the text for so many invectives under the Tudors that we imagine that we see a real man in the gloomy portrait that is set up before us. Yet we may fairly ask whether our impression is not drawn25, either at first or at second hand, almost entirely26 from Sir Thomas More's famous biography of the usurper27, a work whose literary merits have caused it to be received as the only serious source for Richard's history. If we had not that work, Richard of Gloucester would seem a vaguely-defined monster of iniquity28, as great a puzzle to the student of history as are the other shadowy forms which move on through those evil times to fall, one after the other, into the bloody29 grave which was the common lot of all.
In spite, however, of the dearth30 of good chronicles,[Pg 4] and of the absolute non-existence of any contemporary writers of literary merit, there are authorities enough of one sort and another to make it both possible and profitable to build up a detailed31 picture of Warwick and his times. First and foremost, of course, come the invaluable32 Paston Letters, covering the whole period, and often supplying the vivid touches of detail in which the more formal documents are so lamentably33 deficient34. If but half a dozen families, as constant in letter-writing as John and Margery Paston, had transmitted their correspondence to posterity35, there would be little need to grumble36 at our lack of information. Other letters too exist, scattered37 in collections, such as the interesting scrawl38 from Warwick himself, in his dire39 extremity40 before Barnet fight, to Henry Vernon, which was turned up a year ago among the lumber41 at Belvoir Castle. Much can be gathered from rolls and inquests—for example, the all-important information as to centres and sources of local power can be traced out with perfect accuracy from the columns of the Escheats Roll, where each peer or knight42's lands are carefully set forth43 at the moment of his decease. Joining one authority to another, we may fairly build up the England of the fifteenth century before our eyes with some approach to completeness.
The whole picture of the times is very depressing on the moral if not on the material side. There are few more pitiful episodes in history than the whole tale of the reign44 of Henry the Sixth, the most unselfish and well-intentioned king that ever sat upon the English throne—a man of whom not even his enemies and oppressors could find an evil word to say; the troubles came, as they confessed, "all because of his false lords, and never[Pg 5] of him." We feel that there must have been something wrong with the heart of a nation that could see unmoved the meek45 and holy King torn from wife and child, sent to wander in disguise up and down the kingdom for which he had done his poor best, and finally doomed46 to pine for five years a prisoner in the fortress47 where he had so long held his royal Court. Nor is our first impression concerning the demoralisation of England wrong. Every line that we read bears home to us more and more the fact that the nation had fallen on evil times. First and foremost among the causes of its moral deterioration48 was the wretched French War, a war begun in the pure spirit of greed and ambition,—there was not even the poor excuse that had existed in the time of Edward the Third—carried on by the aid of hordes49 of debauched foreign mercenaries (after Henry the Fifth's death the native English seldom formed more than a third of any host that took the field in France), and persisted in long after it had become hopeless, partly from misplaced national pride, partly because of the personal interests of the ruling classes. Thirty-five years of a war that was as unjust as it was unfortunate had both soured and demoralised the nation. England was full of disbanded soldiers of fortune; of knights50 who had lost the ill-gotten lands across the Channel, where they had maintained a precarious51 lordship in the days of better fortune; of castellans and governors whose occupation was gone; of hangers-on of all sorts who had once maintained themselves on the spoils of Normandy and Guienne. Year after year men and money had been lavished52 on the war to no effect; and when the final catastrophe53 came, and the fights of Formigny and Chatillon ended the[Pg 6] chapter of our disasters, the nation began to cast about for a scapegoat54 on whom to lay the burden of its failures. The real blame lay on the nation itself, not on any individual; and the real fault that had been committed was not the mismanagement of an enterprise which presented any hopes of success, but a wrong-headed persistence55 in an attempt to conquer a country which was too strong to be held down. However, the majority of the English people chose to assume firstly that the war with France might have been conducted to a prosperous issue, and secondly56 that certain particular persons were responsible for its having come to the opposite conclusion. At first the unfortunate Suffolk and Somerset had the responsibility laid upon them. A little later the outcry became more bold and fixed57 upon the Lancastrian dynasty itself as being to blame not only for disaster abroad, but for the "want of governance" at home. If King Henry had understood the charge, and possessed58 the wit to answer it, he might fairly have replied that his subjects must fit the burden upon their own backs, not upon his. The war had been weakly conducted, it was true; but weakly because the men and money for it were grudged59. The England that could put one hundred thousand men into the field in a civil broil60 at Towton sent four thousand to fight the decisive battle at Formigny that settled our fate in Normandy. At home the bulwarks61 of social order seemed crumbling62 away. Private wars, riot, open highway robbery, murder, abduction, armed resistance to the law, prevailed on a scale that had been unknown since the troublous times of Edward the Second—we might almost say since the evil days of Stephen. But it was not the Crown alone that should[Pg 7] have been blamed for the state of the realm. The nation had chosen to impose over-stringent constitutional checks on the kingly power before it was ripe for self-government, and the Lancastrian house sat on the throne because it had agreed to submit to those checks. If the result of the experiment was disastrous63, both parties to the contract had to bear their share of the responsibility. But a nation seldom allows that it has been wrong; and Henry of Windsor had to serve as scapegoat for all the misfortunes of the realm, because Henry of Bolingbroke had committed his descendants to the unhappy compact.
Want of a strong central government was undoubtedly64 the complaint under which England was labouring in the middle of the fifteenth century, and all the grievances65 against which outcry was made were but symptoms of one latent disease.
Ever since the death of Henry the Fifth the internal government of the country had been steadily66 going from bad to worse. The mischief67 had begun in the young King's earliest years. The Council of Regency that ruled in his name had from the first proved unable to make its authority felt as a single individual ruler might have done. With the burden of the interminable French War weighing upon their backs, and the divisions caused by the quarrels of Beaufort and Gloucester dividing them into factions68, the councillors had not enough attention to spare for home government. As early as 1428 we find them, when confronted by the outbreak of a private war in the north, endeavouring to patch up the quarrel by arbitration69, instead of punishing the offenders70 on each side. Accounts of riotous71 assemblages in all parts of the country, of armed violence at parliamentary elections, of[Pg 8] party fights in London at Parliament time—like that which won for the meeting of 1426 the name of the Parliament of Bats (bludgeons)—grow more and more common. We even find treasonable insurrection appearing in the strange obscure rising of the political Lollards under Jack72 Sharp in 1431, an incident which shows how England was on the verge73 of bloodshed twenty years before the final outbreak of civil war was to take place.
But all these public troubles would have been of comparatively small importance if the heart of the nation had been sound. The phenomenon which makes the time so depressing is the terrible decay in private morals since the previous century. A steady deterioration is going on through the whole period, till at its end we find hardly a single individual in whom it is possible to interest ourselves, save an occasional Colet or Caxton, who belongs in spirit, if not date, to the oncoming renascence of the next century. There is no class or caste in England which comes well out of the scrutiny74. The Church, which had served as the conscience of the nation in better times, had become dead to spiritual things; it no longer produced either men of saintly life or learned theologians or patriotic75 statesmen. In its corporate76 capacity it had grown inertly78 orthodox. Destitute79 of any pretence80 of spiritual energy, yet showing a spirit of persecution81 such as it had never displayed in earlier centuries, its sole activity consisted in hunting to the stake the few men who displayed any symptoms of thinking for themselves in matters of religion. So great was the deadness of the Church that it was possible to fall into trouble, like Bishop82 Pecock, not for defending[Pg 9] Lollardry, but for showing too much originality83 in attacking it. Individually the leading churchmen of the day were politicians and nothing more, nor were they as a rule politicians of the better sort; for one like Beaufort, who was at any rate consistent and steadfast84, there are many Bourchiers and George Nevilles and Beauchamps, who merely sailed with the wind and intrigued85 for their own fortunes or those of their families.
Of the English baronage of the fifteenth century we shall have so much to say in future chapters that we need not here enlarge on its characteristics. Grown too few and too powerful, divided into a few rival groups, whose political attitude was settled by a consideration of family grudges86 and interests rather than by any grounds of principle, or patriotism87, or loyalty88, they were as unlike their ancestors of the days of John or Edward the First as their ecclesiastical contemporaries were unlike Langton or even Winchelsey. The baronage of England had often been unruly, but it had never before developed the two vices89 which distinguished90 it in the times of the Two Roses—a taste for indiscriminate bloodshed and a turn for rapid political apostasy91. To put prisoners to death by torture as did Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, to desert to the enemy in the midst of battle like Lord Grey de Ruthyn at Northampton, or Stanley at Bosworth, had never before been the custom of England. It is impossible not to recognise in such traits the results of the French War. Twenty years spent in contact with French factions, and in command of the godless mercenaries who formed the bulk of the English armies, had taught our nobles lessons of cruelty and faithlessness such as they had not before imbibed92. Their demoralisation had been displayed in[Pg 10] France long ere the outbreak of civil war caused it to manifest itself at home.
But if the Church was effete93 and the baronage demoralised, it might have been thought that England should have found salvation94 in the soundheartedness of her gentry95 and her burgesses. Unfortunately such was not to be the case. Both of these classes were growing in strength and importance during the century, but when the times of trouble came they gave no signs of aspiring96 to direct the destinies of the nation. The House of Commons which should, as representing those classes, have gone on developing its privileges, was, on the contrary, thrice as important in the reign of Henry the Fourth as in that of Edward the Fourth. The knights and squires97 showed on a smaller scale all of the vices of the nobility. Instead of holding together and maintaining a united loyalty to the Crown, they bound themselves by solemn sealed bonds and the reception of "liveries" each to the baron8 whom he preferred. This fatal system, by which the smaller landholder agreed on behalf of himself and his tenants98 to follow his greater neighbour in peace and war, had ruined the military system of England, and was quite as dangerous as the ancient feudalism. The salutary old usage, by which all freemen who were not tenants of a lord served under the sheriff in war, and not under the banner of any of the baronage, had long been forgotten. Now, if all the gentry of a county were bound by these voluntary indentures99 to serve some great lord, there was no national force in that county on which the Crown could count, for the yeoman followed the knight as the knight followed the baron. If the gentry constituted themselves the voluntary followers100 of the baronage, and aided their employers to keep England unhappy, the class of citizens and burgesses took a very different line of conduct. If not actively101 mischievous102, they were sordidly103 inert77. They refused to entangle104 themselves in politics at all. They submitted impassively to each ruler in turn, when they had ascertained105 that their own persons and property were not endangered by so doing. A town, it has been remarked, seldom or never stood a siege during the Wars of the Roses, for no town ever refused to open its gates to any commander with an adequate force who asked for entrance. If we find a few exceptions to the rule, we almost always learn that entrance was denied not by the citizens, but by some garrison106 of the opposite side which was already within the walls. Loyalty seems to have been as wanting among the citizens as among the barons of England. If they generally showed some slight preference for York rather than for Lancaster, it was not on any moral or sentimental107 ground, but because the house of Lancaster was known by experience to be weak in enforcing "good governance," and the house of York was pledged to restore the strength of the Crown and to secure better times for trade than its rival.
Warwick was a strong man, born at the commencement of Henry the Sixth's unhappy minority, whose coming of age coincided with the outburst of national rage caused by the end of the disastrous French War, whose birth placed him at the head of one of the great factions in the nobility, whose strength of body and mind enabled him to turn that headship to full account. How he dealt with the problems which inevitable108 necessity laid before him we shall endeavour to relate.
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1 eminence | |
n.卓越,显赫;高地,高处;名家 | |
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2 looms | |
n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现,阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 );隐约出现,阴森地逼近 | |
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3 grandeur | |
n.伟大,崇高,宏伟,庄严,豪华 | |
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4 misty | |
adj.雾蒙蒙的,有雾的 | |
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5 monograph | |
n.专题文章,专题著作 | |
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6 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
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7 barons | |
男爵( baron的名词复数 ); 巨头; 大王; 大亨 | |
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8 baron | |
n.男爵;(商业界等)巨头,大王 | |
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9 inadequate | |
adj.(for,to)不充足的,不适当的 | |
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10 curiously | |
adv.有求知欲地;好问地;奇特地 | |
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11 deigned | |
v.屈尊,俯就( deign的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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13 quaint | |
adj.古雅的,离奇有趣的,奇怪的 | |
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14 stature | |
n.(高度)水平,(高度)境界,身高,身材 | |
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15 sketched | |
v.草拟(sketch的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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16 pictorial | |
adj.绘画的;图片的;n.画报 | |
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17 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
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18 renaissance | |
n.复活,复兴,文艺复兴 | |
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19 scanty | |
adj.缺乏的,仅有的,节省的,狭小的,不够的 | |
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20 dreary | |
adj.令人沮丧的,沉闷的,单调乏味的 | |
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21 scraps | |
油渣 | |
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22 jejune | |
adj.枯燥无味的,贫瘠的 | |
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23 compilations | |
n.编辑,编写( compilation的名词复数 );编辑物 | |
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24 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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25 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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26 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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27 usurper | |
n. 篡夺者, 僭取者 | |
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28 iniquity | |
n.邪恶;不公正 | |
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29 bloody | |
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染 | |
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30 dearth | |
n.缺乏,粮食不足,饥谨 | |
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31 detailed | |
adj.详细的,详尽的,极注意细节的,完全的 | |
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32 invaluable | |
adj.无价的,非常宝贵的,极为贵重的 | |
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33 lamentably | |
adv.哀伤地,拙劣地 | |
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34 deficient | |
adj.不足的,不充份的,有缺陷的 | |
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35 posterity | |
n.后裔,子孙,后代 | |
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36 grumble | |
vi.抱怨;咕哝;n.抱怨,牢骚;咕哝,隆隆声 | |
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37 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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38 scrawl | |
vt.潦草地书写;n.潦草的笔记,涂写 | |
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39 dire | |
adj.可怕的,悲惨的,阴惨的,极端的 | |
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40 extremity | |
n.末端,尽头;尽力;终极;极度 | |
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41 lumber | |
n.木材,木料;v.以破旧东西堆满;伐木;笨重移动 | |
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42 knight | |
n.骑士,武士;爵士 | |
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43 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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44 reign | |
n.统治时期,统治,支配,盛行;v.占优势 | |
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45 meek | |
adj.温顺的,逆来顺受的 | |
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46 doomed | |
命定的 | |
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47 fortress | |
n.堡垒,防御工事 | |
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48 deterioration | |
n.退化;恶化;变坏 | |
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49 hordes | |
n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 );部落 | |
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50 knights | |
骑士; (中古时代的)武士( knight的名词复数 ); 骑士; 爵士; (国际象棋中)马 | |
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51 precarious | |
adj.不安定的,靠不住的;根据不足的 | |
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52 lavished | |
v.过分给予,滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53 catastrophe | |
n.大灾难,大祸 | |
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54 scapegoat | |
n.替罪的羔羊,替人顶罪者;v.使…成为替罪羊 | |
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55 persistence | |
n.坚持,持续,存留 | |
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56 secondly | |
adv.第二,其次 | |
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57 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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58 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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59 grudged | |
怀恨(grudge的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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60 broil | |
v.烤,烧,争吵,怒骂;n.烤,烧,争吵,怒骂 | |
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61 bulwarks | |
n.堡垒( bulwark的名词复数 );保障;支柱;舷墙 | |
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62 crumbling | |
adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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63 disastrous | |
adj.灾难性的,造成灾害的;极坏的,很糟的 | |
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64 undoubtedly | |
adv.确实地,无疑地 | |
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65 grievances | |
n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 );苦衷;不满;牢骚 | |
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66 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
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67 mischief | |
n.损害,伤害,危害;恶作剧,捣蛋,胡闹 | |
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68 factions | |
组织中的小派别,派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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69 arbitration | |
n.调停,仲裁 | |
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70 offenders | |
n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 );犯规者;罪犯;妨害…的人(或事物) | |
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71 riotous | |
adj.骚乱的;狂欢的 | |
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72 jack | |
n.插座,千斤顶,男人;v.抬起,提醒,扛举;n.(Jake)杰克 | |
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73 verge | |
n.边,边缘;v.接近,濒临 | |
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74 scrutiny | |
n.详细检查,仔细观察 | |
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75 patriotic | |
adj.爱国的,有爱国心的 | |
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76 corporate | |
adj.共同的,全体的;公司的,企业的 | |
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77 inert | |
adj.无活动能力的,惰性的;迟钝的 | |
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78 inertly | |
adv.不活泼地,无生气地 | |
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79 destitute | |
adj.缺乏的;穷困的 | |
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80 pretence | |
n.假装,作假;借口,口实;虚伪;虚饰 | |
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81 persecution | |
n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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82 bishop | |
n.主教,(国际象棋)象 | |
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83 originality | |
n.创造力,独创性;新颖 | |
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84 steadfast | |
adj.固定的,不变的,不动摇的;忠实的;坚贞不移的 | |
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85 intrigued | |
adj.好奇的,被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式);激起…的兴趣或好奇心;“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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86 grudges | |
不满,怨恨,妒忌( grudge的名词复数 ) | |
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87 patriotism | |
n.爱国精神,爱国心,爱国主义 | |
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88 loyalty | |
n.忠诚,忠心 | |
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89 vices | |
缺陷( vice的名词复数 ); 恶习; 不道德行为; 台钳 | |
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90 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
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91 apostasy | |
n.背教,脱党 | |
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92 imbibed | |
v.吸收( imbibe的过去式和过去分词 );喝;吸取;吸气 | |
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93 effete | |
adj.无生产力的,虚弱的 | |
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94 salvation | |
n.(尤指基督)救世,超度,拯救,解困 | |
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95 gentry | |
n.绅士阶级,上层阶级 | |
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96 aspiring | |
adj.有志气的;有抱负的;高耸的v.渴望;追求 | |
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97 squires | |
n.地主,乡绅( squire的名词复数 ) | |
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98 tenants | |
n.房客( tenant的名词复数 );佃户;占用者;占有者 | |
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99 indentures | |
vt.以契约束缚(indenture的第三人称单数形式) | |
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100 followers | |
追随者( follower的名词复数 ); 用户; 契据的附面; 从动件 | |
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101 actively | |
adv.积极地,勤奋地 | |
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102 mischievous | |
adj.调皮的,恶作剧的,有害的,伤人的 | |
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103 sordidly | |
adv.肮脏地;污秽地;不洁地 | |
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104 entangle | |
vt.缠住,套住;卷入,连累 | |
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105 ascertained | |
v.弄清,确定,查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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106 garrison | |
n.卫戍部队;驻地,卫戍区;vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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107 sentimental | |
adj.多愁善感的,感伤的 | |
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108 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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