Edward, however, had already fixed5 on the policy from which he never swerved6 throughout his reign7—hard measure for the great and easy measure for the small. The Mayor and citizens were allowed to "find means of grace through Lord Berners and Sir John Neville, brother to the Earl of Warwick"—doubtless through a sufficient gift of rose nobles. These two lords led the Mayor and Council before the King, who promptly8 granted them grace, and was then received into the town[Pg 129] "with great solemnity and processions." There Edward kept his Easter week, and made every arrangement for the subjugation10 of the North. His first act was to take down the heads of his father and his uncle from over the gate, and provide for their reverent11 burial. His next was to mete12 out to his Lancastrian prisoners the measure that York and Salisbury had received. The chief of them, Courtney Earl of Devon and the Bastard13 of Exeter, were decapitated in the market-place, and their heads sent south to be set up on London Bridge. James Earl of Wiltshire—long Salisbury's rival in the South—was caught a few days later, and suffered the same fate.
The submission14 of the various Yorkshire towns was not long in coming in, and it was soon ascertained15 that no further resistance was to be looked for south of the Tees. The broken bands of the Lancastrians had disappeared from Yorkshire, and Warwick's tenants16 from Middleham and Sherif Hoton were now able to come in to explain to their lord how they had fared during the Lancastrian ascendency at the hands of his cousins of Westmoreland. In common with the few other Yorkists of the North, they had received hard measure; they had been well plundered17, and probably constrained19 to pay up all that the Westmorelands could wring20 out of them, as arrears21 for the twenty years during which the Yorkshire lands of Neville had been out of the hands of the senior branch.
A few days after Easter, Warwick and Edward moved out of York and pushed on to Durham. On the way they were entertained at Middleham with such cheer as the place could afford after its plunder18 by the Lancas trians. Nowhere did they meet with any resistance, and the task of finishing the war appeared so simple that the King betook himself homeward about May 1st, leaving Warwick with a general commission to pacify22 the North. John Neville remained behind with his brother, as did Sir Robert Ogle23 and Sir John Coniers, the only two Yorkists of importance in the North outside the Neville family. The King took with him the rest of the lords, who were wanted for the approaching festivals and councils in London, and with them the bulk of the army.
The task which Warwick had received turned out to be a much more formidable matter than had been expected. King Henry, Queen Margaret, the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, Lords Hungerford and Roos, with the other surviving Lancastrian leaders, had fled to Scotland, where they had succeeded in inducing the Scotch24 regents—Kennedy, Boyd, and their fellows—to continue the policy of the late King, and throw themselves heartily25 into the war with the Yorkists. The inducement offered was the cession9 of Berwick and Carlisle, and the former town was at once handed over "and well stuffed with Scots." Nor was it only on Scotch aid that the Lancastrians relied; they had determined26 to make application to the King of France, and Somerset and Hungerford sailed for the Continent at the earliest opportunity. They were stayed at Dieppe by orders of the wily Louis the Eleventh, who was averse27 to committing himself to either party in the English struggle while his own crown was hardly three months old; but their mission was not to be without its results. Putting aside the hope of assistance from France and Scotland, the Lancastrians had still some resources of their own on which they might count. A few scattered28 bands of Percy retainers still kept the field in Northumberland, and the Percy crescent still floated over the strong castles of Alnwick, Bamborough, and Dunstanburgh.
The problem which fell into Warwick's hands was to clear the routed Lancastrians out of Northumberland, and at the same time to keep good watch against the inroads of the Scotch and the English refugees who were leagued with them. Defensive29 and offensive operations would have to be combined, for, on the one hand, the siege of the Percy castles must be formed—and sieges in the fifteenth century were slow and weary work—while, on the other, the raids of the lords of the Scotch Border might occur at any time and place, and had to be met without delay. Warwick was forced to divide his troops, undertaking30 himself to cover the line of the Tyne and observe the Northumbrian castles, while his brother John, who for his services at Towton had just been created Lord Montagu, took charge of the force which was to fend32 off Scotch attacks on the Western Marches.
In June the Scots and the English refugees crossed the Border in force; their main body made a push to seize Carlisle, which the Lancastrian chiefs, the Duke of Exeter and Lord Grey de Rougemont, promised to deliver to them as they had already delivered Berwick. The town, however, shut its gates; and the invaders33 were constrained to content themselves with burning its suburbs and forming a regular siege. But as they lay before it they were suddenly attacked by Montagu, who came up long before he was expected, and beat them back over the Border with the loss of several thousand men; among the slain34 was John Clifford, brother to the peer who had fallen at Towton.
Almost simultaneously35 another raiding party, led by Lord Roos and Sir John Fortescu, the late Chief-Justice, and guided by two of the Westmoreland Nevilles, Thomas and Humphrey, slipped down from the Middle Marches and attempted to raise the county of Durham. But as they drew near to the ancestral Neville seat of Brancepeth, they were fallen upon by forces brought up by Warwick, and were driven back on June 26th as disastrously36 as the main army for which they had been making a diversion.
These two defeats cooled the ardour of the Scotch allies of the house of Lancaster. Moreover, trouble was soon provided for them on their own side of the Border. There were always discontented nobles to be found in the North, and King Edward was able to retaliate37 on the Scotch regents by concluding a treaty with the Earl of Ross, which set a considerable rebellion on foot in the Highlands and the Western Isles38. By the time that the autumn came there was no longer any immediate39 danger to be apprehended40 on the Borders, and Warwick was able to relinquish41 his northern viceroyalty and come south, to pay his estates a flying visit, and to obey the writ42 which summoned him in November to King Edward's first Parliament at Westminster.
While Warwick had been labouring in the North, the King had been holding his Court at London, free to rule after his own devices. At twenty Edward the Fourth had already a formed character, and displayed all the personal traits which developed in his later years. The spirit of the fifteenth century was strong in him. Cultured and cruel, as skilled as the oldest statesman in the art of cajoling the people, as cool in the hour of danger as the oldest soldier, he was not a sovereign with whom even the greatest of his subjects could deal lightly. Yet he was so inordinately43 fond of display and luxury of all sorts, so given to sudden fits of idleness, so prone44 to sacrifice policy to any whim45 or selfish impulse of the moment, that he must have seemed at times almost contemptible46 to a man who, like Warwick, had none of the softer vices31 of self-indulgence. Still in mourning for a father and brother not six months dead, with a kingdom not yet fully47 subdued48 to his fealty49, with an empty exchequer50, with half the nobles and gentry51 of England owing him a blood-feud for their kinsmen52 slain at Towton, Edward had cast aside every thought of the past and the morrow, and was bearing himself with all the thriftless good-humour of an heir lately come to a well-established fortune. It seems that the splendours of his coronation-feasts were the main things that had been occupying his mind while Warwick had been fighting his battles in the North. Reading of his jousts53 and banquets and processions, his gorgeous reception by the city magnates, and his lavish54 distributions of honours and titles, we hardly remember that he was no firmly-rooted King, but the precarious55 sovereign of a party, surrounded by armed enemies and secret conspirators56.
In the lists of honours which Edward had distributed after his return homeward from Towton field, Warwick found that he had not been neglected. The offices which he had held in 1458-59 had been restored to him; he was again Captain of the town and castle of Calais, Lieutenant57 of the March of Picardy, Grand Chamberlain of England, and High Steward58 of the Duchy of Lancaster. In addition he was now created Constable59 of Dover and Warden60 of the Cinque Ports, and made Master of the Mews and Falcons61, and Steward of the Manor62 and Forest of Feckenham. His position in the North, too, was made regular by his appointment as Warden and Commissary General of the East and West Marches, and Procurator Envoy63 and Deputy for all negotiations64 with the Scots.
Nor had the rest of the Neville clan65 been overlooked. John Neville had, as we have already mentioned, received the barony of Montagu. George Neville the Bishop67 of Exeter was again Chancellor68. Fauconbridge, who had fought so manfully at Towton, was created Earl of Kent. Moreover, Sir John Wenlock, Warwick's most faithful adherent69, who had done him such good service at Sandwich in 1459, was made a baron66. We shall always find him true to the cause of his patron down to his death at Tewkesbury field. Although several other creations swelled70 the depleted71 ranks of the peerage at the same time, the Nevilles could not complain that they had failed to receive their due share of the rewards.
Nor would it seem that at first the King made any effort to resent the natural ascendency which his cousin exercised over his counsels. The experienced warrior72 of thirty-three must still have overborne the precocious73 lad of twenty when their wills came into contact. The campaigns of 1459-60, in which he had learnt soldiering under Warwick, must have long remained impressed on Edward's mind, even after he had won his own laurels74 at Mortimer's Cross and shared with equal honours in the bloody triumph of Towton. So long as Richard Neville was still in close and constant contact with the young King, his ascendency was likely to continue. It was when, in the succeeding years, his duties took him for long periods far from Edward's side, that the Earl was to find his cousin first growing indifferent, then setting his own will against his adviser's, then deliberately75 going to work to override76 every scheme that came to him from any member of the Neville house.
We have no particular notice of Warwick's personal doings in the Parliament which sat in November and December 1461; but the language of his brother George the Chancellor represents, no doubt, the attitude which the whole family adopted. His text was "Amend77 your ways and your doings," and the tenor78 of his discourse79 was to point out that the ills of England during the last generation came from the national apostasy80 in having deserted81 the rightful heirs so long in behalf of the usurping82 house of Lancaster. Now that a new reign had commenced, a reform in national morality should accompany the return of the English to their lawful83 allegiance. The sweeping84 acts of attainder against fourteen peers and many scores of knights85 and squires86 which the Yorkist Parliament passed might not seem a very propitious87 beginning for the new era, but at any rate it should be remembered to the credit of the Nevilles that the King's Council under their guidance tempered the zeal88 of the Commons by many limitations which guarded the rights of numer ous individuals who would have been injured by the original proposals.
Moreover, the Government allowed the opportunity of reconciliation89 to many of the more luke-warm adherents90 of Lancaster, who had not been personally engaged in the last struggle. It is to Warwick's credit that his cousin Ralph of Westmoreland was admitted to pardon, and not taken to task for the doings of his retainers, under the conduct of his brother, in the campaign of Wakefield and St. Albans. Ralph was summoned to the Parliament, and treated no worse than if he had been a consistent adherent of York. The same favour was granted to the Earl of Oxford91, till he forfeited92 it by deliberate conspiracy93 against the King. Sanguine94 men were already beginning to hope that King Edward and his advisers95 might be induced to end the civil wars by a general grant of amnesty, and might invite his rival Henry to return to England as the first subject of the Crown. Such mercy and reconciliation, however, were beyond the mind of the ordinary partisan96 of York; and the popular feeling of the day was probably on the side of the correspondent of the Pastons, who complained "that the King receives such men as have been his great enemies, and great oppressors of his Commons, while such as have assisted his Highness be not rewarded; which is to be considered, or else it will hurt, as seemeth me but reason."
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1
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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harrying
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| v.使苦恼( harry的现在分词 )；不断烦扰；一再袭击；侵扰 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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swerved
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| v.（使）改变方向，改变目的( swerve的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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cession
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| n.割让，转让 | |
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subjugation
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| n.镇压，平息，征服 | |
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reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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mete
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| v.分配；给予 | |
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bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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plundered
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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constrained
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| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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arrears
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| n.到期未付之债，拖欠的款项；待做的工作 | |
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22
pacify
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| vt.使(某人)平静(或息怒)；抚慰 | |
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ogle
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| v.看；送秋波；n.秋波，媚眼 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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25
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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averse
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| adj.厌恶的；反对的，不乐意的 | |
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28
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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31
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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32
fend
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| v.照料（自己），（自己）谋生，挡开，避开 | |
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invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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35
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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disastrously
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| ad.灾难性地 | |
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retaliate
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| v.报复，反击 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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40
apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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41
relinquish
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| v.放弃，撤回，让与，放手 | |
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42
writ
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| n.命令状，书面命令 | |
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43
inordinately
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| adv.无度地，非常地 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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46
contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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47
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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48
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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49
fealty
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| n.忠贞，忠节 | |
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50
exchequer
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| n.财政部；国库 | |
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51
gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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52
kinsmen
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| n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 ) | |
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53
jousts
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| （骑士）骑着马用长矛打斗( joust的名词复数 )； 格斗，竞争 | |
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54
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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55
precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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56
conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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57
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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58
steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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59
constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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60
warden
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| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
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61
falcons
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| n.猎鹰( falcon的名词复数 ) | |
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62
manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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envoy
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| n.使节，使者，代表，公使 | |
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64
negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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65
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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66
baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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adherent
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| n.信徒，追随者，拥护者 | |
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70
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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71
depleted
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| adj. 枯竭的, 废弃的 动词deplete的过去式和过去分词 | |
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72
warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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73
precocious
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| adj.早熟的；较早显出的 | |
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74
laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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76
override
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| vt.不顾，不理睬，否决；压倒，优先于 | |
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77
amend
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| vt.修改，修订，改进；n.[pl.]赔罪，赔偿 | |
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78
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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79
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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80
apostasy
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| n.背教，脱党 | |
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81
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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82
usurping
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| 篡夺，霸占( usurp的现在分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权 | |
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83
lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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84
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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85
knights
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| 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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86
squires
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| n.地主，乡绅( squire的名词复数 ) | |
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87
propitious
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| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
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88
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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89
reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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90
adherents
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| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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92
forfeited
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| （因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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93
conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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94
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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95
advisers
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| 顾问，劝告者( adviser的名词复数 )； （指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授 | |
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96
partisan
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| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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