The Last of the Barons — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (books to read for self improvement TXT) 📕

It was a clear and bright day in the first week of October, 1470, when the various scouts employed by the mayor and council of London came back to the Guild, at which that worshipful corporation were assembled,—their steeds blown and jaded, themselves panting and breathless,—to announce the rapid march of the Earl of Warwick. The lord mayor of that year, Richard Lee, grocer and citizen, sat in the venerable hall in a huge leather chair, over which a pall of velvet had been thrown in haste, clad in his robes of state, and surrounded by his aldermen and the magnates of the city. To the personal love which the greater part of the body bore to the young and courteous king was added the terror which the corporation justly entertained of the Lancastrian faction. They remembered the dreadful excesses which Margaret had permitted to her army in the year 1461,—what time, to use the expression of the old historian, “the wealth of London looked pale;” and how grudgingly she had been restrained from condemning her revolted metropolis to the horrors of sack and pillage. And the bearing of this august representation of the trade and power of London was not, at the first, unworthy of the high influence it had obtained. The agitation and disorder of the hour had introduced into the assembly several of the more active and accredited citizens not of right belonging to it; but they sat, in silent discipline and order, on long benches beyond the table crowded by the corporate officers. Foremost among these, and remarkable by the firmness and intelligence of his countenance, and the earnest self-possession with which he listened to his seniors, was Nicholas Alwyn, summoned to the council from his great influence with the apprentices and younger freemen of the city.

As the last scout announced his news and was gravely dismissed, the lord mayor rose; and being, perhaps, a better educated man than many of the haughtiest barons, and having more at stake than most of them, his manner and language had a dignity and earnestness which might have reflected honour on the higher court of parliament.

“Brethren and citizens,” he said, with the decided brevity of one who felt it no time for many words, “in two hours we shall hear the clarions of Lord Warwick at our gates; in two hours we shall be summoned to give entrance to an army assembled in the name of King Henry. I have done my duty,—I have manned the walls, I have marshalled what soldiers we can command, I have sent to the deputy-governor of the Tower—”

“And what answer gives he, my lord mayor?” interrupted Humfrey Heyford.

“None to depend upon. He answers that Edward IV., in abdicating the kingdom, has left him no power to resist; and that between force and force, king and king, might makes right.”

A deep breath, like a groan, went through the assembly.

Up rose Master John Stokton, the mercer. He rose, trembling from limb to limb.

“Worshipful my lord mayor,” said he, “it seems to me that our first duty is to look to our own selves!”

Despite the gravity of the emergence, a laugh burst forth, and was at once silenced at this frank avowal.

“Yes,” continued the mercer, turning round, and striking the table with his fist, in the action of a nervous man—“yes; for King Edward has set us the example. A stout and a dauntless champion, whose whole youth has been war, King Edward has fled from the kingdom. King Edward takes care of himself,—it is our duty to do the same!”

Strange though it may seem, this homely selfishness went at once through the assembly like a flash of conviction. There was a burst of applause, and, as it ceased, the sullen explosion of a bombard (or cannon) from the city wall announced that the warder had caught the first glimpse of the approaching army.

Master Stokton started as if the shot had gone near to himself, and dropped at once into his seat, ejaculating, “The Lord have mercy upon us!” There was a pause of a moment, and then several of the corporation rose simultaneously. The mayor, preserving his dignity, fixed on the sheriff.

“Few words, my lord, and I have done,” said Richard Gardyner—“there is no fighting without men. The troops at the Tower are not to be counted on. The populace are all with Lord Warwick, even though he brought the devil at his back. If you hold out, look to rape and plunder before sunset to-morrow. If ye yield, go forth in a body, and the earl is not the man to suffer one Englishman to be injured in life or health who once trusts to his good faith. My say is said.”

“Worshipful my lord,” said a thin, cadaverous alderman, who rose next, “this is a judgment of the Lord and His saints. The Lollards and heretics have been too much suffered to run at large, and the wrath of Heaven is upon us.”

An impatient murmuring attested the unwillingness of the larger part of the audience to listen further; but an approving buzz from the elder citizens announced that the fanaticism was not without its favourers. Thus stimulated and encouraged, the orator continued; and concluded an harangue, interrupted more stormily than all that had preceded, by an exhortation to leave the city to its fate, and to march in a body to the New Prison, draw forth five suspected Lollards, and burn them at Smithfield, in order to appease the Almighty and divert the tempest!

This subject of controversy once started might have delayed the audience till the ragged staves of the Warwickers drove them forth from their hall, but for the sagacity and promptitude of the mayor.

“Brethren,” he said, “it matters not to me whether the counsel suggested be good or bad, in the main; but this have I heard,—there is small safety in death-bed repentance. It is too late now to do, through fear of the devil, what we omitted to do through zeal for the Church. The sole question is, ‘Fight or make terms.’ Ye say we lack men; verily, yes, while no leaders are found! Walworth, my predecessor, saved London from Wat Tyler. Men were wanting then till the mayor and his fellow-citizens marched forth to Mile End. It may be the same now. Agree to fight, and we’ll try it. What say you, Nicholas Alwyn?—you know the temper of our young men.”

Thus called upon, Alwyn rose, and such was the good name he had already acquired, that every murmur hushed into eager silence.

“My lord mayor,” he said, “there is a proverb in my country which says, ‘Fish swim best that’s bred in the sea;’ which means, I take it, that men do best what they are trained for! Lord Warwick and his men are trained for fighting. Few of the fish about London Bridge are bred in that sea. Cry, ‘London to the rescue!’—put on hauberk and helm, and you will have crowns enough to crack around you. What follows?—Master Stokton hath said it: pillage and rape for the city, gibbet and cord for mayor and aldermen. Do I say this, loving the House of Lancaster? No; as Heaven shall judge me, I think that the policy King Edward hath chosen, and which costs him his crown to-day, ought to make the House of York dear to burgess and