therein made by the gossiping contemporary of any rumour that Edward
had suffered imprisonment. He enters the city in state, as having
returned safe and victorious from a formidable rebellion. The letter
goes on to say: "The king himself hath (that is, holds) good language
of the Lords Clarence, of Warwick, etc., saying 'they be his best
friends.'" Would he say this if just escaped from a prison? Sir John
Paston, the writer of the letter, adds, it is true, "But his household
men have (hold) other language." very probably, for the household men
were the court creatures always at variance with Warwick, and held, no
doubt, the same language they had been in the habit of holding
before.] that he betroths his eldest daughter to Warwick's nephew, the
male heir of the family. And then suddenly, only three months
afterwards (in February, 1470), and without any clear and apparent
cause, we find Warwick in open rebellion, animated by a deadly hatred
to the king, refusing, from first to last, all overtures of
conciliation; and so determined is his vengeance, that he bows a
pride, hitherto morbidly susceptible, to the vehement insolence of
Margaret of Anjou, and forms the closest alliance with the Lancastrian
party, in the destruction of which his whole life had previously been
employed.

Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosity
is the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, and
seeks to detect and to guess the truth. And then Fiction, accustomed
to deal with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance of
a Fact which the modern historian has been contented to place amongst
dubious and collateral causes of dissension. We find it broadly and
strongly stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attempted
the virtue of one of the earl's female relations. "And farther it
erreth not from the truth," says Hall, "that the king did attempt a