thing once in the earl's house, which was much against the earl's
honesty; but whether it was the daughter or the niece," adds the
chronicler, "was not, for both their honours, openly known; but surely
such a thing WAS attempted by King Edward," etc.

Any one at all familiar with Hall (and, indeed, with all our principal
chroniclers, except Fabyan), will not expect any accurate precision as
to the date he assigns for the outrage. He awards to it, therefore,
the same date he erroneously gives to Warwick's other grudges (namely,
a period brought some years lower by all judicious historians) a date
at which Warwick was still Edward's fastest friend.

Once grant the probability of this insult to the earl (the probability
is conceded at once by the more recent historians, and received
without scruple as a fact by Rapia, Habington, and Carte), and the
whole obscurity which involves this memorable quarrel vanishes at
once. Here was, indeed, a wrong never to be forgiven, and yet never
to be proclaimed. As Hall implies, the honour of the earl was
implicated in hushing the scandal, and the honour of Edward in
concealing the offence. That if ever the insult were attempted, it
must have been just previous to the earl's declared hostility is
clear. Offences of that kind hurry men to immediate action at the
first, or else, if they stoop to dissimulation the more effectually to
avenge afterwards, the outbreak bides its seasonable time. But the
time selected by the earl for his outbreak was the very worst he could
have chosen, and attests the influence of a sudden passion,--a new and
uncalculated cause of resentment. He had no forces collected; he had
not even sounded his own brother-in-law, Lord Stanley (since he was
uncertain of his intentions); while, but a few months before, had he
felt any desire to dethrone the king, he could either have suffered