him to be crushed by the popular rebellion the earl himself had
quelled, or have disposed of his person as he pleased when a guest at
his own castle of Middleham. His evident want of all preparation and
forethought--a want which drove into rapid and compulsory flight from
England the baron to whose banner, a few months afterwards, flocked
sixty thousand men--proves that the cause of his alienation was fresh
and recent.

If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and
others, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such
abrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed
where it is in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl's revolt.
The next question is, who could have been the lady thus offended,
whether a niece or daughter. Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one
married brother, Lord Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters
were married to lords who remained friendly to Edward, [Except the
sisters married to Lord Fitzhugh and Lord Oxford. But though
Fitzhugh, or rather his son, broke into rebellion, it was for some
cause in which Warwick did not sympathize, for by Warwick himself was
that rebellion put down; nor could the aggrieved lady have been a
daughter of Lord Oxford, for he was a stanch, though not avowed,
Lancastrian, and seems to have carefully kept aloof from the court.]
and Montagu seems to have had no daughter out of childhood, [Montagu's
wife could have been little more than thirty at the time of his death.
She married again, and had a family by her second husband.] while that
nobleman himself did not share Warwick's rebellion at the first, but
continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward. We cannot reasonably,
then, conceive the uncle to have been so much more revengeful than the
parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honour of a daughter. It
is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maiden should have been