Hast. Why, knows not Montagu, that of itself England is safe if true within itself ?* Mon. Yes, but the safer when 'tis back'd with France. Hast. 'Tis better using France than trusting France : Let us be back'd with God and with the seas, Which he hath given for peace impregnable. And with their helps only defend ourselves : In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies. Cla. For this one speech, Lord Hastings well deserves To have the heiress of the Lord Hungerford. K. Edw. Ay, what of that? it was my will and grant, And for this once, my will shall stand the law. Glou. And yet, methinks, your grace has not done well, To give the heir and daughter of Lord Scales, Unto the brother of your loving bride, She better would have fitted me, or Clarence, Cla. Or else you would not have bestow'd the heir K. Edw. Alas, poor Clarence! is it for a wife That thou art malcontent? I will provide thee. Cla. In choosing for yourself, you showed your judg ment, Which, being shallow, you shall give me leave, To play the brother in mine own behalf, And to that end, I shortly mind to leave you." The passages in which the power of England * See King John in Bosw., xv. 374. to maintain herself without foreign alliances, are enlarged and strengthened in this play, form those which are found in "the Contention." They are conformable to Shakspeare's general views, so far as we can collect them, and to the policy of the English court at the time of his writing. The discontent expressed at the favours bestowed upon the queen's relatives, is warranted by history. The estrangement of Warwick could not have arisen at once, or directly, out of the marriage with Lady Grey, to whose eldest daughter (afterwards the wife of Henry VII.) he stood sponsor.* I do not know whence Shakspeare took his enumeration of alliances. It is true that the son of Lord Hastings was married to the heiress of Hungerford,† that the queen's brother, Anthony Widville, married the heiress of the last Lord Scales, and that her son, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, had the heiress of Bonville. § The queen herself speaks conformably with her character: 'My lords, before it pleased his Majesty, To raise my state to title of a queen, Do me but right, and you must all confess, * W. Wyre., 505. † William, first Lord Hastings, of Ashby; married Warwick's sister. Banks, iii. 397. ‡ Ib., p.,631. § Ib., ii. 52. That I am not ignoble of descent, And meaner than myself has had like fortune. So your dislikes, to when I would be pleasing, These few lines, which, though there is not much in them, strike me as decidedly Shakspearian, are not in the old play. Elizabeth assuredly was not "ignoble of descent;" her father, Sir Richard Widville, of a family of considerable antiquity, had been ennobled by Henry VI.* previuusly to the alliance with royalty. Her mother was the widow of the Duke of Bedford, and daughter of the Earl of St. Pol, and sister to the Duchess of Burgundy. The messenger now brings from Paris the news of what we have seen (in the play) to pass there; Clarence now departs, declaring his intention to join Warwick, and to marry his other daughter. He is followed by Somerset; but Gloucester to whom this aside had already been given,― "I hear yet say not much, but think the more," refuses to join his brother, and announces in another aside his ambitious views: My thoughts aim at a further matter. I * In 1448, 26 Hen. VI. Banks, iii. 689. It may be asked how it is that Somerset, who is mentioned in the dramatis personæ as a "Lord on King Henry's side," and whose predecessor was slain fighting in that king's cause,* is placed at King Edward's court. The duke who was slain at St. Alban's, left a son Henry, who fought for Henry VI. at Towton, and escaped. He afterwards made his submission to Edward (in company with Sir Ralph Percy and others), but again revolted to King Henry when Margaret obtained her brief successes in the north.† At Hexham he was taken and beheaded. All this was really prior to Edward's marriage and to Warwick's defection; but I can find no other ground for the tergiversation of a Duke of Somerset in the play. The successor of Duke Henry was faithful to the Lancastrian side, and was beheaded after the battle of Tewksbury. Pembroke and Stafford are correctly made faithful to Edward. Montagu was the brother, and Hastings the brother-in-law of Warwick, and they were therefore reasonably suspected. * See part ii. of the play. + Hol., 281; W. Wyrc., 495-498; Leland, ii. 499. The story is not very clear. Edmund Beaufort; it is doubtful whether he was ever styled Duke of Somerset. Nicolas, ii. 593. § Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke; Humphrey, Lord Stafford, of Southwick, afterwards Earl of Devon. There is an important error in making the marriage of Clarence with the one daughter of Warwick subsequent to the marriage of Prince Edward with the other. The marriage of Prince Edward, far from being together with that of Clarence, a part of that arrangement by which the duke and Warwick became Lancastrians, was rather the cause which estranged Clarence from that party, with which his own marriage had, through Warwick, connected him. There was now a new participator in the great inheritance of the Neville's. It is obviously impossible to trace with certainty the causes of personal dissatisfaction, but there is sufficient reason to conclude that the estrangement between Edward and the man to whom he owed so much, arose out of the king's impatience, fomented by the queen's relatives, of the power and influence of Warwick, and Warwick's jealousy of the increasing favour of those relatives.* It is impossible to fix a date to the rupture. The great seal was taken from Archbishop Neville in June, 1467,† which may be deemed either a symptom or a cause of enmity. In 1468, it is supposed that there was a political difference between the king and his late favourite; the king being desirous of allying himself with the Duke of * Croyl. Cont., 542; W. Wyrc., 505-507. |