Meanwhile, it became the interest of the king’s brothers to act as mediators between Edward and his powerful subject.  The Duke of Clarence was anxious to wed the proud earl’s equally proud elder daughter Isabel; the hand of the gentle Anne was sought more secretly by Richard of Gloucester.  At last the peacemakers effected their object.

But the peace was only partial, the final rupture not far off.  The king restored to Warwick the governorship of Calais—­outwardly as a token of honour; really as a means of ridding himself of one whose presence came between the sun and his sovereignty.  Moreover, he forbade the marriage between Clarence and Isabel, to the mortification of his brother, the bitter disappointment of Isabel herself, and the chagrin of the earl.

However, Edward had once more to experience indebtedness at the hands of the man whom he treated so badly, but whose devotion to him it seemed that nothing could destroy.  There arose the Popular Rebellion, and Warwick only arrived at Olney, where the king was sorely pressed, in time to save him and to secure, on specific terms, a treaty of peace.

Again Edward’s relief was but momentary.  Proceeding to Middleham as Warwick’s guest, when he beheld the extent of the earl’s retinue his jealous passions were roused more than ever before; and he formed a plan not only for attaching to himself the allegiance of the barons, but of presenting the earl to the peasants in the light of one who had betrayed them.

Smitten, too, by the charms of the Lady Anne, he meditated a still more unworthy scheme.  Dismissing the unsuspecting Warwick to the double task of settling with the rebels and calling upon his followers to range themselves under the royal banner, he commanded Anne’s attendance at court.

Events leading to the final breach between king and king-maker followed rapidly.  One night the Lady Anne fled in terror from the Tower—­fled from the dishonouring addresses of her sovereign, now grown gross in his cups, however brave in battle.  The news reached Warwick too late for him to countermand the messages he had sent to his friends on the king’s behalf.  And, so rapid were Edward’s movements that Warwick, his eyes at length opened to Edward’s true character, was compelled to flee to the court of King Louis at Amboise, there to plan his revenge, hampered in doing so by his daughter Isabel’s devotion to Clarence, who followed him to France, and by the fact that, in regard to his own honour, he could communicate to none save his own kin the secret cause of his open disaffection.

IV.—­The Return of the King-Maker

There was no love between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou.  But his one means of exacting penance from Edward was alliance with the unlucky cause of Lancaster.  And this alliance was brought about by the suave diplomacy of Louis, and the discovery of the long-existing attachment between the Lady Anne and her old play-fellow, Edward, the only son of Henry and Margaret, and the hope of the Red Rose.