fought, for the utter want of all nobleness and chivalry in the contest
itself, of all great result in its close. And it is this moral
disorganization that expresses itself in the men whom the civil war left
behind it. Of honour, of loyalty, of good faith, Warwick knew nothing. He
had fought for the House of Neville rather than for the House of York, had
set Edward on the throne as a puppet whom he could rule at his will, and
his policy seemed to have gained its end in leaving the Earl master of the
realm.

[Sidenote: Edward the Fourth]

In the three years which followed Towton the power of the Nevilles
overshadowed that of the king. Warwick was now all-powerful in the state,
but the cessation of the war was the signal for a silent strife between
the Earl and his young sovereign. In Edward indeed Warwick was to meet not
only a consummate general but a politician whose subtlety and rapidity of
conception were far above his own. As a mere boy Edward had shown himself
among the ablest and the most pitiless of the warriors of the civil war.
He had looked on with cool ruthlessness while grey-haired nobles were
hurried to the block. The terrible bloodshed of Towton woke no pity in his
heart; he turned from it only to frame a vast bill of attainder which
drove twelve great nobles and a hundred knights to beggary and exile. When
treachery placed his harmless rival in his power he visited him with cruel
insult. His military ability had been displayed in his rapid march upon
London, the fierce blow which freed him from his enemy in the rear, the
decisive victory at Towton. But his political ability was slower in
developing itself. In his earliest years he showed little taste for the
work of rule. While Warwick was winning triumphs on battle-field after
battle-field, the young king seemed to abandon himself to a voluptuous
indolence, to revels with the city wives of London, and to the caresses of
mistresses like Jane Shore. Tall in stature and of singular beauty, his
winning manners and gay carelessness of bearing secured Edward a
popularity which had been denied to nobler kings. When he asked a rich old
lady for ten pounds towards a war with France, she answered, "For thy
comely face thou shalt have twenty." The king thanked and kissed her, and
the old woman made her twenty forty. In outer appearance indeed no one
could contrast more utterly with the subtle sovereigns of his time, with
the mean-visaged Lewis of France or the