party, in the destruction of which his whole life had
previously been employed.

Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosity
is the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, and
seeks to detect and to guess the truth. And then Fiction, accustomed
to deal with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance of
a Fact which the modern historian has been contented to place amongst
dubious and collateral causes of dissension. We find it broadly and
strongly stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attempted
the virtue of one of the earl's female relations. "And farther it erreth
not from the truth," says Hall, "that the king did attempt a 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 intention