their instigation Duke Philip busied himself at the opening of 1464 as the
mediator of an alliance which would secure Lewis against it, a triple
alliance between Burgundy and the French and English kings.

[Sidenote: Warwick's Policy]

Such an alliance had now become Warwick's settled policy. In it lay the
certainty of peace at home as abroad, the assurance of security to the
throne which he had built up. While Henry was sheltered in Scotland where
French influence was supreme, and while Margaret of Anjou could look for
aid from France, the house of York could hope for no cessation of the
civil war. A union between France, Burgundy, and England left the
partizans of Lancaster without hope. When Lewis therefore summoned him to
an interview on the Somme, Warwick, though unable to quit England in face
of the dangers which still threatened from the north, promised to send his
brother the Chancellor to conduct a negotiation. Whether the mission took
place or no, the questions not only of peace with France but of a marriage
between Edward and one of the French king's kinswomen were discussed in
the English Council as early as the spring of 1464, for in the May of that
year a Burgundian agent announced to the Croys that an English embassy
would be despatched to St. Omer on the coming St. John's day to confer
with Lewis and Duke Philip on the peace and the marriage-treaty. But at
this very moment Warwick, followed by the king, was hurrying to meet a new
rising which Margaret had brought about by a landing in the north. On 15th
May the Lancastrians were finally routed by Lord Montagu in the battle of
Hexham, and the queen and her child driven over the Scotch border. The
defeat of this rising seemed at last to bring the miserable war to a
close. The victory of Hexham, with the capture of Henry that followed a
year later, successes which were accepted by foreign powers as a final
settlement of the civil strife, left Edward's hands free as they had never
been free before, while his good fortune quickened the anxiety of Lewis,
who felt every day the toils of the great confederacy of the French
princes closing more tightly round him. But Margaret was still in his
hands, and Warwick remained firm in his policy of alliance. At Michaelmas
the Earl prepared to cross the sea for the meeting at St. Omer.

[Sidenote: Edward's Marriage]

It was this moment that Edward chose for a sudden and decisive blow. Only
six days before the depa