in danger. There is a band of armed men in ambush
near the house."

The king was greatly alarmed at hearing this. He immediately stole out
of the house, mounted his horse, and, with two or three followers,
rode away as fast as he could ride. He continued his journey all
night, and in the morning arrived at Windsor Castle.

Then followed new negotiations between Warwick and the king, with
mutual reproaches, criminations, and recriminations without number.
Edward insisted that treachery was intended at the house to which he
had been invited, and that he had barely escaped, by his sudden
flight, from falling into the snare. But Warwick and his friends
denied this entirely, and attributed the flight of the king to a
wholly unreasonable alarm, caused by his jealous and suspicious
temper. At last Edward suffered himself to be reassured, and then came
new treaties and a new reconciliation.

This peace was made in the fall of 1469, and in the spring of 1470 a
new insurrection broke out. The king believed that Warwick himself,
and Clarence, were really at the bottom of these disturbances, but
still he was forced to send them with bodies of troops to subdue the
rebels; he, however, immediately raised a large army for himself, and
proceeded to the seat of war. He reached the spot before Warwick and
Clarence arrived there. He gave battle to the insurgents, and defeated
them. He took a great many prisoners, and beheaded them. He found, or
pretended to find, proof that Warwick and Clarence, instead of
intending to fight the insurgents, had made their arrangements for
joining them on the following day, and that he had been just in time
to defeat their treachery. Whether he really found evidence of these
intentions on the part of Warwick and Clarence or not, or whether he
was flushed by the excitement of victory, and resolved to seize the
occasion to cut loose at once and forever from the entanglement in
which he had been bound, is somewhat uncertain. At all events, he now
declared open war against Warwick and Clarence, and set off
immediately on his march to meet them, at the head of a force much
superior to theirs.

Warwick and Clarence marched and countermarched, and made many
manoeuvres to escape a battle, and during all this time their
strength was rapidly diminishing. As long as they were nominally on
the king's side, however really hostile to him, they had plenty of
followers; but, now that they were in open war against hi