romise
of aid and fellowship,--not before!"

Meanwhile, the king, eager to dispel thought in action, rushed in person
against the rebellious forces. Stung by fear into cruelty, he beheaded,
against all kingly faith, his hostages, Lord Welles and Sir Thomas
Dymoke, summoned Sir Robert Welles, the leader of the revolt, to
surrender; received for answer, that Sir Robert Welles would not trust
the perfidy of the man who had murdered his father!--pushed on to
Erpingham, defeated the rebels in a signal battle, and crowned his
victory by a series of ruthless cruelties, committed to the fierce and
learned Earl of Worcester, "Butcher of England." [Stowe. "Warkworth
Chronicle"--Cont. Croyl. Lord Worcester ordered Clapham (a squire to
Lord Warwick) and nineteen others, gentlemen and yeomen, to be impaled,
and from the horror the spectacle inspired, and the universal odium
it attached to Worcester, it is to be feared that the unhappy men were
still sensible to the agony of this infliction, though they appear first
to have been drawn, and partially hanged,--outrage confined only to the
dead bodies of rebels being too common at that day to have excited the
indignation which attended the sentence Worcester passed on his victims.
It is in vain that some writers would seek to cleanse the memory of this
learned nobleman from the stain of cruelty by rhetorical remarks on
the improbability that a cultivator of letters should be of a ruthless
disposition. The general philosophy of this defence is erroneous. In
ignorant ages a man of superior acquirements is not necessarily made
humane by the cultivation of his intellect, on the contrary, he too
often learns to look upon the uneducated herd as things of another clay.
Of this truth all history is pregnant,--witness the accomplished tyrants
of Greece, the profound and cruel intellect of the Italian Borgias.
Richard III. and Henry VIII. were both highly educated for their age.
But in the case of Tiptoft, Lord Worcester, the evidence of his cruelty
is no less incontestable than that which proves his learning--the
Croyland historian alone is unimpeachable. Worcester's popular name of
"the Butcher" is sufficient testimony in itself. The people are often
mistaken, to be sure, but can scarcely be so upon the one point, whether
a man who has sat in judgment on themselves be merciful or cruel.]

With the prompt vigour and superb generalship which Edward ever
displayed in war, he then cut his gory way