to the force which Clarence
and Warwick (though their hostility was still undeclared) had levied,
with the intent to join the defeated rebels. He sent his herald, Garter
King-at-arms, to summon the earl and the duke to appear before him
within a certain day. The time expired; he proclaimed them traitors, and
offered rewards for their apprehension. [One thousand pounds in money,
or one hundred pounds a year in land; an immense reward for that day.]

So sudden had been Warwick's defection, so rapid the king's movements,
that the earl had not time to mature his resources, assemble his
vassals, consolidate his schemes. His very preparations, upon the night
on which Edward had repaid his services by such hideous ingratitude, had
manned the country with armies against himself. Girt but with a scanty
force collected in haste (and which consisted merely of his retainers in
the single shire of Warwick), the march of Edward cut him off from the
counties in which his name was held most dear, in which his trumpet
could raise up hosts. He was disappointed in the aid he had expected
from his powerful but self-interested brother-in-law, Lord Stanley.
Revenge had become more dear to him than life: life must not be
hazarded, lest revenge be lost. On still marched the king; and the day
that his troops entered Exeter, Warwick, the females of his family,
with Clarence, and a small but armed retinue, took ship from Dartmouth,
sailed for Calais (before which town, while at anchor, Isabel was
confined of her first-born). To the earl's rage and dismay his deputy
Vauclerc fired upon his ships. Warwick then steered on towards Normandy,
captured some Flemish vessels by the way, in token of defiance to the
earl's old Burgundian foe, and landed at Harfleur, where he and his
companions were received with royal honours by the Admiral of France,
and finally took their way to the court of Louis XI. at Amboise.

"The danger is past forever!" said King Edward, as the wine sparkled in
his goblet. "Rebellion hath lost its head,--and now, indeed, and for the
first time, a monarch I reign alone!" [Before leaving England, Warwick
and Clarence are generally said to have fallen in with Anthony Woodville
and Lord Audley, and ordered them to execution, from which they were
saved by a Dorsetshire gentleman. Carte, who, though his history is
not without great mistakes, is well worth reading by those whom the
character of Lord Warwick may interest, says, that the e