ers (where exposed in front to Edward's
horsemen) by strong tall barricades, leaving only such an opening
as would allow one horseman at a time to pass, and defending by a
formidable line of pikes this narrow opening left for communication, and
to admit to a place of refuge in case of need. These dispositions made,
and ere yet Edward had advanced on Somerset, the earl rode to the front
of the wing under his special command, and, agreeably to the custom of
the time, observed by his royal foe, harangued the troops. Here were
placed those who loved him as a father, and venerated him as something
superior to mortal man; here the retainers who had grown up with him
from his childhood, who had followed him to his first fields of war, who
had lived under the shelter of his many castles, and fed, in that rude
equality of a more primeval age which he loved still to maintain, at his
lavish board. And now Lord Warwick's coal-black steed halted, motionless
in the van. His squire behind bore his helmet, overshadowed by the eagle
of Monthermer, the outstretched wings of which spread wide into sable
plumes; and as the earl's noble face turned full and calm upon the
bristling lines, there arose not the vulgar uproar that greeted the
aspect of the young Edward. By one of those strange sympathies which
pass through multitudes, and seize them with a common feeling, the whole
body of those adoring vassals became suddenly aware of the change which
a year had made in the face of their chief and father. They saw the
gray flakes in his Jove-like curls, the furrows in that lofty brow, the
hollows in that bronzed and manly visage, which had seemed to their rude
admiration to wear the stamp of the twofold Divinity,--Beneficence and
Valour. A thrill of tenderness and awe shot through the veins of every
one, tears of devotion rushed into many a hardy eye. No! there was not
the ruthless captain addressing his hireling butchers; it was the chief
and father rallying gratitude and love and reverence to the crisis of
his stormy fate.

"My friends, my followers, and my children," said the earl, "the field
we have entered is one from which there is no retreat; here must your
leader conquer or here die. It is not a parchment pedigree, it is not a
name derived from the ashes of dead men, that make the only charter of a
king. We Englishmen were but slaves, if, in giving crown and sceptre
to a mortal like ourselves, we asked not in return the kingly virtues.