s);
while, but a few months before, had he felt any desire to dethrone the
king, he could either have suffered him to be crushed by the popular
rebellion the earl himself had quelled, or have disposed of his person
as he pleased when a guest at his own castle of Middleham. His evident
want of all preparation and forethought--a want which drove into rapid
and compulsory flight from England the baron to whose banner, a few
months afterwards, flocked sixty thousand men--proves that the cause of
his alienation was fresh and recent.

If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and
others, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such
abrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed
where it is in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl's revolt. The
next question is, who could have been the lady thus offended, whether
a niece or daughter. Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one married
brother, Lord Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters were married
to lords who remained friendly to Edward, [Except the sisters married to
Lord Fitzhugh and Lord Oxford. But though Fitzhugh, or rather his son,
broke into rebellion, it was for some cause in which Warwick did not
sympathize, for by Warwick himself was that rebellion put down; nor
could the aggrieved lady have been a daughter of Lord Oxford, for he was
a stanch, though not avowed, Lancastrian, and seems to have carefully
kept aloof from the court.] and Montagu seems to have had no daughter
out of childhood, [Montagu's wife could have been little more than
thirty at the time of his death. She married again, and had a family by
her second husband.] while that nobleman himself did not share Warwick's
rebellion at the first, but continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward.
We cannot reasonably, then, conceive the uncle to have been so much more
revengeful than the parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honour
of a daughter. It is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maiden
should have been one of Lord Warwick's daughters; and this is the
general belief. Carte plainly declares it was Isabel. But Isabel it
could hardly have been. She was then married to Edward's brother, the
Duke of Clarence, and within a month of her confinement. The earl had
only one other daughter, Anne, then in the flower of her youth; and
though Isabel appears to have possessed a more striking character of
beauty, Anne must have had no inconside