igh-spirited
was thrown. Edward was thoroughly the cavalier, deeply imbued with the
romance of chivalry, and, while making the absolute woman his plaything,
always treated the ideal woman as a goddess. A refined gallantry, a
deferential courtesy to dame and demoiselle, united the language of
an Amadis with the licentiousness of a Gaolor; and a far more
alluring contrast than the court of Charles II. presented to the grim
Commonwealth seduced the vulgar in that of this most brave and most
beautiful prince, when compared with the mournful and lugubrious circles
in which Henry VI. had reigned and prayed. Edward himself, too, it
was so impossible to judge with severe justice, that his extraordinary
popularity in London, where he was daily seen, was never diminished by
his faults; he was so bold in the field, yet so mild in the chamber;
when his passions slept, he was so thoroughly good-natured and social,
so kind to all about his person, so hearty and gladsome in his talk and
in his vices, so magnificent and so generous withal; and, despite his
indolence, his capacities for business were marvellous,--and these last
commanded the reverence of the good Londoners; he often administered
justice himself, like the caliphs of the East, and with great acuteness
and address. Like most extravagant men, he had a wholesome touch
of avarice. That contempt for commerce which characterizes a modern
aristocracy was little felt by the nobles of that day, with the
exception of such blunt patricians as Lord Warwick or Raoul de Fulke.
The great House of De la Pole (Duke of Suffolk), the heir of which
married Edward's sister Elizabeth, had been founded by a merchant of
Hull. Earls and archbishops scrupled not to derive revenues from what
we should now esteem the literal resources of trade. [The Abbot of
St. Alban's (temp. Henry III.) was a vendor of Yarmouth bloaters. The
Cistercian Monks were wool-merchants; and Macpherson tells us of
a couple of Iceland bishops who got a license from Henry VI. for
smuggling. (Matthew Paris. Macpherson's "Annals of Commerce," 10.)
As the Whig historians generally have thought fit to consider the
Lancastrian cause the more "liberal" of the two, because Henry IV. was
the popular choice, and, in fact, an elected, not an hereditary king, so
it cannot be too emphatically repeated, that the accession of Edward IV.
was the success of two new and two highly--popular principles,--the one
that of church reform, the other