r the
city of York, and was said to have beheaded their leader. But the spirit
of discontent was only fanned by an adverse wind. The popular hatred to
the Woodvilles was so great, that in proportion as Edward advanced to
the scene of action, the country rose in arms, as Raoul de Fulke had
predicted. Leaders of lordly birth now headed the rebellion; the sons
of the Lords Latimer and Fitzhugh (near kinsmen of the House of Nevile)
lent their names to the cause and Sir John Coniers, an experienced
soldier, whose claims had been disregarded by Edward, gave to the
insurgents the aid of a formidable capacity for war. In every mouth was
the story of the Duchess of Bedford's witchcraft; and the waxen figure
of the earl did more to rouse the people than perhaps the earl himself
could have done in person. [See "Parliamentary Rolls," vi. 232, for the
accusation of witchcraft, and the fabrication of a necromantic image
of Lord Warwick, circulated against the Duchess of Bedford. She
herself quotes and complains of them.] As yet, however, language of
the insurgents was tempered with all personal respect to the king; they
declared in their manifestoes that they desired only the banishment
of the Woodvilles and the recall of Warwick, whose name they used
unscrupulously, and whom they declared they were on their way to meet.
As soon as it was known that the kinsmen of the beloved earl were in the
revolt, and naturally supposed that the earl himself must countenance
the enterprise, the tumultuous camp swelled every hour, while knight
after knight, veteran after veteran, abandoned the royal standard. The
Lord d'Eyncourt (one of the few lords of the highest birth and greatest
following over whom the Neviles had no influence, and who bore the
Woodvilles no grudge) had, in his way to Lincolnshire,--where his
personal aid was necessary to rouse his vassals, infected by the common
sedition,--been attacked and wounded by a body of marauders, and thus
Edward's camp lost one of its greatest leaders. Fierce dispute broke out
in the king's councils; and when the witch Jacquetta's practices against
the earl travelled from the hostile into the royal camp, Raoul de Fulke,
St. John, and others, seized with pious horror, positively declared
they would throw down their arms and retire to their castles, unless
the Woodvilles were dismissed from the camp and the Earl of Warwick was
recalled to England. To the first demand the king was constrained to
yield; w