king's vices the land's shame!

"Nor did we act without at least revealing our intentions to my uncle
and your brother, the Lord Montagu," added the heir of Fitzhugh.

"Meanwhile," said Robin of Redesdale, "the commons were oppressed, the
people discontented, the Woodvilles plundering, and the king wasting
our substance on concubines and minions. We have had cause eno' for our
rising!" The earl listened to each speaker in stern silence.

"For all this," he said at last, "you have, without my leave or
sanction, levied armed men in my name, and would have made Richard
Nevile seem to Europe a traitor, without the courage to be a rebel! Your
lives are in my power, and those lives are forfeit to the laws."

"If we have incurred your disfavour from our over-zeal for you," said
the son of Lord Fitzhugh, touchingly, "take our lives, for they are of
little worth." And the young nobleman unbuckled his sword, and laid it
on the table.

"But," resumed Warwick, not seeming to heed his nephew's humility,
"I, who have ever loved the people of England, and before king and
parliament have ever pleaded their cause,--I, as captain-general and
first officer of these realms, here declare, that whatever motives of
ambition or interest may have misled men of mark and birth, I believe
that the commons at least never rise in arms without some excuse for
their error. Speak out then, you, their leaders; and, putting aside all
that relates to me as the one man, say what are the grievances of which
the many would complain."

And now there was silence, for the knights and gentlemen knew little
of the complaints of the populace; the Lollards did not dare to expose
their oppressed faith, and the squires and franklins were too uneducated
to detail the grievances they had felt. But then the immense superiority
of the man of the people at once asserted itself; and Hilyard, whose
eye the earl had hitherto shunned, lifted his deep voice. With clear
precision, in indignant but not declamatory eloquence, he painted the
disorders of the time,--the insolent exactions of the hospitals and
abbeys, the lawless violence of each petty baron, the weakness of the
royal authority in restraining oppression, its terrible power in aiding
the oppressor. He accumulated instance on instance of misrule; he showed
the insecurity of property, the adulteration of the coin, the burden
of the imposts; he spoke of wives and maidens violated, of industry
defrauded, of houses