Part 5

We are now arrived at the closing reflections of Commines upon the course which events had taken in France at this memorable crisis. "At the beginning of our affairs with the English, you may remember that the king of England had no great inclination to make his descent; and as soon as he came to Dover, and before his embarkation there, he entered into a sort of treaty with us. But that which prevailed with him to transport his army to Calais was first the solicitation of the duke of Burgundy, and the natural animosity of the English against the French, which has existed in all ages; and next to reserve to himself a great part of the money which had been liberally granted him for that expedition; for, as you have already heard, the kings of England live upon their own demesne revenue, and can raise no taxes but under the pretence of invading France. Besides, the king had another stratagem by which to content his subjects; for he had brought with him ten or twelve citizens of London, and other towns in England, all fat and jolly, the leaders of the English commons, of great power in their countries, such as had promoted the wars and had been very serviceable in raising that powerful army. The king ordered very fine tents to be made for them, in which they lay; but, that not being the kind of living they had been used to, they soon began to grow weary of the campaign, for they expected they should come to an engagement within three days of their landing, and the king multiplied their fears and exaggerated the dangers of the war, on purpose that they might be better satisfied with a peace, and aid him to quiet the murmurs of the people upon his return to England; for, since king Arthur's days, never king of England invaded France with so great a number of the nobility and such a formidable army. But, as you have heard, he returned immediately into England upon the conclusion of the peace, and then reserved for his own private use the {xlvi} greater part of the money that had been raised to pay the army; so that, in reality, he accomplished most of the designs he had in view. King Edward was not of a complexion or turn of mind to endure much hardship and labour, and such any king of England must encounter who designs to make any considerable conquest in France. Besides, our king was in a tolerable posture of defence, though he was not so well prepared in all respects as he ought to have been, by reason of the variety and multitude of his enemies. Another great object with the king of England was the arrangement of a marriage between our present king Charles the Eighth and his daughter; and this alliance, causing him to wink at several things, was a material advantage to our master's affairs.

"King Louis himself was very desirous to obtain a general peace. The vast numbers of the English had put him into great alarm; he had seen enough of their exploits in his time in his kingdom, and he had no wish to witness any more of them."

When Louis went to meet the duke of Burgundy's plenipotentiaries at a bridge half-way between Avesnes and Vervins, he took the English hostages with him, and they were present when he gave audience to the Burgundians. "One of them then told Commines that, if they had seen many such men of the duke of Burgundy's before, perhaps the peace had not been concluded so soon. The vicomte of Narbonne, (afterwards comte of Foix,) overhearing him, replied, 'Could you be so weak as to believe that the duke of Burgundy had not great numbers of such soldiers? he had only sent them into quarters of refreshment; but you were in such haste to be at home again, that six hundred pipes of wine and a pension from our king sent you presently back into England.' The Englishman was irritated, and answered with much warmth, 'I plainly see, as everybody said, that you have done nothing but cheat us. But do you call the money your king has given us a pension? It is a tribute; and, by Saint George! you may prate so much as will bring us back again to prove it.' I interrupted their altercation, and turned it into a jest; but the Englishman would not understand it so, and I informed the king of it, and his majesty was much offended with the vicomte of Narbonne."

King Edward, being highly disgusted with the duke of Burgundy's rejection of his truce, and his subsequent offer to make a distinct peace with the king of France, despatched a great favourite of his, named sir Thomas Mountgomery, to king Louis at Vervins, and he arrived whilst the negociation was proceeding with the duke of Burgundy's envoys. Sir Thomas desired, on the behalf of the king his master, that the king of France would not consent to any other truce with the {xlvii} duke than what was already made.[69] He also pressed Louis not to deliver St. Quentin into the duke's hands; and, as further encouragement, Edward offered to repass the seas in the following spring with a powerful army to assist him, provided his majesty would continue in war against the duke of Burgundy, and compensate him for the prejudice he should sustain in his duties upon wool at Calais, which would be worth little or nothing in war time, though at other times they were valued at 50,000 crowns. He proposed likewise that the king of France should pay one-half of his army, and he would pay the other himself. Louis returned Edward abundance of thanks, and made sir Thomas a present of plate: but as to the continuation of the war, he begged to be excused, for the truce with Burgundy was already concluded, and upon the same terms as those which had been already agreed to between them; only the duke of Burgundy had pressed urgently to have a separate truce for himself; which circumstance Louis excused as well as he could, in order to satisfy the English ambassador, who with this answer returned home, accompanied by the hostages. "The king (adds Commines) felt extremely surprised at king Edward's offers, which were delivered before me only, and he conceived it would be very dangerous to bring the king of England into France again, for between those two nations, when brought into contact, any trifling accident might raise some new quarrel, and the English might easily make friends again with the duke of Burgundy." These considerations greatly forwarded the conclusion of the king of France's treaty with the Burgundians.

In fact, the duke of Burgundy at last overreached his brother-in-law king Edward, for he concluded a truce with France for nine years, whilst that of England with France was for seven years only. The duke's ambassadors requested king Louis that this truce might not be proclaimed immediately by sound of trumpet, as the usual custom was, for they were anxious to save the duke's oath to king Edward (when he swore in his passion that he would not accept of the benefit of the truce until the king had been in England three months), lest Edward should think their master had spoken otherwise than he designed.

As for Edward himself, whatever selfish satisfaction he may have derived from the result of the campaign,--such as Commines has already suggested--it must have weakened his popularity both with his nobles and with his people, whilst it terminated the former cordiality that had existed with his brother of Burgundy. The king of England had now become the pensioner of France, the great {xlviii} absorbing power of that age, which was soon to swallow up England's nearest and best allies, the duchies of Burgundy and Britany.

The French pension of 50,000 crowns was, as Commines relates, punctually paid every half-year in the Tower of London; and by a treaty made in Feb. 1478-9 it was renewed for the lives of Edward and Louis, and extended for a hundred years after the death of both princes: which seemed to give it more directly the character of a tribute, a term that Commines says the English applied to it, but which the French indignantly repelled. However, after little more than four years longer, it had answered its purpose, and its payment ceased. The English voluptuary then found himself entirely outwitted by the wily Frenchman. After the duke of Burgundy's death (in 1477) and that of his only daughter the wife of the archduke Maximilian (in 1482) his grand-daughter Margaret of Austria was suddenly betrothed to the Dauphin, in the place of the lady Elizabeth of England. Louis caught at this alliance in order to detach the counties of Burgundy and Artois from the territory of the Netherlands, and annex them to the crown of France; and the turbulent citizens of Ghent, in whose keeping the children[70] of their late sovereign lady were, were ready to make this concession, without the concurrence of the children's father, in order to reduce the power of their princes. This infant bride was then only three years and a half old; and had consequently made her appearance on the stage of life subsequently to the Dauphin's former contract with the English princess.[71]

Commines describes at some length the mortification experienced by king Edward when he heard of this alliance,--"finding himself deluded in the hopes he had entertained of marrying his daughter to the Dauphin, of which marriage both himself and his queen were more ambitious than of any other in the world, and never would give credit to any man, whether subject or foreigner, that endeavoured to persuade them that our king's intentions were not sincere and honourable. For the parliament (or council) of England had remonstrated to king Edward several times, when our king was in Picardy, that after he had conquered {xlix} that province he would certainly fall upon Calais and Guines, which are not far off. The ambassadors from the duke and duchess of Austria, as also those from the duke of Bretagne, who were continually in England at that time, represented the same thing to him; but to no purpose, for he would believe nothing of it, and he suffered greatly for his incredulity. Yet I am entirely of opinion that his conduct proceeded not so much from ignorance as avarice; for he was afraid to lose his pension of fifty thousand crowns, which our master paid him very punctually, and besides he was unwilling to leave his ease and pleasures, to which he was extremely devoted."

The enervated temper of Edward's latter years is faithfully depicted in the opening lines of one of the best-known works of our great Dramatic Poet:

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front, And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds, To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. _Shakspeare's Richard the Third, act i. sc. 1._

In another place Commines attributes the death of Edward the Fourth to the vexation he conceived at the great reverse in his political prospects, which disclosed itself on his loss of the French alliance. This conclusion is probably imaginary, though Edward's death certainly occurred whilst the Dauphin's new betrothal was in progress. The treaty of Arras, by which the arrangement was made, was signed on the 23d Dec. 1482, and the lady Margaret was delivered to the French, and met the Dauphin at Amboise, on the 22d of June following. King Edward died on the intervening 9th of April, a victim, as is generally thought, to his long course of intemperate living. It is obvious, however, that the failure of the French alliance must have been a very serious loss to Edward's family, who were left defenceless on his death, although he had previously contracted his daughters to the heirs of France, Scotland, Spain, and Burgundy.

Altogether, the ruin of the house of York, if we may credit Commines, was the eventual result of the fatal compromise made in the campaign of 1475, and of {l} the enervating and corrupting influences exercised by the French pensions which were then accepted by king Edward and his ministers. Thenceforward, any hope of recovering the English provinces of France was indefinitely deferred; the very echoes of those martial glories which had once made the English name so dreadful in that country were allowed to die away; the dreams of conquest were dissipated; and the hands of Englishmen again turned to internecine contests, which resulted in the total destruction of the royal house of Plantagenet, and the ruin of a large proportion of the ancient nobility.

THE BOKE OF NOBLESSE, after the total failure of those more generous sentiments and aspirations which it was intended to propagate, at once became, what it is now, a mere mirror of by-gone days; and, considering these circumstances, we cannot be surprised that it was never again transcribed, nor found its way to the press.

It is with regret that I relinquish to some future more fortunate inquirer the discovery of the author of this composition. The manuscript from which it is printed is certainly not his autograph original; for its great inaccuracy occasionally renders the meaning almost unintelligible. And yet the corrections and insertions, which I have indicated as coming _a secunda manu_, would seem to belong to the author.

I have already, in the first page of this Introduction, intimated the possibility of the work having been composed in the lifetime of sir John Fastolfe, and merely re-edited, if we may use the term, upon occasion of the projected invasion of France in 1475. There are three circumstances which decidedly connect the book with some dependent of sir John Fastolfe:--

1. That the writer quotes sir John as "mine autour," or informant, in pp. 16 and 64, as well as tells other anecdotes which were probably received from his relation.

2. His having access to sir John's papers or books of account (p. 68); and

3. There being still preserved in the volume, bound up with its fly-leaves, the two letters, probably both addressed to Fastolfe, and one of them certainly so, which are printed hereafter, as an Appendix to these remarks.

Sir John Fastolfe is not commemorated as having been a patron of literature. In the inventory of his property which is printed in the twentieth volume of the Archaeologia, no books occur except a few missals, &c. belonging to his chapel. Though William of Worcestre, now famous for his historical collections, (which have been edited by Hearne, Nasmith, and Dallaway,) was Fastolfe's secretary, he was kept in a subordinate position, and valued for his merely clerical, {li} not his literary, services. Sir John Fastolfe's passion was the acquisition of property; whilst William of Worcestre, on his part, followed (as far as he could) the bent of his own taste, and not that of his master; being (as his comrade Henry Windsore declared) as glad to obtain a good book of French or of Poetry as his master Fastolfe was to purchase a fair manor.[72]

The translation of Cicero de Senectute, which was printed by Caxton in 1481, is indeed in the preface stated to have been translated by the ordinance and desire of the noble ancient knight sir John Fastolfe;[73] and, though Worcestre's name is not mentioned by Caxton, we may conclude that it was the same translation which from Worcestre's own memoranda we know was made by him.[74] Still, it was but a very slight deference to literature, if the ancient knight approved of his secretary's translating "Tully on Old Age," and did not make any further contribution towards its publication.

But on the particular subject of the loss of the English provinces in France, and the causes thereof, there can be no question that sir John Fastolfe, the "baron {lii} of Sillie le Guillem," once governor of Anjou and Maine, and lord of Piron and Beaumont, took the deepest interest; considering that he had spent his best days in their acquisition, administration, and defence, and that he was one of the principal sufferers by their loss. He may, therefore, well have promoted the composition of the work now before us.

William of Worcestre has the reputation of having written a memoir[75] of the exploits of sir John Fastolfe; but this is not traceable beyond the bare assertion of Bale, and a more recent misapprehension of the meaning of one of the Paston letters.

{liii}

Another person whose name has occurred as having been employed in a literary capacity for sir John Fastolfe[76] is Peter Basset[77]; who is commemorated with some parade by Bale as an historical writer, but whose writings, though quoted by Hall the chronicler, have either disappeared or are no longer to be identified.

I have, however, mentioned the names of William of Worcestre and Peter Basset only from the circumstance of their being connected with that of sir John {liv} Fastolfe; and not from there being any other presumptive proof that either of them wrote "The Boke of Noblesse." We have no known production of Basset with which to compare it; and as to Worcestre his "Collectanea" and private Memoranda can scarcely assist us in determining what his style might have been had he attempted any such work as the present.

Altogether, The Boke of Noblesse is more of a compilation than an original essay. It has apparently largely borrowed from the French; and I have already shown that it was partly derived from former works, though I cannot undertake to say to what extent that was the case. In its general character our book resembles one which was popular in the middle ages, as the _Secretum Secretorum_, falsely attributed to Aristotle,[78] and which was also known under the title _De Regimine Principum_. The popularity of this work was so great that MS. copies occur in most of our public libraries, and not less than nine English translations and six French translations are known.[79] A Scots translation by sir Gilbert de Hay, entitled "_The Buke of the Governaunce of Princis_," is contained in a MS. at Abbotsford, accompanying a version of _The Tree of Batailes_, already noticed in pp. iii. vi.

Another work of the same class is that of which Caxton published (about the year 1484) a translation entitled _The booke of the ordre of Chevalrye or Knyghthode_, and of which the Scots translation by sir Gilbert de Hay was printed for the Abbotsford Club by Beriah Botfield, esq. in 1847.

To his translations of the treatises of Cicero on Old Age and Friendship, which Caxton printed in 1481, he also appended two "declaracyons," or orations, supposed to be spoken by two noble Roman knights before the senate, in order "to know wherein Noblesse restith," or, as otherwise expressed in the title-page, "shewing wherin Honoure should reste." These imaginary orations were the work of an Italian, who styled himself, in Latin, Banatusius Magnomontanus.

After a time, the term Noblesse, which we here find synonymous with Honour, and (in p. xv. _ante_) with Chivalry, in the sense of a class or order of society, {lv} became obsolete as an English word. In the former sense, at least, it was changed into our English "Nobleness;" and about the year 1530 we find published a "Book of Noblenes," printed by Robert Wyer, without date.[80] This work had been translated from Latin into French, and "now into English by John Larke." I have not seen it, but I imagine it was a far smaller and slighter composition than the present.[81]

Ames[82] mentioned our "Boke of Noblesse" as a printed work, on the authority of Tanner's MSS., but this was evidently a misapprehension.

It only now remains that I should describe the Manuscript, which is preserved in the Royal Collection at the British Museum, and marked 18 B. XXII.

It is written in a paper book, which is formed of four quires of paper, each consisting of six sheets, and is of the size of a modern quarto volume. The quires are marked in the lower margin with the signatures of the scribe: the first quire consisting of six sheets, placed within one another, and marked j. ij. iij. iiij. v. vj.; the second also of six sheets, marked .a.i. .a.ij. .a.iij. .a.iiij. .a.v. and .a.vj.; the third, b.1. .b.3. .b.4. .b.5. .b.6.; the fourth .c.1. c.2. c.3. c.4. c.5. c.6. Thus it is seen that the sheet containing the leaf b.2. and the attached leaf (b.11. as it might be called) is lost: and this loss occasions the defects which will be found in the present volume at p. 50 and p. 68.

In front of the volume are bound three leaves of vellum, on the last of which is fastened a slip of the like material, inscribed, apparently

Edwarde w [iiij?] wych ys bold

On the back of the same leaf is the name of

_Symond'_ _Samson._

At the foot of the first paper leaf is the autograph name of

_Lumley._

_i. e._ John lord Lumley, the son-in-law of the last Earl of Arundel, into whose {lvi} possession the volume probably came by purchase in the reign of Elizabeth or James the First.

On the leaf .c.2. is the autograph name of _Robert Savylle_.

On the last leaf are many scribblings, and attempts in drawing grotesque heads and figures, apparently done about the time of queen Mary. Among them occurs again the name of

_Symeon Sampson p._

Also those of _Richarde Dyconson_ and _Edward Jones of Clemente in the Jor of_ ---- and these sentences,

John Twychener ys booke he that stellys thys booke he shall be hangid a pon a hooke and that wylle macke ys necke to brake & that wyll macke ys neck awrye

A nyes wiffe & a backe dore makythe } outon tymys a Ryche man pore. }

In the name of the father of the Sonne and the holey Gost. So be itt. Jhesus nazerinus Rex iudior[=u] fillij dei miserere mei. Jhesus.) God save the king o^r souu'ain lorde. Jhesus Nazarinus. God save king p. & mary. O gloryous Jesu o mekest Jesu o moost sweteste Jesu have m'cye on us.

Quite at the bottom of the page is the name of

_Edward Banyster._

* * * * *

LETTERS ADDRESSED TO SIR JOHN FASTOLFE.

(Royal MS. 18 B. XXII. f. 44.)

From JOHN APPULTON, captain of Pontdonne and the Haye de Puis.