make England a treasure-house scholarship Though much that Tiptoft wrote and said is lost, the art and diligence of Caxton have preserved for us some excellent specimens of his translations. Inspired by the Renaissance, he too did what he might to recapture the ancient classics, and to enrich his country and his country's language with some works of Cæsar and Cicero. His choice of originals was wise. The treatise De Amicitia' is packed with the splendid commonplaces which the revival of learning had made already popular. And of Cæsar's Commentaries he Englished only so "much as concernyth thys realm of England callyd Bretanyne; which is the eldest hystoryes of all other that can be found that ever wrote of thys realm of England." Thus was his patriotism as well as his In thought at one blow to sing His sojourn in Italy gave him far more than a knowledge of the Humanities. He brought back to England with him those lessons of statecraft which were taught only on the other side of the Alps. He learned from the despots with how 1 The following passage, chosen at hazard, and modernised only in its spelling, will prove how closely Tiptoft approached both his original and the English of our time: "Now, the side of the river, where his enemies stood, was pitched full of sharp piles; and beside it, at the brink of the river, were other piles covered with water. Of the which things, when Cæsar was advertised by the report of the prisoners, and by them which had left the Britons and were come to Cæsar, he sent first his men of arms, and commanded the legions should follow them without delay." There is not a touch of archaism in these lines. Plainness is their quality—a quality, above all others, necessary to the interpreter of Cæsar, who wrote as though his hand held not a pen but a sword. nice a cynicism cruelty and learning might be combined. He discovered from a hundred illustrious examples that it was in no disaccord with sovereignty to carry a cup of poison in one hand and a manuscript of Plato in the other. Though Machiavelli was born only a year before Tiptoft lost his head, Machiavellism in act was already plain to see. The pitiless dramas of lust and craft, which the wise Florentine resumed in his stern theory of life and government, were enacted, many of them, before the eyes of Tiptoft. He might, perchance, have known the famous Lord of Rimini, Sigismundo Pandolfo Malatesta, who engrossed in his single person the vices and virtues of his age. Scholar and savage, Sigismundo studied the classics and listened to the lectures of learned men with the same ardour wherewith he killed his wives or betrayed, tricked, and tortured his enemies. Trained in such a school, with such models constantly before him, Tiptoft easily acquired the hard, ruthless doctrines of the Renaissance. He arrived at the same ends by the same paths as the despots. He drove from his mind what to Malatesta would have seemed the cant of mercy and justice. Henceforth he knew but one god— success, and no other methods of worship than force, pride, and passion. The moral aspect of things no longer attracted his vision. He approved only such courses as flattered his own ambition or prospered his prince. But he was no ogre -at any rate, in his own regard. He encouraged culture and luxury like the best of the despots, he did something no doubt to soften the barbarity of English manners, and if, in obeying the behests of the King, he showed himself as graciously cynical as his Italian exemplars, he did not shirk the reprisal which he knew must come. A terror to others, he watched without terror his own approaching doom. Tiptoft returned from Italy in the nick. The battle of Towton, which had devastated the houses of the nobles, had brought a grateful peace to the kingdom. On no field had ever been poured forth so much English blood. Victors and vanquished were of one nation, many of them near in alliance. As an eloquent historian says, not a single "stranger of name was present at our III. battles, as if we had disdained to conquer or perish by other weapons than our own. The carnage which had established Edward IV. firmly on the throne left many gaps in the ranks of his advisers, and Tiptoft was abundantly justified of his prudence. Absent in Italy, he had been spared the necessity of taking this side or that, he had borne no burden in council-chamber or on the field of battle. He was, there were showered upon him. Chieffore, free to take the reward Justice for life of North Wales of abstinence without jealousy Constable of the Tower, Conor suspicion. At a Court which stable of England, Knight of he had not frequented he might the Garter, Lord Steward of expect to find few enemies. the King's Household, ComMoreover, he was called to missioner to keep guard by serve a Prince who, uncon- Sea, Chancellor and Deputy of sciously perhaps, had formed Ireland, these are some of the himself upon the Italian model. titles conferred upon him by a If guiltless of the crimes which generous sovereign. Above all, blackened the fame of Mala- it was his duty to execute the testa, Edward IV. was in other summary justice of the King, respects the fine flower of des- and this duty he performed potism. Courageous and cruel, with a truculent severity which munificent and pleasure-loving, won him the hatred of the he held firmly by the precepts people, even when no fault which Machiavelli was present- might be found with his senly to formulate. He believed, tences. He was accused of at any rate in practice, that substituting the Paduan for the the only way to render his foes English law, and as he did not innocuous was to extirpate scruple to send many a noble them, that it was no part of a rebel to the scaffold without the king's honour to keep faith formality of trial before their with an adversary, that pro- peers, his accusers had right mises might be given without on their side. His long sojourn intent of performance, or that abroad, his intimate acquaintVows might be forsworn for ance with the practices of profit or revenge. If Tiptoft Italy, gave him a sinister found in Edward IV. an apt aspect in the popular regard, pupil for the lessons of Italian and he soon became a legend diplomacy, Edward IV. wel- of lawless ferocity. Wherever comed Tiptoft as a willing in- he went, he was hailed as the strument of his schemes. He Butcher of England, and though advanced him with an ominous he did much to earn the title, rapidity. A bitter Nemesis it is not easy to separate his could but await this sudden responsibility from the King's.1 favourite of fortune. Honours What he did, he did by the 1 In the 'Mirror of Magistrates' the case is put as leniently as possible for Tiptoft : "And for my goods and livinges were not small, The gapers for them bare the world in hand The executions done within the land: For this did such as did not understand Mine enemies' drift, thinke all reports were true: King's command, which he dared not disobey, and with the King he reaped the harvest of hate, sown by the hand of tyranny. It is not plain that he and the King could have taken any other course. If they spared the lives of their adversaries, these adversaries speedily armed themselves again. If they punished them by death, they incurred the hatred of peaceable men. But it was Tiptoft's fault that he passed his sentences with alacrity and saw them carried out with a merciless cruelty. His first victims were the Earl of Oxford, the Lord Aubrey, his son, and son, and Sir Thomas Tottenham, who, after the semblance of a trial, in 1462, were carried to a scaffold on Tower Hill, eight feet high, and there had "their heads smitten off, that all men might see." Though there was no doubt concerning the treachery of Oxford and his friends, even at that turbulent time the swiftness with which justice was done and the public ferocity of the judge exasperated the citizens, who henceforth were ready to believe that Tiptoft was a public enemy. But for the execution of Sir Ralph Grey not even Tiptoft could incur reproach. For Sir Ralph was a traitor, who had opened the doors of Bamborough Castle to the enemy. He knew that he might expect no mercy, as he deserved none. The herald, who summoned the Castle to surrender, reserved two persons, Sir Humphrey Neville and Sir Ralph Grey, "with Tip out any redemption." toft's duty, then, was clear. When the Castle was taken by assault he had but to pass sentence, and this he did with a pomp, eloquence, and moderation which do not suggest the Butcher of England. "Sir Ralph Grey," said he, "thou hast taken the order of Knighthood of the Bath, and any so taking that order ought to keep the faith the which he takes. Therefore remember thou the law!" After this impressive exordium Tiptoft proceeds to declare that Sir Ralph had drawn arms upon the King, had withstood and made fences against his Majesty, that according to the royal ordinance he should have had his spurs stricken off by the hard heels with the hand of the master cook, that his proper coat-of-arms should have been torn off his body, and that he should have been degraded of his worship, noblesse, and arms, as of his order of knighthood. Nevertheless, he was pardoned the ceremonies of degradation, "for his noble grandfather, the which suffered trouble for the King's most noble predecessors. And Tiptoft closed his harangue in the familiar terms. "Then, Sir Ralph Grey,' Grey," said he, "this shall be thy penance,-thou shalt go on thy feet unto the town's end, and there thou shalt be laid down and drawn to a scaffold made for thee, and that thou shalt have thine head smitten off thy body, to be buried in the freres; thy head where it pleaseth the King." No fault can be found either made sharp at the both ends, whereof one end was put in at the buttocks, and the other end their heads were put upon." It is not surprising that this brutality horrified the people, and that ever after the Earl of Worcester was "greatly behated." His victims, no doubt, deserved to die the death. They did not deserve the outrage of impalement,an outrage which was contrary to the law of England, and which suggested to the popular imagination the unknown, unspeakable cruelties of Italy. with the manner or the justice of this sentence. Not even a partisan could say a word in defence of the punishment which Tiptoft meted out to the friends of Warwick, who in 1470 fell into the hands of the King at Southampton. Commanded to sit in judgment of such men as were taken in the ships, he ordered "twenty persons of gentlemen and yeomen to be hanged, drawn, quartered, and headed; and after that they hanged up by the legs, and a stake was Harsh as Tiptoft showed himself in the judgment-seat, he revealed but a slender talent on the field of battle. He was IV. not born to carry arms. When he accompanied the King on his northward expedition, his greatest service was done in the swift punishment of offenders. Appointed in 1463 to guard the sea and to prevent the escape of Queen Margaret, he ordained a great army and a great navy by land and water. And all in vain! He and his crews did but consume their stores and come out of the adventure empty-handed and disgraced. "O infelix successus opprobrium et confusio!" exclaims the old Latin chronicler with a shame of which Tiptoft himself was insensible. He, indeed, rode arrogantly upon the topmost wave of fortune, and recked not not of failure. His pride and influence increased in spite of de Was feats on shore and sea. |