fled the country. The Lancastrian restoration, thereupon carried out with cynical indifference to consistency by Warwick, could not be expected to enlist the enthusiastic support of Clarence. The remote prospect of his succession to the throne if the issue of Henry VI should fail, and even the more tangible sop by which the whole inheritance of his father was settled on him, was poor compensation for the uncomfortable discovery that he had been a mere pawn in the hands of Warwick's ambition. The proposal for him to share with Warwick the joint lieutenancy of the realm in behalf of Henry VI did not soothe his wounded vanity, though he dared not give open expression to his resentment (Polydore Vergil, p. 134; cf. Arrivall, p. 41). In the course of the winter (1470–1), if not before, during his stay in France, his mother and sisters secretly reconciled him with his exiled brother, and obtained his promise to join Edward as soon as he should land (ib.) When that happened in the spring of 1471, Clarence took care to wait until Edward was blockading Warwick in Coventry and he could bring over a force that would give weight to his accession. After, it is said, preventing Warwick from fighting by urging him to wait his arrival, he ordered the four thousand men he had levied for Henry VI to mount the white rose of York and marched them to Edward's camp at Warwick, where the two brothers had ‘right kind and loving language’ between their armies, and swore ‘perfect accord for ever hereafter’ (ib.; Warkworth, p. 15). They fought together at Barnet and at Tewkesbury, where Polydore Vergil (p. 152) represents Clarence as joining Gloucester and Hastings in murdering his brother-in-law, the unfortunate Prince Edward, in cold blood after the battle. The only support the story finds, however, in the strictly contemporary writers is Warkworth's statement that he ‘cried for succour’ to Clarence.
The crime, if crime it was, brought its own punishment in the resolute determination of Gloucester to marry the widowed Anne Neville and share her mother's inheritance with Clarence. The two brothers quarrelled bitterly, and their strife threatened the peace of the kingdom for several years. Clarence did not hesitate to carry off his young sister-in-law, over whom he perhaps claimed rights of wardship, and place her in hiding disguised as a kitchenmaid; but Gloucester discovered her in London, and put her in sanctuary at St. Martin's. The two dukes argued their case in person before the king in council with a skill and pertinacity which astonished even lawyers (Croyl. Cont. p. 557). In February 1472 Clarence was reported to be now willing to let his brother have the lady, but resolved to ‘parte no lyvelod’ (Paston Letters, iii. 38). Not even his creation, jure uxoris, as Earl of Warwick and Salisbury (25 March 1472), nor the post of great chamberlain (20 May), sufficed to remove his opposition to the partition. The act of 1473 resuming crown grants, while protecting Gloucester, gave Clarence further cause of discontent by pointedly omitting to make an exception in his favour, and thus depriving him of Tutbury and other castles. Towards the end of the year Clarence was reported to be ‘making himself big in that he can,’ and the situation was so strained that most of those at court sent for their armour (ib. iii. 98). But Edward seems to have been at last roused to decisive interference, and in the parliamentary session of 1474 a partition of the estates, which the late Earl of Warwick had acquired by his marriage with Anne Beauchamp, between her two daughters and their husbands was ordered; her own rights were thrust aside (Rot. Parl. vi. 100). The bulk of Warwick's Neville estates went to Gloucester, but Clarence received Clavering in Essex and some London property (ib. pp. 124–5). Edward also bestowed upon him the forfeited lands of the Courtenays in the south-west.
Harmony was for a time restored, and Clarence accompanied his brothers in the French expedition of 1475; but it did not last long. Clarence doubtless discovered that his past offences, though forgiven, could not be entirely forgotten, and that he was less trusted by the king than Gloucester or the queen's kinsmen. He sulked and held aloof from court. Mischief-makers carried what each of them said to the other (Croyl. Cont. p. 561). Circumstances soon gave a dangerous turn to his discontent. His wife died on 21 Dec. 1476, and the death of Charles the Bold a fortnight later made Mary of Burgundy, whose hand had once been sought for Clarence, mistress of all Charles's dominions. Clarence at once offered himself as a suitor, and enjoyed the support of her stepmother, Margaret, whose favourite brother he was. But, on political as well as personal grounds, Edward placed his veto on the match, as it would have involved him in difficulties with France, and the queen and her family are said to have pushed the claims of Earl Rivers.
Clarence revenged himself in most high-handed fashion. He had one of his late wife's attendants, Ankarette, widow of Roger Twynyho of Cayford, Somerset, through whom he no doubt wished to strike at the queen, arrested, without the formality of a
