6.
{1471.} He equipped four large vessels, in the name of some private merchants, at Terveer, in Zealand; and causing fourteen ships to be secretly hired from the Easterlings, he delivered this small squadron to Edward, who, receiving also a sum of money from the duke, immediately set sail for England.

No sooner was Charles informed of his departure than he issued a proclamation inhibiting all his subjects from giving him countenance or assistance;[*] an artifice which could not deceive the earl of Warwick, but which might serve as a decent pretence, if that nobleman were so disposed, for maintaining friendship with the duke of Burgundy.
Edward, impatient to take revenge on his enemies, and to recover his lost authority, made an attempt to land with his forces, which exceeded not two thousand men, on the coast of Norfolk; but being there repulsed, he sailed northwards, and disembarked at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire.
Finding that the new magistrates, who had been appointed by the earl of Warwick, kept the people every where from joining him, he pretended, and even made oath, that he came not to challenge the crown, but only the inheritance of the house of York, which of right belonged to him; and that he did not intend to disturb the peace of the kingdom.

His partisans every moment flocked to his standard: he was admitted into the city of York: and he was soon in such a situation as gave him hopes of succeeding in all his claims and pretensions.

The marquis of Montague commanded in the northern counties; but from some mysterious reasons, which, as well as many other important transactions in that age, no historian has cleared up, he totally neglected the beginnings of an insurrection which he ought to have esteemed so formidable.

Warwick assembled an army at Leicester, with an intention of meeting and of giving battle to the enemy; but Edward, by taking another road, passed him unmolested, and presented himself before the gates of London.