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As old Lancaster resumed his seat, he smiled grimly under his white beard, and muttered to himself "Sans doute!" "Sir Edward of Langley, Earl of Rutland!" Constance's brother was similarly led up by his father and his cousin, the newly-created Duke, and he resumed his princely seat, Duke of Aumerle, or Albemarle. "Sir Thomas de Holand, Earl of Kent, Baron Wake!"
Even after a lifelong study of this as of all other plays of Shakespeare, it is for me at least impossible to determine what I doubt if the poet could himself have clearly defined the main principle, the motive and the meaning of such characters as York, Norfolk, and Aumerle.
When Lancaster's rebellion broke out, Aumerle merely waited to make sure which was the winning side, and then went over to his cousin Henry without a thought of the Sovereign who had styled him "brother," and had been the author of all his prosperity. In the midst of the tumult his patent as Constable of the Tower was once more renewed, August 31st.
At the coronation of Henry the Fourth, Aumerle was one of the peers who held the canopy. He is named as one of those who requested the usurper to put the King to death. How he betrayed his friends at Maidenhead Bridge is recounted in the text. Henry the Fourth trusted Aumerle as he trusted few others, in a manner incomprehensible to any one acquainted with the character of either.
But there was a seventh person present, whom it is incomprehensible that any of the six should have been willing to trust. This was Aumerle, vexed with the loss of his title, and always as ready to join a conspiracy at the outset as he was to play the traitor at the close.
On the evening of the day on which Lord Reckage died, Aumerle and Ullweather called at Vigo Street as a preliminary move in their new plan of campaign. But Robert was not there. He sat all that night, a solitary watcher, in the chamber of death. His affection for his old pupil was something stronger than a brother's love.
An hour later, when his story was told, and his pardon solemnly promised, York and his train came lumbering to the gate, to find his news forestalled. When Henry had read the agreement, which York brought with him, he set out immediately for London, while Aumerle calmly repaired to his tryst at Colnbrook. Here Exeter was the first to join him.
"I know it," said Randall Hatchett. "Why didn't you speak to him?" asked Aumerle. "Because," said Bradwyn, "our good Hatchett is not so sure of himself that he can afford to be civil even to a President out of fashion!" No one smiled except Hatchett himself, because each one felt it was unwise to encourage Bradwyn's peculiar humour.
Hereford and Aumerle were the two to lead up the candidate. He was the son of the King's half-brother, and was reputed the handsomest of the nobles: a tall, finely-developed man, with the shining golden hair of his Plantagenet ancestors. He was created Duke of Surrey. Hereford sat down, and Surrey and Aumerle conducted John Earl of Huntingdon to the throne.
Maude knew most of them by sight, but as her eyes roved here and there, they lighted on a young man coming up towards the dais whom she did not know. He stopped almost close to her, to speak to Aumerle, now Duke of York, so that Maude had time and opportunity to study him. He was dressed in the height of the fashion.
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