When compelled to acknowledge this unwise match, Edward made the best of the matter, brought his wife to court, conferred an earldom on her father, and showered patronage upon her brothers and sisters. When Warwick ventured to remonstrate, he showed that he had no mind to be ruled any more by his too-powerful cousin, and redoubled his favours to the Woodvilles. He gave his wife's sisters as brides to the greatest peers of the realm, and made her father his Lord Treasurer. This was not pique, but policy, for Edward had come to the conclusion that the Neville clan was too strong, and had resolved to surround himself by another family connection which should owe everything to his protection (1465). For a time an open breach between the king and the King-maker was delayed, and Edward's throne seemed firmly set. His position was made surer by the capture of the old King Henry VI., who was caught in Lancashire, where he had been lurking obscurely for some time. When Edward had placed him in the Tower of London, he thought that all his troubles were over. He forgot the unhealthy condition of the realm, the blood-feuds that reigned in every county, and the general disorganization of society that had resulted from six years of civil war and from the wholesale transference of lands and property that had accompanied it. Above all, he overlooked the vast power that had fallen into the hands of the great military peers, and especially of his ambitious cousin Warwick. In 1467 Edward put his strength to the trial by dismissing all the King-maker's friends from office, and by ignominiously disavowing an embassy to France on which he had sent his cousin. From sheer desire to humiliate the great earl, he concluded an alliance with Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy, the deadly enemy of France, because he knew that Warwick was opposed to such a tie. He gave his sister Margaret to be the duke's wife, and made Warwick escort her on her embarkation for Flanders. [Sidenote: =Conspiracy of Warwick.=] The earl replied by setting treasonable intrigues on foot. He leagued himself with the king's younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, Shakespeare's "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," a discontented young man of a very unamiable character. Warwick agreed to give his eldest daughter, the heiress of his vast estates, to the duke, and they swore to compel Edward to drive away the Woodvilles, and rule only under their guidance. [Sidenote: =Defeat and capture of Edward.=]