The opportunity for a quarrel was too favorable to be neglected. One day, when Warwick was attending the council at Westminster, a yeoman of his retinue, having been struck by one of the royal household, wounded his assailant. The king's servants assembling at the news watched until the earl was returning from the council to his barge, and set upon him with desperate intentions. A fray ensued, and Warwick, with some difficulty, escaped in a wherry to London. Unfortunately, the mischief did not end here. The queen, having heard of the affair, acted with characteristic imprudence, and ordered Warwick to be sent to the Tower, and a cry was therefore raised that "The Foreign Woman," who had murdered "The Good Duke Humphrey," was going to murder "The Stout Earl." Warwick, however, consulted his safety by making for Yorkshire, where he took counsel with York and Salisbury. After this conference he passed over to Calais, and during the winter employed himself in embodying some veteran troops who had served under Bedford and Talbot in the wars of France. CHAPTER VIII. THE CITY AND THE COURT. One day, in the year 1456, a citizen of London, passing along Cheapside, happened to meet an Italian carrying a dagger. The citizen was a young merchant who had lately been on the Continent, and who had, in some of the Italian states, been prohibited by the magistrates from wearing a weapon, even for the defense of his life. Naturally indignant at seeing an Italian doing in the capital of England what an Englishman was not allowed to do in the cities of Italy, the merchant ventured upon stopping the foreigner and reminding him of the laws of his own country. Not having any relish for being thus challenged, the Italian answered with some degree of insolence; and the Englishman, stung to the quick, forcibly seized the dagger of the foreigner, "and," according to the chroniclers of the period, "with the same a little cut his crown and cracked his pate." Enraged at this assault, the Italian complained of the outrage to the lord mayor; and the Englishman, having been summoned to the court at Guildhall, was committed to Newgate.