At a court, over which Elizabeth Woodville exercised all the influence derived from her rank as a queen and her fascination as a woman, the Earl of Warwick was somewhat out of place. By Woodvilles, Herberts, and Howards, he was regarded with awe and envy as the haughtiest representative of England's patricians. Especially to the queen and her kinsmen his presence was irksome; and, knowing that any attempt to make "The Stout Earl" a courtier after the Woodville pattern was hopeless as to convert a bird of prey into a barn-door fowl, they were at no pains to conceal the pleasure they felt in mortifying his pride and destroying his influence. One possibility does not seem to have struck them. The Woodvilles themselves, to receive benefits, had been suddenly converted from the Red Rose to the White; Warwick, to avenge the nation's injuries and his own, might as suddenly be converted from the White Rose to the Red. Notwithstanding the exile of Lancastrians and the discontent of Yorkists, no court in Christendom was more brilliant than that of King Edward. Indeed, foreign embassadors confessed, with mingled envy and admiration, that their eyes were dazzled by the surpassing loveliness of the damsels who appeared at state balls in the Palace of Westminster; and among these fair beings, perhaps, none was more interesting than the king's sister, Margaret, youngest daughter of Richard Plantagenet and Cicely Neville. Two daughters of the Duke of York were already wives. Both had been married to English dukes--one to Exeter, another to Suffolk; and it was known that Edward, having, by his union with Elizabeth Woodville, lost the opportunity of allying himself with the Continental dynasties, contemplated for his remaining sister a marriage with some foreign prince capable of aiding him in case of a change of fortune. Suitors were not, of course, wanting when so fair a princess as Margaret Plantagenet was to be won; and it happened that while Warwick was at feud with the Woodvilles--while the populace were clamoring against the new men with whom the king's court swarmed--her hand was contended for by Louis of France, for a prince of the blood royal, and by Louis of Bruges for the Count of Charolois, who, since his interview with Margaret of Anjou, had taken up arms against Louis and defeated him in the battle of Montlhéry. The choice was a matter of some difficulty; for the Woodvilles and Warwick took different sides of the question. The queen's kindred favored the suit of the Count of Charolois; while "The Stout Earl," between whom and the Burgundian no amity existed, declared decidedly for an alliance with France. Edward was in some perplexity, but at length he yielded to the earl's arguments; and, in 1467, the frank, unsuspecting king-maker departed to negotiate a marriage with that celebrated master of kingcraft, whose maxim was, that he who knew not how to dissemble knew not how to reign.