THE ROYAL FAMILIES OF ENGLAND

Henry the Sixth

HENRY VI was hardly nine months old when his father died. The Duke of Gloucester preferred his claims to the regency as being the nearest of kin to his nephew in the absence of the Duke of Bedford, and because the late king had appointed him to that charge. The lords, to whom alone belonged the cognizance of that matter, replied that such claims were unfounded in law or precedent; but they appointed him president of the council in Bedford’s absence, with the title of “protector of the realm and church of England.” The members of the council they also named, and the commons, on its being notified to them, gave their sanction to the proceeding.

The regency of France had been offered, as the late king desired, to the Duke of Burgundy. On his refusal it was given by Charles to the Duke of Bedford; but Charles died Soon after, and the dauphin was crowned king of France, at Chartres, under the name of Charles VII. On the other hand, Burgundy and the Duke of Bretagne joined Bedford in supporting the claims of the young Henry. The flames of war were rekindled, and amidst the usual scenes of havoc, one brilliant event distinguished the campaign. At the battle of Crevant on the Yonne, the French, with their Scotch allies, sustained a signal defeat, the latter being almost annihilated. To make amends for this loss fresh reinforcements came from Scotland, and the English, seeing the necessity of breaking up this union between the two countries, proposed to King James to treat for his release from captivity. After much negotiation an agreement was made by which, in addition to the payment of forty thousand pounds by certain installments, James should forbid his subjects entering into the service of France. Yet farther to conciliate the Scottish king, they gave to him in marriage Jane, descended by her father, the Earl of Somerset, from Edward III., and by her mother, Margaret Holland, from Edward I.

In France the new campaign produced no permanent results. If Arthur, the Duke of Bretagne’s brother, with several Burgundian lords, passed over to Charles and made some conquests, the Duke of Bedford defeated a French army under Alençon with great slaughter. In this action the Scots were so reduced that they never afterwards formed a distinct corps in the service of their allies. Had not Bedford’s policy been thwarted by the ambition of his brother Gloucester, that sagacious leader might yet have realized the schemes of the late sovereign. Jacqueline of Bavaria, heiress of Hainault, Holland, Zealand, and Friesland, had fled from her husband, John Duke of Brabant, and married Gloucester, under pretence that the former union was illegal from the consanguinity of the parties. So long as the late king lived he had prevented this match, as being the sure means of alienating the Duke of Burgundy, who espoused the cause of John. His death left Gloucester more free to act, and having married Jacqueline, he laid claim to her dominions.

This roused the anger of Burgundy. He sent forces to aid his cousin, and only withdrew them upon a challenge from Gloucester, which, though accepted, never came to a decision. Eventually the towns of Hainault returned to the obedience of the duke, and Jacqueline was delivered to the Burgundians to be detained prisoner, till the pontiff should pronounce upon the validity of her marriage. She escaped however to her subjects in Holland, which thus for two years became the theatre of war. Her first husband died, but being slenderly supported by aid from Gloucester, who was held in check by the council, she was at last forced to yield to the Duke of Burgundy. The strangest part of this story is, that Gloucester all the time was deeply enamored of the profligate Eleanor Cobham, and the wives of the principal London citizens, headed by a lady of the name of Stokes, presented a petition to the lords against him for neglecting his lawful wife Jacqueline. To embroil things yet more came the rivalry between the Duke and Henry Beaufort, Bishop of ‘Winchester, second son to John of Ghent, by Catharine Swynford, and, consequently, uncle to the regent and his brother. By frugality he had amassed much wealth, which he lent freely both to the late and present king, and in his office of chancellor had opposed Gloucester’s plans in regard to Jacqueline. At length their quarrels recalled the regent. By his earnest endeavors, a hollow reconciliation was effected between the disputants, but the bishop, it is not known why, resigned the seals, and in the following year accompanied Bedford to Calais, where he received the welcome news that he had been named a cardinal by Pope Martin. Some writers have said that Beaufort was jealous of his nephew’s ambition, and suspected he meant to render himself independent of the council.

In France things were far from favourable to the English interests. The Duke of Bretagne had gone over to Charles, and the regent had to lay waste the country, defeating the Bretons in several battles, before he was won back to his former allies. Not content with this, against the advice of the Duke of Bedford, the English council of war resolved to cross the Loire and attack Charles in the provinces that had always adhered to him. Orleans was laid siege to by Montague, Earl of Salisbury, who was killed almost at the commencement, and succeeded in his command by the Earl of Suffolk, who after a tedious blockade, during the winter, had reduced the place to great straits. The fall of the city was confidently expected, when it was saved by an event, which coloured up, as it has been by various writers, seems rather to belong to romance than to history. There was a peasant girl, by name Joan d’Acre, about twenty years old, who lived as servant with an innkeeper in the small town of Neufchateau. In the beginning of March, this woman suddenly appeared at the palace, dressed as a man, and attended by two esquires and four servants, announcing herself as the deliverer of France. According to her own account, the saints Margaret and Catharine had commissioned her from the Almighty to that office, under which conviction she had first applied to the governor Vaucouleur, and was by him sent to Charles at his residence of Chinon. The courtiers laughed at this announcement; the council, as became grave statesmen, deliberated on the matter, and concluded to introduce her to the king, when she addressed him with the inspired air of a prophetess, declaring her name and mission. Charles thanked her zeal, without farther committing himself, till he saw what belief she found amongst the people. In the meantime a thousand stories were circulated, well adapted to work upon the popular credulity. Though she had never before seen the king, she had pointed him out among the courtiers; she had revealed to him things which naturally could only be known to himself; she had accurately described and demanded a sword deposited in the church of St. Catharine of Fierbois, which had for many years passed out of notice. Divines and lawyers who had sate in committee at Poitiers, to examine these miracles, found them true, and when did the people at large disbelieve an absurdity? Charles ratified this well got-up scene with the royal sanction. It can not be denied either that Joanna was admirably qualified for the part she had undertaken, having her full share of that fanaticism which so wonderfully believes the lies of its own creation, besides that from her former employment, she could manage a horse with ease and boldness. Armed at all points like a knight, and mounted on a grey charger, she rode forth with her banner displayed before her, whereon was painted, amidst a profusion of fleur-de-lys, the Almighty under the form of an old man bearing the globe in his hand.

The result showed how well the inventors of this scheme had understood their age. The spirits of the one side were raised, the courage of the other depressed, by this celestial missionary. While the attention of the besiegers was directed to another quarter by a false sortie, the Maid, as she was now called, assisted by the military skill of La Hire, the French general, introduced a plentiful supply of provisions into the city, at a time when it was on the point of surrendering from famine, and this exploit established her reputation. The officers, affecting to follow, while in reality they dictated, her inspired counsels, led their soldiers from victory to victory, ‘till the Earl of Suffolk, unable to subdue the superstitious terrors of his soldiers, resolved to give up the siege. Having burnt his works, the fruit of seven months’ labour, he retired unpursued, and distributed his men in the neighbouring fortresses. No sooner was the English army thus broken up, than the enemy besieged the earl in Jargeau. In the assault the Maid of Orleans-she had now gained this additional title—was precipitated from a high wall into the ditch; but the French poured into the place through an unguarded corner; three hundred of the garrison fell; the rest, with the Earl of Suffolk, were made prisoners. Other fortresses experienced the same fate, and Talbot, who had succeeded to the command, was defeated at Patroy.

Encouraged by these successes, Charles resolved to be crowned at Rheims, which, having expelled its Burgundian garrison, received him with joy, and the coronation was performed, the Maid with her banner unfurled standing by the king’s side. The late misfortunes of the English served only to stimulate Bedford to fresh exertions. He withdrew five thousand men from his Norman garrisons, obtained an equal number from his uncle Beaufort, and went in pursuit of Charles. In the neighbourhood of Senlis the two armies unexpectedly came in sight of each other, the English being much inferior in numbers to their enemy. Charles consulted the Maid. Unluckily, since the entrance into Rheims, her prophetic powers had so far deserted her, that she knew not what to reply, at one moment advising an engagement, at another dissuading him from the hazard. In this state of doubt two days were spent. On the third, the armies after a few sharp skirmishes separated, as if by mutual consent, the duke hastening into Normandy, and repulsing the constable, who had penetrated into that dutchy. The inspiration of the Maid returned upon Bedford’s absence. At her suggestion Charles made an attempt upon the capital, but after an action of four hours he was obliged to retire, and passed the winter at Bourges.

During the winter, Charles endeavoured to detach Burgundy from the English interest, but was defeated in the attempt by the influence of the duke’s sister, the wife of Bedford. He was bought over by the promise of twenty-five thousand nobles, in consideration of which he engaged to assume the command of the united army on the return of spring. His first operation was the siege of Compègne. The Maid undertook to raise it, and found the end of her career. Being dragged from her horse by an archer, she surrendered to the bastard of Vendome, when she was conducted to the quarters of John of Luxemburgh, by whom after some months she was sold to the regent. From that moment Charles abandoned the poor creature to her fate. What follows must be judged of by the manners of that age, not of ours. The captor might keep his prisoner confined so long as he pleased, liberate him for money, sell him to another, or put him to death. Joan herself only a short time before had ordered the execution of the Burgundian leader Franquet. There was nothing, therefore, contrary to justice, as it was then understood, had the English general, without any farther ceremony taken her life at once, as being a vanquished enemy. He took another course. At his suggestion the Bishop of Beauvais, in whose diocese she had been captured, claimed a right to try her at his tribunal on a charge of sorcery, a charge which from all existent records was evidently believed by her judges. For sixteen days the court endeavoured to make her confess this imputation, but she still maintained her divine mission, and that she had often been favoured by visits from the archangel Michael, and the saints Margaret and Catharine. When, however, the fatal sentence was about to be pronounced, a sudden fit of terror overcame her, she burst into tears, and admitted all that was desired. But in the solitude of her dungeon, the old enthusiasm again awoke. She recanted her confession, nor was it till she had seen the fires of the executioner kindled at her feet, that nature once more prevailed over the pride of the impostor or the madness of the fanatic. Whether deluder or deluded, or, as is most probable, an indefinite mixture of the two, she burst into loud exclamations, calling on Christ for mercy, and by the agony of her terrors, showing how completely all enthusiasm was extinguished. This cruel scene was acted in the market-place of Rouen, nearly a twelvemonth after her capture, in the presence of thousands.

As the ceremony of coronation was in those days held to consecrate the person so honoured, Bedford resolved that his nephew should also be crowned at Rheims. For this purpose he, in the first place, received the regal sanction at Westminster, being then only eight years old, and as a necessary consequence, the Duke’s title of protector merged into that of prime counsellor. Accompanied by the Cardinal of Winchester, the young Henry went to Rouen, while the Duke of Gloucester remained behind as guardian of the realm. But it was found impossible to penetrate to Rheims, and the ceremony therefore took place at Paris in the November of 1431.

For two years the war languished, ‘till the death of the Duchess of Bedford dissolved the only tie that had held together her husband, and the Duke of Burgundy. Quarrels soon arose between them, of which Charles was not slow to avail himself, and the pontiff with the leading powers of Europe took this opportunity to mediate a general peace. It soon appeared that the French had gained over the mediators to their own side. The English were censured for inflexibility, and peace was proclaimed between France and Burgundy, the Cardinals having absolved the latter from the oath of alliance with England.

For ten years the war was now carried on with no important results, when at length, an armistice was concluded for two years. While these affairs had been transacting on the continent— and we must now go back twenty years—events of more or less importance had occurred in England. James of Scotland had renewed the ancient league between his crown and France, and agreed to give the princess of Scotland in marriage to the dauphine when the parties should attain the age of puberty.

The French now reminded him of his engagements with themselves, while Lord Scroop on the part of England solicited the hand of the princess for his own monarch, offering to cede the towns of Roxburgh and Berwick. Divided between the two proposals, the Scots accepted neither, ‘till the assistance lent by Sir Robert Ogle to a Scottish lord in arms against his sovereign re-opened the breach, and the princess was sent to France, having the good fortune to escape the English fleet that was cruising to intercept her. Shortly afterwards James was murdered, and a truce was concluded with Henry ‘till 1447 on the part of his son, James II., then in his fifth year.

For many years the national councils were distracted by the rivalry of the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort. In the affair of the Duke of Orleans, they, as usual, adopted opposite sides. Gloucester opposed his liberation; the cardinal, who always advocated peace, as strongly argued in favour of his freedom, and succeeded. The duke was fated to sustain a yet worse disgrace by the folly of his: new wife, dame Eleanor Cobham, who was addicted to necromancy, and had employed Bolingbroke and Southwell to discover the duration of the king’s life, her husband being presumptive heir to the crown. In this matter Marjory Jourdemaine, the witch of Eyre, was implicated. She was condemned and burnt; Southwell died in the Tower before his trial; Bolingbroke was convicted and executed, acknowledging the charge of necromancy; dame Eleanor submitted to the mercy of the court, and was sentenced, on three days of the week to walk hoodless and bearing a lighted taper in her hand through the streets of London, after which she was delivered to the custody of Sir Thomas Stanley with an annuity of one hundred marks for her support.

It was easily seen that whatever woman married Henry would in all likelihood obtain the controul of his weak and facile mind. His counsellors directed his attention toward Margaret, the daughter of Rene, King of Sicily and Jerusalem, and Duke of Anjou, Maine, and Bar, the two first of which were mere nominal kingdoms since he had not a foot of land in either, while his territory of Bar was mortgaged to the Duke of Burgundy, and the two dutchies were in the possession of the English. The principal, if not the only, cause of this choice was her near relationship to Charles, who esteemed her highly, and who it was thought therefore might be persuaded into a peace by her mediation. William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was entrusted with the conduct of this matter, which was opposed by Gloucester, and was besides attended with this difficulty; an act of parliament had been passed in the reign of Henry V., making it highly penal for any man to conclude a peace with Charles without the previous consent of the three estates in both realms. To quiet the doubts of Suffolk, an instrument was signed by the king, and approved by the parliament, assuring him beforehand of pardon for any error of judgment he might commit; and, thus armed, he not only accepted the lady in his king’s name, without any marriage portion, which indeed her father was much too poor to have paid, but even ceded to him Maine and Anjou. For having conducted this transaction, so little advantageous to England, he was created Marquess of Suffolk. Margaret was married to Henry at Titchfield, and afterwards crowned at Westminster.

The councilors, who had expected peace from this alliance, soon discovered their mistake. Charles who was resolved, if possible, to exclude the English altogether from the soil of France, would not lose the opportunity that offered itself in the dissensions among his enemies. The cardinal had retired from the council for some time, but Gloucester found a yet more dangerous rival in the new favourite, who contrived to make Henry suspicious of his uncle’s loyalty. He was arrested on a charge of high treason by Lord Beaumont, constable of England. Seventeen days later he was found dead in his bed, and though no marks of outward violence appeared, yet suspicion, as is usual in all such cases, soon spread a rumour of his having been murdered. The truth would seem to be that he died of a broken heart.

Within six weeks the duke was followed to the grave by his great rival, Cardinal Beaufort, and thus were removed the two firmest supports of the house of Lancaster. So favourable a crisis awakened the ambitious desires of Richard, duke of York, who by the paternal line sprang from Edward Langley, the youngest son of Edward III., and by the maternal from Lionel the third son of that monarch. Revenge too came in aid of ambition. He had been appointed regent of France for five years, when the Duke of Somerset had expressed a wish for that command, and he had been obliged to resign it for the government of Ireland. Even the people began to participate in his dislike of the favourite.

The little of France that remained to England was being rapidly lost under his management. Normandy was entirely recovered by the French monarch. Even this did not satisfy Charles. He marched for Guienne. Before Christmas all the territory on the banks of the Dordogne had fallen into Charles’ hands, and by the following August he was master of the country from the mouth of the Garonne to the Spanish borders.

The popular feeling was now strongly, if not justly, inflamed against Somerset. The bishop of Chichester, who had delivered Maine to the French, was attacked by the people at Portsmouth, whither he had gone to pay the soldiers and seamen, and in the vain hope of saving himself from their fury he accused Somerset of having sold that city to the enemy. So much credit did the report find with the public that the duke—he had now been raised to that dignity—thought it right to justify himself in parliament, challenging any one to come forth, who had ought to say against him. The commons took him at his word, and framed a bill of impeachment, upon which he was confined in the Tower. But however incompetent to the high offices he had taken upon himself, and however ruinous his ministry had been to the English interests in France, it was manifestly absurd to accuse him of having plotted to dethrone the king; but his enemies thirsted for his blood ; the commons would grant no supplies ‘till their demand for vengeance had been satisfied; and as the only means of gratifying this feeling without danger to his life, the king, not as a judge, but as one to whose controul he had submitted, commanded him to leave the country. Escaping from the people who would have intercepted him, he sailed from Ipswich with two small vessels, sending before him a pinnace to know if he might land at Calais. It was taken by a squadron of men of war, and one of the largest, the Nicholas of the Tower, bore down upon the duke’s vessels, when he was ordered to come aboard. Here he remained for two nights. On the second morning a small boat came alongside, in which were a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner. Into this he was ordered, and the man telling him he should die like a knight smote off his head at the sixth stroke.

Upon hearing of the melancholy end of their favourite, the king and queen were filled with the most poignant grief. Henry possessed none of the qualities that fitted a king to maintain his rule in such boisterous times, and his weakness encouraged the ambitious, while it furnished causes for discontent. Instigated probably by York, for his own ends, the popular indignation broke out on all sides. The defeat of Sir Thomas Kyriel at Fourmignie by the French poured oil upon these flames; in many counties the commons threatened to reform the government. John Cade, an Irish adventurer, assuming the name of Mortimer, cousin to the Duke of York, marched to Blackheath at the head of twenty thousand men, and Henry, dissolving his parliament collected a body of troops to meet them. Many messages passed between the king and the insurgent leader. But Henry had levied between fifteen and twenty thousand men, and felt little inclined to yield to the demands of the rebels. Cade retreated on his approach, and was pursued by a detachment under Sir Humphrey Stafford ‘till he arrived at Sevenoaks, when he turned upon his pursuers, put them to flight, and having killed the leader arrayed himself in the armour of his fallen enemy. The news of this defeat made the royalists at Blackheath waver, and begin to think that the requests of the Kentish men were not unreasonable. Henry was persuaded to send Lord Say, the most obnoxious of his ministers, to the Tower, but by some inexplicable chance he fell into Cade’s hands and was beheaded.

It was not long before the insurgents, shaking off what must have been to them an unnatural restraint, began to pillage. The system was not carried out to any great extent, but the citizens feared worse for the next day, and determined to exclude them by the help of Lord Scales who held the Tower. A hard-fought battle was the consequence during the night, ‘till at the end of six hours, by mutual consent, a short truce was taken. To divide the insurgents the bishop of Winchester offered a pardon under the great seal for all who should at once return to their own homes, upon which, after some demur, the army dispersed. Cade, however, soon repented of his compliance. He again collected a few men round his standard, who, too weak to force the city, retreated towards Rochester, and on the way fell out among themselves about their plunder. In despair Cade fled to Lewes in Sussex, whither he was followed by a knight called Alexander Iden, and by him slain in a garden after an obstinate defence.

Hitherto the Duke of York had not appeared in person on the scene. Now without permission he left his government of Ireland, and marching to London had an interview with Henry, from whom he extorted a promise that he would summon a parliament. In the meanwhile he retired to his castle of Fotheringay, and scarcely was he gone, than to the great joy of the king and queen, the Duke of Somerset returned from France. Unfortunately for the royal cause, he came fresh from the loss of Normandy, yet in the stormy sessions that followed, he opposed his rival with some success, though his life was threatened and his house pillaged by the multitude. York and his friends, baffled in parliament, determined to appeal to the sword whenever opportunity should serve.

The moment for action came; York hastened to his castle at Ludlow, and in the Welsh marshes raised the tenants of the house of Mortimer. The king marched against him at the head of an army; but York, escaping his royal opponent, directed his troops upon London, in hopes of getting possession of the metropolis, either by force or the aid of his friends within. Disappointed in his expectations, he proceeded as far as Dartford, where he might reasonably expect to lure the men of Kent to his standard. The king, following him, made a halt at Blackheath, and thence despatched the bishops of Winchester and Ely to require an explanation of his conduct. The duke’s reply, as usual, was filled with protestations of loyalty, but he demanded that all persons, “noised or indicted of treason,” should be apprehended and confined in the Tower ‘till they could be brought to an answer, and the feeble Henry had the weakness no less than the folly to order his firmest support, Somerset, into custody. Yet farther to satisfy him, tire king promised to appoint a new council, in which he should be included, and all matters in debate be settled by a majority in the same. Upon these concessions, York disbanded his army, and submitted to visit Henry in his tent, unarmed and bareheaded. There the two dukes met; each accused the other of treason; and York, as he left the royal presence, was immediately arrested. Somerset strongly urged the king to bring him to trial at once, or else to terrify him into confession and have him executed before his friends could make any dangerous movement in his favour. The king wavered, his council were intimidated by a report that the Earl of March was advancing with an army for his father’s liberation, and an offer of his liberty was made to York on condition that he would again swear fealty to the king. Having taken the oath required, he was allowed to depart for his castle of Wigmore.

At this juncture a deputation arrived from Guienne, the inhabitants of which were already tired of their new masters, and solicited the aid of an English force, that they might return under their old allegiance, in an evil hour this proposal was accepted. Four thousand men under Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, their in his eightieth year, sailed for Guienne; his son Lord Lisle brought him a reinforcement of an equal number; and before winter he had subdued Bourdeaux, the whole of the Bordelais, and Chatillon in Perigord. With the spring the tide of victory turned. In hurrying to relieve Chatillon, which the French had invested, the veteran met and defeated a body of the enemy, and was tempted to assault their intrenched camp lined with three hundred pieces of cannon. His horse was shot under him, his leg broken, and he was slain by a bayonet as he lay upon the field. His son in attempting to rescue him was likewise killed, and the army deprived of its favourite leader fled in every direction.

In the intoxication of Talbot’s first successes, the parliaments besides liberal supplies, had voted an army of twenty thousand archers, of which it was proposed that the king should take the command. His health, however, declined from day to day, and the design, at first postponed, was finally abandoned. The hopes of the Yorkists were now at the highest. Every thing seemed to promise their leader’s early succession to the throne. But in the autumn, the queen was delivered of a son, upon whose legitimacy the king’s enemies in vain endeavoured to throw a doubt, while the friends of order hailed with joy the prospect as they thought of an undisputed succession. To balance these hopes, there was every chance of a long minority, for the king had sunk into a state of mental as well as bodily incapacity. Hence it became necessary to prorogue the parliament, and recal York into the cabinet, where he Soon obtained the ascendency, and Somerset was committed to the Tower. On the re-assembling of the parliament, he himself opened it with the title of the king’s lieutenant, and when a committee of peers had visited Henry, and found him incapable of business, the duke was appointed protector. Still the influence of the Lancastrians had preserved the royal rights inviolate.

It had been well for the king had his malady been permanent. Unfortunately for him he recovered his health, and with it the use of his reason. Though he received York with kindness, he freed Somerset from the Tower, and laboured hard to reconcile the rivals. As the possession of Calais threatened to be a lasting cause of feud, he took it into his own hands, and prevailed upon both to submit their other differences to eight arbitrators. But instead of waiting for the award, York invited his friends to meet him in the Welsh marches, where he was joined by Salisbury and Warwick, and had soon collected a force of three thousand men, at whose head he surprised Henry when entering St. Albans. A sharp conflict ensued, which York commenced by assaulting the barriers, while Warwick penetrated through the gardens into the street. The Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, the Lord Clifford, were slain; others of the royalist-leaders were wounded; Henry himself received a wound in the neck, and took refuge in the house of a tanner; his men threw down their arms and fled.

York with much appearance of humility visited the ill-used sovereign in his place of refuge. On bended knee he congratulated him on the traitor Somerset, having met with his desert, and taking him by the hand first led him to the shrine of St. Alban, and then to his chamber in the abbey. The subsequent measures were of the same character, Henry being forced to condemn the friends he loved, and who had died to serve him, while he sanctioned the worst acts of those he well knew to be his decided enemies. Before the assembled parliament, he was gravely told that York and his partisans had been influenced in all they did by the most loyal motives. Notorious as these falsehoods were, Henry had no choice but to affect his perfect belief in them, and grant a full pardon to York, Warwick, and Salisbury, pronouncing them to be good and faithful subjects. After a short time Henry had a relapse of his old complaint, and York now made another stride towards his object. At the request of the lords, he consented to assume the protectorship, but took care to add as an especial clause that it should not be as before revocable, “at the will of the king, but by the king in parliament, with the advice and assent of the lords spiritual and temporal.” There was now but one step between him and the throne he coveted. The great obstacle that remained was the mild and inoffensive character of Henry, which preserved to him many friends, and made no small part of the nation unwilling to see him stripped altogether of his royal honours. Nor was the proud and high spirited Margaret wanting to herself or husband at this juncture. She on all occasions opposed the Yorkists, and when once more, to the surprise of all, Henry recovered, the protector’s commission was formally revoked, and the king’s friends again filled the offices of government. Two years succeeded of distrust and alarm, though without any actual violence. The friends of those slain at St. Albans clamoured for redress; their adversaries surrounded themselves with armed retainers; and it would seem that the Yorkists had again lost the preponderance. At length, though not without great difficulty, the king contrived to mediate a show of peace between them.

A short time previously, the king had taken the custody of the sea from Exeter, and given it for five years to the Earl of Warwick, as much to remove him from his associates as to attach him to the throne. In May, news was brought to Calais of a strange fleet of twenty-eight sail, whereupon Warwick hastened to intercept it with no more than five large and seven smaller vessels. Unequal as the fight was, it lasted from four in the morning ‘till ten, and after capturing six sail, the English were obliged with some loss to retire into Calais. The Lubeckers, to whom the merchandise belonged, complained of violated treaties, in consequence of which Warwick was summoned before the council at Westminster, that inquiries might be made into the causes of this engagement. As he left the court one day, a quarrel between a retainer of his and one of the king’s servants led to a serious affray, and he, affecting to believe his life in danger, hastened to York and Salisbury in the north. There the three concerted their future plan of operations, and the earl returned to his command at Calais.

Warwick’s discontent and the schemes growing out of it had not escaped the notice of the loyalists, and the winter was spent by both parties in preparations for the contest that all felt to be inevitable. While the disaffected called upon their adherents, and Warwick in particular collected under his banner the veterans who had fought in Normandy and Guienne, the court distributed collars with white swans, and by letters under the privy seal solicited the king’s friends to meet him at Leicester. Yet it was not ‘till towards the end of summer, that any actual movement was made, when Salisbury advanced to join the Duke of York on the Welsh borders. Lord Audeley, with ten thousand men, threw himself between them at Bloreheath, near Drayton, in Staffordshire. The earl pretended to fly before so superior a force. The royalists pursued in confusion, and when one half of them had crossed a rapid torrent, the fugitives turned upon them, and obtained an easy victory, more than two thousand soldiers remaining on the battle field, and Audely, with many knights and esquires, being made prisoners. At Ludlow, whither he now marched, Salisbury met the Duke of York, and in a few days they were joined by his son from Calais, with a large body of veterans, under Sir John Blount and Sir Andrew Trollop. In the meanwhile, the king who lay at Worcester, with sixty thousand men, sent the Bishop of Salisbury to them with offers of reconciliation if they submitted within six days. To this the insurgents replied that they could not trust him; but on his advancing to Ludlow, within half a mile of their camp, they sent a second message, declaring that they had taken up arms only in self-defence, and, unless compelled to do so, would never draw the sword against the king. The moment, however, had come, when they were obliged to let Trollop, the marshal of the insurgents, know that the throne was in truth the duke’s object. This confession ruined all. Trollop was attached to his sovereign, and on learning this plan, departed in the dusk of the evening, to offer the service of his veterans to the king. At the news of his departure, consternation spread through the camp, and the confederate nobles fled about midnight into the heart of Wales, when they separated. York with one of his Sons sailed to Ireland, and the others accompanied Warwick into Devonshire, from which place he sailed to Calais.

Henry, the next day, granted an amnesty to the deserted insurgents, and convoked a parliament at Coventry, in which, much against his inclination, acts of attainder were passed against the duke and duchess of York with their children, and many of their adherents. Still he would not give an unconditional consent to this salutary, though severe, measure, though he now superseded Warwick in the command of the fleet, and in the government of Calais. The one was given to the Duke of Exeter, the other to the Duke of Somerset; but the latter was not allowed to enter the port, but was driven back by the batteries, and on landing at Guisnes found his ship carried off to Calais by his own seamen. Nothing could have been more opportune for the Yorkists. It enabled Warwick, while his rival was detained in Guisnes, to surprize two successive armaments that had been fitted out by the royalists in the Kentish ports, and to venture as far as Dublin to plot fresh treason with the Duke of York. It was even a worse omen for the king’s cause, so far at least as the dominion of the sea was concerned, that when Exeter met him on his way back, the royal commander was pre vented by the evident disaffection of his seamen from offering him battle.

Before the Yorkists broke out into open war against their sovereign, they had recourse to all those quieter means, by which in that age it was usual to cloak and advance the cause of sedition. It was pretended that the king had not consented to the act of attainder; that he still believed in the innocence of the exiles; and that he was in the hands of those who did not allow him the exercise of his own free will. Fifteen hundred men under Warwick, that now landed in Kent, proved an excellent comment on this manifesto. These were joined, first by Lord Cobham, next by the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘till, as the earl advanced, his army had swollen to forty thousand men, and London opened its gates to him without resistance. Henry had intrenched himself at Northampton, where the royalists with reason seemed confident of victory; but they had a traitor in their lines; Lord Grey of Ruthyn, betraying his post, introduced the enemy into the heart of the camp, and in the short conflict that followed, Buckingham, Shrewsbury, the Viscount Beaumont, and Lord Egremont, with three hundred knights and gentlemen, were slain. It was said to be Warwick’s policy that his followers should spare the people, but give no quarter to the nobles. To Henry himself, who had retired to his tent, the victors showed every outward token of respect. The queen with her son fled to Chester, whence they escaped into Wales, and subsequently made their way to a Scottish port.

The king was conducted in great state to London, Warwick riding before him bareheaded; but he was not the less compelled by his victors to issue writs approving of their loyalty, though they had borne arms against him, and to convoke a parliament for the healing of dissensions, to which all the acts were repealed that had been made in the late sessions at Coventry. None, however, except those who were more immediately in the duke’s secrets could believe he meditated any thing against his sovereign; hence, when at last he avowed his purpose, many even of his own adherents, who then heard it for the first time, showed no enthusiasm in the cause, and the people murmured loudly. These obstacles were too slight to stop in his career a man so resolved as the duke. On the ninth day of the session he by his counsel delivered to the Bishop of Exeter, the new chancellor, a statement of his claim to the crown as the lineal representative of Roger Mortimer, in preference to any claiming only as the descendant of Henry Earl of Derby. When these claims were stated to Henry, he asserted his right to the crown by arguments sufficiently reasonable had they been confirmed by the sword, but at the same time, recommended the peers to search into the matter. On their part the lords would fain have turned over the defence of the king’s rights to the judges, were however were much too wary to interfere in so dangerous a matter. In this dilemma, the lords had recourse to the king’s sergeants and attorneys, who also would have shifted this duty from themselves, but were reminded that by their office they were bound to give advice to the crown when required.

In the debates that followed both parties relied more upon legal quibbles than upon a plain common sense view of the question. Among other points the lords resolved that the duke’s claims must be sustained, yet they would not follow this sentence up to its necessary consequence, and pronounce the king’s degradation. They took a middle course; they proposed that Henry should retain the crown for his life, and the duke and his heirs succeed to it upon his death. To this both parties agreed, the weakminded monarch thus making himself a party to the disinheriting of his son. Not so the queen, or the lords who had ever been attached to the house of Lancaster. They hesitated not for a moment in maintaining the young prince’s rights, confirmed as they were by the possession of three generations, and they were soon joined by the duke of Somerset and the earl of Devon at the head of their numerous tenants, while Northumberland, with the lords Clifford, Dacres, and Nevil, assembled an army at York. The triumphant party took the alarm. The dukes of York and Salisbury marched to put down. this opposition, and although their vanguard was surprised at Worksop by Somerset, they reached the strong castle of Sandal before Christmas. At Wakefield the contending parties joined battle, when the Yorkists sustained a signal defeat. Two thousand men with most of their leaders fell upon this sanguinary day; York himself was taken and beheaded; Salisbury, being captured during the night, met the same fate the next day at Pontefract.

The disaster at Wakefield was in some measure compensated to the Yorkists by a decisive victory obtained over the earl of Pembroke by Edward, earl of March, the heir to the late duke. He was at Gloucester when news came of the fate of his father and brother, and hastened to interpose his levies between the royalists and London; but being pursued by Pembroke, and fearing to be surrounded, he suddenly faced about and gained the bloody battle of Mortimer’s cross near Wigmore, in which the king’s party lost about four thousand men. Pembroke escaped; his father, Owen Tudor, was taken and beheaded at Hereford with Throgmorton and seven other captains, in revenge for the executions that followed the day at Wakefield. On the other hand the queen had marched without opposition as far as St. Albans, then held by Warwick, who had drawn up his forces on the low hills to the south. The royalists fought their way to the market-cross, but were driven back again by the opposing archers, when taking another street they penetrated to Barnet heath, and after a severe struggle so utterly routed the men of Kent that night alone saved the Yorkists from destruction. ‘They fled in every direction, leaving the king in his tent under the care of his chamberlain lord Montague, where to his great joy he was once again visited by his son and queen. But the spirit of vengeance had taken full possession of his councillors, and the next day lord Bouville and sir Thomas Kyriel were executed.

It was unfortunate for the royal cause that the king was unable to march at once upon London; had he done so, the city must have opened its gates. This, however, with such soldiers as he commanded, was impossible, for as the hopes of plunder alone had lured them to his standard, they pillaged the country round, and could not be induced either by threats or persuasions to advance at the call of their leaders. All that Henry could do in this difficult position of his affairs was to publish a proclamation announcing that his consent to the late decision had been extorted from him by violence, and to issue orders for the arrest of the new duke of York. But Edward, having formed a junction with the forces of Warwick, had obtained a numerical superiority that enabled him to set such denunciations at defiance, though he did not pursue the royalists, who made a hasty retreat into the northern counties. London was his object, and the result justified his election. His youth, his personal attractions, and his late successes contrasted with the pillagings of the royalists, raised him many friends amongst the citizens, ‘and when the bishop of Exeter harangued the spectators on his superior claim and abilities, the mass replied by acclamations. Feeling the ground thus secure, it was resolved the next day in a great council, that Henry, by joining the forces raised to maintain his own rights, had violated the award, and that in consequence the crown was forfeited to Edward as being the next heir of Richard late duke of York. After the announcement of this decision, Edward rode in procession to Westminster Hall, where he explained from the throne to all assembled the validity of his claims, amidst joyous interruptions of “long live king Edward !" in the church the same scene was acted over again, and he was immediately proclaimed by the heralds in the city according to the usual custom.

With this ceremony, it may be said that the reign of Henry VI. virtually expired.

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