This measure gave great offence to the Duke of nor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester. 1441. But the Duke of Gloucester was suddenly attacked Trial of Eleathrough his wife, Eleanor Cobham, who, along with Roger Bolingbroke, a chaplain of the duke, was accused of sorcery and treason. The charge takes us into that strange and horrible region of imaginary or impossible crimes, in which so much of the real history of the English people has been enacted. Like the Obi women of the West Indies, Bolingbroke, it was said, had made an image of wood resembling the king, whose strength, it was supposed, would waste away as the image was slowly consumed. Bolingbroke suffered as a traitor; his alleged accomplice, Margaret Jourdemain, commonly known as the Witch of Eye, was burnt in Smithfield. The Duchess of Gloucester, having been compelled to do penance in the streets of London, was imprisoned for life. In the release of the Duke of Orleans, and in all other measures, the young king followed implicitly the counsels of the cardinal of Winchester and of William De la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the son of that De la Pole who had been a councillor to Richard II. (p. 297). The latter urged the king to marry Margaret, the daughter of Réné, Duke of Anjou, and titular king of Naples and Jerusalem. This princess he was to receive without a dowry, while he was to yield to Réné the provinces of Maine and Anjou, so far as he had any power over them. Marriage of the the Duke of Gloucester and of Cardinal Beaufort. 1447. These concessions were strongly resented by the Death of Duke of Gloucester, who was soon afterwards arrested. A few days later, he died (1447), and Suffolk was strongly suspected of having brought about his death. The death of Cardinal Beaufort followed almost immediately. Shakespeare has drawn a terrible Loss of English Insurrection of 1450. picture of the agonies of despair which darkened his closing hours; but eye-witnesses of the scene gave a very different picture of the calmness with which he gave his final orders, and took part in the religious services for the dying. Little now remained of the splendid conquests of Henry V. Before the end of 1450, the whole of Normandy was completely wrested from the English; and the credit of the disasters which led to this result was largely given to the Duke of Suffolk, who was by a newly-coined word called a jackanape, the rime averring that he was "the ape with his clog what had tied Talbot our good dog," Talbot being the Earl of Shrewsbury. Absurd charges were brought against him; but Henry, refusing to pass a sentence, ordered him to leave England for five years. Thus following the example of Richard II. (p. 281), he gave offence to many, and satisfied none. Suffolk was seized on his voyage to Flanders, taken out of his ship, placed in a small boat, and beheaded (1450). The murder of Suffolk preceded by a few weeks only the rebellion, headed by an Irishman, known as Jack Cade, who called himself John Mortimer, claiming to be a cousin of the Duke of York. The social interest attaching to this insurrection is small as compared with that of the uprising under Walter the Tiler (p. 276). There were complaints of extortion and oppression; but these evils affected every class in the land. Cade was for three days master of London; but when at length he was captured in Sussex, he had received a mortal wound, of which he died before he could be brought back to the city. His followers, being promised pardon if they went home, had dispersed some time before. and Gascony. Suffolk was gone; and the Duke of York, son of Loss of Guienne the Earl of Cambridge, a cousin of king Henry V., thought that the time was come for claiming a prominent share in the work of government. But his efforts were fruitless, until a series of fresh reverses still further reduced the English power in France. Normandy had been already lost. Guienne and Gascony, which had remained attached to the English crown since the marriage of Eleanor to Henry II. (p.196), now became French possessions; and grave fears were felt even for Calais, the only town remaining to the English on the Continent (1451). So ended the hundred years' war, in the thorough frustration of the claims and plans which led to it, and in a vast aggrandisement of the French monarchy. An attempt made two years later to recover these provinces ended in hopeless failure. the Duke of York. 1452. To the Duke of York these calamities seemed to Interference of call for and to justify more active interference. Marching to London with an army of followers, he declared, as Henry IV. had declared on landing at Ravenspur, that he sought only the removal of the evil counsellors who had gained the car of the king. His reception led him to dismiss his forces; but, having done so, he found himself in the power of his rival, the Duke of Somerset. The latter, however, was afraid to employ any extreme measures. Rumour said that 10,000 men were hastening to London under the command of Edward, Earl of March, son of the Duke of York, and afterwards Edward IV. To avert this danger, the Duke of Somerset contented himself with demanding that the Duke of York should make public profession of his loyalty. The duke did so, and was allowed to go free (1452). See Genealogy IV. The Civil Wars of England. The Wars of the Roses. Battle of heath. 1459. We now reach a miserable time of deadly plots, feuds, and civil wars, which seem to impair or destroy all sense of honesty and duty, and to train men to the endurance or to the liking of every kind of injustice, ferocity, and cruelty. In 1453, eight years after their marriage, queen Margaret gave birth to a son, named Edward; but the mind of the king was now so absolutely upset that he could not be made to understand the tidings that he was a father. To provide for the carrying on of the government, the lords in parliament appointed the Duke of York Protector of England; but his office came to an end with the recovery of the king (Christmas, 1453), and he was deprived also of the governorship of Calais. Taking the law into his own hands, the Duke of Blore York, with other lords, marched towards London from the north, fought and won a battle at St. Albans, the first fight in the Wars of the Roses, and then besought the king's forgiveness for having done so. The pardon was granted; but again the king fell ill, and again York was named Protector, with the proviso that he should not be released of the office except in a full parliament. He was so discharged a few months later; and subsequently the Duke of York and the queen were reconciled; but the quarrel broke out again when she tried to arrest the father of the Earl of Warwick. The battle of Bloreheath, Sept. 23, 1459, seemed to settle the question in favour of the Yorkists. Alliance of the with the Earl 1460. A little while later the Duke of York was a fugitive Duke of York in Ireland, where Warwick and others of his party of Warwick. arranged plans with him before they went to Calais. In June of the following year they returned to London, and put forth a manifesto on the grievances which they had come to remedy. The king met The Earl of Warwick had been the chief instrument in making Edward king; and he was yet to do other acts which would win for him the title of the Kingmaker. For the present he had to face the army of Henry and Margaret. The battle was fought near Towton, a few miles from York. The slaughter on both sides was vast; but the adherents of the new king were the victors. Henry and Margaret fled towards Scotland; Edward, returning to London, was crowned on the 28th of June. His brothers George and Richard, afterwards Richard III., were created Dukes of Clarence and of Gloucester; and a council, calling itself the parliament of the nation, declared the three preceding sovereigns usurpers. ham. 1464, Escaping to France, Margaret made a treaty with Battle of Hexthe French king, Louis XI., by which she promised to surrender Calais as the price of his help. But the capture of a few strong castles in the north of England shed only a momentary gleam of light on her cause ; and by the end of the year she was again a fugitive, falling sometimes, it is said, among robbers, and escaping by an appeal to their loyalty. She succeeded in making her way to Flanders; but the partisans of Henry were again defeated at Hexham (May 14, 1464), and from this time Henry lived in hiding for more than a year. of Edward IV. to Elizabeth Woodville. 1464. His part on the political stage was, however, not Marriage yet wholly ended; and Edward's marriage became the cause of his temporary restoration. The widow of the Duke of Bedford, who had been regent for France in Henry's childhood (p. 290), had married Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers; and her daughter Elizabeth (who was also a widow, her husband, Sir John Grey, having been killed in the second battle of St. Albans) now became the wife of Edward, |