By winning the battle of Shrewsbury Henry IV. had saved his crown, but his troubles were yet far from an end. The long-expected breach with France had at last come to pass; the duke of Orleans, without any declaration ofWar with France renewed.war, had entered Guienne, while a French fleet attacked the south-west of England, and burnt Plymouth. Even more menacing to the king’s prosperity was the news that another squadron had appeared off the coast of Wales, and landed stores and succours for Glendower, who had now conquered the whole principality save a few isolated fortresses. The drain of money to meet this combination of foreign war and domestic rebellion was more than the king’s exchequer could meet. He was driven into unconstitutional ways of raising money, which recalled all the misdoings of his predecessor. Hence came a series of rancorous quarrels with hisParliament assumes control of the finances.parliaments, which grew more disloyal and clamorous at every new session. The cry was raised that the taxes were heavy not because of the French or Welsh wars, but because Henry lavished his money on favourites and unworthy dependents. He was forced to bow before the storm, though the charge had small foundation: the greater part of his household was dismissed, and the war-taxes were paid not to his treasurer but to a financial committee appointed by parliament.
It was not till 1405 that the worst of Henry’s troubles came to an end. This year saw the last of the convulsions that threatened to overturn him,—a rising in the North headed by the old earl of Northumberland, by RichardRising of 1405 in the North.Scrope, archbishop of York, and by Thomas Mowbray the earl marshal. It might have proved even more dangerous than the rebellion of 1403, if Henry’s unscrupulous general Ralph, earl of Westmorland, had not lured Scrope and Mowbray to a conference, and then arrested them under circumstances of the vilest treachery. He handed them over to the king, who beheaded them both outside the gate of York, without any proper trial before their peers. Northumberland thereupon fled to Scotland without further fighting. He remained in exile till January 1408, when he made a final attempt to raise rebellion in the North, and was defeated and slain at the battle of Bramham Moor.
Long before this last-named fight Henry’s fortunes had begun to mend. Glendower was at last checked by the untiring energy of the king’s eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who had been given charge of the Welsh war. Even whenSuppression of the Welsh rising.French aid was sent him, the rebel chief proved unable to maintain his grip on South Wales. He was beaten out of it in 1406, and Aberystwyth Castle, where his garrison made a desperate defence for two years, became the southern limit of his dominions. In the end of 1408 Prince Henry captured this place, and six weeks later Harlech, the greatest stronghold of the rebels, where Sir Edmund Mortimer, Owen’s son-in-law and most trusted captain, held out till he died of starvation. From this time onwards the Welsh rebellion gradually died down, till Owen relapsed into the position from which he had started, that of a guerrilla chief maintaining a predatory warfare in the mountains. From 1409 onward he ceased to be a public danger to the realm, yet so great was his cunning and activity that he was never caught, and died still maintaining a hopeless rebellion so late as 1416.
The French war died down about the same time that the Welsh rebellion became insignificant. Louis of Orleans, the head of the French war party, was murdered by his cousin John, duke of Burgundy, in November 1407, and afterEnd of the French and Scottish wars.his death the French turned from the struggle with England to indulge in furious civil wars. Calais, Bordeaux and Bayonne still remained safe under the English banner. The Scottish war had ended even earlier. Prince James, the heir of Robert III., had been captured at sea in 1406. The duke of Albany, who became regent when Robert died, had no wish to see his nephew return, and concluded a corrupt agreement with the king of England, by which he undertook to keep Scotland out of the strife, if Henry would prevent the rightful heir from returning to claim his own.3Hence Albany and his son ruled at Edinburgh for seventeen years, while James was detained in an honourable captivity at Windsor.
From 1408 till his death in 1413 Henry was freed from all the dangers which had beset his earlier years. But he got small enjoyment from the crown which no longer tottered on his brow. Soon after his execution of ArchbishopIllness of the king. Faction in the court.Scrope he had been smitten with a painful disorder, which his enemies declared to be the punishmentinflicted on him by heaven for the prelate’s death. It grew gradually worse, and developed into what his contemporaries called leprosy—a loathsome skin disease accompanied by bouts of fever, which sometimes kept him bedridden for months at a time. From 1409 onwards he became a mere invalid, only able to assert himself in rare intervals of convalescence. The domestic politics of the realm during his last five years were nothing more than a struggle between two court factions who desired to use his name. The one was headed by his son Henry, prince of Wales, and his half-brothers John, Henry and Thomas Beaufort, the base-born but legitimized children of John of Gaunt. The other was under the direction of Archbishop Arundel, the king’s earliest ally, who had already twice served him as chancellor, and had the whole church party at his back. Arundel was backed by Thomas duke of Clarence, the king’s second son, who was an enemy of the Beauforts, and not on the best terms with his own elder brother, the prince of Wales. The fluctuating influence of each party with the king was marked by the passing of the chancellorship from Arundel to Henry Beaufort and back again during the five years of Henry’s illness. The rivalry between them was purely personal; both were prepared to go on with the “Lancastrian experiment,” the attempt to govern the realm in a constitutional fashion by an alliance between the king and the parliament; both were eager persecutors of the Lollards; both were eager to make profit for England by interfering in the civil wars of the Orleanists and Burgundians which were now devastating France.
The prince of Wales, it is clear, gave much umbrage to his father by his eagerness to direct the policy of the crown ere yet it had fallen to him by inheritance. The king suspected, and with good reason, that his son wishedPrince Hal.him to abdicate, and resented the idea. It seems that a plot with such an object was actually on foot, and that the younger Henry gave it up in a moment of better feeling, when he realized the evil impression that the unfilial act would make upon the nation. At this time the prince gave small promise of developing into the model monarch that he afterwards became. There was no doubt of his military ability, which had been fully demonstrated in the long Welsh wars, but he is reputed to have shown himself arrogant, contentious and over-given to loose-living. There were many, Archbishop Arundel among them, who looked forward with apprehension to his accession to the throne.
The two parties in the council of Henry IV. were agreed that it would be profitable to intervene in the wars of France, but they differed as to the side which offered the most advantages. Hence came action which seemed inconsistent,English expedition to France.if not immoral; in 1411, under the prince’s influence, an English contingent joined the Burgundians and helped them to raise the siege of Paris. In 1412, by Arundel’s advice, a second army under the duke of Clarence crossed the Channel to co-operate with the Orleanists. But the French factions, wise for once, made peace at the time of Clarence’s expedition, and paid him 210,000 gold crowns to leave the country! The only result of the two expeditions was to give the English soldiery a poor opinion of French military capacity, and a notion that money was easily to be got from the distracted realm beyond the narrow seas.
On the 20th of March 1413, King Henry’s long illness at last reached a fatal issue, and his eldest son ascended the throne. The new king had everything in his favour; his father had borne the odium of usurpation and fought downAccession of Henry V.the forces of anarchy. The memory of Richard II. had been forgotten; the young earl of March had grown up into the most harmless and unenterprising of men, and the nation seemed satisfied with the new dynasty, whose first sovereign had shown himself, under much provocation, the most moderate and accommodating of constitutional monarchs.
Henry V. on his accession bade farewell to the faults of his youth. He seems to have felt a genuine regret for the unfilial conduct which had vexed his father’s last years, and showed a careful determination to turn over a new leaf and give his enemies no scope for criticism. From the first he showed a sober and grave bearing; he reconciled himself to all his enemies,His character.gave up his youthful follies, and became a model king according to the ideas of his day. There is no doubt that he had a strong sense of moral responsibility, and that he was sincerely pious. But his piety inspired him to redouble the persecution of the unfortunate Lollards, whom his father had harried only in an intermittent fashion; and his sense of moral responsibility did not prevent him from taking the utmost advantage of the civil wars of his unhappy neighbours of France.
The first notable event of Henry’s reign was his assault upon the Lollards. His father had spared their lay chiefs, and contented himself with burning preachers or tradesmen.Persecution of the Lollards.Henry arrested John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, their leading politician, and had him tried and condemned to the stake. But Oldcastle escaped from the Tower before the day fixed for his execution, and framed a wild plot for slaying or deposing his persecutor. He planned to gather the Lollards of London and the Home Counties under arms, and to seize the person of the king—a scheme as wildRising under Oldcastle.as the design of Guy Fawkes or the Fifth Monarchy Men in later generations, for the sectaries were not strong enough to coerce the whole nation. Henry received early notice of the plot, and nipped it in the bud, scattering Oldcastle’s levies in St Giles’ Fields (Jan. 10, 1414) and hanging most of his lieutenants. But their reckless leader escaped, and for three years led the life of an outlaw, till in 1417 he was finally captured, still in arms, and sent to the stake.
This danger having passed, Henry set himself to take advantage of the troubles of France. He threatened to invade that realm unless the Orleans faction, who had for the moment possession of the person of the mad kingHenry V. and France.Charles VI., should restore to him all that Edward III. had owned in 1360, with Anjou and Normandy in addition. The demand was absurd and exorbitant and was refused, though the French government offered him the hand of their king’s daughter Catherine with a dowry of 800,000 crowns and the districts of Quercy and Périgord—sufficiently handsome terms. When he began to collect a fleet and an army, they added to the offer the Limousin and other regions; but Henry was determined to pick his quarrel, and declared war in an impudent and hypocritical manifesto, in which he declared that he was driven into strife against his will. The fact was that he had secured the promise of the neutrality or the co-operation of the Burgundian faction, and thought that he could crush the Orleanists with ease.
He sailed for France in August 1415, with an army compact and well-equipped, but not very numerous. On the eve of his departure he detected and quelled a plot as wild and futile as that of Oldcastle. The conspirators were hisHenry invades France.cousin, Richard, earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope, and Sir Thomas Grey, a kinsman of the Percies. They had planned to raise a rebellion in the name of the earl of March, in whose cause Wales and the North were to have been called to arms. But March himself refused to stir, and betrayed them to the king, who promptly beheaded them, and set sail five days later. He landed near the mouth of the Seine, and commenced his campaign by besieging and capturing Harfleur, which the Orleanists made no attempt to succour. But such a large number of his troops perished in the trenches by a pestilential disorder, that he found himself too weak to march on Paris, and took his way to Calais across Picardy, hoping, as it seems, to lure the French to battle by exposing his small army to attack. The plan was hazardous, for the Orleanists turned out in great numbers and almost cut him off in the marshes of the Somme. When he had struggled across them, and was half-way to Calais,Battle of Agincourt.the enemy beset him in the fields of Agincourt (Oct. 25, 1415). Here Henry vindicated his military reputation by winning a victory even more surprising than those of Creçy, and Poitiers, for he was outnumbered in an even greater proportion than the two Edwards had been in 1346 and 1356,and had to take the offensive instead of being attacked in a strong position. The heavily armoured French noblesse, embogged in miry meadows, proved helpless before the lightly equipped English archery. The slaughter in their ranks was terrible, and the young duke of Orleans, the head of the predominant faction of the moment, was taken prisoner with many great nobles. However, so exhausted was the victorious army that Henry merely led it back to Calais, without attempting anything more in thisEffect of the battle.year. The sole tangible asset of the campaign was the possession of Harfleur, the gate of Normandy, a second Calais in its advantages when future invasions were taken in hand. The moral effects were more important. The Orleanist party was shaken in its power; the rival Burgundian faction became more inclined to commit itself to the English cause, and the terror of the English arms weighed heavily upon both.
It was not till the next year but one that Henry renewed his invasion of France—the intervening space was spent in negotiations with Burgundy, and with the emperorEngland and the council of Constance.Sigismund, whose aid the king secured in return for help in putting an end to the scandalous “great schism” which had been rending the Western Church for so many years. The English deputation lent their aid to Sigismund at the council of Constance, when Christendom was at last reunited under a single head, though all the reforms which were to have accompanied the reunion were postponed, and ultimately avoided altogether, by the restored papacy.
In July 1417 Henry began his second invasion of France, and landed at the mouth of the Seine with a powerful army of 17,000 men. He had resolved to adopt a plan of campaignHenry’s second invasion of France.very different from those which Edward III. or the Black Prince had been wont to pursue, having in view nothing more than the steady and gradual conquest of the province of Normandy. This he was able to accomplish without any interference from the government at Paris, for the constable Armagnac, who had succeeded the captive Orleans at the head of the anti-Burgundian party, had no troops to spare.Conquest of Normandy.He was engaged in a separate campaign with Henry’s ally John the Fearless, and left Normandy to shift for itself. One after another all the towns of the duchy were reduced, save Rouen, the siege of which, as the hardest task, King Henry postponed till the rest of the countryside was in his hands. He sat down to besiege it in 1418, and was detained before its walls for many months, for the citizens made an admirable defence. Meanwhile a change had taken place in the domestic politics of France; the Burgundians seized Paris in May 1418; the constable Armagnac and many of hisTriumph of the Burgundians.partisans were massacred, and John the Fearless got possession of the person of the mad Charles VI., and became the responsible ruler of France. He had then to choose between buying off his English allies by great concessions, or taking up the position of champion of French interests. He selected the latter rôle, broke with Henry, and tried to relieve Rouen. But all his efforts were foiled, and the Norman capital surrendered, completely starved out, onHenry takes Rouen.the 19th of January 1419. On this Burgundy resolved to open negotiations with Henry; he wished to free his hands for an attack on his domestic enemies, who had rallied beyond the Loire under the leadership of the dauphin Charles—from whom the party, previously known first as Orleanists and then as Armagnacs, gets for the future the name of the “Dauphinois.” The English king, however, seeing the manifest advantage of his position, tried to drive too hard a bargain; he demanded the old boundaries of 1360, with his new conquest of Normandy, the hand of the princess Catherine, and a great sum of ready money. Burgundy dared not concede so much, under pain of alienating all his more patrioticMurder of John of Burgundy.supporters. He broke off the conference of Meulan, and tried to patch up a peace with the dauphin, in order to unite all Frenchmen against the foreign invader. This laudable intention was wrecked by the treachery of the young heir to the French throne; on the bridge of Montereau Charles deliberately murdered the suppliant duke, as he knelt to do homage, thinking thereby that he would make an end of the Burgundian party (Sept. 9, 1419).
This abominable deed gave northern France for twenty years to an English master. The young duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and his supporters in Paris and the north,The Burgundians acknowledge Henry as heir of France.were so incensed with the dauphin’s cruel treachery that they resolved that he should never inherit his father’s crown. They proffered peace to King Henry, and offered to recognize his preposterous4claim to the French throne, on condition that he should marry the princess Catherine and guarantee the constitutional liberties of the realm. The insane Charles VI. should keep nominal possession of the royal title till his death, but meanwhile the Burgundians would do homage to Henry as “heir of France.” These terms were welcomed by the English king,Treaty of Troyes.and ratified at the treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420). Henry married the princess Catherine, received the oaths of Duke Philip and his partisans, and started forth to conquer the Dauphinois at the head of an army of which half was composed of Burgundian levies. Paris, Picardy, Champagne, and indeed the greater part of France north of the Loire, acknowledged him as their sovereign.
Henry had only two years longer to live; they were spent in incessant and successful campaigning against the partisans of his brother-in-law, the dauphin Charles; by a long series of sieges the partisans of that worthless princeDeath of Henry V.were evicted from all their northern strongholds. They fought long and bitterly, nor was this to be marvelled at, for Henry had a custom of executing as traitors all who withstood him, and those who had once defied him did well to fight to the last gasp, in order to avoid the block or the halter. In the longest and most desperate of these sieges, that of Meaux (Oct. 1421-March 1422), the king contracted a dysenteric ailment which he could never shake off. He survived for a few months, but died, worn out by his incessant campaigning, on the 31st of August 1422, leaving the crown of England and the heirship of France to his only child Henry of Windsor, an infant less than two years old.
Few sovereigns in history have accomplished such a disastrous life’s work as this much-admired prince. If he had not been a soldier of the first ability and a diplomatist of the most unscrupulous sort, he could never have advancedEffects of his conquests.so far towards his ill-chosen goal, the conquest of France. His genius and the dauphin’s murderous act of folly at Montereau conspired to make the incredible almost possible. Indeed, if Henry had lived five years longer, he would probably have carried his arms to the Mediterranean, and have united France and England in uneasy union for some short space of time. It is clear that they could not have been held together after his death, for none but a king of exceptional powers could have resisted their natural impulse to break apart. As it was, Henry had accomplished just enough to tempt his countrymen to persevere for nearly thirty years in the endeavour to complete the task he had begun. France was ruined for a generation, England was exhausted by her effort, and (what was worse) her governing classes learnt in the long and pitiless war lessons of demoralization which were to bear fruit in the ensuing struggle of the two Roses. It is a strange fact that Henry, though he was in many respects a conscientious man, with a strong sense of responsibility, and a sincere piety, was so blind to the unrighteousness of his own actions that he died asserting that “neither ambition nor vainglory had led him into France, but a genuine desire to assert a righteous claim, which he desired his heirs to prosecute to the bitter end.”
The guardianship of the infant Henry VI. fell to his two uncles, John of Bedford and Humphrey of Gloucester, the twosurviving brothers of the late king. Bedford became regent in France, and took over the heritage of the war, in which heHenry VI.was vigorously aided by the young Philip of Burgundy, whose sister he soon after married. Almost his first duty was to bury the insane Charles VI., who only survived his son-in-law for a few months, and to proclaim his little nephew king of France under the name of Henry II. Gloucester, however, had personal charge of the child, who was to be reared in England; he had also hoped to become protector of the realm, and to use the position for his own private interests, for he was a selfish and ambitious prince. But the council refused to let him assume the full powers of a regent, and bound him with many checks and restrictions, because they were well aware of his character. The tiresome and monotonous domestic history of England during the next twenty years consisted of little else than quarrels between Gloucester and the lords of the council, of whom the chief was the duke’s half-uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, the last to survive of all the sons of John of Gaunt. The duke and the bishop were both unscrupulous; but the churchman, with all his faults, was a patriotic statesman, while Gloucester cared far more for his own private ends than for the welfare of the realm.
While these two well-matched antagonists were wrangling in England, Bedford, a capable general and a wise administrator, was doing his best to carry out the task which the dying Henry V. had laid upon him, by crushing theBedford’s rule in France.dauphin, or Charles VII. as he now called himself since his father’s death. As long as the Burgundian party lent the regent their aid, the limits of the land still unsubdued continued to shrink, though the process was slow. Two considerable victories, Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), marked the early years of Bedford’s campaigning; at each, it may be noted, a very large proportion of his army was composed of Burgundian auxiliaries. But after a time their assistance began to be given less freely; this was due to the selfish intrigues ofHumphrey of Gloucester.Humphrey of Gloucester, who, regardless of the general policy of England, had quarrelled with Philip the Good. He had married Jacoba (Jacquelaine), countess of Hainaut and Holland, a cousin of the Burgundian duke, who coveted and hoped to secure her lands. Pressing her claims, Gloucester came to open blows with Philip in Flanders and Hainaut (1424). In his anger the Burgundian ceased to support Bedford, and would have joined Charles VII. if revenge on the murderers of his father had not still remained his dominant passion. But Gloucester’s attempt to seize Hainaut failed, and Philip, when he had got possession of his cousin’s person and estates, allowed himself to be pacified by Bedford, who could prove that he had no part in his brother’s late intrigues.
This quarrel having been appeased, the advance against the territories of Charles VII. was resumed. It went slowly on, till in 1428 the tide of war reached the walls of Orleans, how the only place north of the Loire which remainedSiege of Orleans.unsubdued. The siege was long; but after the last army which the Dauphinois could raise had been beaten at the battle of Rouvray (Feb. 1429) it seemed that the end was near. Charles VII. was in such a state of despair after this last check, that he was actually taking into consideration a flight to Italy or Spain, and the abandonment of the struggle. He had shown himself so incapable and apathetic that his followers were sick of fighting for such a despicable master.
From this depth of despair the party which, with all its faults, represented the national sentiment of France was rescued by the astonishing exploits of Joan of Arc. Charles and his counsellors had no great confidence in the missionJoan of Arc.of this prophetess and champion, when she presented herself to them, promising to relieve Orleans and turn back the English. But all expedients are worth trying in the hour of ruin, and seeing that Joan was disinterested and sincere, and that her preaching exercised a marked influence over the people and the soldiery, Charles allowed her to march with the last levies that he put into the field for the relief of Orleans. From that moment the fortune of war turned; the presence of the prophetess with the French troops had an immediate and incalculable effect. Under the belief that they were now led by a messenger from heaven, the Dauphinois fought with a fiery courage that they had never before displayed. Their movements were skilfully directed—whether by Joan’s generalship or that of her captains it boots not to inquire—and after the first successes which she achieved, in entering Orleans and capturing some of the besiegers’ forts around it, the English became panic-stricken. They were cowed, as they said, “by that disciple and limb of the fiend called La Pucelle, that used false enchantments and sorcery.” Suffolk, their commander, raised the siege, and sent to Bedford for reinforcements; but as he retreated he was set upon by the victorious army, and captured with most of his men at Jargeau and Beaugency (June 1429). The succours which were coming to his aid from Paris were defeated by the Maid at Patay a few days later, and for the most part destroyed.
The regent Bedford was now in a desperate position. His field army had been destroyed, and on all sides the provinces which had long lain inert beneath the English yoke were beginning to stir. When Joan led forth the FrenchCoronation of Charles VII. at Reims.king to crown him at Reims, all the towns of Champagne opened their gates to her one after another. A large reinforcement received from England only just enabled Bedford to save Paris and some of the fortresses of the Île de France. The rest revolted at the sight of the Maid’s white banner. If Joan had been well supported by her master and his counsellors, it is probable that she might have completed her mission by expelling the English from France. But, despite all that she had done, Charles VII. and his favourites had a profound disbelief in her inspiration, and generally thwarted her plans. After an ill-concerted attack on Paris, in which Joan was wounded, the French army broke up for the winter. They had shaken the grip of the English on the north, and reconquered a vast stretch of territory, but they had failed by their own fault to achieve complete success. Nevertheless the crucial point of the war had passed; after 1429 the Burgundian party began to slacken in its support of the English cause, and to pass over piecemeal to the national side. This was but natural: the partisans who could remember nothing but the foul deed of Montereau were yearly growing fewer, and it was clear that Charles VII., personally despicable though he might be, represented the cause of French nationality.
The natural drift of circumstances was not stayed even by the disastrous end of the career of Joan of Arc in 1430. The king’s ministers had refused to take her counsels or to entrust her with another army, but she went forth with a smallCapture and execution of Joan.force of volunteers to relieve the important fortress of Compiègne. The place was saved, but in a sortie she was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her for 10,000 francs to Bedford. The regent handed her over for punishment as a sorceress to the French clergy of his own party. After a long trial, carried out with elaborate formality and great unfairness, the unhappy Joan was found guilty of proclaiming as divine visions what were delusions of the evil one, or of her own vain imagination, and when she persisted in maintaining their reality she was declared a relapsed heretic, and burnt at Rouen on the 30th of May 1431. Charles VII. took little interest in her fate, which he might easily have prevented by threatening to retaliate on the numerous English prisoners who were in his power. Seldom had a good cause such an unworthy figurehead as that callous and apathetic prince.
The movement which Joan had set on foot was in no way crushed by her execution. For the next four years the limits of the English occupation continued to recede. It was to no profit that Bedford brought over the youngPhilip of Burgundy joins Charles. Treaty of Arras.Henry VI. and had him crowned at Paris, in order to appeal to the loyalty of his French partisans by means of the king’s forlorn youth and simplicity. Yet by endless feats of skilful generalship the regent continued to maintain a hold on Paris and on Normandy. The fatal blow was administered by Philip of Burgundy, who, tired of maintaining a failing cause, consented at last to forget his father’s murder,and to be reconciled to Charles VII. Their alliance was celebrated by the treaty of Arras (Sept. 6, 1435), at which the English were offered peace and the retention of Normandy and Guienne if they would evacuate Paris and the rest of France. They would have been wise to accept the agreement; but with obstinate and misplaced courage they refused to acknowledge Charles as king of France, or to give up to him the capital.
Bedford, worn out by long campaigning, died at Rouen on the 14th of September 1435, just before the results of the treaty of Arras began to make themselves felt. With him died the best hope of the English party in France,Death of Bedford. English defeats.for he had been well loved by the Burgundians, and many had adhered to the cause of Henry VI. solely because of their personal attachment to him. No worthy successor could be found—England had many hard-handed soldiers but no more statesmen of Bedford’s calibre. It was no wonder that Paris was lost within six months of the regent’s death, Normandy invaded, and Calais beleaguered by an army headed by England’s new enemy, Philip of Burgundy. But the council, still backed by the nation, refused to give up the game; Burgundy was beaten off from Calais, and the young duke of York, the heir of the Mortimers, took the command at Rouen, and recovered much of what had been lost on the Norman side.
The next eight years of the war were in some respects the most astonishing period of its interminable length. The English fought out the losing game with a wonderful obstinacy. Though every town that they held was eager to revolt,Truce with France.and though they were hopelessly outnumbered in every quarter, they kept a tight grip on the greater part of Normandy, and on their old domain in the Bordelais and about Bayonne. They lost nearly all their outlying possessions, but still made head against the generals of Charles VII. in these two regions. The leaders of this period of the war were the duke of York, and the aged Lord Talbot, afterwards earl of Shrewsbury. The struggle only ceased in 1444, when the English council, in which a peace party had at last been formed, concluded a two-year truce with King Charles, which they hoped to turn into a permanent treaty, on the condition that their king should retain what he held in Normandy and Guienne, but sign away his claim to the French crown, and relinquish the few places outside the two duchies which were still in his power—terms very similar to those rejected at Arras nine years before—but there was now much less to give up. To mark the reconciliation of the two powers Henry VI. was betrothed to the French king’s niece, Margaret of Anjou. The two years’ truce was repeatedly prorogued, and lasted till 1449, but no definitive treaty was ever concluded, owing to the bad faith with which both parties kept their promises.
The government in England was now in the hands of the faction which Bishop Beaufort had originally led, for after long struggles the churchman had at last crushed his nephew Humphrey. In 1441 the duchess of Gloucester hadSupremacy of the Beauforts in England.been arrested and charged with practising sorcery against the health of the young king—apparently not without justification. She was tried and condemned to imprisonment for life; her guilt was visited on her husband, on whose behalf she was acting, for if Henry had died his uncle would have come to the throne. For some years he was constrained to take a minor part in politics, only emerging occasionally to make violent and unwise protests against peace with France. The bishop now ruled, with his nephew Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, as his chief instruments. As he grew older he let the power slip into their hands, as it was they who were mainly responsible for the truce of 1444. King Henry, though he had reached the age of 23 at the time of his marriage, counted forCharacter of Henry VI.nothing. He was a pious young man, simple to the verge of imbecility; a little later he developed actual insanity, the heritage of his grandfather Charles VI. He showed a blind confidence in Suffolk and Somerset, who were wholly unworthy of it, for both were tricky and unscrupulous politicians. His wife Margaret of Anjou, though she possessed all the fire and energy which her husband lacked, was equally devoted to these two ministers, and soon came to share their unpopularity.
The truce with France had offended the natural pride of the nation, which still refused to own itself beaten. The evacuation of the French fortresses in Maine and elsewhere, which was the price paid for the suspension of arms, wasDeath of Humphrey of Gloucester and Henry Beaufort.bitterly resented. Indeed the garrisons had to be threatened with the use of force before they would quit their strongholds. A violent clamour was raised against Suffolk and Somerset, and Humphrey of Gloucester emerged from his retirement to head the agitation. This led to his death; he was arrested by the order of the queen and the ministers at the parliament of Bury. Five days later he died suddenly in prison, probably by foul play, though it was given out that he had been carried off by a paralytic stroke. His estates were confiscated, and distributed among the friends of Suffolk and the queen. Six weeks later the aged Bishop Beaufort followed him to the grave—he had no share in Gloucester’s fate, having long before made over his power and the leadership of his party to his nephew Edmund of Somerset (1447).
The truce with France lasted for two years after the death of Duke Humphrey, and came to an end partly owing to the eagerness of the French to push their advantages, but much more from the treachery and bad faith of SuffolkRenewal of the war with France.and Somerset, who gave the enemy an admirablecasus belli. By their weakness, or perhaps with their secret connivance, the English garrisons of Normandy carried out plundering raids of the most impudent sort on French territory. When summoned to punish the offenders, and to make monetary compensation, Suffolk and Somerset shuffled and prevaricated, but gave no satisfaction. Thereupon the French king once more declared war (July 1449) and invaded Normandy. Somerset was in command; he showed hopeless incapacity and timidity, and in a few months the duchy which had been so long held byLoss of Normandy.the swords of Bedford, York and Shrewsbury was hopelessly lost. The final blow came when a small army of relief sent over from England was absolutely exterminated by the French at the battle of Formigny (April 15, 1450). Somerset, who had retired into Caen, surrendered two months later after a feeble defence, and the English power in northern France came to an end.
Even before this final disaster the indignation felt against Suffolk and Somerset had raised violent disturbances at home. Suffolk was impeached on many charges, true and false; it was unfair to accuse him of treason, butJack Cade’s Rebellion.quite just to lay double-dealing and bad faith to his charge. The king tried to save him from the block by banishing him before he could be tried. But while he was sailing to Flanders his ship was intercepted by some London vessels, which were on the look-out for him, and he was deliberately murdered. The instigators of the act were never discovered. But, though Suffolk was gone, Somerset yet survived, and their partisans still engrossed the confidence of the king. To clear out the government, and punish those responsible for the late disasters, the commons of Kent rose in insurrection under a captain who called himself John Mortimer, though his real name seems to have been John Cade. He was a soldier of fortune who had served in the French wars, and claimed to be in the confidence of the duke of York, the person to whom the eyes of all who hated Somerset and the present régime were now directed.
Cade was not a social reformer, like his predecessor Wat Tyler, with whom he has often been compared, but a politician. Though he called himself “John Amend-all,” and promised to put down abuses of every kind, the main part of the programme which he issued was intended to appeal to national sentiment, not to class feeling. Whether he was the tool of other and more highly placed malcontents, or whether he was simply a ready-witted adventurer playing his own game, it is hard to determine. His first success was marvellous; he defeated theking’s troops, made a triumphant entry into London and held the city for two days. He seized and beheaded Lord Saye, the treasurer, and several other unpopular persons, and might have continued his dictatorship for some time if the Kentish mob that followed him had not fallen to general pillage and arson. This led to the same results that had been seen in Tyler’s day. The propertied classes in London took arms to suppress anarchy, and beat the insurgents out of the city. Cade, striving to keep up the rising outside the walls, was killed in a skirmish a month later, and his bands dispersed.
But the troubles of England were only just beginning; the protest against the misgovernment of Somerset and the rest of the confidants of the king and queen was now taken up by a more important personage than theRichard, duke of York, heads the opposition.adventurer Cade. Richard, duke of York, the heir to the claims of the house of Mortimer—his mother was the sister of the last earl of March—now placed himself at the head of the opposition. He had plausible grounds for doing so; though he had distinguished himself in the French wars, and was, since the death of Humphrey of Gloucester, the first prince of the blood royal, he had been ignored and flouted by the king’s ministers, who had sent him into a kind of honourable banishment as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and had forbidden him to re-enter the realm. When, in defiance of this mandate, he came home and announced his intention of impeaching Somerset, he took the first step which was to lead to the Wars of the Roses.
Yet he was a cautious and in the main a well-intentioned prince, and the extreme moderation of his original demands seems to prove that he did not at first aim at the crown. He merely required that Somerset and his friends should be dismissed from office and made to answer for their misgovernment. Though he backed his demands by armed demonstration—twice calling out his friends and retainers to support his policy—he carefully refrained for five long years from actual violence. Indeed in 1452 he consented to abandon his protests, and to lend his aid to the other party for a great national object, the recovery of Guienne. For in the previous year Charles VII. had dealt with Bordeaux and Bayonne as he had already dealt with Normandy, and had met with no better resistance while completing the conquest. Six months’ experience of French rule, however, had revealed to the Bordelais how much they had lost when they surrendered. Their old loyalty to the house of Plantagenet burst once more into flame; they rose in arms and called for aid to England. For a moment the quarrel of York and Somerset was suspended, and the last English army that crossed the seas during the Hundred Years’ War landed in Guienne, joined the insurgents, and for a time swept all before it. But there seemed to be a curse on whatever Henry VI. and Somerset took in hand. On the 17th of July 1453 the veteran earl of Shrewsbury and the greater part of his Anglo-Gascon host wereBattle of Castillon. Loss of Guienne.cut to pieces at the hard-fought battle of Castillon. Bordeaux, though left to defend itself, held out for eighty days after Talbot’s defeat and death, and then made its final submission to the French. The long struggle was over, and England now retained nothing of her old transmarine possessions save Calais and the Channel Islands. The ambition of Henry V. had finally cost her the long-loyal Guienne, as well as all the ephemeral conquests of his own sword.
The last crowning disaster of the administration of the favourites of Henry VI. put an end to the chance that a way out of domestic strife might be found in the vigorous prosecution of the French war. For the next twenty years the battles of England were to be fought on her own soil, and between her own sons. It was a righteous punishment for her interference in the unnatural strife of Orleanists and Burgundians that the struggle between York and Lancaster was to be as bitter and as bloody as that between the two French factions.
V. The Wars of the Roses (1453-1497)
The Wars of the Roses have been ascribed to many different causes by different historians. To some their origin is mainly constitutional. Henry VI., it is argued, had broken the tacit compact which the house of Lancaster had made with the nation;Origin of the Wars of the Roses.instead of committing the administration of the realm to ministers chosen for him by, or at least approved by, his parliament, he persisted in retaining in office persons like Suffolk and Somerset, who had forfeited the confidence of the people by their many failures in war and diplomacy, and were suspected of something worse than incapacity. They might not be so personally odious as the favourites of Edward II. or of Henry III., but they were even more dangerous to the state, because they were not foreign adventurers but great English peers. In spite of the warnings given by the assault on Suffolk in 1450, by Jack Cade’s insurrection, and by the first armed demonstrations of Richard of York in 1450 and 1452, the king persisted in keeping his friends in office, and they had to be removed by the familiar and forcible methods that had been applied in earlier ages by the lords ordainers or the lords appellant. Undoubtedly there is much truth in this view of the situation; if Henry VI., or perhaps we should rather say, if his queen Margaret of Anjou, had been content to accept ministries in which the friends of Richard of York were fairly represented, it is probable that he might have died a king, and have transmitted his crown to his natural heir. But this explanation of the Wars of the Roses is not complete; it accounts for their outbreak, but not for their long continuance.
According to another school the real key to the problem is simply the question of the succession to the crown. If the wedlock of Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou had been fruitful during the first few years after theirClaims of the duke of York to the crown.marriage, no one would have raised the question of a change of dynasty. But when they remained childless for seven years, and strong suspicion arose that there was a project on foot to declare the Beauforts heirs to the throne, the claim of Richard of York, as the representative of the houses of Clarence and March, was raised by those who viewed the possible accession of the incapable and unpopular Somerset with terror and dislike. When once the claims of York had been displayed and stated by his imprudent partisan, Thomas Yonge, in the parliament of 1451, there was no possibility of hiding the fact that in the strict legitimate line of succession he had a better claim than the reigning king. He disavowed any pretensions to the crown for nine years; it was only in 1460 that he set forth his title with his own mouth. But his friends and followers were not so discreet; hence when a son was at last born to Henry and Margaret, in 1453, the succession question was already in the air and could no longer be ignored. If the claim ofBirth of Edward, prince of Wales.York was superior to that of Lancaster in the eyes of a considerable part of the nation, it was no longer possible to consider the problem solved by the birth of a direct heir to the actual occupant of the throne. Though Duke Richard behaved in the most correct fashion, acknowledged the infant Edward as prince of Wales, and made no attempt to assert dynastic claims during his two regencies in 1454 and 1455-1456, yet the queen and her partisans already looked upon him as a pretender to the throne. It is this fact which accounts for the growing bitterness of the Yorkist andQueen Margaret.Lancastrian parties during the last years of Henry VI. Margaret believed herself to be defending the rights of her son against a would-be usurper. Duke Richard, on the other hand, considered himself as wrongfully oppressed, and excluded from his legitimate position as a prince of the blood and a chief councillor of the crown. Nor can there be any doubt that the queen took every opportunity of showing her suspicion of him, and deliberately kept him and his friends from sharing in the administration of the realm. This might have been more tolerable if the Lancastrian party had shown any governing power; but both while Somerset was their leader, down to his death in the first battle of St Albans, and while in 1456-1459 Exeter, Wiltshire, Shrewsbury and Beaumont were the queen’s trusted agents, the condition of England was deplorable. As a contemporary chronicler wrote, “the realm was out of all good governance—as it has been many days before:the king was simple, and led by covetous councillors, and owed more than he was worth. His debts increased daily, but paymentCondition of the country.was there none, for all the manors and possessions that pertained to the crown he had given away, so that he had almost nought to live on. For these misgovernances the hearts of the people were turned from them that had the land in rule, and their blessing was turned to cursing. The officers of the realm, and especially the earl of Wiltshire the treasurer, for to enrich himself plundered poor people and disinherited rightful heirs, and did many wrongs. The queen was defamed, that he that was called the prince was not the king’s son, but a bastard gotten in adultery.” When it is added that the Lancastrian party avoided holding a parliament for three years, because they dared not face it, and that the French were allowed to sack Fowey, Sandwich and other places because there was no English fleet in existence, it is not wonderful that many men thought that the cup of the iniquities of the house of Lancaster was full. In the military classes it was felt that the honour of the realm was lost; in mercantile circles it was thought that the continuance for a few years more of such government would make an end of English trade. Some excuse must be found for getting rid of the queen and her friends, and the doubtful legitimacy of the Lancastrian claim to the crown afforded such an excuse. Hence came the curious paradox, that the party which started as the advocates of the rights of parliament against the incapable ministers appointed by the crown, ended by challenging the right of parliament, exercised in 1399, to depose a legitimate king and substitute for him another member of the royal house. For Richard of York in 1460 and Edward IV. in 1461 put in their claim to the throne, not as the elect of the nation, but as the possessors of a divine hereditary right to the succession, there having been no true king of England since the death of Richard II. Hence Edward assumed the royal title in March 1461, was crowned in June, but called no parliament till November. When it met, it acknowledged him as king, but made no pretence of creating or electing him to be sovereign.
But putting aside the constitutional aspects of the Wars of the Roses, it is necessary to point out that they had another aspect. From one point of view they were little more than a great faction fight between two alliances ofMotives of the contending parties.over-powerful barons. Though the Lancastrians made much play with the watchword of loyalty to the crown, and though the Yorkists never forgot to speak of the need for strong and wise governance, and the welfare of the realm, yet personal and family enmities had in many cases more effect in determining their action than a zeal for King Henry’s rights or for the prosperity of England. It is true that some classes were undoubtedly influenced in their choice of sides mainly by the general causes spoken of above; the citizens of London and the other great towns (for example) inclined to the Yorkist faction simply because they saw that under the Lancastrian rule the foreign trade of England was being ruined, and insufficient security was given for life and property. But the leading men among the baronage were undoubtedly swayed by ambition and resentment, by family ties and family feuds, far more than by enlightened statesmanship or zeal for the king or the commonweal. It would be going too far to seek the origin of the Yorkist party—as some have done—in the old enmity of the houses of March, Norfolk and Salisbury against Henry IV. But it is not so fantastic to ascribe its birth to the personal hatred that existed between Richard of York and Edmund of Somerset, to the old family grudge (going back to 1405) between the Percies and the Nevilles, to the marriage alliance that bound the houses of York and Neville together, and to other less well-remembered quarrels or blood-ties among the lesser baronage. As an example of how such motives worked, it may suffice to quote the case of those old enemies, the Bonvilles and Courtenays, in the west country. While Lord Bonville supported the queen, the house of Courtenay were staunch Yorkists, and the earl of Devon joined in the armed demonstration of Duke Richard in 1452. But when the earl changed his politics and fought on the Lancastrian side at St Albans in 1455, the baron at once became a strenuous adherent of the duke, adhered firmly to the white rose and died by the axe for its cause.
Richard of York, in short, was not merely the head of a constitutional opposition to misgovernment by the queen’s friends, nor was he merely a legitimist claimant to the crown, he was also the head of a powerfulThe baronial party. The Nevilles.baronial league, of which the most prominent members were his kinsmen, the Nevilles, Mowbrays and Bourchiers. The Nevilles alone, enriched with the ancient estates of the Beauchamps and Montagus, and with five of their name in the House of Lords, were a sufficient nucleus for a faction. They were headed by the two most capable politicians and soldiers then alive in England, the two Richards, father and son, who held the earldoms of Salisbury and Warwick, and were respectively brother-in-law and nephew to York. It must be remembered that a baron of 1450 was not strong merely by reason of the spears and bows of his household and his tenantry, like a baron of the 13th century. The pernicious practice of “livery and maintenance” was now at its zenith; all over England in times of stress the knighthood and gentry were wont to pledge themselves, by sealed bonds of indenture, to follow the magnate whom they thought best able to protect them. They mounted his badge, and joined his banner when strife broke out, in return for his championship of their private interests and his promise to “maintain” them against all their enemies. A soldier and statesman of the ability and ambition of Richard of Warwick counted hundreds of such adherents, scattered over twenty shires. The system had spread so far that the majority of the smaller tenants-in-chief, and even many of the lesser barons, were the sworn followers of an insignificant number of the greater lords. An alliance of half-a-dozen of these over-powerful subjects was a serious danger to the crown. For the king could no longer count on raising a national army against them; he could only call out the adherents of the lords of his own party. The factions were fairly balanced, for if the majority of the baronage were, on the whole, Lancastrian, the greatest houses stood by the cause of York.
Despite all this, there was still, when the wars began, a very strong feeling in favour of compromise and moderation. For this there can be no doubt that Richard of York was mainly responsible. When he was twice placed inAttitude of Richard of York.power, during the two protectorates which followed Henry’s two long fits of insanity in 1454 and 1455-1456, he carefully avoided any oppression of his enemies, though he naturally took care to put his own friends in office. Most of all did he show his sincere wish for peace by twice laying down the protectorate when the king was restored to sanity. He was undoubtedly goaded into his last rebellion of 1459 by the queen’s undisguised preparations for attacking him. Yet because he struck first, without waiting for a definitecasus belli, public opinion declared so much against him that half his followersSuppression of York’s rebellion. Executions and confiscations.refused to rally to his banner. The revulsion only came when the queen, victorious after the rout of Ludford, applied to the vanquished Yorkists those penalties of confiscation and attainder which Duke Richard had always refused to employ in his day of power. After the harsh doings at the parliament of Coventry (1459), and the commencement of political executions by the sending of Roger Neville and his fellows to the scaffold, the trend of public opinion veered round, and Margaret and her friends were rightly held responsible for the embittered nature of the strife. Hence came the marvellous success of the Yorkist counterstroke in June 1460, when the exiled Warwick, landing in Kent with a mere handful of men, was suddenlyThe earl of Warwick defeats the Lancastrians at Northampton.joined by the whole of the south of England and the citizens of London, and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Lancastrians at Northampton before he had been fifteen days on shore (July 10, 1460). The growing rancour of the struggle was marked by the fact that the Yorkists, after Northampton, showed themselves by no means so merciful and scrupulous as in their earlierdays. Retaliatory executions began, though on a small scale, and when York reached London he at last began to talk of his rights to the crown, and to propose the deposition of Henry VI. Yet moderation was still so far prevalent in the ranks of his adherents that they refused to follow him to such lengths. Warwick and the other leading men of the party dictated a compromise, by which Henry was to reign for the term of hisRichard of York declared heir to the throne.natural life, but Duke Richard was to be recognized as his heir and to succeed him on the throne. They had obviously borrowed the expedient from the terms of the treaty of Troyes. But the act of parliament which embodied it did not formally disinherit the reigning king’s son, as the treaty of Troyes had done, but merely ignored his existence.
It would have been well for England if this agreement had held, and the crown had passed peaceably to the house of York, after the comparatively short and bloodless struggle which had just ended. But Duke Richard had forgotten to reckon with the fierce and unscrupulous energy of Queen Margaret, when sheBattle of Wakefield. Richard slain.was at bay in defence of her son’s rights. Marching with a trifling force to expel her from the north, he was surprised and slain at Wakefield (Dec. 30, 1460). But it was not his death that was the main misfortune, but the fact that in the battle the Lancastrians gave no quarter to small or great, and that after it they put to death York’s brother-in-law Salisbury and other prisoners. The heads of the duke and the earl were set up over the gates of York. ThisBattle of St Albans.ferocity was repeated when Margaret and her northern host beat Warwick at the second battle of St Albans (Feb. 17, 1461), where they had the good fortune to recover possession of the person of King Henry. Lord Bonville and the other captives of rank were beheaded next morning.
After this it was but natural that the struggle became a mere record of massacres and executions. The Yorkists proclaimed Edward, Duke Richard’s heir, king of England; they took no further heed of the claims of King Henry,Edward, earl of March, proclaimed as Edward IV.declared their leader the true successor of Richard II., and stigmatized the whole period of the Lancastrian rule as a mere usurpation. They adopted a strict legitimist theory of the descent of the crown, and denied the right of parliament to deal with the succession. This was the first step in the direction of absolute monarchy which England had seen since the short months of King Richard’s tyranny in 1397-1399. It was but the first of many encroachments of the new dynasty upon the liberties that had been enjoyed by the nation under the house of Lancaster.
The revenge taken by the new king and his cousin Richard of Warwick for the slaughter at Wakefield and St Albans was prompt and dreadful. They were now well supported by the whole of southern England; for not only had theChanged character of the war.queen’s ferocity shocked the nation, but the reckless plundering of her northern moss-troopers in the home counties had roused the peasantry and townsfolk to an interest in the struggle which they had never before displayed. Up to this moment the civil war had been conducted like a great faction fight; the barons and their liveried retainers had been wont to seek some convenient heath or hill and there to fight out their quarrel with the minimum of damage to the countryside. The deliberate harrying of the Midlands by Margaret’s northern levies was a new departure, and one bitterly resented. TheBattle of Towton.house of Lancaster could never for the future count on an adherent south of Trent or east of Chiltern. The Yorkist army that marched in pursuit of the raiders, and won the bloody field of Towton under Warwick’s guidance, gave no quarter. Not only was the slaughter in that battle and the pursuit more cruel than anything that had been seen since the day of Evesham, but the executions that followed were ruthless. Ere Edward turned south he had beheadedRuthless reprisals of the Yorkists.two earls—Devon and Wiltshire—and forty-two knights, and had hanged many prisoners of lesser estate. The Yorkist parliament of November 1461 carried on the work by attainting 133 persons, ranging from Henry VI. and Queen Margaret down through the peerage and the knighthood to the clerks and household retainers of the late king. All the estates of the Lancastrian lords, living or dead, were confiscated, and their blood was declared corrupted. This brought into the king’s hands such a mass of plunder as no one had handled since William the Conqueror. Edward IV.Personal rule of Edward IV.could not only reward his adherents with it, so as to create a whole new court noblesse, but had enough over to fill his exchequer for many years, and to enable him to dispense with parliamentary grants of money for an unexampled period. Between 1461 and 1465 he only asked for £37,000 from the nation—and won no small popularity thereby. For, in their joy at being quit of taxation, men forgot that they were losing the lever by which their fathers had been wont to move the crown to constitutional concessions.
After Towton peace prevailed south of the Tyne and east of the Severn, for it was only in Northumberland and in Wales that the survivors of the Lancastrian faction succeeded in keeping the war alive. King Edward, as indolentCivil war in the north and west.and pleasure-loving in times of ease as he was active and ruthless in times of stress and battle, set himself to enjoy life, handing over the suppression of the rebels to his ambitious and untiring cousin Richard of Warwick. The annals of the few contemporary chroniclers are so entirely devoted to the bickerings in the extreme north and west, that it is necessary to insist on the fact that from 1461 onwards the civil war was purely local, and nine-tenths of the realm enjoyed what passed for peace in the 15th century. The campaigns of 1462-63-64, though full of incident and bloodshed, were not of first-rate political importance. The cause of Lancaster had been lost at Towton, and all that Queen Margaret succeeded in accomplishing was to keep Northumberland in revolt, mainly by means of French and Scottish succours. Her last English partisans, attainted men who had lost their lands and lived with the shadow of the axe ever before them, fought bitterly enough. But the obstinate and hard-handed Warwick beat them downBattle of Hexham. Imprisonment of Henry VI.again and again, and the old Lancastrian party was almost exterminated when the last of its chiefs went to the block in the series of wholesale executions that followed the battle of Hexham (May 15, 1464). A year later Henry VI. himself fell into the hands of his enemies, as he lurked in Lancashire, and with his consignment to the Tower the dynastic question seemed finally solved in favour of the house of York.
The first ten years of the reign of Edward IV. fall into two parts, the dividing point being the avowal of the king’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in November 1464. During the first of these periods Edward reigned but WarwickRichard Neville, earl of Warwick.governed; he was not only the fighting man, but the statesman and diplomatist of the Yorkist party, and enjoyed a complete ascendancy over his young master, who long preferred thriftless ease to the toils of personal monarchy. Warwick represented the better side of the victorious cause; he was no mere factious king-maker, and his later nickname of “the last of the barons” by no means expresses his character or his position. He was strong, not so much by reason of his vast estates and his numerous retainers, as by reason of the confidence which the greater part of the nation placed in him. He never forgot that the Yorkist party had started as the advocates of sound and strong administration, and the mandatories of the popular will against the queen’s incapable and corrupt ministers. “He ever had the goodwill of the people because he knew how to give them fair words, and always spoke not of himself but of the augmentation and good governance of the kingdom, for which he would spend his life; and thus he had the goodwill of England, so that in all the land he was the lord who was held in most esteem and faith and credence.” As long as he remained supreme, parliaments were regularly held, and the house of York appeared to be keeping its bargain with the nation. His policy was sound; peace with France, the rehabilitation of the dwindling foreign trade of England, and themaintenance of law and justice by strong-handed governance were his main aims.
But Warwick was one of those ministers who love to do everything for themselves, and chafe at masters and colleagues who presume to check or to criticise their actions. He was surrounded and supported, moreover, by a group of brothers and cousins, to whom he gave most of his confidence, and most of the preferment that came to his hands. England has always chafed against a family oligarchy, however well it may do its work. The Yorkist magnates who did not belong to the clan of the Nevilles were not unnaturally jealous of that house, and Edward IV. himself gradually came to realize the ignominious position of a king who is managed and overruled by a strong-willed and arbitrary minister.
His first sign of revolt was his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a lady of decidedly Lancastrian connexions, for her father and her first husband were both members of the defeated faction. Warwick was at the momentEdward IV. marries Elizabeth Woodville.suing for the hand of Louis XI.’s sister-in-law in his master’s name, and had to back out of his negotiations in a sudden and somewhat ridiculous fashion. His pride was hurt, but for two years more there was no open breach between him and his master, though their estrangement grew more and more marked when Edward continued to heap titles and estates on his wife’s numerous relatives, and to conclude for them marriage alliances with all the great Yorkist families who were not of the Neville connexion. In this wayBreach between Warwick and the king.he built up for himself a personal following within the Yorkist party; but the relative strength of this faction and of that which still looked upon Warwick as the true representative of the cause had yet to be tried. The king had in his favour the prestige of the royal name, and a popularity won by his easy-going affability and his liberal gifts. The earl had his established reputation for disinterested devotion to the welfare of the realm, and his brilliant record as a soldier and statesman. In districts as far apart as Kent and Yorkshire, his word counted for a good deal more than that of his sovereign.
Unhappily for England and for himself, Warwick’s loyalty was not sufficient to restrain his ambition and his resentment. He felt the ingratitude of the king, whom he had made, so bitterly that he stooped ere long to intrigueWarwick organizes a rebellion.and treason. Edward in 1467 openly broke with him by dismissing his brother George Neville from the chancellorship, by repudiating a treaty with France which the earl had just negotiated, and by concluding an alliance with Burgundy against which he had always protested. Warwick enlisted in his cause the king’s younger brother George of Clarence, who desired to marry his daughter and heiress Isabella Neville, and with the aid of this unscrupulous but unstable young man began to organize rebellion. His first experiment in treason was the so-called “rising of Robin of Redesdale,” whichRising of “Robin of Redesdale.”was ostensibly an armed protest by the gentry and commons of Yorkshire against the maladministration of the realm by the king’s favourites—his wife’s relatives, and the courtiers whom he had lately promoted to high rank and office. The rebellion was headed by well-known adherents of the earl, and the nickname of “Robin of Redesdale” seems to have covered the personality of his kinsman Sir John Conyers. When the rising was well started Warwick declared his sympathy with the aims of the insurgents, wedded his daughter to Clarence despite the king’s prohibition of the match, and raised a force at Calais with which he landed in Kent.
But his plot was already successful before he reached the scene of operations. The Yorkshire rebels beat the royalist army at the battle of Edgecott (July 6, 1469). A few days later Edward himself was captured at Olney and put intoBattle of Edgecott. Edward a prisoner.the earl’s hands. Many of his chief supporters, including the queen’s father, Lord Rivers, and her brother, John Woodville, as well as the newly-created earls of Pembroke and Devon, were put to death with Warwick’s connivance, if not by his direct orders. The king was confined for some weeks in the great Neville stronghold of Middleham Castle, but presently released on conditions, being compelled to accept new ministers nominated by Warwick. The earl supposed that his cousin’s spirit was broken and that he would giveExecution of the queen’s relatives.no further trouble. In this he erred grievously. Edward vowed revenge for his slaughtered favourites, and waited his opportunity. Warwick had lost credit by using such underhand methods in his attack on his master, and had not taken sufficient care to conciliate public opinion when he reconstructed the government. His conduct had destroyed his old reputation for disinterestedness and honesty.
In March 1470 the king seized the first chance of avenging himself. Some unimportant riots had broken out in Lincolnshire, originating probably in mere local quarrels, but possibly in Lancastrian intrigues. To suppress this rising theKing Edward drives Warwick into exile.king gathered a great force, carefully calling in to his banner all the peers who were offended with Warwick or, at any rate, did not belong to his family alliance. Having scattered the Lincolnshire bands, he suddenly turned upon Warwick with his army, and caught him wholly unprepared. The earl and his son-in-law Clarence were hunted out of the realm before they could collect their partisans, and fled to France; Edward seemed for the first time to be master in his own realm.
But the Wars of the Roses had one more phase to come. Warwick’s name was still a power in the land, and his expulsion had been so sudden that he had not been given an opportunity of trying his strength. His old enmityWarwick takes up the cause of Henry VI.for the house of Lancaster was completely swallowed up in his new grudge against the king that he had made. He opened negotiations with the exiled Queen Margaret, and offered to place his sword at her disposition for the purpose of overthrowing King Edward and restoring King Henry. The queen had much difficulty in forcing herself to come to terms with the man who had been the bane of her cause, but finally, was induced by Louis XI. to conclude a bargain. Warwick married his younger daughter to her son Edward, prince of Wales, as a pledge of his good faith, and swore allegiance toHe lands in England.King Henry in the cathedral of Angers. He then set himself to stir up the Yorkshire adherents of the house of Neville to distract the attention of Edward IV. When the king had gone northward to attack them, the earl landed at Dartmouth (Sept. 1470) with a small force partly composed of Lancastrian exiles, partly of his own men. His appearance had the effect on which he had calculated. Devon rose in the Lancastrian interest; Kent, where the earl’s name had always been popular, took arms aKing Edward in exile.few days later; and London opened its gates. King Edward, hurrying south to oppose the invader, found his army melting away from his banner, and hastily took ship at Lynn and fled to Holland. He found a refuge with his brother-in-law and ally Charles the Bold, the great duke of Burgundy.
King Henry was released and replaced on the throne, and for six months Warwick ruled England as his lieutenant. But there was bitterness and mistrust between the old Lancastrian faction and the Nevilles, and Queen MargaretRestoration of Henry VI.refused to cross to England or to trust her son in the king-maker’s hands. Her partisans doubted his sincerity, while many of the Yorkists who had hitherto followed Warwick in blind admiration found it impossible to reconcile themselves to the new régime. The duke of Clarence in particular, discontented at the triumph of Lancaster, betrayed his father-in-law, and opened secret negotiations with his exiled brother. Encouraged by the news of the dissensions among his enemies, Edward IV. resolved to try his fortune onceEdward returns to England.more, and landed near Hull on the 15th of March 1471 with a body of mercenaries lent him by the duke of Burgundy. The campaign that followed was most creditable to Edward’s generalship, but must have been fatal to him if Warwick had been honestly supported by hislieutenants. But the duke of Clarence betrayed to his brother the army which he had gathered in King Henry’s name, andBattle of Barnet. Death of Warwick.many of the Lancastrians were slow to join the earl, from their distrust of his loyalty. Edward, dashing through the midst of the slowly gathering levies of his opponents, seized London, and two days later defeated and slew Warwick at the battle of Barnet (April 13, 1471).
On that same day Queen Margaret and her son landed at Weymouth, only to hear that the earl was dead andBattle of Tewkesbury. Death of Edward, prince of Wales.his army scattered. But she refused to consider the struggle ended, and gathered the Lancastrians of the west for a final rally. On the fatal day of Tewkesbury (May 3, 1471) her army was beaten, her son was slain in the flight, and the greater part of her chief captains were taken prisoner. She herself was captured next day. The victorious Edward sent to the block the last Beaufort duke of Somerset, and nearly all the other captains of rank, whether Lancastrians orCapture of Queen Margaret and murder of Henry VI.followers of Warwick. He then moved to London, which was being threatened by Kentish levies raised in Warwick’s name, delivered the city, and next day caused the unhappy Henry VI. to be murdered in the Tower (May 21, 1471).
The descendants of Henry IV. were now extinct, and the succession question seemed settled for ever. No one dreamed of raising against King Edward the claims of the remoter heirs of John of Gaunt—the young earl ofEdward IV.Richmond, who represented the Beauforts by a female descent, or the king of Portugal, the grandson of Gaunt’s eldest daughter. Edward was now king indeed, with no over-powerful cousin at his elbow to curb his will. He had, moreover, at his disposal plunder almost as valuable as that which he had divided up in 1461—the estates of the great Neville clan and their adherents. A great career seemed open before him; he had proved himself a fine soldier and an unscrupulous diplomatist; he was in the very prime of life, having not yet attained his thirty-first year. He might have devoted himself to foreign politics and have rivalled the exploits of Edward III. or Henry V.—for the state of the continent was all in his favour—or might have set himself to organize an absolute monarchy on the ruins of the parliament and the baronage. For the successive attainders of the Lancastrians and the Nevilles had swept away many of the older noble families, and Edward’s house of peers consisted for the main part of new men, his own partisans promoted for good service, who had not the grip on the land that their predecessors had possessed.