ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH
PART THE FIRST
It had been the wish of the late King, that while his infant son King
Henry the Sixth, at this time only nine months old, was under age, the
Duke of Gloucester should be appointed Regent. The English Parliament,
however, preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, with the Duke of
Bedford at its head: to be represented, in his absence only, by the
Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament would seem to have been wise in
this, for Gloucester soon showed himself to be ambitious and
troublesome, and, in the gratification of his own personal schemes,
gave dangerous offence to the Duke of Burgundy, which was with
difficulty adjusted.
As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was bestowed by the
poor French King upon the Duke of Bedford. But, the French King dying
within two months, the Dauphin instantly asserted his claim to the
French throne, and was actually crowned under the title of Charles the
Seventh. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match for him, entered into a
friendly league with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, and gave them
his two sisters in marriage. War with France was immediately renewed,
and the Perpetual Peace came to an untimely end.
In the first campaign, the English, aided by this alliance, were
speedily successful. As Scotland, however, had sent the French five
thousand men, and might send more, or attack the North of England while
England was busy with France, it was considered that it would be a good
thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had been so long
imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand pounds for his
board and lodging during nineteen years, and engaging to forbid his
subjects from serving under the flag of France. It is pleasant to know,
not only that the amiable captive at last regained his freedom upon
these terms, but, that he married a noble English lady, with whom he
had been long in love, and became an excellent King. I am afraid we
have met with some Kings in this history, and shall meet with some
more, who would have been very much the better, and would have left the
world much happier, if they had been imprisoned nineteen years too.
In the second campaign, the English gained a considerable victory at
Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly remarkable, otherwise, for
their resorting to the odd expedient of tying their baggage-horses
together by the heads and tails, and jumbling them up with the baggage,
so as to convert them into a sort of live fortification—which was found
useful to the troops, but which I should think was not agreeable to the
horses. For three years afterwards very little was done, owing to both
sides being too poor for war, which is a very expensive entertainment;
but, a council was then held in Paris, in which it was decided to lay
siege to the town of Orleans, which was a place of great importance to
the Dauphin’s cause. An English army of ten thousand men was despatched
on this service, under the command of the Earl of Salisbury, a general
of fame. He being unfortunately killed early in the siege, the Earl of
Suffolk took his place; under whom (reinforced by Sir John Falstaff,
who brought up four hundred waggons laden with salt herrings and other
provisions for the troops, and, beating off the French who tried to
intercept him, came victorious out of a hot skirmish, which was
afterwards called in jest the Battle of the Herrings) the town of
Orleans was so completely hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to
yield it up to their countryman the Duke of Burgundy. The English
general, however, replied that his English men had won it, so far, by
their blood and valour, and that his English men must have it. There
seemed to be no hope for the town, or for the Dauphin, who was so
dismayed that he even thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain—when a
peasant girl rose up and changed the whole state of affairs.
The story of this peasant girl I have now to tell.
PART THE SECOND: THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC
In a remote village among some wild hills in the province of Lorraine,
there lived a countryman whose name was Jacques d’Arc. He had a
daughter, Joan of Arc, who was at this time in her twentieth year. She
had been a solitary girl from her childhood; she had often tended sheep
and cattle for whole days where no human figure was seen or human voice
heard; and she had often knelt, for hours together, in the gloomy,
empty, little village chapel, looking up at the altar and at the dim
lamp burning before it, until she fancied that she saw shadowy figures
standing there, and even that she heard them speak to her. The people
in that part of France were very ignorant and superstitious, and they
had many ghostly tales to tell about what they had dreamed, and what
they saw among the lonely hills when the clouds and the mists were
resting on them. So, they easily believed that Joan saw strange sights,
and they whispered among themselves that angels and spirits talked to
her.
At last, Joan told her father that she had one day been surprised by a
great unearthly light, and had afterwards heard a solemn voice, which
said it was Saint Michael’s voice, telling her that she was to go and
help the Dauphin. Soon after this (she said), Saint Catherine and Saint
Margaret had appeared to her with sparkling crowns upon their heads,
and had encouraged her to be virtuous and resolute. These visions had
returned sometimes; but the Voices very often; and the voices always
said, ‘Joan, thou art appointed by Heaven to go and help the Dauphin!’
She almost always heard them while the chapel bells were ringing.
There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed she saw and heard these
things. It is very well known that such delusions are a disease which
is not by any means uncommon. It is probable enough that there were
figures of Saint Michael, and Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, in
the little chapel (where they would be very likely to have shining
crowns upon their heads), and that they first gave Joan the idea of
those three personages. She had long been a moping, fanciful girl, and,
though she was a very good girl, I dare say she was a little vain, and
wishful for notoriety.
Her father, something wiser than his neighbours, said, ‘I tell thee,
Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better have a kind husband to take
care of thee, girl, and work to employ thy mind!’ But Joan told him in
reply, that she had taken a vow never to have a husband, and that she
must go as Heaven directed her, to help the Dauphin.
It happened, unfortunately for her father’s persuasions, and most
unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that a party of the Dauphin’s
enemies found their way into the village while Joan’s disorder was at
this point, and burnt the chapel, and drove out the inhabitants. The
cruelties she saw committed, touched Joan’s heart and made her worse.
She said that the voices and the figures were now continually with her;
that they told her she was the girl who, according to an old prophecy,
was to deliver France; and she must go and help the Dauphin, and must
remain with him until he should be crowned at Rheims: and that she must
travel a long way to a certain lord named Baudricourt, who could and
would, bring her into the Dauphin’s presence.
As her father still said, ‘I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy,’ she set
off to find out this lord, accompanied by an uncle, a poor village
wheelwright and cart-maker, who believed in the reality of her visions.
They travelled a long way and went on and on, over a rough country,
full of the Duke of Burgundy’s men, and of all kinds of robbers and
marauders, until they came to where this lord was.
When his servants told him that there was a poor peasant girl named
Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but an old village wheelwright and
cart-maker, who wished to see him because she was commanded to help the
Dauphin and save France, Baudricourt burst out a-laughing, and bade
them send the girl away. But, he soon heard so much about her lingering
in the town, and praying in the churches, and seeing visions, and doing
harm to no one, that he sent for her, and questioned her. As she said
the same things after she had been well sprinkled with holy water as
she had said before the sprinkling, Baudricourt began to think there
might be something in it. At all events, he thought it worth while to
send her on to the town of Chinon, where the Dauphin was. So, he bought
her a horse, and a sword, and gave her two squires to conduct her. As
the Voices had told Joan that she was to wear a man’s dress, now, she
put one on, and girded her sword to her side, and bound spurs to her
heels, and mounted her horse and rode away with her two squires. As to
her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at his niece in wonder
until she was out of sight—as well he might—and then went home again.
The best place, too.
Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they came to Chinon,
where she was, after some doubt, admitted into the Dauphin’s presence.
Picking him out immediately from all his court, she told him that she
came commanded by Heaven to subdue his enemies and conduct him to his
coronation at Rheims. She also told him (or he pretended so afterwards,
to make the greater impression upon his soldiers) a number of his
secrets known only to himself, and, furthermore, she said there was an
old, old sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine at Fierbois, marked
with five old crosses on the blade, which Saint Catherine had ordered
her to wear.
[Illustration: Joan of Arc]
Now, nobody knew anything about this old, old sword, but when the
cathedral came to be examined—which was immediately done—there, sure
enough, the sword was found! The Dauphin then required a number of
grave priests and bishops to give him their opinion whether the girl
derived her power from good spirits or from evil spirits, which they
held prodigiously long debates about, in the course of which several
learned men fell fast asleep and snored loudly. At last, when one gruff
old gentleman had said to Joan, ‘What language do your Voices speak?’
and when Joan had replied to the gruff old gentleman, ‘A pleasanter
language than yours,’ they agreed that it was all correct, and that
Joan of Arc was inspired from Heaven. This wonderful circumstance put
new heart into the Dauphin’s soldiers when they heard of it, and
dispirited the English army, who took Joan for a witch.
So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and on, until she came
to Orleans. But she rode now, as never peasant girl had ridden yet. She
rode upon a white war-horse, in a suit of glittering armour; with the
old, old sword from the cathedral, newly burnished, in her belt; with a
white flag carried before her, upon which were a picture of God, and
the words Jesus Maria. In this splendid state, at the head of a great
body of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for the starving
inhabitants of Orleans, she appeared before that beleaguered city.
When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried out ‘The Maid is
come! The Maid of the Prophecy is come to deliver us!’ And this, and
the sight of the Maid fighting at the head of their men, made the
French so bold, and made the English so fearful, that the English line
of forts was soon broken, the troops and provisions were got into the
town, and Orleans was saved.
Joan, henceforth called The Maid of Orleans, remained within the walls
for a few days, and caused letters to be thrown over, ordering Lord
Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from before the town according to
the will of Heaven. As the English general very positively declined to
believe that Joan knew anything about the will of Heaven (which did not
mend the matter with his soldiers, for they stupidly said if she were
not inspired she was a witch, and it was of no use to fight against a
witch), she mounted her white war-horse again, and ordered her white
banner to advance.
The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong towers upon the bridge;
and here the Maid of Orleans attacked them. The fight was fourteen
hours long. She planted a scaling ladder with her own hands, and
mounted a tower wall, but was struck by an English arrow in the neck,
and fell into the trench. She was carried away and the arrow was taken
out, during which operation she screamed and cried with the pain, as
any other girl might have done; but presently she said that the Voices
were speaking to her and soothing her to rest. After a while, she got
up, and was again foremost in the fight. When the English who had seen
her fall and supposed her dead, saw this, they were troubled with the
strangest fears, and some of them cried out that they beheld Saint
Michael on a white horse (probably Joan herself) fighting for the
French. They lost the bridge, and lost the towers, and next day set
their chain of forts on fire, and left the place.
But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than the town of
Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, the Maid of Orleans besieged
him there, and he was taken prisoner. As the white banner scaled the
wall, she was struck upon the head with a stone, and was again tumbled
down into the ditch; but, she only cried all the more, as she lay
there, ‘On, on, my countrymen! And fear nothing, for the Lord hath
delivered them into our hands!’ After this new success of the Maid’s,
several other fortresses and places which had previously held out
against the Dauphin were delivered up without a battle; and at Patay
she defeated the remainder of the English army, and set up her
victorious white banner on a field where twelve hundred Englishmen lay
dead.
She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept out of the way when there
was any fighting) to proceed to Rheims, as the first part of her
mission was accomplished; and to complete the whole by being crowned
there. The Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do this, as Rheims was
a long way off, and the English and the Duke of Burgundy were still
strong in the country through which the road lay. However, they set
forth, with ten thousand men, and again the Maid of Orleans rode on and
on, upon her white war-horse, and in her shining armour. Whenever they
came to a town which yielded readily, the soldiers believed in her;
but, whenever they came to a town which gave them any trouble, they
began to murmur that she was an impostor. The latter was particularly
the case at Troyes, which finally yielded, however, through the
persuasion of one Richard, a friar of the place. Friar Richard was in
the old doubt about the Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her
well with holy water, and had also well sprinkled the threshold of the
gate by which she came into the city. Finding that it made no change in
her or the gate, he said, as the other grave old gentlemen had said,
that it was all right, and became her great ally.
So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid of Orleans, and the
Dauphin, and the ten thousand sometimes believing and sometimes
unbelieving men, came to Rheims. And in the great cathedral of Rheims,
the Dauphin actually was crowned Charles the Seventh in a great
assembly of the people. Then, the Maid, who with her white banner stood
beside the King in that hour of his triumph, kneeled down upon the
pavement at his feet, and said, with tears, that what she had been
inspired to do, was done, and that the only recompense she asked for,
was, that she should now have leave to go back to her distant home, and
her sturdily incredulous father, and her first simple escort the
village wheelwright and cart-maker. But the King said ‘No!’ and made
her and her family as noble as a King could, and settled upon her the
income of a Count.
Ah! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans, if she had resumed her
rustic dress that day, and had gone home to the little chapel and the
wild hills, and had forgotten all these things, and had been a good
man’s wife, and had heard no stranger voices than the voices of little
children!
It was not to be, and she continued helping the King (she did a world
for him, in alliance with Friar Richard), and trying to improve the
lives of the coarse soldiers, and leading a religious, an unselfish,
and a modest life, herself, beyond any doubt. Still, many times she
prayed the King to let her go home; and once she even took off her
bright armour and hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear it
more. But, the King always won her back again—while she was of any use
to him—and so she went on and on and on, to her doom.
When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very able man, began to be active
for England, and, by bringing the war back into France and by holding
the Duke of Burgundy to his faith, to distress and disturb Charles very
much, Charles sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the Voices said
about it? But, the Voices had become (very like ordinary voices in
perplexed times) contradictory and confused, so that now they said one
thing, and now said another, and the Maid lost credit every day.
Charles marched on Paris, which was opposed to him, and attacked the
suburb of Saint Honoré. In this fight, being again struck down into the
ditch, she was abandoned by the whole army. She lay unaided among a
heap of dead, and crawled out how she could. Then, some of her
believers went over to an opposition Maid, Catherine of La Rochelle,
who said she was inspired to tell where there were treasures of buried
money—though she never did—and then Joan accidentally broke the old,
old sword, and others said that her power was broken with it. Finally,
at the siege of Compiègne, held by the Duke of Burgundy, where she did
valiant service, she was basely left alone in a retreat, though facing
about and fighting to the last; and an archer pulled her off her horse.
O the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that were sung, about
the capture of this one poor country-girl! O the way in which she was
demanded to be tried for sorcery and heresy, and anything else you
like, by the Inquisitor-General of France, and by this great man, and
by that great man, until it is wearisome to think of! She was bought at
last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and was shut up
in her narrow prison: plain Joan of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no
more.
I should never have done if I were to tell you how they had Joan out to
examine her, and cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and worry her
into saying anything and everything; and how all sorts of scholars and
doctors bestowed their utmost tediousness upon her. Sixteen times she
was brought out and shut up again, and worried, and entrapped, and
argued with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary business. On the
last occasion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place at
Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and faggots, and
the executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, and an awful sermon
ready. It is very affecting to know that even at that pass the poor
girl honoured the mean vermin of a King, who had so used her for his
purposes and so abandoned her; and, that while she had been regardless
of reproaches heaped upon herself, she spoke out courageously for him.
It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save her life, she
signed a declaration prepared for her—signed it with a cross, for she
couldn’t write—that all her visions and Voices had come from the Devil.
Upon her recanting the past, and protesting that she would never wear a
man’s dress in future, she was condemned to imprisonment for life, ‘on
the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction.’
But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, the visions
and the Voices soon returned. It was quite natural that they should do
so, for that kind of disease is much aggravated by fasting, loneliness,
and anxiety of mind. It was not only got out of Joan that she
considered herself inspired again, but, she was taken in a man’s dress,
which had been left—to entrap her—in her prison, and which she put on,
in her solitude; perhaps, in remembrance of her past glories, perhaps,
because the imaginary Voices told her. For this relapse into the
sorcery and heresy and anything else you like, she was sentenced to be
burnt to death. And, in the market-place of Rouen, in the hideous dress
which the monks had invented for such spectacles; with priests and
bishops sitting in a gallery looking on, though some had the Christian
grace to go away, unable to endure the infamous scene; this shrieking
girl—last seen amidst the smoke and fire, holding a crucifix between
her hands; last heard, calling upon Christ—was burnt to ashes. They
threw her ashes into the river Seine; but they will rise against her
murderers on the last day.
From the moment of her capture, neither the French King nor one single
man in all his court raised a finger to save her. It is no defence of
them that they may have never really believed in her, or that they may
have won her victories by their skill and bravery. The more they
pretended to believe in her, the more they had caused her to believe in
herself; and she had ever been true to them, ever brave, ever nobly
devoted. But, it is no wonder, that they, who were in all things false
to themselves, false to one another, false to their country, false to
Heaven, false to Earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and treachery
to a helpless peasant girl.
In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds and grass grow high
on the cathedral towers, and the venerable Norman streets are still
warm in the blessed sunlight though the monkish fires that once gleamed
horribly upon them have long grown cold, there is a statue of Joan of
Arc, in the scene of her last agony, the square to which she has given
its present name. I know some statues of modern times—even in the
World’s metropolis, I think—which commemorate less constancy, less
earnestness, smaller claims upon the world’s attention, and much
greater impostors.
PART THE THIRD
Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind; and the English cause
gained no advantage from the cruel death of Joan of Arc. For a long
time, the war went heavily on. The Duke of Bedford died; the alliance
with the Duke of Burgundy was broken; and Lord Talbot became a great
general on the English side in France. But, two of the consequences of
wars are, Famine—because the people cannot peacefully cultivate the
ground—and Pestilence, which comes of want, misery, and suffering. Both
these horrors broke out in both countries, and lasted for two wretched
years. Then, the war went on again, and came by slow degrees to be so
badly conducted by the English government, that, within twenty years
from the execution of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French
conquests, the town of Calais alone remained in English hands.
While these victories and defeats were taking place in the course of
time, many strange things happened at home. The young King, as he grew
up, proved to be very unlike his great father, and showed himself a
miserable puny creature. There was no harm in him—he had a great
aversion to shedding blood: which was something—but, he was a weak,
silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great lordly
battledores about the Court.
Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the King, and
the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most powerful. The Duke of
Gloucester had a wife, who was nonsensically accused of practising
witchcraft to cause the King’s death and lead to her husband’s coming
to the throne, he being the next heir. She was charged with having, by
the help of a ridiculous old woman named Margery (who was called a
witch), made a little waxen doll in the King’s likeness, and put it
before a slow fire that it might gradually melt away. It was supposed,
in such cases, that the death of the person whom the doll was made to
represent, was sure to happen. Whether the duchess was as ignorant as
the rest of them, and really did make such a doll with such an
intention, I don’t know; but, you and I know very well that she might
have made a thousand dolls, if she had been stupid enough, and might
have melted them all, without hurting the King or anybody else.
However, she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, and so was one
of the duke’s chaplains, who was charged with having assisted them.
Both he and Margery were put to death, and the duchess, after being
taken on foot and bearing a lighted candle, three times round the City,
as a penance, was imprisoned for life. The duke, himself, took all this
pretty quietly, and made as little stir about the matter as if he were
rather glad to be rid of the duchess.
But, he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble long. The royal
shuttlecock being three-and-twenty, the battledores were very anxious
to get him married. The Duke of Gloucester wanted him to marry a
daughter of the Count of Armagnac; but, the Cardinal and the Earl of
Suffolk were all for Margaret, the daughter of the King of Sicily, who
they knew was a resolute, ambitious woman and would govern the King as
she chose. To make friends with this lady, the Earl of Suffolk, who
went over to arrange the match, consented to accept her for the King’s
wife without any fortune, and even to give up the two most valuable
possessions England then had in France. So, the marriage was arranged,
on terms very advantageous to the lady; and Lord Suffolk brought her to
England, and she was married at Westminster. On what pretence this
queen and her party charged the Duke of Gloucester with high treason
within a couple of years, it is impossible to make out, the matter is
so confused; but, they pretended that the King’s life was in danger,
and they took the duke prisoner. A fortnight afterwards, he was found
dead in bed (they said), and his body was shown to the people, and Lord
Suffolk came in for the best part of his estates. You know by this time
how strangely liable state prisoners were to sudden death.
If Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it did him no good,
for he died within six weeks; thinking it very hard and curious—at
eighty years old!—that he could not live to be Pope.
This was the time when England had completed her loss of all her great
French conquests. The people charged the loss principally upon the Earl
of Suffolk, now a duke, who had made those easy terms about the Royal
Marriage, and who, they believed, had even been bought by France. So he
was impeached as a traitor, on a great number of charges, but chiefly
on accusations of having aided the French King, and of designing to
make his own son King of England. The Commons and the people being
violent against him, the King was made (by his friends) to interpose to
save him, by banishing him for five years, and proroguing the
Parliament. The duke had much ado to escape from a London mob, two
thousand strong, who lay in wait for him in St. Giles’s fields; but, he
got down to his own estates in Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich.
Sailing across the Channel, he sent into Calais to know if he might
land there; but, they kept his boat and men in the harbour, until an
English ship, carrying a hundred and fifty men and called the Nicholas
of the Tower, came alongside his little vessel, and ordered him on
board. ‘Welcome, traitor, as men say,’ was the captain’s grim and not
very respectful salutation. He was kept on board, a prisoner, for
eight-and-forty hours, and then a small boat appeared rowing toward the
ship. As this boat came nearer, it was seen to have in it a block, a
rusty sword, and an executioner in a black mask. The duke was handed
down into it, and there his head was cut off with six strokes of the
rusty sword. Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover beach, where the
body was cast out, and left until the duchess claimed it. By whom, high
in authority, this murder was committed, has never appeared. No one was
ever punished for it.
There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave himself the name of
Mortimer, but whose real name was Jack Cade. Jack, in imitation of Wat
Tyler, though he was a very different and inferior sort of man,
addressed the Kentish men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad
government of England, among so many battledores and such a poor
shuttlecock; and the Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty
thousand. Their place of assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by
Jack, they put forth two papers, which they called ‘The Complaint of
the Commons of Kent,’ and ‘The Requests of the Captain of the Great
Assembly in Kent.’ They then retired to Sevenoaks. The royal army
coming up with them here, they beat it and killed their general. Then,
Jack dressed himself in the dead general’s armour, and led his men to
London.
Jack passed into the City from Southwark, over the bridge, and entered
it in triumph, giving the strictest orders to his men not to plunder.
Having made a show of his forces there, while the citizens looked on
quietly, he went back into Southwark in good order, and passed the
night. Next day, he came back again, having got hold in the meantime of
Lord Say, an unpopular nobleman. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor and
judges: ‘Will you be so good as to make a tribunal in Guildhall, and
try me this nobleman?’ The court being hastily made, he was found
guilty, and Jack and his men cut his head off on Cornhill. They also
cut off the head of his son-in-law, and then went back in good order to
Southwark again.
But, although the citizens could bear the beheading of an unpopular
lord, they could not bear to have their houses pillaged. And it did so
happen that Jack, after dinner—perhaps he had drunk a little too
much—began to plunder the house where he lodged; upon which, of course,
his men began to imitate him. Wherefore, the Londoners took counsel
with Lord Scales, who had a thousand soldiers in the Tower; and
defended London Bridge, and kept Jack and his people out. This
advantage gained, it was resolved by divers great men to divide Jack’s
army in the old way, by making a great many promises on behalf of the
state, that were never intended to be performed. This _did_ divide
them; some of Jack’s men saying that they ought to take the conditions
which were offered, and others saying that they ought not, for they
were only a snare; some going home at once; others staying where they
were; and all doubting and quarrelling among themselves.
Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accepting a pardon, and
who indeed did both, saw at last that there was nothing to expect from
his men, and that it was very likely some of them would deliver him up
and get a reward of a thousand marks, which was offered for his
apprehension. So, after they had travelled and quarrelled all the way
from Southwark to Blackheath, and from Blackheath to Rochester, he
mounted a good horse and galloped away into Sussex. But, there galloped
after him, on a better horse, one Alexander Iden, who came up with him,
had a hard fight with him, and killed him. Jack’s head was set aloft on
London Bridge, with the face looking towards Blackheath, where he had
raised his flag; and Alexander Iden got the thousand marks.
It is supposed by some, that the Duke of York, who had been removed
from a high post abroad through the Queen’s influence, and sent out of
the way, to govern Ireland, was at the bottom of this rising of Jack
and his men, because he wanted to trouble the government. He claimed
(though not yet publicly) to have a better right to the throne than
Henry of Lancaster, as one of the family of the Earl of March, whom
Henry the Fourth had set aside. Touching this claim, which, being
through female relationship, was not according to the usual descent, it
is enough to say that Henry the Fourth was the free choice of the
people and the Parliament, and that his family had now reigned
undisputed for sixty years. The memory of Henry the Fifth was so
famous, and the English people loved it so much, that the Duke of
York’s claim would, perhaps, never have been thought of (it would have
been so hopeless) but for the unfortunate circumstance of the present
King’s being by this time quite an idiot, and the country very ill
governed. These two circumstances gave the Duke of York a power he
could not otherwise have had.
Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack Cade, or not, he came over from
Ireland while Jack’s head was on London Bridge; being secretly advised
that the Queen was setting up his enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against
him. He went to Westminster, at the head of four thousand men, and on
his knees before the King, represented to him the bad state of the
country, and petitioned him to summon a Parliament to consider it. This
the King promised. When the Parliament was summoned, the Duke of York
accused the Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Somerset accused the Duke
of York; and, both in and out of Parliament, the followers of each
party were full of violence and hatred towards the other. At length the
Duke of York put himself at the head of a large force of his tenants,
and, in arms, demanded the reformation of the Government. Being shut
out of London, he encamped at Dartford, and the royal army encamped at
Blackheath. According as either side triumphed, the Duke of York was
arrested, or the Duke of Somerset was arrested. The trouble ended, for
the moment, in the Duke of York renewing his oath of allegiance, and
going in peace to one of his own castles.
Half a year afterwards the Queen gave birth to a son, who was very ill
received by the people, and not believed to be the son of the King. It
shows the Duke of York to have been a moderate man, unwilling to
involve England in new troubles, that he did not take advantage of the
general discontent at this time, but really acted for the public good.
He was made a member of the cabinet, and the King being now so much
worse that he could not be carried about and shown to the people with
any decency, the duke was made Lord Protector of the kingdom, until the
King should recover, or the Prince should come of age. At the same time
the Duke of Somerset was committed to the Tower. So, now the Duke of
Somerset was down, and the Duke of York was up. By the end of the year,
however, the King recovered his memory and some spark of sense; upon
which the Queen used her power—which recovered with him—to get the
Protector disgraced, and her favourite released. So now the Duke of
York was down, and the Duke of Somerset was up.
These ducal ups and downs gradually separated the whole nation into the
two parties of York and Lancaster, and led to those terrible civil wars
long known as the Wars of the Red and White Roses, because the red rose
was the badge of the House of Lancaster, and the white rose was the
badge of the House of York.
The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful noblemen of the White
Rose party, and leading a small army, met the King with another small
army at St. Alban’s, and demanded that the Duke of Somerset should be
given up. The poor King, being made to say in answer that he would
sooner die, was instantly attacked. The Duke of Somerset was killed,
and the King himself was wounded in the neck, and took refuge in the
house of a poor tanner. Whereupon, the Duke of York went to him, led
him with great submission to the Abbey, and said he was very sorry for
what had happened. Having now the King in his possession, he got a
Parliament summoned and himself once more made Protector, but, only for
a few months; for, on the King getting a little better again, the Queen
and her party got him into their possession, and disgraced the Duke
once more. So, now the Duke of York was down again.
Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of these constant
changes, tried even then to prevent the Red and the White Rose Wars.
They brought about a great council in London between the two parties.
The White Roses assembled in Blackfriars, the Red Roses in Whitefriars;
and some good priests communicated between them, and made the
proceedings known at evening to the King and the judges. They ended in
a peaceful agreement that there should be no more quarrelling; and
there was a great royal procession to St. Paul’s, in which the Queen
walked arm-in-arm with her old enemy, the Duke of York, to show the
people how comfortable they all were. This state of peace lasted half a
year, when a dispute between the Earl of Warwick (one of the Duke’s
powerful friends) and some of the King’s servants at Court, led to an
attack upon that Earl—who was a White Rose—and to a sudden breaking out
of all old animosities. So, here were greater ups and downs than ever.
There were even greater ups and downs than these, soon after. After
various battles, the Duke of York fled to Ireland, and his son the Earl
of March to Calais, with their friends the Earls of Salisbury and
Warwick; and a Parliament was held declaring them all traitors. Little
the worse for this, the Earl of Warwick presently came back, landed in
Kent, was joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other powerful
noblemen and gentlemen, engaged the King’s forces at Northampton,
signally defeated them, and took the King himself prisoner, who was
found in his tent. Warwick would have been glad, I dare say, to have
taken the Queen and Prince too, but they escaped into Wales and thence
into Scotland.
The King was carried by the victorious force straight to London, and
made to call a new Parliament, which immediately declared that the Duke
of York and those other noblemen were not traitors, but excellent
subjects. Then, back comes the Duke from Ireland at the head of five
hundred horsemen, rides from London to Westminster, and enters the
House of Lords. There, he laid his hand upon the cloth of gold which
covered the empty throne, as if he had half a mind to sit down in
it—but he did not. On the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him if he
would visit the King, who was in his palace close by, he replied, ‘I
know no one in this country, my lord, who ought not to visit _me_.’
None of the lords present spoke a single word; so, the duke went out as
he had come in, established himself royally in the King’s palace, and,
six days afterwards, sent in to the Lords a formal statement of his
claim to the throne. The lords went to the King on this momentous
subject, and after a great deal of discussion, in which the judges and
the other law officers were afraid to give an opinion on either side,
the question was compromised. It was agreed that the present King
should retain the crown for his life, and that it should then pass to
the Duke of York and his heirs.
But, the resolute Queen, determined on asserting her son’s right, would
hear of no such thing. She came from Scotland to the north of England,
where several powerful lords armed in her cause. The Duke of York, for
his part, set off with some five thousand men, a little time before
Christmas Day, one thousand four hundred and sixty, to give her battle.
He lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and the Red Roses defied
him to come out on Wakefield Green, and fight them then and there. His
generals said, he had best wait until his gallant son, the Earl of
March, came up with his power; but, he was determined to accept the
challenge. He did so, in an evil hour. He was hotly pressed on all
sides, two thousand of his men lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he
himself was taken prisoner. They set him down in mock state on an
ant-hill, and twisted grass about his head, and pretended to pay court
to him on their knees, saying, ‘O King, without a kingdom, and Prince
without a people, we hope your gracious Majesty is very well and
happy!’ They did worse than this; they cut his head off, and handed it
on a pole to the Queen, who laughed with delight when she saw it (you
recollect their walking so religiously and comfortably to St. Paul’s!),
and had it fixed, with a paper crown upon its head, on the walls of
York. The Earl of Salisbury lost his head, too; and the Duke of York’s
second son, a handsome boy who was flying with his tutor over Wakefield
Bridge, was stabbed in the heart by a murderous, lord—Lord Clifford by
name—whose father had been killed by the White Roses in the fight at
St. Alban’s. There was awful sacrifice of life in this battle, for no
quarter was given, and the Queen was wild for revenge. When men
unnaturally fight against their own countrymen, they are always
observed to be more unnaturally cruel and filled with rage than they
are against any other enemy.
But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the Duke of York—not
the first. The eldest son, Edward Earl of March, was at Gloucester;
and, vowing vengeance for the death of his father, his brother, and
their faithful friends, he began to march against the Queen. He had to
turn and fight a great body of Welsh and Irish first, who worried his
advance. These he defeated in a great fight at Mortimer’s Cross, near
Hereford, where he beheaded a number of the Red Roses taken in battle,
in retaliation for the beheading of the White Roses at Wakefield. The
Queen had the next turn of beheading. Having moved towards London, and
falling in, between St. Alban’s and Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick
and the Duke of Norfolk, White Roses both, who were there with an army
to oppose her, and had got the King with them; she defeated them with
great loss, and struck off the heads of two prisoners of note, who were
in the King’s tent with him, and to whom the King had promised his
protection. Her triumph, however, was very short. She had no treasure,
and her army subsisted by plunder. This caused them to be hated and
dreaded by the people, and particularly by the London people, who were
wealthy. As soon as the Londoners heard that Edward, Earl of March,
united with the Earl of Warwick, was advancing towards the city, they
refused to send the Queen supplies, and made a great rejoicing.
The Queen and her men retreated with all speed, and Edward and Warwick
came on, greeted with loud acclamations on every side. The courage,
beauty, and virtues of young Edward could not be sufficiently praised
by the whole people. He rode into London like a conqueror, and met with
an enthusiastic welcome. A few days afterwards, Lord Falconbridge and
the Bishop of Exeter assembled the citizens in St. John’s Field,
Clerkenwell, and asked them if they would have Henry of Lancaster for
their King? To this they all roared, ‘No, no, no!’ and ‘King Edward!
King Edward!’ Then, said those noblemen, would they love and serve
young Edward? To this they all cried, ‘Yes, yes!’ and threw up their
caps and clapped their hands, and cheered tremendously.
Therefore, it was declared that by joining the Queen and not protecting
those two prisoners of note, Henry of Lancaster had forfeited the
crown; and Edward of York was proclaimed King. He made a great speech
to the applauding people at Westminster, and sat down as sovereign of
England on that throne, on the golden covering of which his
father—worthy of a better fate than the bloody axe which cut the thread
of so many lives in England, through so many years—had laid his hand.