THE WARS OF THE ROSES.
1454-1471.
In mediaeval England there was but one way of getting rid of political
grievances which the king refused to redress--the old method of armed
force, the means which we have seen used in the cases of Gaveston, the
Despensers, and the favourites of Richard II. Henry VI. was not idle
and vicious like Edward the Second, nor did he yearn for autocratic
power like the second Richard. He was merely a simple, feeble,
well-intentioned young man, who always required some prop to lean upon,
who chose his servants unwisely, and adhered to them obstinately.
A wise king would have dismissed Somerset after the disasters in
Normandy and Guienne, and taken a more profitable helper in the hard
task of governing England. York was the obvious man to choose; he
was an able general, and the first prince of the blood. But Henry
distrusted York, and Henry's young queen viewed him with keen and
unconcealed dislike. The thought that, if any harm should come to her
husband, Duke Richard must succeed him, filled Margaret of Anjou with
wrath and bitterness.
[Sidenote: =Policy of the Duke of York.=]
There are no signs that York yet entertained any disloyal designs on
the throne, but he undoubtedly knew that, as the heir of the house of
Mortimer, he owned a better hereditary claim to the throne than any
member of the line of Lancaster. He was contented, however, to bide his
time and wait for the succession of the childless king.
Meanwhile he took care to keep his party together, and steadfastly
persevered in his very justifiable desire to evict the incapable
Somerset from office. But it was the misfortune of England that
Somerset was not friendless and unsupported, as Gaveston or the
Despensers had been. He was the chief of a considerable family
combination among the nobility, who were ready to aid him in keeping
his place. There were, too, many others who disapproved of him
personally, but were prepared to support him, some out of sheer loyalty
to King Henry, some because they had old personal or family grudges
against York or York's chief friends and supporters.
[Sidenote: =Power of the nobility.=]
The chief misfortunes of the unhappy time that was now to set in, had
their source in the swollen importance of the great noble houses, and
the bitterness of their feuds with each other. For the last hundred
years the landed wealth of England had been concentrating into fewer
and fewer hands. The House of Lords contained less than a third of the
numbers that it had shown in the days of Edward I. The greater peers
had piled up such vast masses of estates that they were growing to be
each a little king in his own district. The weak government of Henry
VI. had allowed their insolence to come to a head, and for the last
twenty years private wars between them had been growing more and more
frequent. They found the tools of their turbulence in the hordes of
disbanded soldiers sent home from France, who knew no other trade but
fighting, and would sell themselves to be the household bullies of the
highest bidder.
[Sidenote: =The rival factions.--The Yorkists.=]
England was already honeycombed with family feuds, now ready to burst
out into open violence. If we examine the lists of the supporters of
York and of Somerset, we find that to a very large extent the politics
of the English magnates were personal, and not national. With York
were linked a great group of peers who were allied to him by blood.
The chief of them were the younger branch of the Nevilles, represented
by the two Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, a father and son who had
each made his fortune by marrying the heiress of a great earldom. The
Nevilles of the elder line, represented by the head of the house,
the Earl of Westmoreland, had always been at feud with their cousins
of the younger stock, and, since they were strong Lancastrians, the
younger branch would probably have favoured York in any case. But their
adhesion to him was rendered certain by the fact that Duke Richard had
married Salisbury's sister. Another sister of the earl's was wedded to
the next greatest supporter of York, John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. He
was a nephew of that Mowbray whom Henry IV. had beheaded in 1405, in
company with Archbishop Scrope, and so had his private grudge against
the house of Lancaster. Among the other chiefs of the Yorkist party we
can trace in almost every instance an old feud or a family alliance
which seems to have determined their policy.
[Sidenote: =The Lancastrians.=]
It was the same with the party that stood by the king and Somerset. It
comprised, first of all, the houses which were allied in blood to the
Lancastrian line--the king's cousins the Beauforts, the legitimized
descendants of John of Gaunt, and his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper
Tudor, Earls of Richmond and Pembroke.[27] After them came the Percies
of Northumberland, the Westmoreland Nevilles, and the Staffords of
Buckingham--the three houses which had been prominent in aiding the
usurpation of Henry IV. The Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland
were certainly confirmed in their loyalty to the king by their bitter
quarrel with their kinsmen, the younger Nevilles, the strongest
supporters of York.
[Sidenote: =Character of the Wars of the Roses.=]
But the "Wars of the Roses,"--as historians have chosen to name them,
from the white rose which was the badge of York, and the red rose which
was assumed long after as the emblem of Lancaster--were much more than
a faction fight between two rival coteries of peers. At the first
they were the attempt of the majority of the English nation to oust
an unpopular minister from power by force of arms. There is no doubt
that the greater part of England sided with York in this endeavour. The
citizens and freeholders of London, Kent, the South, and the Midlands,
where lay all the wealth and political energy of the nation, were
strongly Yorkist. Henry, on the other hand, got his support from a
group of great nobles who controlled the wild West and North, and the
still wilder Wales.
Unfortunately for the nation, the constitutional aspect of the struggle
was gradually obscured by the increasing bitterness of family
blood-feuds. "Thy father slew mine, and now will I slay thee," was the
cry of the Lancastrian noble to the enemy who asked for quarter,[28]
and it expresses well enough the whole aspect of the later years of
the struggle. The war commenced with an attempt to set right by force
the government of the realm, but it ended as a mere series of bloody
reprisals for slain kinsfolk. It left England in a far worse state,
from the political and constitutional point of view, than it had
known since the days of John. It began with the comparatively small
affliction of a weak, well-intentioned king, who persisted in retaining
an unpopular minister in power; it ended by leaving the realm in the
hands of an arbitrary self-willed king, who ruled autocratically for
himself, with no desire or intention of consulting the nation's wishes
as to how it should be governed.
We might place the beginning of the Wars of the Roses at the moment
of Cade's insurrection, but it was not till five years later that the
struggle broke out in its bitterer form.
[Sidenote: =Madness of the king.--Birth of his son.=]
Strangely enough, the commencement of the strife was preceded by a
time in which it seemed almost certain that the troubles of the realm
would blow over. In 1453 the king went mad; the peers and commons
unanimously called upon York, as the first prince of the blood, to
take up the place of Protector of the realm. He did so to the general
satisfaction of the nation, cast Somerset into the Tower, and replaced
the old ministers by more capable men. But just as all seemed settled,
and York's ultimate succession to the crown appeared inevitable, the
whole aspect of affairs was altered by the queen giving birth to a son,
after nine years of unfruitful wedlock. This completely cut away York's
prospect of succession; but he accepted the situation with loyalty,
and swore allegiance to the infant Prince of Wales. But after eighteen
months, Henry VI. suddenly and unexpectedly recovered his sanity. At
once, at Queen Margaret's behest, he dismissed York and his friends
from office, and drew Somerset out of the Tower to make him minister
once more.
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of war.--First battle of St. Albans.=]
This action drove Duke Richard to sudden violence. He hastily gathered
his retainers from the Welsh Marches, called his kinsmen the two
Neville earls to his aid, and marched on London. Somerset and the
king had only the time to collect a few of their friends, when York
came upon them at St. Albans. He laid before the king his ultimatum,
requiring that Somerset should be given up to be tried, and, when
it was rejected, attacked the town, in which the royal troops had
barricaded themselves. After a short skirmish, the young Earl of
Warwick, Richard Neville, burst his way into the streets and won the
day for his uncle Duke Richard. The king was taken prisoner, while
Somerset, the cause of all the trouble, was slain in the fray with
several other lords of his party (May, 1455).
The first battle of St. Albans put the control of the king's person
into the hands of York, who again assumed the management of the realm.
But he only kept it for less than a year; in 1456 the king asserted
his constitutional power of changing his ministers, and turned Duke
Richard's friends out of office. As his foe Somerset was now dead,
York was fairly contented to leave matters in the king's own control.
But after the blood shed at St. Albans, there could be no true
reconciliation between the friends of the king and the friends of York.
The fierce and active young Queen Margaret put herself at the head of
the party which Suffolk and Somerset had formerly led. She feared for
her infant son's right of succession to the throne, and was determined
to crush York to make his path clear. Throughout the years 1457-8,
while a precarious peace was still preserved, Margaret was journeying
up and down the land, enlisting partisans in her cause, and giving
them her son's badge of the white swan to wear, in token of promised
fidelity.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.--Rout of Ludford.=]
The inevitable renewal of the war came in 1459. Its immediate cause was
an attempt by some of the Queen's retainers to slay the young Earl of
Warwick, York's ablest and most energetic supporter. Then Salisbury,
Warwick's father, raised his Yorkshire tenants in arms; the queen
sent against them a force under Lord Audley, whom the elder Neville
defeated and slew at Bloreheath. After this skirmish, all England flew
to arms to aid one party or the other. York, Salisbury, and Warwick met
at Ludlow, on the Welsh border, while the king gathered a great army
at Worcester, taking the field himself, with a vigour which he never
before or afterwards displayed. It seems that York's adherents were
moved by the vehement appeals which King Henry made to their loyalty,
and cowed by the superior forces that he mustered. At the Rout of
Ludford they broke up without fighting, leaving their leaders to escape
as best they might. York fled to Ireland, Salisbury and Warwick to
Calais, of which the younger Neville was governor.
[Sidenote: =Harsh measures of the queen.=]
But surprising and sudden vicissitudes of fortune were the order of the
day all through the Wars of the Roses. The queen and her friends ruled
harshly and unwisely after they had driven York out of the land. They
assembled a Parliament at Coventry, which dealt out hard measures of
attainder and confiscation against all who had favoured Duke Richard.
They sacked the open town of Newbury because it was supposed to favour
York, and hung seven citizens of London of the duke's party. These
cruel actions turned the heart of the nation from the king and the
ruthless Queen Margaret.
Hearing of this state of affairs, Warwick and Salisbury suddenly made a
descent from Calais, landed at Sandwich, and pushed boldly inland. The
whole of Kent rose to join them, and they were able to march on London.
The Yorkist partisans within the city were so strong that they threw
open the gates, and the Nevilles seized the capital. The Londoners
armed in their favour, and the Yorkist lords of the South flocked in
to aid them; soon they were strong enough to strike at their enemies,
whose forces were not yet concentrated. The queen had gathered at
Northampton the loyalists of the Midland counties, but her friends of
the North and West were not yet arrived.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Northampton.=]
Warwick, on July 10, 1460, stormed the entrenched camp of the
Lancastrians in front of Northampton, and took the king prisoner. The
queen escaped to Wales, but the greater part of the chiefs of her army
were left dead on the field, for Warwick had bidden his men to spare
the common folk, and slay none save knights and nobles. There fell the
Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and many other leading men
of the king's party.
The Duke of York had crossed from Ireland too late to take any share
in the fight of Northampton, but in time to reap the fruits of
his nephew's victory. He advanced to London, and there summoned a
Parliament. It then appeared that the vicissitudes of the last year
had so embittered him that he was no longer content to act as regent
for Henry VI. He fell back on his undisputed hereditary claim as the
eldest heir of Richard II., and began to talk of deposing his cousin
and assuming the crown. But his own partisans set their faces against
this plan, for Henry was still personally popular, and all the blame
of his misgovernment was laid on the queen and her friends. The Earl
of Warwick openly told his uncle that he must be content to be regent,
and York had to accept a compromise, by which Henry VI. was to retain
the crown as long as he lived, but to leave it to Duke Richard on his
death. The rights of the little Prince of Wales were ignored, and many
of the Yorkists swore that he was a supposititious child, and no true
son of King Henry.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Wakefield.--Slaughter of Yorkist leaders.=]
But in making this arrangement the duke's party had reckoned without
Queen Margaret, who was still free and busy. She had fled to the North,
and there had gathered to her the Percies, the elder Nevilles, and the
barons of the Border, all staunch Lancastrians. Hearing of this muster,
Duke Richard marched northward, with his second son Edmund, Earl of
Rutland, and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury. He underrated
the queen's forces, and rashly engaged with them under the walls of
Sandal Castle, close to Wakefield. There, overwhelmed by numbers, he
and his whole army were destroyed. Burning to avenge the slaughter of
Northampton, the Lancastrians refused all quarter. The Earl of Rutland,
a lad of seventeen, fell at the knees of Lord Clifford and asked for
his life. "Thy father slew mine, and now will I slay thee," answered
the rough Borderer, and stabbed him as he knelt. The Earl of Salisbury
was captured and beheaded next day. Queen Margaret set the heads of the
slain lords above the gate of York, Duke Richard's in the midst crowned
in derision with a diadem of paper.
Thus perished Richard of York, a man who had always displayed great
abilities, and down to the last year of his life had shown much
self-control and moderation. His death was a great loss to England,
as the headship of his house and his party now passed to his son, a
selfish and hard-hearted--though very able--young man of eighteen.
[Sidenote: =Second Battle of St. Albans.=]
The event of the battle of Wakefield came as a thunderclap to the
Yorkists, who had hitherto despised the queen and her northern
followers. Edward, Earl of March, Duke Richard's heir, was absent in
the west, where he was striving with the Lancastrians of Wales. Only
Richard of Warwick was in time to reach London before the northern
army approached its walls. He rallied the Yorkists of the South, and
led them to St. Albans, where Queen Margaret attacked him. Again the
Northerners were victorious; they rescued King Henry from his captors,
and scattered Warwick's army to the winds. The rancorous queen made her
little seven-year old son sit in judgment on the prisoners, and bade
him choose the form of death by which they each should die.
[Sidenote: =London saved by Edward of York.=]
If Margaret had pushed on next day, the capital would have fallen into
her hands; but her gentle and kindly spouse feared that the northern
moss-troopers would sack and burn the city, and persuaded her to wait,
in order that London might surrender in due form, and not be taken by
assault. The short delay was fatal to him and his cause. While London
was negotiating the terms on which it should yield, a new Yorkist army
suddenly appeared on the scene.
Not many days before the second battle of St. Albans, the young
Edward of York had routed the Lancastrians of Wales at the battle of
Mortimer's Cross, in Herefordshire. He had then set out to march on
London; on the way he was met by Warwick, who brought the news of his
own defeat, and of the queen's approach to the capital. But, learning
that she had not yet entered its walls, they marched night and day,
and threw themselves into the city just as its gates were opening for
surrender.
[Sidenote: =Retreat of the queen.=]
The arrival of the heir of York and his victorious troops turned the
fortune of the war. Margaret's army had in great part dispersed to
plunder the Midlands, for the Northerners had vowed to treat every man
south of the Trent as an enemy. When Duke Edward advanced they gave way
before him, and retreated towards York, wasting the country behind them
on all sides.
[Sidenote: =Edward proclaims himself king.=]
The slaughter of Wakefield and St. Albans, and more especially the
ruthless execution of prisoners which had followed each battle, had
driven the Yorkists to a pitch of anger which they had not felt
before. There was no longer any talk of making terms with Henry VI.,
and leaving him the crown. Warwick and the other nobles of his party
besought the young duke to claim the crown, as the true heir of Richard
II., and to stigmatize the three Lancastrian kings as usurpers. Edward
readily consented, and proclaimed himself king at Westminster on
his hereditary title, and without any form of election or assent of
Parliament.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Towton.=]
But the new king had to fight for his crown before he could wear it. He
and Warwick pursued the queen's army over the Trent, and caught it up
at Towton, near Tadcaster, in Yorkshire. Here was fought the greatest
and fiercest of the battles of the Wars of the Roses. Both parties
were present in full force; the South and Midlands had rallied round
Edward IV. in their wrath at the plundering of the Northumbrians. The
Lancastrians of Wales and the Midlands had joined the queen during her
retreat. The chroniclers assert that the two armies together mustered
nearly a hundred thousand men--an impossible figure, but one which
vouches for the fact that Towton saw the largest hosts set against each
other that ever met on an English battle-field.
[Sidenote: =Slaughter of Lancastrian leaders.=]
This desperate and bloody fight was waged on a bleak hillside during
a blinding snow-storm, which half hid the combatants from each other.
It lasted for a whole March day from dawn to dusk, and ended in the
complete rout of the queen's army. Thousands of the Lancastrians were
crushed to death or drowned at the passing of the little river Cock,
which lay behind their line of battle. There fell on the field the Earl
of Northumberland, the Lords Clifford, Neville, Dacre, Welles, and
Mauley--all the chiefs of the Lancastrian party in the north. Courtney,
Earl of Devon, and Butler, Earl of Wilts, were captured, and beheaded
some time after the fight. No less than forty-two men of knightly rank
shared their fate, so savage were King Edward and Warwick in avenging
their fathers and brothers who had died at Wakefield.
Henry VI., with his wife and son, and the young Duke of Somerset,
escaped from the field and fled into Scotland, where they were kindly
received by the regents who ruled that land for the little King James
III.
[Sidenote: =Rule of Edward.--Warwick the King-maker.=]
The carnage in and after Towton assured the crown to the house of
York. Edward IV. was able to return to London and summon a Parliament,
which formally acknowledged him as king, recognizing his hereditary
right, and not going through any form of election. At his command they
attainted the whole of the leaders of the Lancastrian party, both
those who had fallen at Towton, and those who yet lived. Thinking his
position sure, the young king then gave himself over to feasting and
idleness, entrusting the completion of the war and the pacification of
England to his cousin, the Earl of Warwick, whom men from this time
forward called "the King-maker," because he had twice settled the fate
of England, by winning the rule of the land for the house of York, at
Northampton in 1460, and at Towton in 1461.
Edward IV. showed a strange mixture of qualities. On the battle-field
he was a great commander, and in times of danger he was alert and
dexterous. But when no perils were at hand, he became a reckless,
heartless voluptuary, given to all manner of evil living and idle
luxury, and letting affairs shift for themselves. For the first four
years of his reign he handed over all cares of state to his cousin of
Warwick, a busy capable man, who loved work and power, and strove not
unsuccessfully to make himself the most popular man in England. Warwick
called himself the friend of the commons, and used the vast wealth
which he enjoyed as heir of all the broad lands of the Beauchamps,
Nevilles, and Montacutes, to make himself partisans all over the
country. He was self-confident and ambitious in the highest degree,
and thoroughly enjoyed his position of chief minister to an idle and
careless master. When he was at last deprived of it, we shall see that
wounded pride could lead him to intrigue and treason.
[Sidenote: =Last efforts of the Lancastrians.=]
The four years 1461-64 were occupied by the final crushing out of the
civil war by the strong hand of the King-maker. The task proved longer
than might have been expected, owing to the desperate efforts which
Queen Margaret made to maintain her son's cause. After Towton nothing
remained to her but some castles in Northumberland and Wales, but she
bought the aid of the Scots by ceding Berwick, and obtained men and
money from Lewis XI., the young King of France. That astute prince
thought that a weak and divided England was the best security for
the safety of France, and doled out occasional help to the queen in
consideration of a promise to surrender Calais.
Warwick captured all the Northumbrian strongholds of the house of
Percy,--Bamborough, Alnwick, and Dunstanborough--in 1462. But the
North was thoroughly disaffected to the new king, and they were twice
retaken by treachery when the queen, with her French and Scottish
friends, appeared before them. In her third campaign she was aided by
a rising of all the Lancastrians who had submitted to King Edward and
been pardoned by him, headed by the Duke of Somerset, the son of him
who fell at St. Albans. But the two battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham
(April-May, 1464) crushed the last desperate effort of the northern
Lancastrians: at the former fell Sir Ralph Percy, the last chief of
the Percy clan who clung to the lost cause; at the second the Duke of
Somerset was taken and executed. Both fights were won by Lord Montagu,
the younger brother and lieutenant of the great Earl of Warwick. By
June, 1464, Warwick himself stamped out the last embers of resistance
by the second capture of Bamborough, the sole surviving Lancastrian
stronghold in England.
The King-maker returned in triumph to London, and could report to his
master that he had completely pacified England, and had also concluded
an advantageous treaty with the Scots. He proposed to finish his work
by making terms with the King of France, the last supporter of the
Lancastrian cause, with whom Margaret and her young son had sought
refuge. For this purpose he advised King Edward to endeavour to ally
himself with some princess among the kinswomen of Lewis XI.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Edward.=]
It was from this point that the breach between Edward and his great
minister began. When pressed to marry, the king announced--to the great
surprise and annoyance of Warwick and the rest of his council--that he
was married already. He had secretly espoused Elizabeth, daughter of
Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, a staunch Lancastrian, and widow of Sir
John Grey, another Lancastrian, who had fallen at St. Albans. She was
some years older than Edward, and had a family by her first husband.
But her beauty had captivated the susceptible young king, and he had
married her in secret, in order to avoid the opposition of his family
and his councillors.
[Sidenote: =Breach between Warwick and Edward.=]
When compelled to acknowledge this unwise match, Edward made the best
of the matter, brought his wife to court, conferred an earldom on her
father, and showered patronage upon her brothers and sisters. When
Warwick ventured to remonstrate, he showed that he had no mind to be
ruled any more by his too-powerful cousin, and redoubled his favours to
the Woodvilles. He gave his wife's sisters as brides to the greatest
peers of the realm, and made her father his Lord Treasurer. This was
not pique, but policy, for Edward had come to the conclusion that the
Neville clan was too strong, and had resolved to surround himself by
another family connection which should owe everything to his protection
(1465).
For a time an open breach between the king and the King-maker was
delayed, and Edward's throne seemed firmly set. His position was
made surer by the capture of the old King Henry VI., who was caught
in Lancashire, where he had been lurking obscurely for some time.
When Edward had placed him in the Tower of London, he thought that
all his troubles were over. He forgot the unhealthy condition of the
realm, the blood-feuds that reigned in every county, and the general
disorganization of society that had resulted from six years of civil
war and from the wholesale transference of lands and property that had
accompanied it. Above all, he overlooked the vast power that had fallen
into the hands of the great military peers, and especially of his
ambitious cousin Warwick.
In 1467 Edward put his strength to the trial by dismissing all the
King-maker's friends from office, and by ignominiously disavowing an
embassy to France on which he had sent his cousin. From sheer desire
to humiliate the great earl, he concluded an alliance with Charles the
Rash, Duke of Burgundy, the deadly enemy of France, because he knew
that Warwick was opposed to such a tie. He gave his sister Margaret to
be the duke's wife, and made Warwick escort her on her embarkation for
Flanders.
[Sidenote: =Conspiracy of Warwick.=]
The earl replied by setting treasonable intrigues on foot. He leagued
himself with the king's younger brother George, Duke of Clarence,
Shakespeare's "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," a discontented
young man of a very unamiable character. Warwick agreed to give his
eldest daughter, the heiress of his vast estates, to the duke, and they
swore to compel Edward to drive away the Woodvilles, and rule only
under their guidance.
[Sidenote: =Defeat and capture of Edward.=]
Warwick and Clarence were completely successful in their plot. They
secretly suborned a rebellion in Yorkshire, under Sir John Conyers,
one of Warwick's relatives, who was aided by the Neville retainers, as
well as by the discontented Lancastrians of the North. Conyers called
himself "Robin of Redesdale," and gave himself out as the champion of
the poor and the redresser of grievances--much as Cade had done fifteen
years before. He beat the king's army at Edgecote Field, near Banbury,
and then Warwick and Clarence appeared upon the scene and apprehended
Edward at Olney. They beheaded Earl Rivers, the father of all the
Woodvilles, and Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the king's chief confidant.
After keeping Edward some months in durance, they released him, on his
undertaking to govern according to their desires (1469).
[Sidenote: =Warwick driven from England.=]
But the spirit of Edward always rose in times of trouble; he cast
off his sloth, and plotted against the plotters. Taking advantage of
an ill-planned Lancastrian rising in Lincolnshire, he raised a great
army, and suddenly turned it against his disloyal brother and cousin.
Warwick and Clarence were chased all across England, from Manchester to
Dartmouth, and barely escaped with their lives by taking ship to France.
[Sidenote: =He joins the Lancastrians.=]
Furious at his failure, the King-maker resolved to sacrifice all his
prejudices and predispositions to revenge. He met the exiled Queen
Margaret at Angers, and proposed to her to restore Henry VI. to the
throne, and make an end of the ungrateful Edward. After long doubting,
Margaret resolved to take his offer, though she hated him bitterly,
and never trusted him. To bind the alliance, Edward, Prince of Wales,
the queen's young son, was married to Anne Neville, the earl's second
daughter.
[Sidenote: =Henry again king.=]
Then Warwick and Margaret joined to foment a rising in England. The
numerous clan of the Nevilles were prepared to follow their chief, and
the surviving Lancastrians were still ready to risk themselves in a
new plan of insurrection. In the autumn of 1470, Warwick and Clarence
landed in Devonshire and raised the standard of the imprisoned Henry
VI. Their success showed the deep roots of the earl's popularity, and
the precarious nature of King Edward's power. Simultaneous risings
broke out all over England, and Edward, betrayed by most of his
supporters, had to take ship and fly to Flanders. Henry VI. was drawn
from his dungeon, and was for a few months again King of England.
[Sidenote: =Return of Edward.--Battle of Barnet.=]
But one more change of fortune was yet to come. Edward IV. borrowed
men and money from his brother-in-law, Charles of Burgundy, and boldly
returned to England in the spring of 1471. He landed in Yorkshire,
called his partisans about him, and marched on London. Edward, when
his mettle was up, was a captain of no mean ability. He completely
out-generalled his enemy, and got between him and the capital. The Duke
of Clarence, who had been entrusted with Warwick's western forces,
betrayed his father-in-law, and joined his brother with the men whom
he should have led to the earl's aid. London and the person of Henry
VI. fell into King Edward's hands. Warwick came up too late, and had
to fight the Yorkists at Barnet, a few miles north of the city. There
he was completely defeated and slain, losing the battle mainly by the
accident of a fog, which caused two divisions of his troops to attack
one another. With Warwick fell his brother Lord Montagu, and most of
the personal adherents on whom his power rested.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Tewkesbury.--End of the war.=]
But Edward was not yet secure. On the very day of Barnet, Queen
Margaret landed at Portsmouth to raise the Lancastrians of the South
in Warwick's aid. Hearing of his fall, she turned westward, gathering
up a considerable force of adherents as she fled. But Edward rapidly
pursued her, and by dint of superior pace in marching, caught her up
at Tewkesbury. The queen's army was intercepted, and penned up with
its back to the Severn, then destitute of a bridge. Unable to fly,
the Lancastrians had to turn, and fought a desperate battle outside
Tewkesbury. But King Edward never suffered a defeat in all his days;
his courage and skill carried all before it, and the queen's army
was annihilated. Her young son Edward, Prince of Wales, was slain in
the pursuit, though he cried for quarter to "his brother Clarence."
The last Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Devon, and all the surviving
Lancastrian magnates fell on the field, or were beheaded next day
by the victor. Queen Margaret was taken prisoner and thrown into
confinement.
[Sidenote: =Murder of Henry.=]
On the death of Prince Edward, the old king Henry VI. was left the only
survivor of the house of Lancaster. The ruthless heir of York resolved
that he too should die, and on his return to London had the feeble and
saintly prince murdered, by the hands of his young brother Richard,
Duke of Gloucester (1471).
Thus ended the wars of the Roses, in the complete victory of York, and
the extinction of the line of John of Gaunt, after it had sat for three
generations on the English throne.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] The sons of Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V., by her
second marriage with a Welsh knight named Owen Tudor.
[28] See p. 251.