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.