favor on Somerset, whom they blamed for the loss of Normandy, and for the miserable failure of an attempt to recover Guienne.

At this critical point Henry was seized with a fit of insanity, and the reins of government were thrown into the hands of York with the title of Protector. This, however, did not last long, for the recovery of Henry deprived York of his office. But the Duke having tasted the sweets of power, took up arms. A civil conflict-the famous Wars of the Roses-began. They were so called from the badges of the rival houses, the ensign of the House of York being a white, that of the House of Lancaster a red rose. The chief supporters of York were the Earl of Salisbury and his son the Earl of Warwick. All England was divided into two great parties. The first blood in these destructive wars was shed at St. Albans in May 1455, where York obtained a victory, with the slaughter of several Lancastrian nobles. Henry was made prisoner; but a sort of compromise between the parties followed this first action, and the king nominally resumed his sovereignty. The war being renewed, the Yorkists were again victorious, at Bloreheath, in Staffordshire (1459). Henry was a second time made captive, at Northampton, by the Yorkists under Warwick, in 1460. Now for the first time York publicly laid claim to the throne as the representative of the eldest surviving branch of the royal family. Parliament decided that Henry should reignd uring his life, and that the crown should then pass to York and his heirs.

Brave Margaret of Anjou, burning with anger that her son Edward, Prince of Wales, should be shut out from the throne, called the Lancastrians again to arms, and routed the Yorkists at Wakefield Green in Yorkshire, 1460. This was the first success of the Red Rose, and in this battle the Duke of York was slain. This loss, instead of dispiriting, roused the Yorkists to fury. Edward, Earl of March, succeeded his father as Duke of York, and at Mortimer's Cross swept the royalists before him, 1461. A few days later, Margaret defeated Warwick in the second battle of St. Albans, 1461, and released the king from confinement. But when Edward marched to London, he was received by the citizens with shouts of joy. A great council declared that Henry had forfeited the crown when he joined the army of the queen, and the young Duke

of York was at once proclaimed king, with the title of Edward IV. The north of England, however, still remained faithful to Henry; London and the south had declared for Edward. But a decisive victory, won at Towton, in March, 1461, established the predominance of the House of York. Edward was crowned at Westminster in June. Again the shattered ranks of the Lancastrians were arrayed; but at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham, 1464, they were again broken.

Poor Henry fled to the wilds of Lancashire, where for more than a year he eluded pursuit; but at last was betrayed by a monk and consigned to the Tower of London. Here he was kept until October, 1470, when a revolution again restored him, for a few months, to both his liberty and his crown. At the battle of Barnet, 14th April, 1471, Henry again fell into the hands of Edward and was re-committed to the Tower. In the same battle Warwick was slain. Queen Margaret soon after landed with a fresh army, but was surprised and defeated at Tewkesbury. Her son Edward, Prince of Wales, was killed after the fight was over. It was generally believed that Henry was murdered in his prison cell by the king's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III.; but his death is involved in mystery. All that is known is that on Wednesday, the 22d of May, 1471, the dead body of the Lancastrian monarch was exposed to public view in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Henry VI. was gentle, pious, and perhaps fond of learning, but one of the weakest kings that ever sat upon a throne. His long minority formed in him the habit of trusting too much to his counsellors; and, like a shuttlecock, he was kept flying between the two parties. His wife displayed high courage, and was far better fitted for the throne than the feeble king. She maintained his cause in the field, while he passed from one captivity to another.

MARGARET OF ANJOU.

From Shakespeare and the chroniclers we receive a very harsh impression of the character of Margaret of Anjou, for they present her in repulsive, if not hideous, colors. She is portrayed unfeminine, arbitrary, revengeful, licentious; and

even her energy and fortitude are distorted into unnatural ferocity and obduracy. I greatly distrust this representation, not because I am able to find historical authority for a different and better character, but because there was so much that would almost irresistibly render the English judgment on her memory prejudicial and unjust. The marriage contract between her and Henry the Sixth, stipulated for the cession of territory to her father, René of Anjou, that amiable but, perhaps, somewhat fantastic person, who was happy in the pompous possession of three regal titles, without a rood of land in either of his kingdoms, Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem; and who spent his days in a sort of pleasant dream of the innocent play of chivalry and the songs of troubadours.

Margaret came to England a Frenchwoman, to be the Queen of England, just at the time when English pride was exasperated by French victories; and, moreover, she was soon placed in the unnatural attitude of supplying, by her character, the feebleness of her husband's rule. The almost feminine gentleness of Henry's disposition gives an offensively masculine character to Margaret's life. She could not but see that the throne was environed with dangers, the perils of false friends and open enemies. She could not but see the helplessness of her royal husband; and she ought not to be judged too severely, when we consider that, if her natural temper led to it, so also did the necessity of the case constrain her to do one of the worst things a woman can do-make a man of herself. And this was done, not, as by her illustrious country-woman, the Maid of Orleans, under religious influences, but for the purposes of worldly policy. Still these purposes were the defense of her king and husband, the possession of the throne, and the maintenance of the hereditary rights of her son. She may have been all that the English chroniclers and the English dramatist represent; but I do distrust it because she was in the very position-the relation to a divided and misgoverned people-that would inevitably cause a great deal to be attributed to her, for which she may not have been rightfully responsible. Consider how natural, and yet how unjust would it be for the adverse party to trace every obnoxious measure of the government, and many an

atrocity in the war, to the Frenchwoman on the throne, the strong and determined wife of an irresolute and unregarded king. I dare say that, in her way of life, there may have been much that is revolting to our sense of female character; indeed, it could not be otherwise; for a woman can hardly play a man's part in the work of the world without grievous detriment to her own nature. But one is still entitled to contemplate Queen Margaret, not as a vulgar and hideous Amazon, but as a woman under the dire necessity of mingling in scenes of war.

After the parliamentary compromise, in which the succession of her son was sacrificed, we can behold her as an heroic matron warring for the rights of her child, when the father's feeble hand could not defend them. She gathers an army, which the Duke of York, contemptuously encountering, pays a bloody penalty for the folly of rashly despising an enemy. He was slain at the battle of Wakefield; and in as short a time as two months after he had walked in procession to St. Paul's, as the newly-declared heir-apparent, his gory head, insulted with a paper crown, was set upon the gates of York. After such a catastrophe, the reader of history naturally looks for the establishment of Lancastrian supremacy; but no-the rights of the Duke of York, and the feudal inheritance of vengeance for his death, pass to his son, the Earl of March, a youth of nineteen years of age; and from this time the war becomes more ferocious than ever, and with a deeper thirst for revenge. The warlike queen pursues her success by the rescue of her husband from captivity; but the young Duke of York enters London, and is proclaimed King Edward the Fourth.

The coronation of the new monarch was postponed until further hostilities should give him stronger possession of the throne. There were now two kings in the land, Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth; and the battle that soon followed between the two royal armies, shows, more impressively, perhaps, than any other in the war, to what fearful issues of carnage and bloodshed the passions of faction and civil war can drive men of the same kindred and the same homes. No foreigner shared in the strife; there were none

but Englishmen present, and of them more than one hundred thousand were drawn up, in no very unequal divisions, in hostile array on the field of Towton. Both sovereigns were present, King Edward and King Henry, or, perhaps we had better say, Queen Margaret. Proclamation had been made. that no quarter should be given; and faithfully and fiercely was the order obeyed, so that it proved probably the bloodiest battle in British history. The desperate conflict lasted more than a day; and some idea may be formed of the slaughter, when it is said the number of the Englishmen slain exceeded the sum of those who fell at Vimiera, Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Vittoria-five great battles of the Peninsular War -and at Waterloo, combined. This enormous shedding of English blood was by English hands. The battle ended in the total rout of the Lancastrians, and the crown was firmly placed on the brow of Edward the Fourth.

So decided a victory, one would imagine, must have closed the contest; but no-for ten perilous years was the struggle continued, chiefly by the indomitable energy of Queen Margaret. Poor King Henry took refuge in the secluded regions of the north of England, but was betrayed and committed prisoner in the Tower of London; while his queen, eluding her enemies, is with difficulty followed in her rapid and unwearied movements, at one time rallying her English partisans and risking battle, again seeking alliance and help from the King of France. Perils by land and perils by sea making up the wild story of her adventures, we hear of her at one time shipwrecked, and, at another, falling into the hands of a band of roving banditti. She struggled to the last as long as she had a husband or a child whose rights were to be contended for.

The later years of the war are no less perplexed than the beginning; and there is nothing especially characteristic of the age or expressive of the spirit of the times, except the conduct of that great feudal lord, the Earl of Warwick. It was chiefly by him that Edward the Fourth had been helped to the throne; and, when the King-maker found cause of quarrel with the monarch, he turned his allegiance away, and the greatest of the Yorkist chieftains was afterward an adherent of the Lancastrians. King Edward became the prisoner of