Battle of and Salisbury advanced with six thousand men to Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and were there awaiting reinforcements, when, on December 30, a clever ruse of Clifford drew York into a rash encounter Wakefield. with superior numbers, in which he himself was killed and Salisbury captured. Rutland, York's second son, a fine lad of seventeen, was slain in the pursuit. The unlucky Salisbury was promptly beheaded at Pontefract; and his head with that of York, the latter adorned with a paper crown, was barbarously set upon the gates of York. Deaths of Margaret's southern march. The victory of Wakefield seemed to give Margaret such a superiority that the men of the north flocked to her standard by thousands, and she was soon at the head of 40,000 men; but her very success was her danger, for the rumours of the intentions of the ruder northerners, who claimed to plunder at will south of the Trent, roused a feeling of desperation in all the southern shires, and made the campaign that followed a national war in a sense it had never been before. Hitherto the chief fighting had been borne by the retainers of the nobility, but now, for the first time, the towns came into the field, and the interference of the men of the northern moorlands was met by the appearance of peaceful citizens and agriculturists, who saw in the victory of the Yorkist cause the only guarantee for peace and good government. Four leaders were soon in the field. Margaret and her northerners advancing by the Ermine Street on London, and plundering on their way Grantham, Stamford, Peterborough, and Huntingdon; Warwick, with 30,000 men, was at St. Albans, blocking the line of Margaret's advance on London. The earl of March, with a force of 10,000 men, raised from the Mortimer lands on the marches, was in the Severn valley; and Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, who had gathered a body of Welshmen to reinforce the queen's army, was threatening March's rear. March was only nineteen, but with the instinct of a general he saw that it was little use to cross the Severn while Pembroke's force was intact; so, turning upon his foe Mortimer's he delivered a crushing attack at Mortimer's Cross, near Cross. Wigmore, on February 2, 1461. Pembroke was utterly routed, and his aged father, Owen Tudor, was put to death on the field. From Mortimer's Cross Edward hurried to join Warwick; but he had barely reached Oxfordshire, when, on February 17, Warwick was defeated at the second battle of St. Albans. This was due partly to battle of bad management, partly to treachery. Warwick's line was St. Albans. too extended for quick concentration. By some error of Disposition of the armies. Battle of Second his scouts no warning was given of the Lancastrian attack; and when the fight began a body of Kentishmen deserted, and let the Lancastrians through the line. Inextricable confusion followed; the Yorkists were driven from the field; and Warwick, with difficulty keeping together a few thousand men, joined Edward at Chipping-Norton, leaving the road to London completely open. London The queen now seemed to have the game in her own hands; King Henry had been recaptured at St. Albans, and nothing remained but to march on London. At this crisis, however, Margaret failed. Time was lost, and when the Londoners heard that Warwick declares and Edward were still in the field and marching to their against Margaret. assistance, they plucked up courage to stop the provision carts which were carrying stores to Margaret's army, and next day Warwick and Edward again entered London. Next morning a coup d'état was carried out. Four months before, York's proposal to seize the crown had met with universal disapprobation; but so far as southern England was concerned, Wakefield and St. Albans, and above all the plundering by the northern men, had swept away all feelings of loyalty for Henry; and it was felt that, blameless as was the king's personal character, his wife's conduct had made his further reign impossible. So long as he had stood aloof from party, men like Warwick would have been content to leave him the shadow while they retained the substance of power; but his wife's folly had identified Henry with a faction, and by so doing had made him impossible. Accordingly, on Sunday, March 9, in Clerkenwell Fields, Bishop George Neville of Exeter addressed the soldiers and set forth Edward's claim to the crown. His speech was received with applause; and Warwick, having secured the assent of Archbishop Bourchier, of John Mowbray, earl of Norfolk, his brother William Neville, Lord Falconbridge, and a few others, held a meeting of the notables of the Yorkist party, and went through the form of electing Edward king, and he was accordingly proclaimed as Edward iv. Edward, March, Battle of Towton and Suppression of the Lancastrians-Edward's Marriage— Retreat of the Lan No regular coronation was attempted; for no one could tell how soon Margaret's standards might be seen on Highgate Hill; and great was the joy when it was rumoured that her army was in retreat. Hope of plunder had drawn the northerners southward; but castrians. the first use Henry made of his liberty was to issue a proclamation forbidding it altogether. The disgust of Margaret's men knew no bounds. Some set out to plunder on their own account, others hurried north to secure what they had already won; and even those who remained with their standards were so discontented that the lords declared a retreat inevitable; and, on the very day of Edward's election, Margaret and her husband reluctantly turned their faces north. No time was lost in pursuing them. On the 10th the main body left London, and on March 26 Edward was at Pontefract. His army Pursuit of the Yorkists. amounted to 48,000 men, led by Warwick and his uncle, Lord Falconbridge, Norfolk, and himself. Every southern shire was represented in their ranks, for the northerners had been merciless, and every southerner who had anything to lose felt that plunder must be stopped once for all and at whatever cost. The men of Coventry were there under their 'Black Ram,' and those of Bristol under the standard of the 'Ship.' After passing the lines of the Trent and the Don, the northern army had turned to bay between the Aire and the Wharfe, and were encamped on a comparatively high plateau, known as Towton Field, about four miles south of Tadcaster, where the roads from Castleford and Ferrybridge-on-Aire meet on their way to Tadcaster. By a rapid movement Edward seized the passage of the Aire ; but though the crossing at Ferrybridge was retaken by Lord Clifford, Lord Falconbridge successfully crossed at Castleford, and had the good luck to intercept and kill Lord Clifford when he attempted to retreat on Towton. Towton. Next day, March 29, which happened to be Palm Sunday, Edward, Warwick, and Falconbridge, with a large force, attempted to storm the plateau, relying on the aid of Norfolk, whom they left ill at Battle of Pontefract, but who promised to be up in time for the great fight. At the beginning of the battle the Yorkists were much aided by a blinding snowstorm which Falconbridge cleverly used to deceive the Lancastrians into discharging most of their arrows at a useless distance, but the real struggle was hand-to-hand. For some hours neither side gained any advantage; but when Norfolk came up, his attack on their left wing proved fatal to the Lancastrians, whose right rested on a steep ravine. Hemmed in thus, but fighting furiously, the northern men were gradually borne backwards, and at length, after ten hours' fighting, were pushed down the steep bank, at whose foot flowed the Cock Beck, then in flood. This disaster completed their destruction. Thousands perished in the stream; and it is said that no less than 37,000 corpses were buried in the field. During the battle Henry and Margaret were at York, and after it took refuge in Scotland. From Towton, Edward advanced by York to Durham; and then, finding that the Lancastrian army had broken up, he returned to London, Conquest of leaving to Warwick the business of capturing the great the North. Percy castles of Alnwick, Dunstanborough, and Bamborough, and of resisting any invasion of the Scots which Margaret might be able to organise. The reduction of these strongholds proved a formidable task, and the castles were taken and retaken several times before they finally remained in Yorkist hands. The bulk of the fighting fell on Warwick and his brother, John Neville, created earl of Montagu in reward for his services at Towton. Anger and thirst for revenge had destroyed the last vestige of Margaret's patriotism. The Scots were bribed by the surrender of Berwick, and even Calais was offered to the French as the price of their aid. At this terrible price both Scots and French gave some assistance to the Lancastrians. Several times the Scots crossed the border, and 2000 troops were landed by Louis; but at length, in the winter of 1462, a successful raid in Scotland brought the Scottish regents to reason, and deprived Margaret of her footing in that country. The French were confined to the Percy castles; and in 1463, a final attempt at fighting, made by the duke of Somerset, was defeated by Montagu at Hedgeley Moor in April 1464, and again near Hexham on May 13, after which fight Somerset and other leaders were summarily put to death. In the summer the three castles surrendered, and this brought the war in the north to a conclusion. In Wales a few isolated castles still held out: among others Harlech, in which was being educated and cared for the little Henry, son of Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort, who was afterwards destined to reign as Henry VII. In 1465 Edward's safety was assured further by the capture at Waddington Hall, near Clitheroe, of Henry VI., who, since the flight of his queen and his own expulsion from Scotland, had wandered aimlessly about among the tenants of the duchy of Lancashire in Craven and Ribblesdale. King Edward took little personal share in the pacification of the north, but for the most part remained in southern England ready to deal with the even more serious danger of a French invasion. The king's character is one which is not easy to define. In Edward's personal character. person he is described as the handsomest man of his time,— tall, strong, and stately in his bearing. His capacity for war was great, and in politics he showed himself from boyhood a master of the intrigue |