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it up. His advanced guard was surprised and driven back at Ferry Bridge; but his main army pressed on, and on March 29 gained a decisive victory at Towton. The slaughter of the defeated side was enormous. Margaret escaped with Henry to Scotland, and Edward, returning southwards, was crowned at Westminster on June 29.

CHAPTER XXII

THE YORKIST KINGS

EDWARD IV., 1461-1483. EDWARD V., 1483.
RICHARD III., 1483—1485.

LEADING DATES

Coronation of Edward IV.

Restoration of Henry VI..

Edward IV. recovers the crown-Battles of Barnet and

Tewkesbury

Edward V.

Richard III. deposes Edward V.

Richard III. killed at Bosworth

1461

1470

1471

I. Edward IV. and the House of Commons. 1461.-On June 29 1461, Edward IV. was crowned, and created his two brothers, His George and Richard, Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester. first Parliament declared the three Lancastrian kings to have been usurpers, and Henry VI., his wife, his son, and his chief supporters, to be traitors. At the end of the session Edward thanked the Commons for their support, and assured them of his resolution to protect them at the hazard of his own life. It was the first time that a king had addressed the Commons, and his doing so was a sign that a new era had begun, in which the wishes of the middle class in town and country were to prevail over those of the great nobles. It did not follow that the House of Commons would take the control of the government into its own hands, as it does at the present day. For a long time the election of the members had been carried out under pressure from the local nobility. If the great men in a county resolved that certain persons should be returned as members, those who came to the place of election in support of others would be driven off, and perhaps beaten or wounded. Consequently each House of Commons had hitherto represented the dominant party, Lancastrian or Yorkist, as the case might be.

Before there could be a House of Commons capable of governing, the interference of the nobles with elections would have to be brought to an end, and it was only by a strong king that their power could be overthrown. The strengthening of the kingship was the only road to future constitutional progress.

2. Loss of the Mediaval Ideals. Before the end of the 15th century the English people had lost all the ideals of the middle

ages. The attempt of Henry V. to revive the old ecclesiastical feeling had broken down through the race for material power opened by his French wars, and through the savagery of the wars of the Roses. The new religious feeling of Wycliffe and the nobler Lollards had perished with Sir John Oldcastle from the same causes. Neither the Church nor the opponents of the Church had any longer a sway over men's hearts. The clergy continued to perform their part in the services of the Church not indeed without belief, but without the spiritual fervour which influences the lives of men. The chivalry of Men spoke of women

the middle ages was as dead as its religion. as coarsely as they spoke of their cattle. Human nature indeed could not be entirely crushed. John Paston's wife (see p. 321), for instance, was quaintly affectionate. "I would," she once wrote to her husband, "ye were at home, if it were for your ease . . . now liever than a gown, though it were of scarlet." But the system of wardship (see p. 116) made marriages a matter of bargain and sale. "For very need," wrote a certain Stephen Scrope, "I was fain to

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MORAL DETERIORATION

331

sell a little daughter I have for much less than I should." When Scrope was old he wished to marry Paston's young sister, and the girl was willing to take him if she were sure that his land was not burdened with debt. She would be glad enough to escape from home. Her mother kept her in close confinement and beat her once or twice every week, and sometimes twice a day, so that her head was broken in two or three places. This low and material view of domestic life had led to an equally low and material view of political life, and the cruelty which stained the wars of the Roses was but the outcome of a state of society in which no man cared much for anything except his own greatness and enjoyment. The ideal which shaped itself in the minds of the men of the middle class was a king acting as a kind of chief constable, who, by keeping great men in order, would allow their inferiors to make money in peace. 3. Fresh Efforts of the Lancastrians. 1462-1465.-Edward IV. only very partially responded to this demand. He was swift in action when a crisis came, and was cruel in his revenge, but he was lustful and indolent when the crisis was passed, and he had no statesmanlike abilities to lay the foundations of a powerful government. The wars were not ended by his victory at Towton. In 1462 Queen Margaret reappeared in the North, and it was not till 1464 that Warwick's brother, Lord Montague, thoroughly defeated her forces at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham; for which victories he was rewarded by Edward with the earldom of Northumberland, which had been forfeited by the Lancastrian head of the House of Percy. Montague's victory was marked by the usual butcheries; the Duke of Somerset, a son of the duke who had been slain at St. Albans, being amongst those who perished on the scaffold. In 1465 Henry himself was taken prisoner and lodged in the Tower.

4. Edward's Marriage. 1464.-Whilst these battles were being fought Edward was lingering in the South courting the young widow of Sir John Grey, usually known by her maiden name as Elizabeth Woodville. His marriage to her gave offence to his noble supporters, who disdained to acknowledge a queen of birth so undistinguished ; and their ill-will was increased when they found that Edward distributed amongst his wife's kindred estates and preferments which they had hoped to gain for themselves. The queen's father became Earl Rivers and Lord Constable, and her brothers and sisters were enriched by marriages with noble wards of the Crown. One of her brothers, a youth of twenty, was married to the old Duchess of Norfolk, who was over eighty.

5. Estrangement of Warwick. 1465-1468.-No doubt there was as much of policy as of affection in the slight shown by Edward to the Yorkist nobility. Warwick-the King-maker, as he was called-had special cause for ill-humour. He had expected to be a King-ruler as well as a King-maker, and he took grave offence when he found Edward slipping away from his control. It seemed as if Edward had the settled purpose of raising up a new nobility to counterbalance the old. In 1467 Warwick's brother, the Archbishop of York, was deprived of the chancellorship. In foreign politics, too, Edward and Warwick disagreed. Warwick had taken up the old policy of the Beauforts, and was anxious for an alliance with the astute Louis XI., who had in 1461 succeeded his father, Charles VII., as king of France Edward, perhaps with some thought passing through his head of establishing his throne by following in the steps of Henry V., declared for an alliance with Burgundy. In 1467 Warwick was allowed to go to France as an ambassador, whilst Edward was entertaining Burgundian ambassadors in England. In the same year Charles the Rash succeeded his father, Philip the Good (see p. 306), as Duke of Burgundy, and in 1468 married Edward's sister, Margaret. The Duke of Burgundy, the rival of the king of France, was the lord of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, and his friendship brought with it that peaceful intercourse with the manufacturing towns of Flanders which it was always the object of English policy to

secure.

6. Warwick's Alliance with Clarence. 1469-1470.—Warwick, disgusted with Edward, found an ally in Edward's brother, Clarence, who, like Warwick, was jealous of the Woodvilles. Warwick had no son, and his two daughters, Isabel and Anne, would one day share his vast estates between them. Warwick gave Isabel in marriage to Clarence, and encouraged him to think that it might be possible to seat him-in days when everything seemed possible to the strong-on Edward's throne. Edward had by this time lost much of his popularity. His extravagant and luxurious life made men doubt whether anything had been gained by substituting him for Henry, and in 1469 and 1470 there were risings fomented by Warwick. In the latter year Edward, with the help of his cannon, the importance of which in battles was now great, struck such a panic into his enemies at a battle near Stamford that the place of action came to be known as Losecoat Field, from the haste with which the fugitives stripped themselves of their armour to make their flight the easier. Warwick

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and Clarence fled across the sea. Warwick was governor of Calais, but his own officer there refused to admit him, and he was forced to take refuge in France.

7. The Restoration of Henry VI. 1470.-Warwick knew that he had no chance of recovering power without the support of the Lancastrian party, and, disagreeable as it was to him, he allowed Louis XI. to reconcile him to Queen Margaret, the wife of that Henry VI., of whom he had been the bitterest enemy. Louis, who

A fifteenth-century ship: from Harl. MS. 2278.

dreaded Edward's alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, did everything to support Edward's foes, and sent Warwick off to England, where he was subsequently to be joined by the queen. Edward, who was in his most careless mood, was foolish enough to trust Warwick's brother, Montague, from whom he had taken away, not only his new earldom of Northumberland to restore it to the head of the Percies (see p. 331), but all the lands connected with it, and had thought to compensate him with the mere marquisate