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Home Lancaster and York The Wars of the Roses; Part 2 |
The Wars of the Roses; Part 2In 1445 Henry married his French wife, Margaret of Anjou. In 1447 Gloucester was imprisoned on a charge of treason, and died in prison; no doubt he was murdered. Since Henry VI had as yet no son, Richard, Duke of York, son of Richard of Cambridge, became heir to the throne. So far, York had shown no sign of disloyalty. For more than ten years he had held a command in France, and had made a reputation as a stout soldier. The Beauforts, however, grew jealous of him. He was removed from his command, and sent into practical banishment as King's Lieutenant in Ireland. Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, superseded him in Normandy (1448).Then came the hour of the last agony in France. The patched-up truce was foolishly broken. One defeat followed another: failure abroad was visited on the heads of unpopular ministers at home by a series of murders. In 1450 the Bishop of Chichester was murdered. Suffolk, who had had the moral courage to negotiate the peace with France - the one possible course a wise man could take - was banished, intercepted on his way, and his head hewn off, with a rusty sword for axe and a boat's gunwale for block. In June Jack Cade, pretending that his name was Mortimer, led the Kentish men in rebellion, and occupied London, murdering,[there, the Bishop of Salisbury and Lord Saye, the Treasurer.; The idea that York was at the bottom of Cade's rebellion was fostered when he came back suddenly from Ireland just as Somerset returned from Normandy. A Yorkist party grew in strength, posing as the friends of good government, and the opponents of the Beauforts and the Court party. York himself behaved with what may, considering the spirit of his time, be called moderation. He did indeed collect an army in 1452, but he did not fight When, in 1453, a son was born to Henry VI, thus displacing him from being heir to the Crown, he gave his allegiance to the new prince. In the next year, when King Henry went mad and York was chosen regent, he made no attempt to seize the throne. It was not till the king's recovery brought with it the return to power of his deadly enemy, Somerset, that York actually took the field. He could not do anything else; had he submitted, his fate would probably have been the block. The Wars of the Roses proper, beginning in 1455, fall into four subdivisions. The first was a struggle for the regency, and ended in the triumph of York over Somerset at St. Albans. The second period began in 1459 with the attempt of Queen Margaret to overthrow the Yorkists, and ended with the accession of Edward IV, the Yorkist triumph at Towton (1461), and the beating down of the Lancastrian resistance in the north. The third was marked by the effort of the Nevilles to master the line of York: this failed at Barnet and Tewkesbury (1471). The last relates how Richard III, having alienated a great part of his own supporters, fell victim to an alliance of enemies at Bosworth (1485). |
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