721 



EDWARD IV. 



EDWARD IV. 



72 3 



play of the First Part of ' Henry the Fourth." It is to him also we 

 suppose that we are to attribute the pun put by the common histories 

 into the mouth of his nephew the Earl of March at the coronation of 

 Henry IV., when, on that king claiming the crown as the heir male of 

 Henry III., he said that he was indeed Hceres Modus. The young 

 Earl of March, with the other children of his father, was detained in 

 a sort of imprisonment at Windsor during all the reign of Henry IV., 

 but on the accession of Henry V. he was set at liberty. In 1415 he 

 became involved in the conspiracy planned against Henry V. by 

 Richard, earl of Cambridge ; but it is most probable that he was not 

 answerable for the use which was made, or rather intended to be 

 made, on this occasion, of his name. Indeed the common account 

 makes him to have been the person who gave Henry information of 

 the conspiracy, after he had been applied to by the Earl of Cambridge, 

 who had married his sister, to join it. After the accession of Henry VI. 

 he was sent as lord lieutenant to Ireland ; and he died there, in the 

 castle of Trim, in 1424. He left no issue, nor did his brother Roger, i 

 nor his sister Eleanor; but his sister Ann, married to the Earl of 

 Cambridge, had a son named Richard, who consequently became his 

 uncle's representative, and (at least after the death of his mother) the 

 individual on whom had devolved the claim by lineal descent to the 

 crown. This Richard was also the representative of Edward IIL's 

 fifth son, Edmund, duke of York, his father, the Eurl of Cambridge, 

 having been the second son of that prince, whose eldest son and heir, 

 Edward, duke of York, had fallen at the battle of Agiucourt, leaving 

 no issue, only a few months after his brother had been executed for 

 the conspiracy mentioned above. At the time of his uncle's death, 

 Richard, in consequence of his father's forfeiture, had no title ; but 

 he seems to have immediately assumed that of Earl of March, at least 

 he is so called by some of the chroniclers, and the same title was also 

 afterwards borne by his son, although the right of either to it may be 

 questioned, inasmuch as it appears to have been only descendible to 

 heirs male. Richard however is best known by his title of Duke of 

 York, which he took in 1425, on being restored in blood and allowed 

 to inherit the honours both of his father and uncle. But it is 

 important to recollect that the claim of the house of York to the 

 crowu in opposition to the house of Lancaster was not derived from 

 Edward III.'s fifth son, Edmund, duke of York, who was younger 

 than John of Gaunt, the founder of the house of Lancaster, but from 

 Lionel, duke of Clarence, who was that king's thud son, John of 

 Gaunt being his fourth. 



As a clear notion of the above genealogical statement is important 

 to the understanding of a considerable portion of English history, it 

 may be proper once for all to exhibit it in the form most convenient 

 for its ready apprehension and for future reference to it. The line of 

 the eldest son of Edward III. having failed in Richard II., and his 

 second son having died without issue, the contest for the crown in 

 the 15th century lay among the descendants of his third, fourth, and 

 fifth sons, whose connection with him and among themselves .stood 

 thus : 



but in 1447 he was recalled, through the influence of the queen and 

 the favourite, the Marquis of Suffolk, and Edmund Beaufort, earl 

 (afterwards duke) of Somerset, the chief of the younger branch of the 

 Lancaster family, was appointed his successor. It is understood that 

 before this the unpopular government of the queen and the favourite 

 had turned men's minds to the claims of the Duke of York; and it 

 is said that he himself, though he moved warily in the matter, was 

 not idle by his emissaries in encouraging the disposition that began 

 to grow up in his favour. The progress of events in course of time 

 enabled him to take a bolder part in the promotion of the design he 

 had already in all probability formed, of securing the crown for 

 himself and his family. In 1449 he gained additional popularity by 

 the able and conciliatory manner in which he suppressed an insurrec- 

 tion in Ireland. In the rising of the people of Kent the next year, 

 their leader, Jack Cade, assumed the name of Mortimer as a sort of 

 title. When he rode in triumph through the streets of the metro- 

 polis, he called out, as he struck London Stone with his sword, " Now 

 is Mortimer lord of the city ! " When the duke returned from 

 Ireland, in August 1451, some steps seem to have been taken by the 

 court to oppose his landing; but he made his way to London, and 

 immediately entered there into consultations with his friends. It was 

 determined to demand the dismissal and punishment of the Duke of 

 Somerset, now the king's chief minister; but although this attempt 

 was supported by an armed demonstration, it ended after a few 

 months in the Duke of York dismissing his followers, returning to his 

 allegiance, and agreeing to retire to his estate. 



The king had now been married for several years without having 

 any children, and it appears to have been generally expected that the 

 duke, by merely waiting for his death, would obtain the crown 

 without any risk or trouble. On the birth of the Prince of Wales 

 however in October 1453, it became necessary to adopt another course. 

 The spirit that showed itself in the parliament the following year 

 forced the court to admit the Duke of York and his chief friends and 

 confederates, the two Nevilles (father and son), earls of Salisbury and 

 Warwick, into the council, where their first act was to arrest the 

 Duke of Somerset and send him to the Tower. A few weeks after this 

 (on the 3rd of April 1454), the Dukeof York was appointed by the par- 

 liament protector and defender of the kingdom during the illness of the 

 king, who had fallen into a state of mental as well as bodily imbecility. 

 In the following spring however Henry partially recovered, and 

 resuming the management of affairs, released Somerset. This brought 

 matters to a crisis. The Duke of York now withdrew from court, and 

 both parties collected their forces to decide their quarrel by the sword. 

 The two armies met at St. Albans on the 23rd of May 1455, when 

 the king was defeated, he himself being wounded and taken prisoner, 

 and the Duke of Somerset and others of the royal leaders slain. 

 Henry, detained in the hands of the victor, was obliged to call a 

 parliament, which met at Westminster on the 9th of July ; and here 

 the helpless king declared the duke and hi* friends to be innocent of 

 the slaughter at St. Albans, and greeted them as his " free and 



EDWAKD III. 



3. Lionel, Duke of Clarence. 



Philippa = Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. 



Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, 

 died 1398. 



4. John, Duke of Lancaster. 



5. Edmund, Duke 

 of York. 



Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, 

 died 1424. 



Ann Mortimer. 



IIKXBT IV. 



died 1413. 



HEHET V. 



died 1422. 



HKNBT VI. 



Edward, Duke of 



York, killed 



1415. 



Eichard, Earl of 



Cambridge, 

 executed 1415. 



Ann Mortimer, dau. 



of Roger Mortimer, 



Earl of March. 



Richard, Duke of York, 

 died 1460. 



Edward, Earl of March 

 (afterwards EDWARD IV.) 



The persons whose names are printed in Italics arc those in whom successively the hereditary right vested. We cannot discover however how long Ann 

 Mortimer survived her brother, or even that she survived him at all, although it seems to be usually assumed that she did. 



Richard, duke of York, first makes his appearance in public affairs 

 in the end of the year 1435, when he was appointed by Henry VL to 

 the regency of France on the death of the Duke of Bedford. By the 

 time he entered upon his office however Paris had been evacuated, and 

 their French dominion was fast passing out of the hands of the 

 English. He was recalled in 1437, but was reappointed on the death 

 of bis successor, the Earl of Warwick, in July 1440. On the 29th of 

 April 1441 (or, according to another account, in September 1442), his 

 son Edward, earl of March, afterwards Edward IV., was born at 

 Rouen. The Duke of York remained in France till after the con- 

 clusion of the king's marriage with Margaret of Anjou, in 1446; and 

 hia government was then prolonged for another term of five years ; 



faithful liegemen." The parliament met again, after prorogation, on 

 the 12th of November, when the duke was a second time appointed 

 protector. He was removed however by the king on the 23rd of 

 February 1456; on which he again retired from court with his 

 friends. The next two years passed without any further encounter, 

 each party hesitating to attack the other. At last in the spring of 

 1458, York and his friends were invited by the queen to London to 

 be reconciled to the Lancastrian party ; an agreement to live for the 

 future in peace was made with much solemnity ; and the Duke of 

 York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick were again admitted into 

 the council. AH this however seems to havo been merely a stratagem 

 of the queen's to get them into her power : their danger soon became 



