48 



THE STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



land. The king soon proved incapable oi 

 lating tlie i ins baron- 



..mail of bold, intriguing disposition, 

 joined in the confederacy against him, which 

 1 in his imprisonment and death in l.'iL'T. 

 dward III. was as brilliant as 

 : his father had been tin- reverse. The 

 main | the third Kdward were directed 



airain> : the crown of which he claimed 



N in virtue of his mother, the daughter of 

 King Philip. The victory won by the Black 

 Hi), the capture of Calais 

 ami the victory of Poitiers in/iiii. ulti- 

 mately led to th- liivtigny in l.'M). by 

 Which Edward 111. received all the wot of Francr 

 on condition of renouncing his claim to the 

 French throne. IVtore the close of his roign, 

 idvantages were all lost again. 

 B few principal tOWH8 On the coast. 



Fdward III. was succeeded in l-">77 by his 

 grandson Richard II., son of Edward the Black 

 Prince. The people of England now began to 

 show, though in a turbulent manner, that they 

 had acquired just notions of government. In 

 1380 an unjust and oppressive poll-tax brought 

 their grievances to a head, and 100,000 men 

 under Wat Tyler, marched toward London 

 (1381). Wat Tyler was killed while conferring 

 with the king, and the prudence and courage of 

 Richard appeased the insurgents. Despite his 

 conduct on this occasion Richard was deficient in 

 the vigor necessary to curb the lawlessness of 

 the nobles. In 1398 he banished his cousin, 

 Henry Bolingbroke ; and on the death of the lat- 

 ter's father, the Duke of Lancaster, unjustly ap- 

 propriated his cousin's patrimony. To avenge 

 the injustice Bolingbroke landed in England 

 during the king's absence in Ireland, and at the 

 head of 60,000 malcontents compelled Richard 

 to surrender. He was confined in the Tower, 

 and despite the superior claims of Edmund Morti- 

 mer, Earl of March, Henry was appointed king 

 (1399), the first of the House of Lancaster. 

 Richard was, in all probability, murdered early 

 in 1400. 



The manner in which the Duke of Lancaster, 

 now Henry IV., acquired the crown rendered his 

 reign extremely turbulent, but the vigor of 

 his administration quelled every insurrection. 

 The most important that of the Percies of 

 Northumberland, Owen Glendower, and Douglas 

 of Scotland was crushed by the battle of Shrews- 

 bury (1403). During the reign of Henry IV. the 

 clergy of England first began the practice of 

 burning heretics under the act de hceretico com- 

 burendo, passed in the second year of his reign. 

 The act was chiefly directed against the Lollan Is. 

 as the followers of Wickliffe now came to be 

 called. Henry died in 1413, leaving his crown 

 to his son, Henry V., who revived the claim of 

 Edward III. to the throne of France in 1415, 

 and invaded that country at the head of 30,000 

 men. The disjointed councils of the French 

 rendered their country an easy prey; the victory 

 of Agincourt was gained in 1415 ; and after a sec- 

 ond campaign a peace was concluded at Troyes 

 in 1420, by which Henry received the hand of 

 Katharine, daughter of Charles VI., was ap- 

 pointed regent of France during the reign of his 

 father-in-law, and declared heir to his throne on 



his death. The two kings, however, died within 

 a few weeks of each other in 1 iLlL', and the infant 

 son of Henry thus became King of I'.nuhnul 

 Henry VI.) and France at the age of nine 

 months. 



F.ngland during the reign of Henry VI. was 

 subjected, in the iirst place, to all the confusion 

 incident to a long minority, and afterwards to 

 all the misery of a civil war. Henry allowed 

 himself to be managed by anyone who had the 

 courage to assume the conduct of his affairs, and 

 the influence of his wife, Margaret of Anjou. a 

 woman of uncommon capacity, was of no advan- 

 tage either to himself or the realm. In France 

 ( l-l:2l2-l-ir>3) the Knglish forces lost ground, and 

 were finally expelled by the celebrated Joan of 

 Arc, Calais alone being retained. The rebellion 

 of Jack Cade in 14,~>0 was suppressed, only to be 

 succeeded by more serious trouble. In that 

 year Richard, duke of York, the father of Edward, 

 afterwards Edward IV., began to advance his 

 pretentious to the throne which had been so long 

 usurped by the house of Lancaster. His claim 

 was founded on his descent from the third son of 

 Edward III., Lionel, duke of Clarence, who was 

 his great-great-grandfather on the mother's side, 

 while Henry was the great-grandson on the fa- 

 ther's side of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, 

 the fourth son of Edward III. Richard of York 

 was also grandson on the father's side of Edmund, 

 fifth son of Edward III. The wars which result- 

 ed, called the Wars of the Roses, from the fact 

 that a red rose was the badge of the house of 

 Lancaster and a white one that of the house of 

 York, lasted for thirty years, from the first bat tie 

 of St. Albans, May 22, 1455, to the battle of 

 Bosworth, August 22, 1485. Henry VI. was 

 twice driven from the throne (in 1461 and 1471) 

 by Edward of York, whose father had previously 

 been killed in battle in 1460. Edward of York 

 reigned as Edward IV. from 1461 till his death in 

 1483, with a brief interval in 1471; and was 

 succeeded by two other sovereigns of the house of 

 York, first his son Edward V., who reigned for 

 eleven weeks in 1483; and then by his brother 

 Richard III., who reigned from 1483 till 1485, 

 when he was defeated and slain on Bosworth 

 field by Henry Tudor, of the house of Lancaster, 

 who then became Henry VII. 



Henry VII. was at this time the representat ive 

 of the house of Lancaster, and in order at once to 

 strengthen his own title, and to put an end to the 

 rivalry between the houses of York and Lan- 

 caster, he married, in 1486, Elizabeth, the sister 

 of Edward V. and heiress of the house of York. 

 His reign was disturbed by insurrections attend- 

 ing the impostures of Lambert Simnel (1487), 

 who pretended to be a son of the Duke of Clar- 

 ence, brother of Edward IV., and of Perkin 

 Warbeck (1488), who affirmed that he was the 

 Duke of York, younger brother of Edward V. ; 

 but neither of these attained any magnitude. 

 The king's worst fault was the avarice which led 

 him to employ in schemes of extortion such 

 instruments as Empson and Dudley. His admin- 

 istration throughout did much to increase the 

 royal power and to establish order and prosper- 

 ity. He died in 1509. 



The authority of the English crown, which 

 had been so much extended by Henry VII., 



