214 ENGLAND. 



London, where the duke of York was received, on the 28th of Feb- 

 ruary 1461, while the queen and her husband were obliged to retreat 

 northwards. She soon raised another army, and fought the battle 

 of Towton, the most bloody perhaps that ever happened in any civil 

 war. After prodigies of valour had been performed on both sides, 

 the victory remained with young king Edward, and near 40,000 men 

 lay dead on the field of battle. Margaret and her husband were 

 once more obliged to fly to Scotland, where they met with generous 

 protection. 



Margaret, by the concessions she made to the Scots, soon raised a 

 fresh army in Scotland, and the north of England, but met with de- 

 feat upon defeat, till at last her husband, the unfortunate Henry, was 

 carried prisoner to London. 



The duke of York, now Edward IV, being crowned on the 20th of 

 June, fell in love with, and privately married, Elizabeth the widow of 

 sir John Gray, though he had some time before sent the earl of War- 

 wick to demand the king of France's sister in marriage, in which 

 embassy he was successful, and nothing remained but the bringing 

 over the princess into England. When the secret of Edward's mar- 

 riage was known, the haughty earl, deeming himself affronted, re- 

 turned to England inflamed with rage and indignation, and, from be- 

 ing Edward's best friend, became his most formidable enemy; and 

 gaining over the duke of Clarence, Edward was made prisoner ; but 

 escaping from his confinement, the earl of Warwick, and the French 

 king Lewis XI, declared for the restoration of Henry, who was re- 

 placed on the throne, and Edward narrowly escaped to Holland. Re- 

 turning from thence, he advanced to London, under pretence of claim- 

 ing his dukedom of York ; but being received into the capital, he 

 resumed the exercise of royal authority, made king Henry once 

 more his prisoner, and defeated and killed Warwick in the battle of 

 Barnet. A few days after he defeated a fresh army of Lancastrians, 

 and made queen Margai-et prisoner, together with her son prince 

 Edward, whom Edward's brother, the duke of Gloucester, murdered 

 in cold blood, as he is said (but with no great appearance of probabili- 

 ty) to have done his father Henry VI, then a prisoner in the tower of 

 London, a few days after, in the year 147L 



Edward, partly to amuse the public, and partly to supply the vast 

 expences of his court, pretended sometimes to quarrel and some- 

 times to treat with France : but his irregularities brought him to his 

 death, 1483, in the twenty-third year of his reign, and forty-second of 

 his age. 



Notwithstanding the turbulence of the times, the trade and manu- 

 factures of England, particularly the woollen, increased during the 

 reigns of Henry VI, and Edward IV. The invention of printing, 

 which is generally supposed to have been imported into England by 

 William Caxton, and which received some countenance from Edward, 

 is the chief glory of his reign ; but learning in general was then in a 

 mean state in England. 



Edward IV, left two sons by his queen, who had exercised her 

 power with no great prudence, by having ennobled many of her ob- 

 scure relations. Her eldest son, Edward V, was about thirteen ; 

 and his uncle, the duke of Gloucester, taking advantage of the queen's 

 unpopularity among the nobility, found means to bastardise her issue, 

 by act of parliament, under the scandalous pretext of a pre-contract 

 between their father and another lady. The duke, at the same time, 



