196
Constitutional History.
[chap.
Battiesat 28th of March a battle was fought at Ferrybridge, in. which .
Ferrybridge # σ
and Towton ; lord Clifford on the one side, and lord Fitzwalter on the other,
March 28
and 29.
Berwick
surrendered
to the Scots,
Edward IV
crowned.
The cause*of
the fall of
Henry VI.
fell1. The next day the two hosts met at Towton, and in a
bloody battle Edward was victorious. Of the Lancastrian lords,
the eari of Northumberland, and lords Wells, Neville, and Dacre
were slain ; the earls of Devonshire and Wiltshire were taken
and executed, the former at York, the latter at Newcastle.
The dukes of Somerset and Exeter escaped2. Margaret carried
off her husband and son to Scotland. By the surrender of
Berwick to the Scots, in April, the fall of the house of Lancaster
was recognised as finals. Edward, after securing his conquests,
returned to London, and was crowned at Westminster on the
28th of June4.
The overthrow of the house of Lancaster was not in itself
a national act. The nation acquiesced in, approved and ac-
cepted it, because it had no great love for the king, because it
distrusted the queen and the ministers and policy which she'
represented, because it had exhausted its strength, and longed
for peace. The house of Lancaster was put practically, al-
though not formally, upon its trial. Henry was not deposed
for incompetency or misgovernment, but set aside on the claim
of a legitimate heir whose right he was regarded as usurping.
But such a claim would not have been admitted except on two
conditions; the house of York could not have unseated the
house of Lancaster unless the first had been exceedingly strong,
and the second exceedingly weak. The house of York was
and Wiltshire, the lords Moleyns, Roos, Rivers, and Scales ; Hardyng,
p. 4o5∙
1 W. Wore. p. 777, Lord Fitzwalter was John Radcliffe, husband of
the heiress of Fitzwalter, and a titular lord only : see Nicolas, Hist. Peerage,
p. 199.
2 Gregory, p. 216, gives a list of the lords who were at Towton on the
king’s side : the prince of Wales, the dukes of Exeter and Somerset ; the
earls of Northumberland and Devonshire ; the lords Roos, Beaumont,
Clifford, Neville, Wells, Willoughby, Harry of Buckingham, Rivers, Scales,
Mauley, Ferrers of Groby, Lovell, and thð young lord of Shrewsbury;
Sir John Fortescue, Sir Thomas Hamxuys, Sir Andrew Trollope, Sir
Thomas Tresham, Sir Robert Whittingham, Sir John Dawney. Henry
and Margaret had been left at York ; Hall, p. 254. The slain lords were
Northumberland, Clifford, NevillejWells, and Mauley. Cf. Paston Letters,
ii. 6; Hardyng, n. 407.
3 Hall, p. 256.
4 Gregory, p. 218.
XVIII.]
Fall of Henry VI.
*97
strong in the character and reputation of duke Richard, in the strength
early force and energy of Edward, in the great popularity of
Warwick, in the wealth and political ability of the family party
which he led : but its great advantage lay in the weakness of
the house of Lancaster. That weakness was proved in almost Weakness of
every possible way. The impulse which had set Henry IV on
the throne, as the hereditary champion of constitutional right,
and as personally the deliverer from odious tyranny, had long
been exhausted. The new impulse which Henry V had created
in his character of a great conqueror, a national hero and a
good ruler, had become exhausted too ; its. strength is proved
by the fact that it was not exhausted sooner. Since the death
of Gloucester and Beaufort, in 1447, everything had gone
wrong ; the conquests of Henry V were lost, the crown was
bankrupt, the peace was badly kept, the nation distrusted the
ministers, the ministers contemned, although they did not per-
haps deserve, the distrust of the nation. Henry himself never Personal
. . - weakness of
seems to have looked upon his royal character as involving the the king:
responsibility of leadership ; he yielded on every pressure, trusted strength of
implicitly in every pretended reconciliation, and, unless we are ɪɑ '1"ccu'
to charge him with faults of dissimulation with which his enemies
never charged him personally, behaved as if his position as a
constitutional monarch involved his acting as the puppet of each
temporary majority. Without Margaret, he might have reigned ɪ`ntaɪ iɪre-
as long as he lived, and perhaps have outlived the CxhaustionofMargaret
under which the nation after the struggle with France was
labouring. He might with another wife have transmitted his
crown to his posterity as Henry HI had done, who was not
less despised, and much more hated. But in Margaret, from
the very moment of her arrival, was concentrated the weakness
and the strength of the dynastic cause ; its strength in her
indomitable will, her steady faithfulness, her heroic defence of
the rights of her husband and child ; its weakness in her
political position, her policy and her ministers. To the nation Herun-
she symbolised the loss of Henry V⅛ conquests, an inglorious 1'opulanty∙
peace, the humiliation of the popular Gloucester, the promotion
of the unpopular Beauforts. Her domestic policy was one of