The name is absent

Scotland furnished employment for Gloucester from 1480
onwards; Edward had undertaken the cause of the duke ofj
Albany against his nephew James III ; and Albany had pro-
mised, if he were successful, to hold Scotland as a fief of the
English crown¹. The great exploit of the war, the seizure of
Edinburgh in 1482, was the joint work of Gloucester and
Albany ; the funds were raised by recourse to benevolences² ;
the establishment of relays of couriers to carry dispatches
between the king and his brother is regarded as the first
attempt at a postal system in England, and as one of the main
benefits which entitle the house of York to the gratitude of
posterity³. With France the king’s relations continued to be
friendly, but the cordiality of the newly-formed alliance quickly
cooled; Lewis found that he did not need Edward; Edward
tried hard to think that he was not duped. Towards the close
of 1482 the marriage between the king’s daughter Elizabeth
and the dauphin, which had been one of the articles of the
peace of Pecquigny, was broken off by Lewis himself ; who
on the 22nd of January 1483⁴ ratified the contract for the
betrothal of his son to Margaret of Austria. Edward felt this
as a personal insult, and the failure of all his negotiations for
the marriage of his children with foreign princes contributed
no doubt to his mortification, if it did not suggest that, great
as his power and prosperity were, he was regarded by the kings
of Europe as somewhat of an outlaw. It was probably with
some intention of avenging himself on Lewis XI that on the
15th of November 1482 he called together his last parliament.
It met on the 20th of the following January⁵. The chancellor’s

¹ Rymer, xii. 156-158.

² Cent. Croyl. p. 562. The York records furnish some indications that
other methods of exaction were practised. The king had issued letters for
the collection of a force to join in the expedition to Scotland ; forty persons
were to be maintained by the Ainsty, eighty by the city ; the money re-
quired was to be collected in each parish by the constables, the portion
Unspenttobereturned; Davies, pp. 115, ιι6, 128. This Seemsvery like
the worst form of commission of array. See also Rymer, xii. U/.

³ Cont. Croyl. p. 571.

⁴ ɪb. p. 563 ; Commines, liv. 6. c. 9.

⁵ Rot. Parl. vi. 196 ; JohnWoodwas the speaker. SeeDavies_jYork
Records, p. 138 ; Cont. Croyl. p. 563.

sermon, the text of which was ¹Dominus illuminatio mea et
salus mea,’ has not been preserved ; so that it is impossible to
say whether the renewal of the war with France was distinctly
proposed to the estates. The truce of 1475 had been in 1477
changed into a truce for life¹ ; but both the amount and
character of the money grants now made in parliament prove
that a speedy outbreak was expected. For the hasty and Preparation
necessary defence of the realm, the commons voted a fifteenth
and a tenth², and on the 15th of February, three days later,
they re-imposed the tax on aliens ³. In the expectation of war Petitions for
• the commons seem to have attempted to make their voices of order,
heard ; they prayed for the enforcement of the statutes which
maintained the public peace, the statutes of Westminster and
Winchester, and the legislation on liveries, labourers and
beggars⁴. It was possibly to disarm opposition, possibly to
secure the provision for his sons and brother and the Wydvilles,
that the king agreed to pass an act of resumption⁵ and to
accept an assignment of .£11,000 for the maintenance of the
household. A few months however were to show how little

foresight he possessed, and to break up all his schemes. IIisDeathofthe
constitution was ruined with debauchery : whether the failure ⅛f. ^AprU
of his foreign policy, as foreign writers believed, or the natural
consequences of dissipation, as the English thought, finally
broke him down, he died somewhat suddenly on the 9th of
April, leaving his young family to be the prey of the contend-
ing factions which had long divided the court.

Edward IV was not perhaps quite so bad a man or so bad Character of
1 ∙ u∙          ∙ τ.                   . ₁   , , j,          ., EdwardIV.

a «mg as nɪs enemies nave represented : but even those writers
who have laboured hardest to rehabilitate him, have failed to

¹ Rymer, xii. 46. The truce was to last during the joint lives of Edward
and Lewis and for a year after the death of the one who died first.

² Rot. Parlai. 197. The CrowIand historian says, ‘nihil adhuc taɪnen
a Communitate Subsidii pecuniarii expetere ausus, erga praelatos necessi-
tates suas non dissimulât, blande exigendo ab eis prae manibus décimas
quae proximo concedentur, quasi, semel Comparentibus praelatis et clero
in Convocatione, quicquid rex petit id fieri debeat p. 563∙ A tenth was
granted by the clergy in 1481, and another in April, 1483, after the king’s
death ; Wilk. Cone. iii. 614; Wake, pp. 380, 381.

³ Rot. Parl. vi. 197.                                        ^t lb. vi. 198.

⁵ lb. vi. 198, 199.

VOL. III.                    Q

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