The name is absent

182              Constitutional Histwy.            [chap.

enemies and weakened more and more the hold which the king
had on the people. The duke and the Nevilles either plotted
in secret or waited until she had ruined her husband’s cause.
Norfolk received licence to go on pilgrimage. The clergy,
under the guidance of Bourchier, were employed in the trial of
bishop Pecock of Chichester ɪ, a learned and temperate divine,
who was trying to convert the heretics by argument rather
than by force, and who in the strength of his own faith had
made admissions which recommended him to neither the
orthodox nor the heterodox. At the close of the year Henry
called a great council with his usual intention of making
peace: on the 27th of January, 1458, all the lords met in
London and the neighbourhood, the Yorkist party within the
city, the Lancastrian lords outside. As might be expected,
both hard words and hard blows were heartily interchanged ;
but the king, with the aid of archbishop Bourchier, succeeded
at last. A grand pacification took place in March, and on
Lady Day at S. Paul’s², after an imposing procession in which
the duke led the queen by the hand, the high conflicting
parties swore eternal friendship. The ministers who had con-
trived this happy result remained in office. The command of
the fleet and the captaincy of Calais were allotted to Warwick³ ∙₁
and the duke of York and other lords who had conquered at
S. Alban’s, by paying for masses for the souls of the slain,
appeased the hostility of their sons. The victories won by
Warwick as soon as he had assumed his command were suffi-
cient to vindicate the wisdom of employing him as admiral,
but they increased his popularity and made the queen more
than ever apprehensive of his predominance.

353. The eternal friendship sworn in March 1458 served for
about a year and a half to delay the crisis, whilst it gave both
parties time to organise their forces for it. But long before they
came to blows all pretence of cordiality had vanished. In October

ɪ Wilkins, Cone. iii. 576 ; Eng. Chr. p. 75 ; Whethamstede, i. 279 sq. ;
Fabyan, p. 632.

^a Ordinances, vɪ. 290 sq. ; Fabyan, p. 633; Political Songs, ii. 254;
Hall, p. 238. Cf. Paston Letters, i. 424-427 ; Stow, Chr. pp. 403, 404;
W Iiethamstede, i. 295-308,               ^s Ordinances, vɪ. 294, 295,

the king held a full council and recalled the earl of Wiltshire to
the treasury¹. In November ² a riot occurred at Westminster in Warwick
which the earl of Warwick was implicated, and which caused him Calais”
to leave England and establish himself at Calais, which henceforth X^^mber
became the head-quarters of disaffection. The country returned
to the condition in which it had been the year before : it was
divided as it were between two hostile camps ; all regular gov- Divisions

∙∣11        Tiii ip .      . .  and rumours,

eminent was paralysed; the queen devoted herself to organising

a party for her son ; the Yorkists spread the evil report that the
royal boy was a bastard or a changeling. The treasurer was said
to be amassing untold wealth³ ; yet the taxes were uncollected,
and the king’s debts unpaid. Everything was going wrong ; and
everything, wrong or right, was represented in its worst colours.
The grant of the taxes to the king for life made it unnecessary to Cessation of
call a parliament ; but this abeyance of constitutional forms, ^parhamente∙
whilst it seemed to confine personal altercations within the walls
of the council chamber, left the nation at large without an oppor-
tunity of broaching its grievances or forcing them on the notice
of the king. At last, in the month of September 1459 ⁴, the
final breach occurred. The earl of Salisbury, who seems to have Saiisbmy
been, notwithstanding his j^,ears and experience, more inve- southwards
terately hostile to the king than either York or Warwick, force,
collected a force of 5000 men at Middleham and marched
towards Ludlow castle, where he was to join the duke of York,
and with him to visit the king at ColeshilL The queen, mis-
trusting the object of the visit, sent lord Audley with an insuf-
ficient force and a royal warrant for the earl’s arrest. The
two lords met at Bloreheath on the 2 3rd ; Salisbury refused to
obey the warrant, defeated Audley, who was killed on the field, Battieof
and made his way to Ludlow, where Warwick also joined him. Sept. ≈₃,
Henry was better prepared than they expected. He marched ɪ⁴⁵⁹'
on Ludlow : the opposing force, after attempting to surprise
him at Ludford, melted before him ; and, unable to face him,

¹ The council was summoned for Oct. ɪɪ ; Ordinances, vi. 29“; the
treasurer was appointed Oct. 30.

² Nov. 9 ; Engl. Chron. (ed. Davies), p. 78 ; Stow, Chr. pp. 404, 403.
Fabyan, p. 633. places it on Feb. 2.

^s Eng. Chron. p. 79.     ¹ Eng. Chron, p. 80 ; Whethamstede, i. 338.

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