By the fiction of the English constitution, England was now governed by a child of nine months old. The late King had thoughtfully arranged for the government by the nomination of Gloucester to the regency in England, Bedford to the regency in France; but experience of former regencies, and the constant adherence to constitutional forms which marked the English nobility, led the Privy Council to make different arrangements. It was determined, in fact, that the Council should be virtually the governing body. This was in accordance with several precedents; even as late as the reign of Henry IV., a council named in Parliament had, during the last years of that monarch’s life, governed England. When the hero, whose popularity and ability had for a time carried all men with him, was dead, it was natural that the kingdom should fall back into the same system of government. In the first Parliament therefore, by the advice of the Council, Bedford was made Regent of both France and England, while to Gloucester was given the title of Defender or Protector of the kingdom, which amounted to little more than the position of President of the Council, by whose advice he was bound to act, and of which the members were nominated in Parliament. After this, the grant of the wool tax and of tonnage and poundage, for two years, closed the session.
All interests were still centred in France. To all appearance, both in geographical position and in the talents of their leader, the advantage lay with the English. Bedford shared all the better qualities of his elder brother; as able, both as a general and a statesman, he was of a gentler and a finer character; on the other hand, the Dauphin Charles was a man without vigour, sunk in sensual pleasure, and still under the influence of unprincipled adventurers. His possessions, too, were much restricted. He found himself confined to the centre and south-east of France. It was only from south of the Loire to Languedoc that his power was unquestioned. Either England or its great ally Burgundy possessed or dominated all other parts of France; while Savoy and Brittany, at the extreme and opposite corners, were professedly neutral. The strength of this position, such as it was, lay in its central situation. The immense extent of country the English held required resources beyond the power of that country single-handed to produce; by alliance with Burgundy alone was it possible. But misgovernment and party feeling prevented any great exhibition of strength on the part of France. She had to rely chiefly on mercenaries, and the war was merely kept alive. In 1423, Bedford succeeded in forming anew a close alliance with Burgundy, in which Brittany also joined. It was cemented by a double marriage; on the one hand, Bedford married Anne, Philip’s sister, while Arthur of Richemont, the brother of the Duke of Brittany, married her elder sister Margaret.
The treaty was scarcely finished when Bedford had to move southward to relieve Crévant on the Yonne, closely besieged by the Scotch and French. The expedition was very successful. A simultaneous attack from the city and the relieving army destroyed the besiegers; 1200 knights, chiefly Scotch, were said to have been left on the field. But fresh recruits were continually coming to the French, some from Italy, some from Scotland; notably 5,000 men under Archibald Douglas, who was raised to the Duchy of Touraine; while Stewart of Darnley, their former leader, received the lordships of Aubigné and of Dreux. Bedford attempted to cut off this source of help by arranging for the release of the Scottish King, who had now been twenty-four years a captive in England. In September 1423, his freedom was arranged, on the payment of £40,000 for his past expenses, and upon a promise on his part that he would keep peace with England, and marry an English lady. He was told to choose his own wife, as English ladies were not in the habit of proposing for husbands, and married Joan Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, granddaughter of John of Gaunt. He did his best, though not always successfully, to keep his promise of peace. But this step on the part of Bedford did not stop the Scotch in France. They pushed on even to the borders of Normandy, and captured Ivry. Bedford addressed himself to the recovery of that fortress. 18,000 troops, Scotch, French, and Italians, led by the Duke of Alençon and Earl of Buchan, now Constable of France, marched to relieve it. This they were unable to do, but revenged themselves by the capture of the neighbouring town of Verneuil. Thither the Regent pursued them, and there he brought them to action. It was the old story over again. The French had not yet learnt wisdom by experience; and again the mass of heavy-armed foot, with cavalry on the flanks, was shattered by the English archers from behind their impenetrable wall of pointed stakes. The Scotch auxiliaries were nearly destroyed; and among the 5000 dead were the Earls of Douglas, Buchan and Aumale. The victory was likened in Parliament to the Battle of Agincourt. Its effects were almost as complete. For the time the French had to withdraw completely behind the Loire.
It was the unbridled folly of Gloucester which disturbed the favourable position which Bedford had secured. The Countess Jacqueline of Hainault and Holland had married John of Brabant, and had fled from her husband. She had taken refuge in England, and just before the death of Henry V., Gloucester, during the life of her former husband, had taken her for his wife. The Duke of Burgundy was the cousin and close ally of John of Brabant, and had hoped to bring all the Netherlands under his power by his kinsman’s marriage with Jacqueline. Gloucester would hear of no compromise, but, in 1424, appeared with 5000 English troops in Calais, and took possession of Hainault. Philip of Burgundy at once wavered in his friendship for England, drew closer his connection with Brabant, and even procured a truce with the Dauphin. Preparations for a duel, to which he had challenged Burgundy, called Gloucester home. The immediate effect of his departure was the occupation of Hainault by John of Brabant. Jacqueline herself was taken prisoner, but managing to escape in man’s clothes, she reached her other dominions in Holland, and thence proceeded to begin a war with Burgundy. Her English lover could send her but little help, and at last, after her husband’s death in 1428, she surrendered to Philip, and declared him her heir. Gloucester’s infidelity broke off relations between them, and eventually, in 1436, the whole of the Netherlands came into the power of Burgundy. It has been said that, without the friendship of Burgundy, the English resources were insufficient to retain France. This was the first shock that friendship received.
This outbreak of Gloucester’s was but one instance of his intemperate and ambitious character. At home, he had already involved the government in difficulties, by his constant rivalry with Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, second son of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swinford. This Prince had already been engaged in all the prominent affairs of the last reign. But though a man of vast wealth and large ambition, his aspirations in England were rather for his family than for himself; and in the financial difficulties which began to beset England his money was freely advanced without interest to Government. In 1424, he had been made Chancellor, for the express purpose of counterbalancing the power of his nephew Gloucester, and in pursuance of this object, he had, during Gloucester’s absence in Hainault, garrisoned the Tower, from which Gloucester on his return found himself excluded. This produced an open quarrel and an appeal to arms, only repressed by the intervention of the Prince of Portugal, at that time in England. There was one man only who could decide this quarrel, and that was the Duke of Bedford, who on coming to England would at once become the constitutional Regent. He found it therefore necessary to leave France, where he was much wanted, and to return to England. He contrived to bring about a reconciliation, at a Parliament held at Leicester. The Bishop of Winchester, from patriotic motives, resigned his chancellorship, and got leave to absent himself from England to go on a pilgrimage. At the same time, the Parliament defined as before the power of Gloucester, establishing the practical supremacy of the Council. This definition Bedford accepted. Eventually, though much against his will, Gloucester was induced to do so also; but his real view was expressed in the words attributed to him, “Lat my brother governe as hym lust, whiles he is in this lande, for after his going overe to Fraunce, I wol governe as me semethe goode.” It was plain that the views of Bedford and Gloucester as to the government of England were very different. Nor had Bedford long left England to return to France when his brother gave rise to a fresh scandal. He had already forgotten Jacqueline, and even while getting supplies from the Commons, with whom he was very popular, for the purpose of upholding her cause, had married his former mistress Eleanor Cobham.
On his return to France, the Duke of Bedford found that his brother’s conduct had increased his difficulties. Richemont, the brother of the Duke of Brittany, had been won to the French side, and received the rank of Constable, vacant by the death of Buchan, and was now using all his influence to induce his brother-in-law Burgundy to follow his example. Bedford’s presence for the moment improved the position of the English. He contrived to renew an alliance with both Burgundy and Brittany, and was thus secured upon either side of Normandy. Encouraged by this success, the English generals were eager to press forward beyond the Loire, which had hitherto been the limit of their conquests. It seems probable that Bedford, with a clearer view of the difficulties of his position, would have been well content to have carried out the wishes of his brother Henry by securing Normandy. He, however, yielded to the pressure brought to bear upon him, and in October, the siege of Orleans, situated on the northernmost angle of the river Loire, and from its position holding command of that river, was undertaken. The town itself stands upon the northern bank, but is connected with a southern suburb, the Portereau, by a bridge, terminating in a strong castle called Les Tournelles. The siege was intrusted to Salisbury,[90] who began the attack upon the southern side. He established his troops in a fortified camp in the ruins of a monastery of Augustinians, and before long succeeded in capturing Les Tournelles, and breaking the bridge. He was unfortunately killed, while examining the country from that fortress, with a view to further investment of the town. The command devolved upon the Earl of Suffolk, who succeeded before the close of the year in erecting a string of thirteen strongholds, called bastides, round the Northern city. But the weather and want of resources compelled him to put these too far apart, and the intercourse of the defenders with an army of relief under the Count of Clermont at Blois was not broken off. Early in the following year, this army hoped to raise the siege by falling on a large body of provisions coming to the besiegers from Paris under Sir John Fastolf. The attack was made at Rouvray, but Fastolf had made careful preparations. The waggons were arranged in a square, and, with the stakes of the archers, formed a fortification on which the disorderly attack of the French made but little impression. Broken in the assault, they fell an easy prey to the English, as they advanced beyond their lines. The skirmish is known by the name of the Battle of the Herrings. This victory, which deprived the besieged of hope of external succour, seemed to render the capture of the city certain.
Already at the French King’s court at Chinon there was talk of a hasty withdrawal to Dauphiné, Spain, or even Scotland; when suddenly there arose one of those strange effects of enthusiasm which sometimes set all calculation at defiance.
In Domrémi, a village belonging to the duchy of Bar, the inhabitants of which, though in the midst of Lorraine, a province under Burgundian influence, were of patriotic views, lived a village maiden called Joan of Arc. The period was one of great mental excitement; as in other times of wide prevailing misery, prophecies and mystical preachings were current. Joan of Arc’s mind was particularly susceptible to such influences, and from the time she was thirteen years old, she had fancied that she heard voices, and had even seen forms, sometimes of the Archangel Michael, sometimes of St. Catherine and St. Margaret, who called her to the assistance of the Dauphin. She persuaded herself that she was destined to fulfil an old prophecy which said that the kingdom, destroyed by a woman—meaning, as she thought, Queen Isabella,—should be saved by a maiden of Lorraine. The burning of Domrémi in the summer of 1428 by a troop of Burgundians at length gave a practical form to her imaginations, and early in the following year she succeeded in persuading Robert of Baudricourt to send her, armed and accompanied by a herald, to Chinon. She there, as it is said by the wonderful knowledge she displayed, convinced the court of the truth of her mission. At all events, it was thought wise to take advantage of the infectious enthusiasm she displayed, and in April she was intrusted with an army of 6000 or 7000 men, which was to march up the river from Blois to the relief of Orleans. When she appeared upon the scene of war, she supplied exactly that element of success which the French required. Already long and bitter experience had taught them the art of war. They were commanded no longer by favourites of the Court, but by professional soldiers, such as Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, La Hire and Saintrailles; and the cause of their weakness was the deep-rooted immorality both of public and private life, which the disastrous party struggles of the last reign had produced. A national instead of a party cry, strict morality enforced by a Heaven-sent virgin, and the enthusiasm of religion, were well calculated to remove this cause of weakness. It is to this combination of experience with enthusiasm that the success of the French henceforward must be traced. Aided by the skill of Dunois, Joan succeeded in entering Orleans by water, while her army the day after marched in unopposed upon the northern side. After various attacks upon the Bastides, she at length, on the 6th and 7th of May, attacked the lines upon the south of the river. The camp in the Augustinian monastery was captured, and after a fierce assault the Tower of the Tournelles fell into the hands of the French, Gladsdale, the commander on the left bank, being killed. The effect of her uniform success, and the superstitious dread she inspired, is shown by the fact that three such generals as Suffolk, Talbot and Fastolf, who commanded on the northern side of the river, took no steps to assist their distressed comrades, and on the following day raised the siege.
The release of Orleans was quickly followed up. The English were hotly pressed. In June, Jargeau on the Loire was taken, and Suffolk with it; while on the 18th of the same month, Talbot and Fastolf suffered a thorough defeat at Pataye, while attempting to save other fortresses lower down the river. Joan of Arc had set herself two great duties to perform—the relief of Orleans, and the coronation of the Dauphin at Rheims. To this second duty she now addressed herself. Her difficulties arose chiefly from the folly of the Dauphin, who was under the influence of his favourite, La Tremouille, a strong Armagnac, whose object it was to prevent his master from entering upon an independent course of action. These difficulties were at length overcome. At the head of a small army, Charles and the Maid of Orleans marched successfully into the heart of their enemy’s country, securing either by force or by negotiation the strong cities on the way. At Rheims the coronation was completed, and thence the French generals directed their march on Paris at the persuasion of Joan. But there, while Joan had been overcoming the reluctance of the French Prince, Bedford had assembled an army of sufficient strength to resist them. He had summoned to his aid the Bishop of Winchester, who had returned from his pilgrimage to Rome with instructions to collect troops to assist the Emperor Sigismund against the heretic Hussites of Bohemia. With this little army he now joined his nephew; and Bedford, alarmed by the rapid defection of great towns such as Blois, Beauvais and Compiègne, determined, if possible, to destroy the superstitious confidence of the French by a successful battle. In this he was disappointed, for, after an indecisive skirmish near Senlis, he was compelled to fall back to cover Paris. For the present, however, this formed the limit of the French successes. A fruitless attack on the city, in which the Maid was wounded, caused timid counsels to prevail, and the army withdrew behind the Loire.
The winter was employed by Bedford in continued efforts to retain the friendship of the Duke of Burgundy; and the united armies of Burgundy and England were attempting to regain Compiègne, when in March Joan of Arc again took the field. She succeeded in passing through the two armies, and in entering the city, but was surprised during a sally and taken prisoner. Her capture gave the English hopes that they might still retain their conquests, as the sluggish and vacillating character of the French King was well known. Bedford set to work to do all he could to regain the prestige he had lost the preceding year. Shortly after the coronation of Rheims, he had caused King Henry to be crowned at Westminster, and with his brother Gloucester had retired from his official situation. He now determined to have the coronation repeated in France. Henry was brought over for that purpose, but it was found impossible to crown him at Rheims, now completely in the hands of the French. Bedford had to content himself with a coronation at Paris. Meanwhile the unfortunate prisoner had been given up to be tried as a sorceress. She was found guilty, and handed over to the secular arm: for a moment she was induced to confess herself guilty, abjuring the truth of her Divine calling; her resumption of arms in the prison was regarded as a relapse into heresy: she was therefore burnt at Rouen. The strangely superstitious character of the age, and the devout belief which existed in sorcery, cannot excuse what was, in fact, an act of base revenge.
From this time onwards the fortunes of England declined. Difficulties accumulated on all sides. The long war had caused such a drain on the finances, that the payment of the troops had already been lowered, and a dangerous mutiny had broken out at Calais. At the same time, Gloucester’s meddlesome and overbearing character perpetually kept the Government at home in disturbance. In 1428, an attack was made on the Bishop of Winchester. He had returned from Rome a Cardinal, and with the rank of Papal Legate for the purpose of collecting troops against the Hussites. His authority thus clashed with that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was ex officio Legate when no one else was specially appointed to that office. Displeased at being superseded, Chicheley joined with Gloucester, and suggested that Winchester, by becoming Legate without royal permission, had incurred the penalties of præmunire. Winchester was therefore excluded from the Council, and from the Chapter of the Garter, of which he was the Prelate, held in 1429. His place in the Council was restored to him in gratitude for his conduct in the following year, when he lent troops to Bedford after the relief of Orleans. Nevertheless, during his absence in 1431, he was asked to resign his bishopric, as being the officer of a foreign power, and Gloucester brought formal charges against him, and caused the writ of præmunire to be actually prepared. The execution of the writ was postponed till the King’s return, when Beaufort was allowed to clear himself, and a declaration vouching for his loyalty given him under the Great Seal. While thus attacking the Cardinal, Gloucester had been attempting to increase his popularity, already very great, by assuming the position of champion of the Church, and persecutor of heresy. In 1430, a man calling himself Jack Sharpe had been put to death at Oxford, and a clergyman of Essex had also been burnt. But there was evidently still existing a strong undercurrent of Lollardism; for the people came in crowds to the place of execution, and made offerings as though the victim of persecution had been a saint. But even worse for Bedford than these troubles at home was the loss of his wife, who died in November 1432, childless, thus breaking the strongest link which had hitherto bound England and Burgundy together. This misfortune was made worse by one of the few acts of indiscretion which can be alleged against Bedford. He married Jacquetta, daughter of the Count of Saint-Pol, of the House of Luxembourg, a marriage in itself politic enough, but which, contracted as it was without the permission of Burgundy, the lady’s feudal superior, caused a quarrel between the two Dukes. This was the second heavy blow which the alliance between England and Burgundy had received. Yet this alliance was absolutely necessary for the successful carrying on of the war. It began to be a question whether peace of some sort was not becoming necessary. Bedford even in the year 1431 received leave from the English Parliament to treat. Abroad the feeling in favour of peace was still stronger. Pope Eugenius IV. had set seriously to work to put an end to the warfare. The Emperor Sigismund, with Frederick of Austria and Louis of Orange, alarmed at the rising power of the Burgundian House, had made offers of assistance to the French King. The Bretons, headed by the Count of Richemont, were anxious to renew their natural alliance with France. Burgundy himself, in 1432, had gone so far as to make an armistice with the French; the presence at the French Court of La Tremouille, one of the murderers of the Duke’s father and the constant supporter of the war, seemed the only obstacle to reconciliation: if that reconciliation were made Bedford must of necessity make peace. Other difficulties were leading him in the same direction. The finances were in the greatest disorder; the garrison of Calais mutinied for pay. Bedford therefore, in 1433, returned to England to see what could be done. He made Lord Ralph Cromwell his treasurer, and intrusted him with the duty of examining and making a statement as to the condition of the finances. It became apparent that the yearly outgoing exceeded the income by £25,000. Bedford at once insisted on economy, and patriotically gave up a considerable portion of his own salaries. But the discovery of his failing resources, the necessity for his presence in England, where Lords and Commons united in intreating him to remain, the increase of the power of France, and the constant danger of reconciliation between Charles and Burgundy, induced him to be quite ready to make arrangements for a peace on honourable terms which should include the possession of Normandy. Such views did not suit Gloucester. He put himself prominently forward as the head of the war party, producing a great but impracticable plan for pressing the war with vigour. Bedford’s residence in England was short. During his absence all went wrong; St. Denis was lost, and the Earl of Arundel taken prisoner. He was forced to return to France, and to leave the parties in England (now clearly defined as peace and war parties) to carry on their quarrels. But the general feeling for the necessity of peace, and for the release from their long imprisonment of the captives taken at Agincourt, gained ground abroad. So much was this the case, that Burgundy found means to assemble on the 14th of July what may be fairly called a European congress, at Arras, to settle if possible the peace of Europe. Thither came ambassadors from the Council of Bâle, (at that time sitting,) the Legate of the Pope, and ministers from the Emperor, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Poland, Denmark, the Parisian University, and the great commercial towns of the Hansa and of Flanders. Archbishop John of York at first represented England. The Duke of Bourbon, who had already entered into agreement with Burgundy, represented France. Even on their first appearance, the English ambassadors were displeased with the precedence given to the French. The rival demands were these:—France wished either for a peace with Burgundy, and the continuation of the war with England, or if there was a cessation of that war, that the peace should be unconditional, with the restoration of all prisoners and all conquests, the three Norman bishoprics alone being left to the English, and those only as fiefs of the French crown; the English demanded the retention of their present possessions and an armistice. The pretensions of the two nations were evidently incompatible; even Cardinal Beaufort, who had joined the congress, was afraid of the war party at home, and on the 6th of September the English embassy withdrew.
At this inopportune moment an event happened which settled the wavering mind of Burgundy, and induced him to make a full reconciliation with the French. This event was the death of the Duke of Bedford. There was no one to fill the place of that great man. It had been his personal influence more than anything else which had kept Burgundy true to England. On his death the Duke at once declared himself ready to receive the terms which France offered. These were humiliating enough. Charles apologized for the death of Duke John, declared that he held the act in abhorrence, that he had been brought to consent to it by the advice of wicked ministers, and would henceforward exclude all Armagnacs from his council. At the same time he granted to Burgundy, Macon and Auxerre, together with the basin of the Somme, or Ponthieu. At first, news of this treaty served only to arouse the warlike feeling of the English. The appearance of the Burgundian envoy in London was the signal for violent riots. It was determined to prosecute the war with vigour. A great loan was raised throughout the country, and the prosecution intrusted to the young Duke of York. It was not to be expected that this young prince, however great his ability, could do what Bedford had been unable to accomplish. United with Burgundy, England had scarcely held its position in France. Against France and Burgundy united, it was helpless.
Already before York’s arrival a great piece of Normandy, and even Harfleur, had been lost. In April the French King, with Burgundy, advanced on Paris, and was admitted by the townspeople. The war party grew only more obstinate. Gloucester revived his absurd claims upon Flanders in right of Jacqueline, and assumed the title of Count of Flanders. York and Talbot succeeded in driving back the Burgundians from Calais; but this was almost the only English success. In July 1437, York was recalled, and Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick,[91] appointed in his place. But it was too late for any one to check the advance of the French. That country was indeed exhausted and miserable to the last degree; but England was in little better plight. For several years the plague had been raging, and an unusually bad harvest added to the horrors of disease. Bread there was none, the people were reduced to live on pulse.
Moreover, the English forces were divided by the threatening aspect of affairs in Scotland. The young King had done his best to keep his promise of peace, but found it impossible to break off the long-standing connection with France. In 1428, his daughter Margaret had been betrothed to Charles VII.’s son, Louis of Anjou. This had excited the fears of the English, and in the following year, the Bishop of Winchester, under the plea of collecting help for his proposed crusade against the Hussites, had visited Edinburgh. A marriage treaty had even been proposed between the two countries, but it came to nothing, and a vigorous diplomatic struggle was still being carried on between the rival parties of France and England, when, in 1434, the folly of Sir Robert Ogle, who led a raid into the Scotch Lowlands, turned the scale in favour of the French. The marriage between Margaret and Louis of Anjou was at once carried out, and, in 1436, an army, with King James at its head, attacked Roxburgh. Fortunately for England, the Scotch King, bred at the Court of Henry V., and eager to introduce into his own kingdom the orderly constitution he had known in England, had excited the anger of his nobles. News of a conspiracy reached him, and he withdrew from his invasion only to fall a victim to that conspiracy in the following year. Weakened by these domestic confusions, Scotland was content to enter into a truce for ten years.
Neither the suffering of the people, nor the danger from Scotland, nor the constant want of success abroad, had any influence on the passionate obstinacy of Gloucester. Meetings with regard to peace were in vain held at Paris, the English refused to recede from their demands. At length, however, Cardinal Beaufort and the peace party so far prevailed, that, after the fall of Meaux, they procured the liberation of the Duke of Orleans, hoping to find in him an efficient mediator. As a protest against the measure, while the Duke was taking the oaths required of him before his liberation, Gloucester, refusing to be present, betook himself to his barge and remained upon the river. The measure did not produce the desired effect. The Duke of Warwick had died in May 1439. Somerset, who had succeeded him, retook Harfleur, but, in the two following years, not only did the French successes increase in Normandy, even Guienne was in its turn assaulted. All efforts to save it were in vain, and it became quite evident that the policy of peace was the only one which could extricate England with honour from its disastrous situation.
The death of Bedford had left Cardinal Beaufort at the head of the party who desired a reasonable peace. But Beaufort was old, and the influence of Gloucester, as first Prince of the blood and the leader of the popular party, kept him much aloof from public business. In his place there arose a new minister, De la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. This man, a descendant of a wealthy merchant in the reign of Edward III., and grandson of the favourite of Richard II., was fully engaged upon the side of the Lancastrian dynasty. He had been taken prisoner after the siege of Orleans, and had in France formed connections which pointed him out as a fitting person to manage negotiations with that country. It was determined, if possible, to make the marriage of the young King with a French Princess the basis of a peace. The Princess fixed on was Margaret, the daughter of Réné, Duke of Bar, representative of the Angevin house, the titular King of Sicily and of Jerusalem.[92] Suffolk undertook to manage the delicate negotiation, although conscious, it would seem, of the obloquy he would probably meet with. He succeeded in obtaining an armistice to extend from June 1444 till April 1446, and the marriage treaty was completed; but so far from receiving a dower with his wife, as might have been expected, (but which her father, who had surrendered his duchy to the Duke of Burgundy, was quite unable to give,) it was arranged that Henry should surrender to the French, as the price of their consent, all that was left to the English of Anjou and Maine, where the war was still being carried on. In carrying out this arrangement, Suffolk had the consent of the Privy Council, but it is probable that they did not contemplate so complete a cession of English rights. His successful return secured him the title of Marquis, and the friendship of the young Queen (whose masculine mind soon got entire command of her husband’s will), and enabled him to hold a position of complete superiority in the English councils.
Alliance with the French, on the somewhat disgraceful terms on which it had been contracted, not unnaturally raised the anger of Gloucester and his party. The rivalry grew hot between him and Suffolk. There were probably private causes of trouble between them, but at all events, in 1447, the Parliament was held at Bury St. Edmunds, and Gloucester was summoned thither. He went with a considerable following, but does not seem to have suspected danger, although he found the town fortified, and the guards everywhere doubled. He was suddenly apprehended on the charge of high treason, and before any trial was granted him, the public were told that he was dead. A death so opportune for his enemies naturally excited suspicion, and the most sinister rumours of foul play were spread among the people. It is impossible not to join in these suspicions; at the same time it is fair to notice that at a late examination his physician had declared his constitution radically unsound, and that some contemporary writers mention his death as having arisen from natural causes.
His death left room for Richard Duke of York’s appearance upon the stage of politics. The son of Anne, sister of the Earl of March, and of that Duke of Cambridge who was put to death for his share in the conspiracy immediately preceding Henry V.’s first expedition to France, he stepped naturally into the place of leader of the Plantagenet Princes. Ever since that family ascended the throne, those branches of it which had not been actually reigning had been for the most part in opposition. Till their accession, the Lancastrians had been the leaders of this party; their place was now taken first by Gloucester, then by York. It will be seen in the sequel that those same families which had formed the discontented party in the reign of Richard II., and in opposition to the Lancastrians, now sided chiefly with York. He had been already employed in public affairs, had been twice governor of Normandy, and in that capacity had quarrelled with the Duke of Somerset, who had been joined with him in command. To rid himself of so important an enemy, Suffolk, the leading statesman of the ruling party, had got him appointed in 1446 to the government of Ireland. This was a post of considerable difficulty; for under the management of the Earls of Ormond, one of the old Anglo-Irish settlers, that country had fallen into great disorder.[93]
After Gloucester’s death Suffolk had become unquestioned chief Minister, for Cardinal Beaufort had not long survived his nephew. He took upon himself all the unpopularity which the Lancastrian dynasty had latterly earned. It is plain that among the people there was deep-seated discontent. The persecution of the Lollards had never relented. Frequent executions are recorded for heresy. The support the Lancastrians had constantly given to the Church had even produced several outbreaks. In 1438, and again in 1443, there had been uproars in several parts of England, directed against the Catholic ecclesiastical foundations. Nor was this unnatural. Amidst the misery and desolation caused by repeated plagues and famines, and the expenditure both of men and money incident upon a foreign war, the Church alone, represented by the wealthy Cardinal Beaufort, had retained its prosperity; while, to crown all, national honour had been deeply wounded by want of success in France. To this inherited unpopularity, Suffolk added that which arose from the late dishonourable marriage treaty with France. Instead of attempting to lessen the feeling against him, he followed the common course of upstart ministers. The Princes and great nobles found themselves excluded from the Council. His ministers were chiefly bishops, especially Ascough, Bishop of Salisbury, and De Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, and men of little eminence, as Lord Say. His government in fact resembled that of Bernard of Armagnac in France, and took that particularly objectionable form, the superiority of the lesser nobles.
His foreign policy, too, was eminently unsuccessful. At the close of the truce, in 1446, he had not secured any permanent peace; and early in 1448, an ill-judged outbreak of some English auxiliaries, who captured the town of Fougères, again plunged England into war. John, Duke of Somerset, perhaps in despair at his ill success, had killed himself. His brother Edmund succeeded to his title and position in France. His opposition to the French, who attacked him in great force, was entirely unavailing, and before the year was over Rouen and a large part of Normandy had been regained by the French. In May an armament under Sir Thomas Kyriel had been defeated near Formigny; in July Caen surrendered; and in August the last remnants of the English army returned to England from Cherbourg. In the following year a last effort was made to retain some position in Guienne with equally bad success.
The loss of Rouen, in 1449, brought the anger of the people to its highest point. In an uproar they put to death De Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, at Portsmouth; and at length the House of Commons, led by Tresham their speaker, insisted upon the apprehension of Suffolk, who had now become a Duke, upon a charge of treason. On the 7th of February eight charges were brought against him of a somewhat indefinite character, especially charging him with a wish to marry his son John to Margaret Beaufort, thus aiming at the kingdom, and with gross mismanagement and treachery in France. These were followed by sixteen more specific charges, in which it was asserted that he had appropriated and misused the royal revenues, interfered with the course of justice, and treated treacherously with the French. On the 13th he appeared before the King in the House of Peers. He denied most of the charges, and excused himself on others on the ground that he had acted with the approbation of the Privy Council. He however, declining the privilege of his peerage and trial by the House of Lords, threw himself entirely upon the King’s mercy; and Henry, hoping to get over the difficulty without giving up his friend, without a trial banished him for five years. This was a manifest breach of the Constitution, and served only to increase the general discontent. The Duke escaped privately to his own estates, and took sea at Ipswich, but was met by an English squadron, taken on board the largest ship, the “Nicholas of the Tower,” and after a sham trial by the seamen, obliged to enter a little boat. He was there beheaded, with a sort of parody of the usual forms of execution. It is pretty evident that behind the popular anger there was the influence of the Duke of York and other noblemen at work.
At the next Parliament, which was held at Leicester, many of the nobles appeared in arms. At the same time the news of the defeat of Kyriel at Formigny arrived; and at once the men of Kent, who were probably in close alliance with the seamen who had executed Suffolk, rose. Their leader was Jack Cade. He led the insurgents under strict discipline towards London, assuming the name of Mortimer, and we cannot but believe with the knowledge of the Duke of York. Two papers were sent in to the Government; one called the Complaints, the other the Demands, of the Commons of Kent. In these were summed up the causes of the unpopularity of Suffolk; and the restoration of Richard of York to favour was demanded. Unable to hold their advanced position, the insurgents fell back to Sevenoaks, but there they were successful against a hasty attack by Sir Humphrey Stafford.[94] The King retired from London, and so far yielded as to order the apprehension of Lord Say, one of the obnoxious councillors. Cade then advanced, took possession of Southwark, and appeared in London, under the title of the Captain of Kent, and in the arms of Stafford. The burghers of London, full of sympathy for the demands of the Kentish men, and pleased with the strict discipline preserved, sided at first with the insurgents. At a formal trial presided over by the Lord Mayor, Say, who had fallen into the hands of the people, was condemned and immediately executed. Meanwhile, almost at the same time, Ascough, the obnoxious Bishop of Salisbury, was put to death by his own followers at Eddington. Thus all the obnoxious ministers had been got rid of. London was now in the hands of the populace. The temptation was too strong for them, and some plundering took place. On this the Londoners took fright, and, when the insurgents retired for the night to Southwark, broke down and defended the bridge. Cade, unable to regain London, fell back, and after his followers, deceived by a promise of general pardon, had chiefly dispersed, was pursued and put to death near Lewes by Iden the sheriff.