House of York

Indeed, England could not hope to make her voice heard in the affairs of Europe.

The weak government of Henry VI and the struggles between Yorkist and Lancastrian factions had reduced her to political exhaustion.

While France and Spain had grown into strong kingdoms, England had dwindled into a third-rate power.

Henry VII had enough to do in securing his own throne against pretenders and in reducing the remnants of the feudal nobility to obedience.

Henry VIII, in his early days, had been educated with a view to high ecclesiastical preferment and was a youth of many accomplishments of mind and body.

His tall, stalwart frame, his fair round face and profusion of light hair, his skill in athletic exercises made the Venetian envoy pronounce him to be the handsomest and most capable king in Christendom.

He inherited the geniality, the physical strength, the resoluteness of the Yorkist house and combined them with the self-restraint and caution of the Lancastrians.

No king began his reign with greater popularity and the belief in the soundness of his head and heart filled all men with hopes of a long period of just and prosperous government.

Indeed, England could not hope to make her voice heard in the affairs of Europe.

The weak government of Henry VI and the struggles between Yorkist and Lancastrian factions had reduced her to political exhaustion.

While France and Spain had grown into strong kingdoms, England had dwindled into a third-rate power.

Henry VII had enough to do in securing his own throne against pretenders and in reducing the remnants of the feudal nobility to obedience.

Henry VIII, in his early days, had been educated with a view to high ecclesiastical preferment and was a youth of many accomplishments of mind and body.

His tall, stalwart frame, his fair, round face and profusion of light hair, his skill in athletic exercises made the Venetian envoy pronounce him to be the handsomest and most capable king in Christendom.

He inherited the geniality, the physical strength, the resoluteness of the Yorkist house and combined them with the self-restraint and caution of the Lancastrians.

No king began his reign with greater popularity, and the belief in the soundness of his head and heart filled all men with hopes of a long period of just and prosperous government.

XXXIII.

warwick the kingmaker lived from fourteen twenty eight to fourteen seventy one one the earl of warwick known as the kingmaker was the most famous man in england for many years after the death of henry v he lived in a great castle with two towers higher than most church spires it is one of the handsomest dwellings in the world and is visited every year by thousands of people the kingmaker had a guard of six hundred men at his house in london meals were served to so many people that six fat oxen were eaten at breakfast alone he had a hundred and ten estates in different parts of england and no less than thirty thousand persons were fed daily at his board he owned the whole city of worcester and besides this the three islands jersey guernsey and alderney so famed in our time for their cattle belonged to him he had a cousin of whom he was fond of as if he were a brother this was richard duke of york who was also a cousin to king henry the sixth the son of henry v one evening as the sun was setting and the warders were going to close the gates of the city of york for the night a loud blast of a horn was heard it was made by the sentry on a wall near the southern gate an armed troop was approaching when they drew near the gate their scarlet coats embroidered with the figure of a boar proved them to be men of the earl of warwick the earl himself was behind them the gate was opened passing through it and on to the castle the earl and his company were soon within its strong stone walls cousin said the earl of warwick to the duke of york as they sat talking before a huge log fire in the great room of the castle england will not long endure the misrule of a king who is half the time out of his mind the earl spoke the truth every now and then henry the sixth lost his reason and the duke of york or some other nobleman had to govern the kingdom for him the earl of warwick added you are the rightful heir to the throne the claim of henry the sixth comes through lancaster the fourth son of edward the third yours through lionel the second his claim comes through his father only yours through both your father and mother it is a better claim and it is a double claim that is true my cousin of warwick replied the duke of york but we must not pledge england into war surely not if we can help it replied the earl let us first ask for reform if the king heeds our petition well and good if not i am determined cousin of york that you shall sit on the throne of england instead of our insane sovereign a petition was soon drawn up and signed and presented to henry it asked that henry would do something which would make the people contented the king paid no attention to it then a war began it was the longest and most terrible that ever took place in england it lasted for thirty years those who fought on the king's side were called lancastrians because henry's ancestor john of gaunt was the duke of lancaster the friends of richard were called yorkists because he was the duke of york The Lancastrians took a red rose for their badge, the Yorkists a white one.

For this reason, the long struggle has always been called the War of the Roses.

In the first great battle, the Red Rose Party was defeated and the king himself was taken prisoner.

Since 1466, he had been allied with Warwick, who had quarreled with Edward IV.

while the Yorkist party in England had definitely ranged itself on the side of Burgundy by the marriage of Edward's sister Margaret with Charles the Bold.

Preparations were made for a war between France on the one hand and Burgundy, Brittany, and England on the other.

But at the critical moment Edward was distracted by a Lancastrian rising in Wales and Francis of Brittany withdrew from the alliance.

Henry VII does have to fight the Battle of Stoke where there's an uprising.

It's the last Yorkist uprising.

That's the de la Poles.

So I thought, oh, maybe I should do then, actually, because that is a bit more of a legit thing.

He's a descendant of Geoffrey Chaucer, weirdly.

The problem with it is that he also has brothers.

There's about five of them, and I think of at least two or three of them, you could say that even though they don't have the Battle of Stoke, but they effectively claim the throne and claim that they are the Yorkist rightful monarch and stuff.

But they've all got pretty much the same story, and then you just have a slightly different ending for each one.

ENFORCED THEE Aren't thou king? And wilt be forced? I shame to hear thee speak.

"'Ah, timorous wretch! thou hast undone thyself, thy son, and me, and given unto the house of York such head as thou shalt reign but by their sufferance.

To entail him and his heirs unto the crown, what is it but to make thy sepulchre and creep into it far before thy time?' "'Warwick is Chancellor, and the Lord of Calais.

"'Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas.

"'Such safety finds the trembling Lamb environed with wolves.

"'Had I been there, which am a silly woman, "'the soldiers should have tossed me on their pikes "'before I would have granted to that act.' but thou preferst thy life before thine honour and seeing thou dost i here divorce myself both from thy table henry and thy bed until that act of parliament be repealed whereby my son is disinherited The northern lords that have forsworn thy colours will follow mine, if once they see them spread.

And spread they shall be, to thy foul disgrace and utter ruin of the House of York.

Thus do I leave thee.

It is by no means certain, however, that Henry knew he had this advantage, and the silence of the Act of Parliament declaring his right to the crown, as to its true hereditary character, seems rather to imply that the ground was thought not safe.

No doubt there was another reason for reticence in the fact that the assertion of Henry's own hereditary claim would have discredited that of his wife as the heiress of the Charles of York, and alienated his Yorkist supporters.

But it seems probable in the nature of things that the reservation inserted by Henry IV in the original patent of Richard II was regarded as a true legal obstacle which it was better simply to ignore than expressly to overrule it in the parliamentary confirmation of Henry's title.

Such then was the nature of Henry's ancestral claims.

And even after Jasper was attainted as a Lancastrian, when Edward IV obtained the crown, young Henry being then four years old, both this and other fortresses for some time held out against the conquerors.

But not for many years, for even Harlech surrendered in 1468, and it was the last stronghold that remained in Lancastrian hands.

And it was doubtless in Harlech Castle, though our informant does not give the name of the fortress, that young Henry was at length besieged, when the place fell into the hands of the victorious Yorkists, and he found himself a prisoner among strangers.

The winner of Harlech Castle was William Lord Herbert, who had been created a peer by Edward IV at his coronation in recognition of his staunch devotion to the House of York.

They confessed that the prince was no prince at all, but a boy called Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker.

The priest, who was a Yorkist or White Rose man, hated Henry, and finding that the boy Lambert was clever as well as handsome, he taught him how to behave as a prince ought.

He told him stories of the Duke of Clarence and of Richard III, so that he might pretend to be what he was not.

Henry did not kill Lambert Simnel, as many kings who reigned before him would have done.