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 a King's ship as he was flying to France. What should we say if a lot of British sailors now caught and beheaded Mr. Asquith on board the Dreadnought? In the same year 1450 there was a fearful insurrection in Kent, led by a scamp called Jack Cade, who marched into London and beheaded several more of the King’s ministers. Law and order were utterly at an end.

The Duke of York, who was now the best living heir of Edward III, at length took up the cudgels against the House of Lancaster. There was civil war for some six years (1455-61), and battle after battle. The horror of it all had driven the good King, on two occasions, out of his mind. It was called the war of the House of York against the House of Lancaster, of the ‘White Rose’ against the ‘Red Rose’; really, it was the war of some dozen savage barons on one side against another dozen on the other. Each of them had a little army of archers and spearmen; each had perhaps the grudges of a century to pay off upon some rival. The war hardly affected the towns at all, and stopped trade very little; and even the country districts, except in the actual presence of the armies, seem to have suffered little. The growth of wool, at any rate, and with it the increase of riches, went on as fast as ever. ‘The King ought to put a sheep instead of a ship on his coins,’ was a common saying of the day. Of course the coasts were utterly undefended, and pirates of all sorts had a happy time in the Channel.

If any line of division can be discovered in the country we may say roughly that the North and West were Lancastrian, the South and East (then the richest counties) Yorkist. At last Henry VI was deposed, Queen Margaret took flight, and Edward, Duke of York, became