Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/601

A.D. 1439.] conduct from the king, and thrown into the dungeon of Wallingford Castle. Thence he was remanded again to Newgate, whence he once more escaped. He was admitted to some small favour by Henry VI., and made keeper of his parks in Denbigh, Wales; and was finally taken, fighting against him, by Edward IV., and beheaded in the market-place of Hereford. Such is the history of the origin of the royal line of Tudor, corrupted from Theodore, the original family name.

The three sons of Owen Tudor and Catherine were acknowledged and ennobled by Henry VI. The eldest, Edmund, was made Earl of Richmond, married to Margaret Beaufort, the heiress of the house of Somerset, and took precedence of all peers. He died at the early age of twenty, yet left one infant son, afterwards Henry VII. The second son of Catherine, Jasper Tudor, was created Earl of Pembroke. The third son became a monk of Westminster.

In France the English still continued to wage a various war, but not sufficiently brilliant to give interest to a detailed account of it. In 1437 Philip of Burgundy again ventured abroad, and laid siege to Crotoy, at the mouth of the Somme. Talbot marched from Normandy with a small army of 4,000 men. Reaching St. Velery over night, the next morning they plunged into the ford of Blanche-taque, so well known since Edward III. crossed it at Creçy, and attacked its besiegers, who hastily drew off to Abbeville. Talbot ravaged the country round, and returned into Normandy laden with spoil.

In May of this year the Duke of York was recalled, and was succeeded by Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who achieved nothing remarkable, and died at Rouen in less than two years. During his government both England and France were exempt from war, but ravaged by famine and pestilence.

In 1439 the Count of Richemont, the Constable of France, recovered the city of Meaux from Talbot; and Talbot, on his part, accompanied by the Earl of Somerset, besieged Harfleur, and took it after a difficult siege. Talbot was, in fact, at this time, the brave supporter of the English power in France. Two years after this time he raised the siege of Pontoise, which was invested by an army of 12,000 men; but all his valour could not preserve it. In 1442 and 1443 there were some advantages gained by the French in Guienne, and these were counterpoised by greater successes of the English in Maine, Picardy, and Anjou. Both parties were weary of the war, yet neither would recede from its high claims. The Pope from time to time urged the combatants, as Christians, to lay aside their animosities, and make peace; and to this desirable object Isabella, Duchess of Burgundy, a descendant of John of Gaunt, lent her persuasions, and succeeded, by the co-operation of Cardinal Beaufort, in obtaining a cessation of hostilities for an indefinite period. The Duke of Orleans, after a captivity of twenty-five years, was now liberated on condition of paying a ransom of 200,000 crowns by fixed instalments. Returning to France, he added his endeavours to those of the advocates for peace, and a truce was at length signed on the 28th of May, 1444, for two years, and by subsequent treaties it was prolonged till April, 1450. It was high time that some respite was given to the wretched people of France, who for so many years had borne the brunt of these deadly contests. Franco, almost from end to end, was become a scene which defies all description, and almost all imagination. Cardinal Beaufort said that more perished in these wars than there wore now in the two kingdoms. The late famine and plague had depopulated France still further; and the wasted country was infested by bands of thieves, vagabonds, cut-throats of every description, chiefly deserted soldiers, who committed the most horrible crimes.

Henry of England was now in his twenty-fourth year. His character was that of a mild, kind-hearted, and pious youth, but weak; and, like all weak princes, prone to surround himself with favourites. From all the accounts that have reached us it is clear that, as a private man, he would have been a good and happy one; as a king, he was destined to become the dupe of some stronger mind, and the victim of faction. During the whole of his minority, his two powerful kinsmen, the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, had kept up round the throne a fierce contest for pre-eminence. Gloucester was warmtempered but generous, and greatly beloved by the people, who called him the "good Duke Humphrey." He id said to have been better educated than most princes of his time, to have been fond of men of talent, and to have founded one of the first public libraries in England. The cardinal was a man of a more calculating and politic temperament. He was well known to be cherishing the hope of grasping the pontifical tiara. Each of these nobles was in daily strife for the possession of the king's person, and, through it, for the chief power in the realm. The duke was a great advocate for the vigorous prosecution of the war, and pleased the people by advocating au ascendancy over the French. Beaufort was as earnest for peace, and thence his popularity with the Church on the Continent. This feud was brought to a climax in 1439 by the debate on the question of the release of the Duke of Orleans. Gloucester opposed it on the ground that his brother, Henry V., had left it as a solemn command that none of the captives of Azincourt should ever be ransomed. Beaufort advocated it on the plea that Orleans would use his influence in France for peace. Beaufort prevailed, and Gloucester, in chagrin, delivered to the king a list of heavy political charges against the cardinal.

Things were at this pass when a charge of sorcery and high treason was got up against the Duchess of Gloucester. It will be recollected that the Duke had married Eleanor Cobham, the daughter of Lord Reginald Cobham, who had been his mistress. Though he had thus made her his wife, her enemies never forgot the circumstances of the duchess's prior situation. It was kept alive as a source of mortification to the duke. Instead of her legitimate title, they persisted in calling her Dame Eleanor Cobham. She is represented as a bold, ambitious, dissolute, and avaricious woman. That is the portraiture drawn by her enemies, and they did not stop there. The last attack of the duke on the cardinal, which aimed at once, as it seemed, at his life and honour, roused the crafty churchman to a deadly scheme of revenge. He called in that ecclesiastical machinery which in those days could so readily be brought to bear on an object of aversion. He is represented as having spies in the household of Gloucester, who kept strict watch on all proceedings, and who reported to him that the duchess had