Page:Comic History of England.djvu/168

164 and killed off the nobility like sheep. They were, it is said, virtually annihilated, and thus a better class of nobility was substituted.

The king was restored; but in 1460 there occurred the battle of Northampton, in which he was defeated and again taken prisoner by the Earl of Warwick.

Margaret was a woman of great spirit, and when the Duke of York was given the throne she went to Scotland, and in the battle of Wakefield her army defeated and captured the duke. At her request he was beheaded, and his head, ornamented with a paper crown, placed on the gates of York, as shown in the rather life-like—or death-like—etching on the preceding page.

The queen was for a time successful, and her army earned a slight reputation for cruelty also; but Edward, son of the late Duke of York, embittered somewhat by the flippant death of his father, was soon victorious over the Lancastrians, and, in 1461, was crowned King of England at a good salary, with the use of a large palace and a good well of water and barn.