Page:The Queens of England.djvu/232

 196 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. dissipated the expectation of a successful endeavor to regain power, to one less energetic than the queen. The engagement itself was indeed a signal warning of the disasters of future conflicts. It was the "first blood spilt in that fatal quarrel, which was not finished in less than a course of thirty years, which was signalized by twelve pitched battles, which opened a scene of extraordinary fierceness and cruelty, is computed to have cost the lives of eighty princes of the blood, and almost entirely annihilated the ancient nobility of England." Thwarted, however, in her military maneuvers, and for a time subjected again to the restriction of the Duke of York's authority, who resumed the protectorship on the king's re- lapse, Margaret, to all appearance absorbed in her devotion to her husband and son at Greenwich, employed her energies secretly, and, as it appears, with success, in promoting division in the council and neutralizing by every obstacle in her power the efficiency and fulfillment of her opponent's plans. With Henry, son of the late Duke of Somerset, as her newly estab- lished counselor, whose ardent desire to revenge his father's death rendered him a ready coadjutor in her resolute policy, it is not astounding that in the beginning of the year 1456 we find York again removed from office, and the queen avail- ing herself of Henry's partial recovery to address letters, "under the privy seal," to York, Salisbury, and Warwick, requesting their immediate presence, as if on affairs of state, but in reality to get them into her power. The court was at this time in Coventry, whither Margaret had removed with the king, not thinking the latter safe in the capital ; but by good, fortune the three peers, who had already so far obeyed the writ of summons as to have commenced their journey, were warned by private emissaries of their danger, and with- drew with the greatest dispatch, each to his safest place of retreat. "The queen was extremely vexed at this disappoint- ment, but her comfort was that she had separated the three lords, and so rendered them less formidable to her." Mean- while the French and Scots taking advantage of the quarrel to invade the kingdom, she, in alarm, was this time sincere in her desire for. domestic amity, to secure the king's and her own safety, and to present unanimity of counsel in resistance to the common foe. For this purpose, and by means of ecclesiastical influence, a public reconciliation took place, the speciousness of which