ancaster, 1399-1461.

n of Gaunt), was only a younger son of Edward III. According to the strict rules of hereditary succession, there were two others with claims superior

est chapter in English histo

e. Haughty, arrogant kings bowed submissively to its will. Henry could not make laws nor impose taxes without first summoning Parliament and ob

of Commons. Cruelty to heretics also, and oppressive enactments were fought and defeated in this body. The King, clergy,

system of bribery and force in the boroughs, the House of Commons had injected into it enough of the right sort to

nd. The infamous "Statute of Heresy" was passed 1401. Its first victim was a pri

ial discontent of the time, and there came to be more of hate than love in the movement, which was at its foundation a revolt against inequality of condition. As in all such movements, much that was vicious a

Henry V.

forces at work for fou

eted crown, and while

ew character of King (

ars of glory

: Agincou

n Henry V. swept down upon her with his archers, and broke her spirit by his splendid victory at Agincourt; then married her Princess Katharine,

leaving an infant son nine months old, who bore the weight of the new title, "King o

of Arc. Battle o

Arc, a child and a peasant, led the French army to the

s' War ended in defeat (1453). England had lost Aquitaine, which for two hundred y

es; and now the odium of defeat made the burdens it imposed intolerable. The temper of every class was strained to the danger p

k Cade's Insur

eat Earl of Warwick when he went to Parliament was still followed by 600 liveried retainers. But when Jack Cade led 20,000 men in rebellion at the close of the French war, they were not the serfs and villeinage of other times, but farmers

on of Parliament, the House of Lancaster had been placed on the throne contrary to the tradition which gave the succession to the oldest branch, which

rs of the Ros

onal ends, with not one noble or chivalric element to redeem the disgraceful exhibition of human nature at its worst. Murders, executions, trea

to the tower, his wife and child fugitives from the Kingdom, and proclaimed Edward, (son of Ri

f Henry VI. House

rose from the dust of defeat,-brought the captive he had sent to the tower back to his throne-only to see him once more dragged down again by the Yorkists-and for the last time returned to captivity; leaving his wife a prisoner and his

story of the "Wars of

wick, the "

Edward IV.,

d wrought its own destruction. Eighty Princes of the blood royal had perished, and more than half of the Nobility had died on the field or the sc

gy, rendered feeble and lifeless from decline in spiritual enthusiasm, and by its blind hostility to the intellectual movement of the time, crept closer to the throne, while Parliament,

r Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, during the twenty-three years of Edward's reign, was undo

boy left heir to the throne upon the death of Edward IV., his father, was placed under the guardianship of his

, 1483-1485. Death of t

een reluctant to believe that they were really smothered, as has been said; but the finding, nearly two hundred years later, of the skeletons of t

. House of Tudor, 1485-16

of Bosworth Field, and the crown won by numberless crimes, rolled und

t of the House of Lanca

riage with Princess Eli

n the Tower) forever b

in peacef

ting Introduced

tive of all arts," was bringing streams of new knowledge into thousands of homes. Copernicus had discovered a new Heaven, and Columbus a new Earth. The sun no longer circled around the Earth, nor was the Earth a flat plain. There was a revival of classic learning