THE QUARREL IN THE TEMPLE GARDENS. (See p. [18].)
CHAPTER II.
REIGN OF EDWARD IV.
The Battle of Towton—Edward's Coronation—Henry escapes to Scotland—The Queen seeks aid in France—Battle of Hexham—Henry made Prisoner—Confined in the Tower—Edward marries Lady Elizabeth Grey—Advancement of her Relations—Attacks on the Family of the Nevilles—Warwick negotiates with France—Marriage of Margaret, the King's Sister, to the Duke of Burgundy—Marriage of the Duke of Clarence with a Daughter of Warwick—Battle of Banbury—Rupture between the King and his Brother—Rebellion of Clarence and Warwick—Clarence and Warwick flee to France—Warwick proposes to restore Henry VI.—Marries Edward, Prince of Wales, to his Daughter, Lady Ann Neville—Edward IV.'s reckless Dissipation—Warwick and Clarence invade England—Edward expelled—His return to England—Battle of Barnet—Battle of Tewkesbury, and ruin of the Lancastrian Cause—Rivalry of Clarence and Gloucester—Edward's Futile Intervention in Foreign Politics—Becomes a Pensioner of France—Death of Clarence—Expedition to Scotland—Death and Character of the King.
Edward IV., at this period of his great success, and his acknowledgment by the people of London and the council as king, was only in his twentieth year. Handsome of person and of popular manners, he was not restrained by any such conscientious scruples as guided his father, but was bold and impetuous. He was fond of pleasure, addicted to gallantry, and at the same time as ready to shed blood as he was to make love and revel in courtly pageants. The reluctant approaches to sanguinary measures which had marked the earlier proceedings of his father, had long since vanished in the heated progress of the strife, and Edward might be regarded as the representative of the leaders now on both sides, with the exception of the gentle and forgiving Henry. But on this side Queen Margaret was as energetic as she was ambitious, and as resolute as her husband was the contrary. The circumstances into which she had been thrown had roused in her the spirit of a tigress fighting for its young.
Margaret, on the warm reception of Edward by the Londoners, had retired northward with her marauding soldiers, who had so fatally damaged her cause by their outrages. Three days after his reception in London, Edward despatched Warwick, the chief bulwark of his cause, in pursuit of her, and on the 12th of March, only five days afterwards, he followed himself. On reaching the Earl of Warwick, their combined troops amounted to 40,000. The queen was exerting all her activity and eloquence amongst her northern friends, and lay at York with 60,000 men. Everything denoted the eve of a bloody conflict.
This civil war was now known all over the world as the War of the Roses, a name said to be derived from a circumstance which took place in a dispute in the Temple Gardens betwixt Warwick and Somerset, at an early period of the rival factions. Somerset, in order to collect the suffrages of those on the side of Lancaster, is said to have plucked a red rose from a bush, and called upon every man who held with him to do the like. Warwick, for York, plucked a white rose, and thus the partisans were distinguishable by these differing badges.