The scene which followed may easily be imagined. Somerset was violent and insolent; Henry, alarmed and silent; York, indignant and scornful. The duke could now entertain no doubt that he had been betrayed; but his courage did not desert him. He retorted Somerset's epithets with interest, and was turning haughtily to take his departure, when informed that he was a captive. Somerset then proposed a summary trial and execution; but the courtiers shrunk from the opprobrium of another murder. The king, who, save in the case of Lollards, had no love of executions, took the more moderate view; and the duke, instead of perishing on the scaffold, was sent as a state prisoner to the Tower of London.
While the queen and her friends were still bent on York's destruction, a rumor that his eldest son Edward, the boy-Earl of March, was coming from Ludlow at the head of a strong body of Welshmen, filled the council with alarm. The duke was thereupon set at liberty, and, after making his submission, allowed to retire to the borders of Wales. Having reached the dominions of the Mortimers, the heir-presumptive sought refuge within the walls of the castles of Wigmore and Ludlow, repressed ambitious longings and patriotic indignation, and, for the restoration of better days to himself and his country, trusted to the chapter of accidents and the course of events.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE KING'S MALADY.
In the autumn of 1453 the queen was keeping her court at Clarendon; the Duke of York was at Wigmore and at Ludlow, maintaining a state befitting the heir of the Mortimers; the barons were at their moated castles, complaining gloomily of Henry's indolence and Somerset's insolence; and the people were expressing the utmost discontent at the mismanagement that had, after a brave struggle, in which Talbot and his son, Lord Lisle, fell, finally lost Gascony; when a strange gloom settled over the countenances of the Lancastrians, and mysterious rumors crept about as to the king's health. At length the terrible truth came out, and the Yorkists learned that Henry was suffering from an eclipse of reason, similar to that which had afflicted his maternal grandsire, the sixth Charles of France. In this state he was slowly removed from Clarendon to Westminster.
About a month after the king's loss of reason, there occurred another event, destined to exercise great influence on the rival parties. At Westminster, on the 14th of October, 1453, Margaret of Anjou, after having been for eight years a wife, without being a mother, gave birth to an heir to the English crown; and the existence of this boy, destined to an end so tragic, while reviving the courage of the Lancastrians, inspired the partisans of the White Rose with a resolution to adopt bold measures on behalf of their chief.
