Richmond's Three Perils. "I'll read you matter deep and dangerous, SHAKSPEARE. Richmond's Three Perils. THE fatal wars of York and Lancaster, which for nearly half a century deluged England with the blood of the noblest and the bravest in the realm, were occasioned by the conflicting claims of the descendants of two of the sons of Edward the Third to the crown. Henry the Sixth, the reigning monarch, was the great-grandson, by the father's side, of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the third son of that renowned king; while Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, was descended, by the mother's side, from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second son of the same King Edward. Nothing, therefore, could be clearer than the superiority of the Duke of York's title over that of King Henry. Still, with the exceptions of some rebellions, hastily raised and speedily quelled, in the reign of Edward the Fourth, and of a plot detected almost as soon as it was engendered, and stifled in the blood of its projectors in that of Henry the Fifth, the crown had been enjoyed in peace and uninterrupted quiet by the grandfather and father of King Henry the Sixth. The prudent and politic administration of the first of those monarchs, and the brilliant military exploits of the second, during his expedition into France, blinded the eyes of the nation to the defects in their title, and it was not until the sceptre was placed in the feeble grasp of an infant of nine months old, and that the realm was distracted by the factions of contending nobles, that the hopes of the House of York began to revive, and its surviving chief, a prince of great talent and valour, and of winning and popular manners, thought of putting forth his pretensions to the splendid inheritance of his ancestors. The general discontent in the nation at the loss of all the French provinces under the new King's reign, which had cost so prodigal an expenditure of blood and treasure during that of his predecessor, materially forwarded the designs of the Duke of York. The Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, and other great nobles, espoused his cause ; and at length having got a numerous army, he took the field against the forces of the King, and openly laid claim to the crown of England. It is of course not our purpose to lead our readers into the details of the disastrous events which followed. Numerous battles were fought, unnumbered lives were sacrificed; the competitors for the royal dignity underwent unheard-of revolutions of fortune; and Henry and Richard were alternately monarchs and fugitives; at one time surrounded with all the pomp and circumstance of royalty, and at another desolate, unfriended, and even petitioners for a meal. The death of the Duke of York, who was slain at the battle of Wakefield, seemed to give a decidedly favourable turn to the affairs of King Henry; and the successes of that day being followed up by the unvaried efforts of his heroic Queen Margaret, he appeared likely to triumph definitively over his foes. The Earl of March, son to the deceased Duke of York, now however assumed the title of King Edward the Fourth; and being supported warmly by all his father's partisans, and especially by the renowned Earl of Warwick, surnamed the King-maker, he took the field, and at length succeeded in totally defeating the Lancastrians, and making himself master of the person of Henry, whom he committed as a prisoner to the Tower of London. His prosperous fortune was not of long duration; for having sent the Earl of Warwick as his ambassador to the Court of the King of France, to claim for him in marriage the hand of that monarch's sister-in-law, he nevertheless, while these negociations were pending, |