f the rude forces at work
as calls for all the poet's refining art to make their representation
tolerable to modern spectators.

But the historians, while consciously failing to discover the hidden
motives of intrigue and treachery which throughout actuated the parties
to this fearful struggle of Englishmen with Englishmen, have nevertheless
recorded for us its main outlines and leading episodes with sufficient
clearness. We are enabled to see England as she was in that great
transition of her "making"--in the throes of civil strife, again to be
endured two centuries later--through which she must pass before she could
become a "land of settled government."

During the weak reign of Henry VI, France was delivered from English
rule, mainly through the heroism of Jeanne d'Arc. In 1450 the commons
rose against King Henry and the house of Lancaster, to which he belonged,
and declared in favor of the house of York--these houses having already
come into serious rivalry for the supreme power. The disasters in France
strengthened the Yorkists, and brought their representative, Richard,
Duke of York, to the front, with armed forces to support his claims.
In 1452 he marched upon London, demanding the removal of the Duke of
Somerset, Henry's chief minister, but a conflict was temporarily averted.
When, in 1454, King Henry became insane, the Duke of York was made
protector by parliament. He might now have seized the crown, but his
forbearance was taken advantage of by the rival party, and "proved the
source of all those furious wars which ensued"--the Wars of the Roses,
beginning with the first battle of St. Albans, in 1455, and ending with
the death of Richard III at Bosworth Field, in 1485.

The wars were signalized by twelve pitched battles; they cost the lives
of about eighty princes of the blood; and during their ravages the
ancient nobility of England was almost annihilated. Yet in these fierce
wars comparatively little damage was done to the general population or to
industry and trade. The wars derived their name from the fact that the
partisans of the house of Lancaster took the red rose as their badge, and
those of York chose the white rose.

The enemies of the Duke of York soon found it in their power to make
advantage of his excessive caution. Henry being so far recovered from his
distemper as to carry the appearance of exercising the royal power, they
moved him to resume his authority, to annul the protectorship of th