iring it, and put an end to his life in the flower of his age.

His son and successor, James III, was also a minor on his accession; the
usual distractions ensued in the government: the Queen Dowager, Anne
of Gueldres, aspired to the regency; the family of Douglas opposed her
pretensions; and Queen Margaret, when she fled into Scotland, found there
a people little less divided by faction than those by whom she had been
expelled. Though she pleaded the connections between the royal family
of Scotland and the house of Lancaster, she could engage the Scottish
council to go no further than to express their good wishes in her favor;
but on her offer to deliver to them immediately the important fortress of
Berwick, and to contract her son in marriage with a sister of King James,
she found a better reception; and the Scots promised the assistance of
their arms to reinstate her family upon the throne. But Edward did not
pursue the fugitive King and Queen into their retreat; he returned to
London, where a parliament was summoned for settling the government.

On the meeting of this assembly, Edward found the good effects of his
vigorous measure in assuming the crown, as well as of his victory at
Touton, by which he had secured it. The parliament no longer hesitated
between the two families, or proposed any of those ambiguous decisions
which could only serve to perpetuate and to inflame the animosities
of party. They recognized the title of Edward, by hereditary descent,
through the family of Mortimer, and declared that he was king by right,
from the death of his father, who had also the same lawful title; and
that he was in possession of the crown from the day that he assumed the
government, tendered to him by the acclamations of the people. They
reinstated the King in all the possessions which had belonged to the
crown at the pretended deposition of Richard II.

But the new establishment seemed precarious and uncertain, not only from
the domestic discontents of the people, but from the efforts of foreign
powers. Louis, the eleventh of the name, had succeeded to his father,
Charles, in 1460, and was led from the obvious motives of national
interest to feed the flames of civil discord among such dangerous
neighbors by giving support to the weaker party. But the intriguing
and politic genius of this Prince was here checked by itself: having
attempted to subdue the independent spirit of his own vassals, he had
excited such an oppos