people cannot peacefully cultivate the
ground--and Pestilence, which comes of want, misery, and suffering. Both
these horrors broke out in both countries, and lasted for two wretched
years. Then, the war went on again, and came by slow degrees to be so
badly conducted by the English government, that, within twenty years from
the execution of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French conquests,
the town of Calais alone remained in English hands.

While these victories and defeats were taking place in the course of
time, many strange things happened at home. The young King, as he grew
up, proved to be very unlike his great father, and showed himself a
miserable puny creature. There was no harm in him--he had a great
aversion to shedding blood: which was something--but, he was a weak,
silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great lordly
battledores about the Court.

Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the King, and the
Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most powerful. The Duke of
Gloucester had a wife, who was nonsensically accused of practising
witchcraft to cause the King's death and lead to her husband's coming to
the throne, he being the next heir. She was charged with having, by the
help of a ridiculous old woman named Margery (who was called a witch),
made a little waxen doll in the King's likeness, and put it before a slow
fire that it might gradually melt away. It was supposed, in such cases,
that the death of the person whom the doll was made to represent, was
sure to happen. Whether the duchess was as ignorant as the rest of them,
and really did make such a doll with such an intention, I don't know;
but, you and I know very well that she might have made a thousand dolls,
if she had been stupid enough, and might have melted them all, without
hurting the King or anybody else. However, she was tried for it, and so
was old Margery, and so was one of the duke's chaplains, who was charged
with having assisted them. Both he and Margery were put to death, and
the duchess, after being taken on foot and bearing a lighted candle,
three times round the City, as a penance, was imprisoned for life. The
duke, himself, took all this pretty quietly, and made as little stir
about the matter as if he were rather glad to be rid of the duchess.

But, he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble long. The royal
shuttlecock being three-and-twenty, the battledores were very an