he mood of the nobles was
seen in the charges of misgovernment which were at once made against
Somerset, and in his committal to the Tower. But Somerset was no longer at
the head of the royal party. With the birth of her son the queen, Margaret
of Anjou, came to the front. Her restless despotic temper was quickened to
action by the dangers which she saw threatening her boy's heritage of the
crown; and the demand to be invested with the full royal power which she
made after a vain effort to rouse her husband from his lethargy aimed
directly at the exclusion of the Duke of York. The demand however was
roughly set aside; the Lords gave permission to York to summon a
Parliament as the king's lieutenant; and on the assembly of the Houses in
the spring of 1454, as the mental alienation of the king continued, the
Lords chose Richard Protector of the Realm. With Somerset in prison little
opposition could be made to the Protectorate, and that little was soon put
down. But the nation had hardly time to feel the guidance of Richard's
steady hand when it was removed. At the opening of 1455 the king recovered
his senses, and York's Protectorate came at once to an end.

[Sidenote: York's revolt]

Henry had no sooner grasped power again than he fell back on his old
policy. The queen became his chief adviser. The Duke of Somerset was
released from the Tower and owned by Henry in formal court as his true and
faithful liegeman. York on the other hand was deprived of the government
of Calais, and summoned with his friends to a council at Leicester, whose
object was to provide for the surety of the king's person. Prominent among
these friends were two Earls of the house of Neville. We have seen how
great a part the Nevilles played after the accession of the house of
Lancaster; it was mainly to their efforts that Henry the Fourth owed the
overthrow of the Percies, their rivals in the mastery of the north; and
from that moment their wealth and power had been steadily growing. Richard
Neville, Earl of Salisbury, was one of the mightiest barons of the realm;
but his power was all but equalled by that of his son, a second Richard,
who had won the Earldom of Warwick by his marriage with the heiress of the
Beauchamps. The marriage of York to Salisbury's sister, Cecily Neville,
had bound both the earls to his cause, and under his Protectorate
Salisbury had been created Chancellor. But he was stripped of this office
on the Duke's fall; and their