summons to the council of Leicester was held
by the Nevilles to threaten ruin to themselves as to York. The three
nobles at once took arms to secure, as they alleged, safe access to the
king's person. Henry at the news of their approach mustered two thousand
men, and with Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, and other nobles in
his train, advanced to St. Albans.

[Sidenote: The civil war]

On the 23rd of May York and the two Earls encamped without the town, and
called on Henry "to deliver such as we will accuse, and they to have like
as they have deserved and done." The king's reply was as bold as the
demand. "Rather than they shall have any lord here with me at this time,"
he replied, "I shall this day for their sake and in this quarrel myself
live and die." A summons to disperse as traitors left York and his
fellow-nobles no hope but in an attack. At eventide three assaults were
made on the town. Warwick was the first to break in, and the sound of his
trumpets in the streets turned the fight into a rout. Death had answered
the prayer which Henry rejected, for the Duke of Somerset with Lord
Clifford and the Earl of Northumberland was among the fallen. The king
himself fell into the victors' hands. The three lords kneeling before him
prayed him to take them for his true liegemen, and then rode by his side
in triumph into London, where a parliament was at once summoned which
confirmed the acts of the Duke; and on a return of the king's malady again
nominated York as Protector. But in the spring of 1456 Henry's recovery
again ended the Duke's rule; and for two years the warring parties
sullenly watched one another. A temporary reconciliation between them was
brought about by the misery of the realm, but an attempt of the queen to
arrest the Nevilles in 1458 caused a fresh outbreak of war. Salisbury
defeated Lord Audley in a fight at Bloreheath in Staffordshire, and York
with the two Earls raised his standard at Ludlow. But the crown was still
stronger than any force of the baronage. The king marched rapidly on the
insurgents, and a decisive battle was only averted by the desertion of a
part of the Yorkist army and the disbanding of the rest. The Duke himself
fled to Ireland, the Earls to Calais, while the queen, summoning a
Parliament at Coventry in November, pressed on their attainder. But the
check, whatever its cause, had been merely a temporary one. York and
Warwick planned a fresh attempt from their secure retreat