This action drove Duke Richard to sudden violence. He hastily gathered his retainers from the Welsh Marches, called his kinsmen the two Neville earls to his aid, and marched on London. Somerset and the king had only the time to collect a few of their friends, when York came upon them at St. Albans. He laid before the king his ultimatum, requiring that Somerset should be given up to be tried, and, when it was rejected, attacked the town, in which the royal troops had barricaded themselves. After a short skirmish, the young Earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, burst his way into the streets and won the day for his uncle Duke Richard. The king was taken prisoner, while Somerset, the cause of all the trouble, was slain in the fray with several other lords of his party (May, 1455). The first battle of St. Albans put the control of the king's person into the hands of York, who again assumed the management of the realm. But he only kept it for less than a year; in 1456 the king asserted his constitutional power of changing his ministers, and turned Duke Richard's friends out of office. As his foe Somerset was now dead, York was fairly contented to leave matters in the king's own control. But after the blood shed at St. Albans, there could be no true reconciliation between the friends of the king and the friends of York. The fierce and active young Queen Margaret put herself at the head of the party which Suffolk and Somerset had formerly led. She feared for her infant son's right of succession to the throne, and was determined to crush York to make his path clear. Throughout the years 1457-8, while a precarious peace was still preserved, Margaret was journeying up and down the land, enlisting partisans in her cause, and giving them her son's badge of the white swan to wear, in token of promised fidelity. [Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.--Rout of Ludford.=] The inevitable renewal of the war came in 1459. Its immediate cause was an attempt by some of the Queen's retainers to slay the young Earl of Warwick, York's ablest and most energetic supporter. Then Salisbury, Warwick's father, raised his Yorkshire tenants in arms; the queen sent against them a force under Lord Audley, whom the elder Neville defeated and slew at Bloreheath. After this skirmish, all England flew to arms to aid one party or the other. York, Salisbury, and Warwick met at Ludlow, on the Welsh border, while the king gathered a great army at Worcester, taking the field himself, with a vigour which he never before or afterwards displayed. It seems that York's adherents were moved by the vehement appeals which King Henry made to their loyalty, and cowed by the superior forces that he mustered. At the Rout of Ludford they broke up without fighting, leaving their leaders to escape as best they might. York fled to Ireland, Salisbury and Warwick to Calais, of which the younger Neville was governor. [Sidenote: =Harsh measures of the queen.=]