disaffected to an actual king naturally look for a rival claimant, the support of whom may serve to disguise rebellion. There can be no doubt that, on the principles of succession now legally established, the next heir to Richard II. was the young earl of March, or that his claim passed eventually to the duke of York. On the other hand it is equally certain that in the fifteenth century there was no established law of succession, and that the substitution of Henry of Lancaster for his cousin was in accordance with the traditional rule of election. If Henry V. had lived to old age, nothing would ever have been heard of the pretensions of the house of York. Those pretensions were in accordance with the legitimist ideas which were then gaining ground elsewhere, as the natural corollary of absolutism, but which have never been really accepted in England except by Jacobite fanatics. When the war at length broke out, ample material for the armies was supplied by the soldiers whose occupation in France was gone, by the overplus of a population not industrially prospering, and most of all by the personal following of the nobles. Though on the whole the cause of York was favoured by the towns, by the merchants, by the most prosperous and civilised elements of the nation, while the backward regions of the north and west supported Lancaster, yet the differences were not deep enough to affect the conduct of the war. Both sides were equipped and fought after the same fashion; both used cannon more or less; both knew the deadly effect of the cloth-yard arrow, and therefore sought to come to close quarters; both fought with the obstinacy of their race, and often with the special fury which civil war is apt to engender. Hence there is much similarity between the battles, and not much interest, in spite of the remarkable vicissitudes of fortune, except in the three great battles won by Edward IV. in person. To what extent Edward deserves the credit of Towton, the first and greatest of them, cannot be determined; he had the co-operation of the earl of Warwick, and he was still very young. Barnet and Tewkesbury were clearly his own.