The next day, March 25th, the king came to town, and went to St. Paul's in procession, followed by the whole court, the queen conducted by the Duke of York, and the lords of each party walking arm-in-arm before them, in token of perfect reconciliation. But real reconciliation was as distant as ever. The causes of contention lay too deep for the efforts of the simple and well-intentioned king, or even for the subtlest acts of diplomacy. It was the settled strife for a crown; and swords, not oaths, could alone decide it. The whole show was a mocking pageant. The slightest spark might any day light up a flame which would rage through the whole kingdom; and in a little more than a month such a spark fell into the combustible mass. News arrived that a large fleet of merchantmen from Lübeck had been attacked by Warwick as it passed down the Channel, and five sail of them captured after a severe contest, and carried into Calais. As Lübeck was a town of the Hanseatic League, that powerful association--which was in amity with England--speedily sent commissioners to London demanding redress. Warwick was summoned to appear before the council; and, whilst in attendance, a quarrel arose betwixt his followers and those of the court. Warwick believed, or feigned--to escape out of the scrape into which he had fallen--that there was a design upon his life. He fled to his father, Salisbury, and York, and they resolved that their only safety lay in arms. There was a story circulated, and thoroughly believed in by the Yorkist party, that the queen, who never forgot or forgave an enemy, kept a register, written in blood, of all the Yorkist chiefs, and had vowed never to rest till they were exterminated. In fact, both parties were arrived at that pitch of rancour which nothing could appease but the blood of their opponents. The feud was no longer confined to the nobles and their immediate retainers; the leaven of discord had pervaded the whole mass of the nation. The conflicting claims had been discussed till they had penetrated into every village, every family, into the convents of the monks, and the cottages of the poor. One party asserted that the Duke of York was an injured prince, driven from his hereditary right by a usurping family, and now marked to be destroyed by them. The other contended that, though Henry IV. had deposed Richard II., he had been the choice of the nation; that his son had made the name of England glorious; that more than sixty years' possession of the crown was itself sufficient warrant for its retention; that the Duke of York had, over and over again, sworn eternal fealty to Henry VI., which was in itself a renunciation of any claim he might previously possess; and that, in seeking now to deprive the king of his throne, he was a perjured and worthless man. One party argued that York owed his life to the clemency of the king; and the other replied that the king equally owed his to that of York, who had him in his power at St. Albans.