The duke, satisfied with his rigour, went on to Holland. Everywhere he evinced himself equally uncompromising towards the nobles, amiable and considerate towards the lower classes and humble folk. Various other stories related about him at this epoch are difficult to accept as authentic, for the main detail has appeared at other times under different guises. Wandering tales seem to alight, like birds of passage, on successive people in lands and epochs widely apart, mere hallmarks of certain characteristics re-embodied. The Hague was the duke's headquarters during two months, and there also he held open court and gave audience to many embassies in the midst of his administrative work pertaining to Holland and its nearest neighbours. He took measures to recover what he claimed had been usurped by Utrecht, and he initiated proceedings to make good the title of Lord of Friesland, that will-o'-the wisp to successive Counts of Holland and never acknowledged by the Frisians. In efforts to weld together the various provinces the months passed, until a new turn of foreign events began to absorb the duke's whole attention. The details of English politics with all the reasons for revolution and counter-revolution involved in the complicated civil disorders, the Wars of the Roses, affected Charles's policy but they can only be suggested in his biography. It must be remembered that the modern impression of English stability and French fickleness in political institutions, an impression casting reflections direct and indirect upon literature as well as history, is based on the changes in France from 1789 down to the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century. Quite the reverse is the earlier tradition based on the kaleidoscopic shifts familiar to several generations of observers in the fifteenth century[2]; stable and firm felt the French as they heard the tidings of the brief triumphs of belligerent factions across the Channel. Since 1461, Henry VI. of the House of Lancaster had been a passive prisoner, while Margaret of Anjou had exhausted herself in efforts to win adherents at home and abroad for her captive husband and her exiled son.[3] In 1463, she had received some aid, some encouragement from Philip of Burgundy, although he had recognised Edward IV. as king and although, too, his personal sympathies were Yorkish rather than Lancastrian. It was Charles who escorted the errant lady into Lille, but later the duke himself entertained her munificently. The poverty-stricken exile probably found the accompanying ducal gifts more to the immediate purpose than the ducal feasts. Two thousand gold crowns were bestowed upon herself, a hundred upon each of her ladies, while various Lancastrian nobles were tided over hard times by useful sums of money.