The news from the north of the siege of Carlisle would not allow the King to be crowned at once as was intended. A week after the Proclamation he started hurriedly for the north to meet Henry, to whom he gave battle at Towton. The result of the stubborn contest was the defeat of Henry, who with the Queen and his son Prince Edward and such of the Lords as were left, fled into Scotland. Edward stayed awhile to set things in order and then rode south. He was welcomed by the Mayor and Aldermen and five hundred citizens at Lambeth on 27th July, and was escorted to the Tower, whence on the 29th—the 28th day of each month was accounted unlucky—he rode to Westminster and was crowned with due ceremony. In the second year of his reign he granted a Charter to the City in which he confirmed all past privileges and liberties. The Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen past the chair, were appointed perpetual justices as long as they continued to be Aldermen. They were also constituted justices of _Oyer and Terminer_ for the trying of all malefactors within their jurisdiction; they were exempt from serving on Juries or on Foreign Assizes, and from having to undertake certain offices; they were empowered to hold a Fair in the Borough of Southwark; and they received certain other privileges connected with waifs, strays, and treasure trove. Three other Charters were granted by Edward. All of them will be found in the Appendix. The year 1463 was taken up by another campaign in the north, with sieges of castles, and with the usual crop of treasures, perjuries, arrests, and beheadings. Surely there was never any war or contest more disgraced by change of sides, broken oaths, and villainies, than this War of the Roses. Edward returned to London in February 1463, and was received by a procession of barges. It has been observed, doubtless, that the mediæval citizens were at all times perfectly regardless of the season: they had a Riding in January, a Coronation in December, a water procession in February quite as happily as in July or August. Yet it is very certain that the climate was as capricious and as uncertain then as now. In 1464 the King married secretly Elizabeth, the young widow of Sir John Grey, and daughter of Lord Rivers. The Queen was crowned in May 1465. In the same year the unfortunate King Henry was taken prisoner, and brought to the Tower of London. At this point we may take up the somewhat tangled story of Alderman Coke. In the early years of King Edward’s reign Coke was treated with special favour by the King. Other Aldermen were made plain Knights. Coke was made a Knight of the Bath. He had a town-house and a country seat, Gidea Hall in Essex. It was this Coke who, when he was made Lord Mayor, finding at an entertainment that the most honourable seat at the table, which belonged to himself, had been taken by the Lord High Treasurer, refused to sit down at all, and with the Aldermen and the citizens retired to his own house, where he gave a dinner.