For, from the time when Henry, a babe of nine months, came, or was brought, to the throne, he had been the victim and alternate tool of the most selfish and unscrupulous noblemen in England arrayed in hostile factions. Into this den Margaret was brought at the age of fifteen, and before two years had passed she had become, to all intents, ruler of England. Henry from that time was as much counted out of the dark games of state-craft and priest-craft that cursed England as if he had been a holy relic. Intrigue, assassination, foreign aggression, and even servile insurrection under Jack Cade were brought to bear on her in vain. The people of England hated her because she was a foreigner, and visited on her all the sins of her court, the imperfections of her husband, their own miseries at home and their shame abroad for the loss of all the winnings of Henry V., Edward III., and the Black Prince. There was no real ruler, and the evil seeds of the usurpation of Henry IV. had ripened in a fearful crop of lawlessness and violence, high and low. There was “a man on horseback” to take advantage of all this evil conjunction of Margaret’s stars,—Edward, Duke of York, to-wit: He first plotted, then struck for the throne. The issue between Lancaster and York was made up, and the red rose and the white became symbols of blood and pale death. It was while this ill-omened issue was crystallizing into action, that Margaret’s only child was born, and even this usual solvent of kingly troubles proved the culmination of her misfortunes and of England’s woes. The birth of the successor changed the issue from a quarrel of York with the court to a deadly enmity of York against Margaret and her son: they were one more block in his path. When the child was born (1453) his father had been for weeks in an idiotic daze—one of the fits he was subject to—not able to move or speak, or hear, or perceive anything; and the boy was some months old before his father could be made to know of his existence. Even this distressing affliction was made to tell against her, for, says an old letter writer, the “noble mother sustained not a little slander and obloquy of the common people, saying that he was not the natural son of King Henry, but changed in the cradle.” The poor mother repeatedly tried to vindicate her honor and strengthen the perilous position of her son by getting the father to recognize him. A letter of that day pathetically says: