Henry answered with unexpected spirit: "My father was King, his father also was King. I have worn the crown forty years from my cradle; you have all sworn fealty to me as your sovereign, and your fathers did the like to my fathers. How, then, can my claim be disputed?" After a long controversy, a compromise was effected. Henry agreed that if he were left in peaceable possession of the throne during his life, Richard or his heirs should succeed him. 303. Battles of Wakefield and Towton (1460-1461). But Queen Margaret refused to see her son, Prince Edward, thus tamely set aside. She raised an army and attacked the Yorkists. Richard, Duke of York, whose forces were inferior to hers, had entrenched himself in Sandal Castle near Wakefield, Yorkshire. Day after day Margaret went up under the walls and dared him to come out. At length, stung by her taunts, the Duke sallied from his strongold, and the battle of Wakefield was fought (1460). Margaret was victorious. Richard was slain, and the Queen, in mockery of his claims to sovereignty, cut off his head, decked it with a paper crown, and set it up over the chief gate of the city of York. Fortune now changed. The next year (1461) the Lacastrians were defeated with great slaughter at Towton, Yorkshire. The light spring snow was crimsoned with the blood of thirty thousand slain, and the way strewn with corpses for ten miles up to the walls of York. The Earl of Warwick (S296), henceforth popularly known as "King Maker," now place Edward, eldest son of the late Duke of York, on the throne, with the title of Edward IV (S300, table). Henry and Margaret fled to Scotland. The new government summoned them to appear, and as they failed to answer, proclaimed them traitors. Four years later Henry was taken prisoner and sent to the Tower of London (S305). He may have been happier there than battling for his throne. He was not born to reign, but rather, as Shakespeare makes him say, to lead a shepherd's life, watching his flocks, until the peacefully flowing years should-- "Bring white hairs unto a quiet grave."[1] [1] See Henry's soliloquy on the field of Towton, beginning, "O God! methinks it were a happy life To be no better than a homely swain." Shakespeare's "Henry VI," Part III, Act II, scene v 304. Summary. The history of the peiod is one of loss to England. The brilliant French conquests of Henry V (SS289, 290) slipped from the nerveless hands of his son, leaving France practically independent. The people's power to vote had been restricted (S297). The House of Commons had ceased to be democratic even in a moderate degree. Its members were all property holders elected by property holders (S297). Cade's rebellion was the sign of political discontent and the forerunner of civil war (S298).