But a new arrival comes on the scene to dash all his hopes and force him to the arbitrament of the sword. Queen Margaret bears a son, Henry recovers, and York is dismissed from his post. He appeals to his friend the great Warwick, and soon a large force rallies to his standard. The rival armies meet at the old town of St. Albans, but ere the fight begins York seeks the king and endeavours to make terms. But Henry, who is as clay in the hands of his implacable wife—“the foreign woman” as the English folk call her—is for the moment moulded into something resembling courage. “I will live and die this day in the quarrel,” he exclaims, and York is cavalierly dismissed. The royalists barricade the streets, and bid the foe come on. The great earl by skilful generalship breaks into the gardens behind the houses, and his archers gain the streets with trumpets blowing and the war-cry “A Warwick! a Warwick!” A tough street fight follows, but it is soon over. The king’s chief supporter is dead, and he himself is in the hands of York. The wars of the Roses have begun, and for more than thirty years the realm will be plunged in a civil war so ghastly and unrelenting that even now it marks the blackest page in our national history. Not that the people generally will join in the strife. The family feuds of great nobles concern them but little; they merely desire peace and good government, that they may till their lands, labour in their workshops, buy and sell, and fill their exhausted purses without distraction. Right willingly would they let the sword rust in its scabbard and the unstrung bow hang idly on the wall. But the land is full of men who have made war their trade in France, and they are eager to be hired for any adventure that is going. These roving mercenaries, the gentry, and their hosts of retainers constitute the armies which will maintain the long and bitter contest. But despite the bloody duels of factious nobles, the business of the country is not interrupted. The judges go on circuit as of old, taking their commissions from whichever king is in the ascendant; and the peasant pauses in his hillside furrow and leans on the handles of his plough to view the nobles of the land dashing themselves to pieces in battle on the plain below. The war is a war of nobles, and not of the commonalty. The wild northern levies triumph, and the king is recovered. Then Margaret arrays her prisoners, and sets up the little prince, her son, to judge them. “Fair son,” she cries, “what deaths shall they die?” and the lad forthwith orders their heads to be struck off. The wild, lawless host tarries eight days at St. Albans, and this delay enables Warwick to unite with the new Duke of York and reach London. The king and queen gain nothing from their victory. They are forced to march north, and the Londoners, glad to be saved from Margaret and her Border freebooters, welcome York’s heir, and sing:— “He that could London forsake, we will no more to us take.”