leader in a civil war. Warwick, and nobles such as he, fought as much for their order as their king; all succeeding soldiers fought more for a cause than either. Meanwhile, Margaret and her son had landed in the West at Plymouth, to be present at the fatal fight at Tewkesbury where defeat was followed by the death of her son, whom Edward struck before subservient attendant lords and stabbed to death, the imprisonment of the queen, and, later on, the death of Henry VI. in the Tower. Neither he nor all the house of Lancaster had been able to save his order from decay. Edward, too, according to his views, had unconsciously aided its downfall. His death was illumined only by the lurid light of an ill-spent life. However enthusiastic in bygone years was the following of the Earl of March, he played the game so badly that with him the feudal spirit practically disappeared. No son of his succeeded. No kindly thought clung round the last of the Yorkist line. For he was practically the last, inasmuch as his son was king but in name, his brother Richard but a transient star. When on Bosworth field Richard III. died, with him finished the civil wars of mediæval England and the feudalism that had accompanied them. In Henry VII., a personality of no great merit, though he certainly instituted a nucleus of the future army in raising the “Yeomen of the Guard,” fifty archers strong, was united the two Roses; and then was born the nation that in the next civil troubles laid the foundation as far as England is concerned of modern life, modern armies, and modern war. Never had a class suffered so severely as that of the nobles in this prolonged struggle. Many of the royal princes, half of the nobility and gentry of England, and quite a hundred thousand men had fallen in the great wars. At Barnet the loss was accentuated by Edward’s own orders. So many of the leaders of the great houses had been killed, murdered, or beheaded, that the very decimation of the aristocracy rendered the growth of the middle class more easy, its fusion with the higher class, as time went on and wealth increased, more possible. The knighthood of men of low degree was rare in feudal days; the Tudors were to extend it to the merchant princes who developed English commerce sword in hand, and taught foreign nations the prowess of the English race. [Illustration: _Formation of Lines of Battle at Barnet 14^{th} April 1471._]