The French were excusable in their delusion. With an insane king and a reckless queen in both cases the parallel was somewhat close. But the French soon discovered their mistake. Having fitted out two expeditions to avail themselves of our domestic disorders, they intrusted one to Lord de Pomyers, and the other to Sir Peter de Brezé. Pomyers landed on the coast of Cornwall, and having burned Towey, sailed back to France without doing serious mischief. Brezé, with four thousand men, embarked at Honfleur, made a descent on Sandwich, and proceeded to spoil the town, which had been deserted by its defenders on account of the plague; but, the country people in the neighborhood arriving in great numbers, the invaders were fain to return to their ships. Such was the end of the riot in London; and from that time the metropolitan populace adhered to the chiefs of the White Rose; and to that badge of hereditary pride and personal honor they clung with fidelity long after it had lost its bloom in the atmosphere of a corrupt court, and been dyed red on scaffold and battle-field in the blood of the noble and the brave. CHAPTER IX. A YORKIST VICTORY AND A LANCASTRIAN REVENGE. In the summer of 1459 Margaret of Anjou carried the Prince of Wales on a progress through Chester, of which he was earl. The queen's object being to enlist the sympathies of the men of the north, she caused her son, then in his sixth year, to present a silver swan, which had been assumed as his badge, to each of the principal adherents of the house of Lancaster. Margaret had left the County Palatine, and was resting from her fatigues at Eccleshall, in Staffordshire, when she received intelligence that the Yorkists were in motion; that the duke was arraying the retainers of Mortimer beneath the Plantagenet banner; that Warwick was on his way from Calais with a body of warriors trained to arms by Bedford and Talbot; and that Salisbury, at the head of five thousand merry men of Yorkshire, was moving from Middleham Castle to join his son and his brother-in-law at Ludlow.