This blot that they object against your house Shall be wiped out in the next parliament, Call’d for the truce of Winchester and Gloster; And, if thou be not then created York, I will not live to be accounted Warwick. Meantime, in signal of my love for thee, Against proud Somerset and William Pole, Will I upon thy party wear this rose: And here I prophesy,—This brawl to–day, Grown to this faction, in the Temple Garden, Shall send, between the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night. In the bloody struggle, which lasted intermittently for a period of thirty years, and was foreshadowed so accurately by Warwick’s speech, his own county was destined to play a far more intimate and important rôle than many other parts of England where, indeed, the battle royal between the houses of York and Lancaster was regarded with comparatively slight interest. With the final rupture of the parties, which took place in 1455, Warwickshire entered upon another period of unrest, such as had afflicted its peace, progress, and prosperity during the Barons’ War. The struggle was possibly rendered the more disastrous from the fact that the county was divided in opinion regarding the merits of the “rival Roses.” The supporters of the House of York numbered many of the most powerful families in Warwickshire, in addition to that of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, destined to go down to posterity as “the King Maker.” But while the town of Warwick was for York, this advantage was somewhat counterbalanced by the strong Lancastrian sympathies of Coventry, but twelve miles distant. Henry of Lancaster and his Queen, Margaret, had sedulously wooed the latter town by frequent visits, and also by making it and several adjoining parishes a separate county. Coventry saw a good deal of the Red Rose faction, and at the re–commencement of the war, which had languished after the first battle of St. Albans in 1455, at the time the Earls of Warwick and March (the latter of whom was afterwards made Edward IV.) set out for London in search of the King’s forces, the Lancastrians were actually quartered at Coventry. The troops, however, did not remain long in the town, but marching south–east under the command of the Duke of Buckingham, encountered the Yorkist forces at Northampton on July 10, 1460, suffering a disastrous defeat, when Henry himself was captured. Amongst the more notable Warwickshire adherents of the King who fell was Sir Henry Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford–on–Avon.