Ten years later saw Warwick “the King Maker” espousing the cause of Lancaster. After his quarrel with Edward IV. he had fled to France, and there at the Court of Louis XI. had met with and been reconciled to Margaret, and exiled Queen of Henry VI. of Windsor, and Edward’s own brother the Duke of Clarence. In the same year (1470) Warwick and Clarence made a descent upon England, and Edward fled to Flanders. On the landing of Warwick, Henry VI., who although deposed was still alive, was proclaimed; and for a short period the Lancastrian dynasty may be said to have been restored. On the return of Edward in the following year the Earl of Warwick took the field at the head of the Lancastrian forces. He was not long destined, however, to profit by his change of sides, for, encountering the army which Edward, who had been rejoined by the Duke of Clarence, had hastily gathered together at Barnet, “the King Maker” was utterly defeated and slain on April 14, 1471. The landing of Margaret, which had taken place at Weymouth on the same day, caused the Lancastrian forces to rally after the battle of Barnet, but they were finally overthrown on May 4 at Tewkesbury, after which Edward, son of Henry and Margaret, was treacherously assassinated by the King and his brother; and the Duke of Somerset, who had been captured, executed. With the defeat and death of “the King Maker” Warwickshire’s active participation in the struggles of the rival Roses may be said to have come to an end. A few years later the House of Warwick became allied to that of York by the marriage of Richard III. with Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and widow of the unhappy Edward V., who had been murdered by Richard, his uncle. The final struggle between the rival Roses took place not in Warwickshire, but in its sister county Leicestershire at Market Bosworth, in the sanguinary battle of August 22, 1485, which by the defeat and death of Richard III. brought the Plantagenet line of English sovereigns to an end. Upon the accession of Henry of Richmond after the battle of Bosworth, the Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence, was imprisoned in the Tower. And on the advent of Perkin Warbeck, who represented himself to be Richard, Duke of York, son of Edward IV., the fact of Warwick’s imprisonment was used by King Henry VII.’s enemies to his injury and disparagement. The fate of Warbeck was destined ultimately to involve that of the unfortunate Earl of Warwick. Bacon puts the position in a brief phrase, which cannot be easily surpassed for vivid imagery. He says, “it was ordained that the winding ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the true tree itself.” By the execution of the Earl upon Tower Hill in 1499 the male line of the Plantagenets, which had flourished in great royalty, power, and renown from the time of Henry II., came to an end; and there was no other Earl of Warwick for a period of nearly half a century. CHAPTER II