when Henry, not knowing how to govern, let the affairs of the kingdom be managed by men who used their power to enrich themselves. One of these men, the Duke of Suffolk, was particularly hated. He was accused of all sorts of crimes and banished. As he was leaving England he was dragged out of

the ship in which he was, and murdered. As in the time of Richard II., the men of Kent were the first to rise. Putting Jack Cade at their head they marched to London. Happily, during the years which had passed since Wat Tyler's rebellion, the peasants had ceased to be serfs. They were now free men, and there was no longer any complaint

about bondage. Cade reached London, but his men took to robbing, and he was himself soon after killed. 14. The Wars of the Roses.-Men who wanted better government looked to one of the king's kinsmen, the Duke of York, to help them. He was descended from that Mortimer who came from Lionel, the son of Edward III., who was older than John of Gaunt, the king's great-grandfather. Nobody, however, at first wanted to make the Duke of York king. They merely wanted him to govern instead of the king's favourites. Before anything could be done the king went mad, and the lords in parliament named the Duke of York Protector, or, as we should say, Regent. If Henry had remained mad for the rest of his life, the Duke of York might have gone on ruling in his name. Unfortunately Henry was sometimes mad and sometimes sane, and he was not much wiser when he was sane than when he was mad. The first time he was better he drove the Duke of York away from his presence. A war began, which is known as the Wars of the Roses, because the House of Lancaster had a red rose for its badge or mark, and the House of York a white one. There were many battles fought. Sometimes one side won and sometimes the other. At last the Duke of York claimed to be king by right of birth. The queen was terribly angry, as this would take away the right of her only son. At a great battle at Wakefield the Duke of York was defeated and slain. The queen had his head cut off and put over the gate of York, with a paper crown placed in mockery upon it. He soon found an avenger in

his eldest son, Edward. The king's party was defeated in a bloody battle at Towton, and Edward became king as Edward IV.

1. Edward IV. and the Barons.-Edward IV. claimed the throne because he was the heir of an older son of Edward III. than the great-grandfather

of Henry VI. had been; but he had had other things besides his birth to help him. In the first place he was a much better soldier than any one who was on the Lancastrian side. In the second place, a very great number of people who did not care whether the king were of one family or another, cared very much to have a king who could really govern and keep order. We are so used to see order kept that it is hard for us to understand how difficult it was to do it in the time of the Wars of the Roses. A few policemen are quite enough to keep many thousands of people peaceable, because only a very few people now think of making a disturbance if they do not get what they want at once. Nobody now is armed as a soldier unless he wears the king's uniform, and is ready to obey the orders of the officers set over him by the king. In the time of Henry VI. the great lords had a large number of armed followers, who were usually ready to do anything that their lords told them to do. Whenever there was going to be any fighting the lords gave out liveries, as they were called, which were what we should call soldiers' uniforms. The word livery means something delivered, and these liveries were coats delivered to the followers with the lord's particular mark. Coats of this kind are still worn by footmen and coachmen, and do not do anybody any harm. Then, when two or three thousand coats were seen about with the bear and ragged staff worked on the front, people knew that, the great Earl of Warwick, who had done so much! to help Edward IV. to the throne that he was known

as the King-maker, was going to fight somebody. When they saw men with a particular kind of knot worked on their breasts, they knew that the Earl of Buckingham was going to fight somebody. Each great lord thus had a little army of his own to dispose of, and was always ready to employ it. Peaceable persons, therefore, wished very much to have a king. strong enough to put down all these little armies, and they thought that a king like Edward, who could win the battle of Towton, was much more likely to be able to put them down than a king like Henry VI., who was usually out of his mind.

2. The Barons and the Middle Classes. If these great lords had contented themselves with marching about and fighting one another it would have been bad enough. What was worse than this was that they used their men to hurt innocent people. A man who had displeased a great lord was pretty sure to meet a band of ruffians. He would then be beaten or wounded, and he would be very lucky if he was not actually killed. If a great man coveted a house belonging to some one else, he sent to take it. A certain John Paston, for instance, lived in Norfolk. One day when he was in London his wife looked out of a window and saw about a thousand men in armour, with guns and bows. They brought with them ladders and long poles with hooks at the end, to pull the house down, and pans with burning coals to set fire to it if they could not pull it down. They set to work first to break down the supports of the room in which the lady was. They then made their way into the house, dragged the lady out by force,