odium under which Margaret and Suffolk laboured; and the sacrifice of that nobleman, which followed, is said to have cost her more tears than are usually shed on the loss of a political ally.
Her son was born in 1453, while the national discontents were rising to a crisis. She was soon after called upon to exert all the vigour of her character in resisting the Yorkists, who had defeated the royal army at St. Albans. Though Henry the Sixth was taken prisoner, she raised troops, and defended the royal cause with so much spirit, that she effected a favourable compromise, and restored her husband to the sovereignty The war, however, was renewed, and at the battle of Northampton, the Lancasterians were totally routed, and Henry again taken prisoner. Margaret, with her son, fled to Durham, and thence to Scotland. Returning into the north of England, she interested the nobles there in her cause, and collected a powerful army. With this she met the Duke of York at Wakefield, and totally defeated him. The duke was killed in this battle, and, by the order of Margaret, his head was struck off, and, crowned with a paper diadem, was placed on the gates of York. His youngest son, Rutland, was killed in cold blood by the furious Clifford; several prisoners of distinction were put to death, and an example given of the cruelties which marked the progress of this unnatural war.
In 1461, the queen defeated the Earl of Warwick, partizan of Edward, son of the Duke of York, at the second battle of St. Albans, in which she recovered the person of the king, now a passive agent in the hands of friends and foes. She displayed her fierce and cruel disposition, by ordering Lord Bonville to be executed, to whose care Henry had been entrusted by the Yorkists, and to whom the powerless king had promised pardon. The approach of Edward with a superior force, obliged her again to retreat to the north, and that prince was elevated to the throne by the Londoners, and the lords of the Yorkists.
Margaret's influence, and the licentiousness in which her troops were indulged, increased the Lancasterian party to sixty thousand men. It was met at Towton, in Yorkshire, by Edward and Warwick, at the head of forty thousand men, and a battle was fought, March, 1461, which was the bloodiest of these destructive wars. The Lancasterians were defeated, and Margaret and Henry, who had remained at York, hastily retreated to Scotland. After soliciting aid in vain from that country, she went over to France for the same purpose: and by offering to deliver Calais to the French, should Henry be restored to the crown, she obtained the succour of two thousand men, with which she landed in Scotland. Joined by some of her partizans, and a band of freebooters, she made an incursion into the north of England, and proceeded to Hexham. She was there met and defeated by a force under Lord Montacute.
The unfortunate queen fled with her son into a forest, where she was seized by a band of robbers, who took her jewels, and treated her with great indignity. While they were quarrelling about the booty, Margaret escaped, and fled wearied and terrified into the depths of the forest. Seeing a man coming towards her with a drawn sword, she summoned up all her courage, and going to meet him, "Here, friend," said she, "I commit to your protection the son of your king." Struck by the nobleness and dignity of her manner, and charmed with the confidence reposed in him
