impaired by the climate, returned with all haste to Guienne, July, 1367. The French king had been watching; the progress of events, and waiting for a favourable opportunity to renew the war with England. Such a juncture seemed now to have arrived. The expedition to Castile had involved the Black Prince in debt, and obliged him to impose a new tax upon his subjects in Guienne—a step which excited great dissatisfaction. King Edward was now old and infirm; and his son was sinking into a premature grave. Charles resolved to avail himself of these favourable circumstances to recover the territories, which the English victories had wrested from him; fortress after fortress fell into his hands, and cautiously avoiding a general action in the field, he gradually but steadily cleared the country of the enemy. Misfortunes gathered thick around the head of the English king. His second son, the duke of Lancaster, laid claim to the throne of Castile in right of his wife, daughter of Don Pedro. The earl of Pembroke, who was sent with reinforcements to the assistance of the duke, was defeated at sea by the Spaniards, and taken prisoner with his whole army; and Sir Robert Knolles at the head of thirty thousand men was defeated by the celebrated Du Guesclin, constable of France. To crown all, the Black Prince died, 8th June, 1376, and "the good fortune of England," says a contemporary historian, "as if it had been adherent in his person, flourished in his health, languished in his sickness, and expired in his death." The old monarch did not long survive his famous son. He died 21st June, 1377, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the fifty-first of his reign. His excellent wife, Philippa, had died seven years before; and he had latterly fallen completely under the influence of a lady of the bed-chamber, named Alice Perrers, who is said first to have plundered and then abandoned him in his dying moments. By his queen he had seven sons and four daughters. Edward III. bore a striking resemblance to his grandfather both in his virtues and his vices, and his reign is generally considered the most illustrious period of the ancient annals of England.—J. T.
EDWARD IV., King of England, was born at Rouen on the 29th of March, 1441, or, as some say, in September, 1442. He was the son of Richard, duke of York, who, as the descendant, by his father, of Edmund the fifth son of Edward III., and by his mother, of Lionel the third son of the same monarch, united in himself the claims both of Clarence and York in the contest for the crown, known as the war of the Roses. At the time of the birth of Edward, his father held the office of regent of France, in the name of Henry VI., from which he was recalled in 1447. The weakness of Henry, who was both mentally and bodily imbecile, and the unpopularity of his queen, Margaret of Anjou, who was arrogant and violent, inflamed the ambition of the duke of York; but it was not till the birth of the prince of Wales, seven years after the marriage of Henry, that his designs were declared, and active preparations made for asserting his claim to the throne. He left the court along with his confederates, and in May, 1455, he defeated Henry at St. Albans and took him prisoner. The king was soon released, but the contest raged for several years with varying fortune. At Drayton in September, 1459, the royal troops sustained a severe defeat; while in October of the same year, at Ludlow, the army of Richard deserted en masse, and he was obliged to save himself by flight. In a few months afterwards, however, Richard landed from Ireland, and his powerful adherent the earl of Warwick landed from France about the same time. His friends in England speedily rallied around him, and in June, 1460, the royal forces were signally defeated by Edward (son of Richard, duke of York) who had assumed the title of Earl of March. Arrangements were now entered into by parliament, in virtue of which Richard was declared heir-apparent to the crown—the prince of Wales being passed over in silence—and proclaimed as protector of the realm; but his dignity was short-lived, for the queen, soon collected an army, and meeting the Yorkists at Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire on the 31st of December, 1460, defeated them with much slaughter. The duke and one of his sons were slain, and many of the nobles and gentlemen who had espoused his cause were taken captive and afterwards executed. At the time of his father's death Edward, now duke of York, was at Gloucester, with a considerable body of troops under his command, but closely watched by an army of Lancastrians under the earls of Pembroke and Ormond. Having attacked and defeated these, he proceeded to London, where, on March 4, 1461, he was proclaimed by the name of Edward IV. As many of the powerful nobles were warmly attached to the house of Lancaster, and as queen Margaret by the aid of France and Scotland was soon enabled to collect troops, Edward was for several years after his accession to the throne, occupied in prosecuting the contest in which his father had fallen; but the war may be said to have terminated with the battle of Hexham in 1464, in which the Yorkists under Lord Montagu gained a signal victory. The Lancastrians were in consequence dispersed; Henry was given up to his enemies and sent to the Tower, and Margaret and her son escaped to the continent.
About this time Edward married privately Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville, an act which led him into new troubles. It put an end to negotiations which had been carried on for some time with a view to his marriage with the Princess Bonne of Savoy, who was nearly related to the French king, Louis XI.; and it alienated from him the earl of Warwick, who had, with the consent and by the authority of Edward, been actively engaged in promoting the proposed alliance. Accordingly, in 1469, Warwick, having opened negotiations with Queen Margaret, declared war against Edward; and after sustaining several defeats, the king was obliged to leave England and seek refuge in Holland. Henry was now released from the Tower, and again invested with royal dignity by Warwick, who thus earned the name of "king-maker," by which he is known in history. But Edward having collected forces in the Low Countries, landed in the Humber in March, 1471, and marching to London was received by the people with enthusiasm. He soon obtained possession of the person of Henry, whom he again sent to the Tower, and attacking the Lancastrians under Warwick at Barnet, on the 14th of April, he routed them—the earl of Warwick and his brother. Lord Montagu, being amongst the slain. A month afterwards, Edward gained another victory at Tewkesbury, and Margaret and her son Prince Edward fell into the hands of their enemies. Margaret was sent to the Tower, and was kept there till 1475, when she was released by the treaty of Pecquigny. Her son was brutally murdered in the presence of King Edward by his brothers, the dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, and the Lords Dorset and Hastings, on the day after the battle of Tewkesbury. King Henry's death took place three weeks afterwards. In January, 1478, the duke of Clarence, who had married a daughter of the earl of Warwick, and had to some extent taken part with the earl against Edward, was attainted and put to death. The other events in Edward's reign are unimportant. By the treaty of Pecquigny, he contracted his daughter Elizabeth to the dauphin of France, and Louis agreed to pay him an annuity of 50,000 crowns during the period of their joint lives. To this agreement the French king did not adhere, and Edward prepared to invade France, but he was suddenly cut off by fever on the 9th of April, 1483. Edward's private character was not estimable. He was impulsive and brave, and the handsomest man of his time; but he was grossly selfish and licentious, and he had recourse to the meanest shifts, in order to maintain his wasteful debaucheries. In his public character, he is said to have been firm and impartial in the administration of justice. It is to be recollected, however, that our knowledge of the period from documentary evidence is scanty, for it stands between the time when men wrote the annals in Latin, and the period when the English began to write freely in their native tongue. During Edward's reign, and the few years previous to his accession to the throne, the country was subjected to frequent and terrible devastation. "Eighty princes of the blood royal of England perished in these convulsions," says Philip de Comines. But the miseries consequent on these civil commotions, prepared the way for the great social and political changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The reign of Edward is illustrious as that in which the art of printing was introduced into England. A brilliant, and on the whole an accurate account, of the manners and of many of the transactions in Edward's reign, has been given by Sir E. B. Lytton in his tale, the Last of the Barons.—J. B. J.
EDWARD V., King of England, son of Edward IV by his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was born on the 4th of November, 1470, in the sanctuary of Westminster abbey, to which Elizabeth had betaken herself when her husband sought refuge on the continent At the time of the death of his father, on the 9th of April, 1483, Edward V., being then a boy of thirteen, was at Ludlow in Shropshire, but shortly thereafter he set out for London, under the protection of his mother's brother, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers. At Northampton he passed into the hands of his
