Soon after hostilities were renewed in France, and a numerous force having been poured by king Charles; into Normandy, through the adjacent country of Maine, uo longer a hostile frontier, town after town was epeedily reduced, till at lest Rouen, the capital, surrendered, 9th of November 1449. Early in the next year another heavy reverse was sustained in the defeat of Sir Thomas Kyriel at Fourtnigny ; and at last the fall of Cherbourg, 12th of August 1450, completed the lose of the duchy. Before this catastrophe however the public indignation in England had swept away the unhappy minister on whose head nil this accumulatiou of disasters nud disgraces was laid ; the Duke of Suffolk, after having been committed to the Tower, on the impeach ment of the House of Commons, and banished from the kingdom by the judgment of his peers, was seized as ho was sailiug across from Dover to Calais, and being carried on board one of the king's ships, KW there detained for n few days, and at last had his head struck off by nu executioner who came alongside in a boat from the shore, May 2nd, 1450, The death of Suffolk was immediately followed by a popular Insurrection, unparalleled in its extent and violence eine() the rebellion of Wet Tyler, seventy years before. [Cane, JOHN. Before the close of the following year the French, in addition t Normandy, had recovered all Guienne; and with the exception o Calaia, not a foot of ground remained to England of all her recen continental possessions. Bordeaux, which had been subject to tin English government for three centuries and a half, revolted the follow ing year; and the brave Talbot, now eighty years of age, was sent t Guienne to take advantage of that movement ; but both he and hi son fell in battle, 20th of July 14b3; and on the 10th of October following Bordeaux surrendered to Charles.
The remainder of the history of the reign of Henry VI. is mach up of the events that arose out of the contest for the crown whirl eventually placed another family on the throne. [EDWARD IV.] It I only necessary here to enumerate in their chronological order the leading facts in the story of Henry's personal fortunes. On the 13t1 of October 1453 Queen Margaret was delivered at Westminster of a son, who was named Edward, and early in the next year, according t,c enstom, created Prince of Wales and Earl of Cheater. About the same time the king sunk into a state of mind amounting to absolute incapacity. By the beginning of the year 1455 however he had recovered such use of his faculties as he had formerly had, and again took upon him the nominal administration of tho government, which during his malady bad been committed to the Duke of York. In the contest of arms that soon ensued, he was taken prisoner by the Earl of Warwick at St. Albans, 23rd of May 1455, and towards the end of that year he was again declared to be in a state of incapacity, and the Duke of York resumed the management of affairs with the title of protector. Again however in a few months Henry recovered his health, and the government was conducted in his name till his second capture by the young Earl of March (afterwards Edward IV.) at
Northampton, 10th of July 1460. On this occasion the queen escaped with her son, and eventually made her way to Scotland. The victory obtained by Margaret over the Earl of Warwick at Barnet Heath, 17th of February 1461, again liberated her husband ; after which, and the issue of the battle of Towton, 29th of March, which established Edward on the throne, he retired with the queen and Prince Edward to Scotland. When Margaret again took up arms and invaded England in 1462, Henry was placed for security in the castle of Hardlough in Merionethshire; and here he remained till the spring of 1464, when ho was brought from Wales to join a new insurrection of his adherents in the north of England. After the two final defeats of the Lancas trians at Hcdgley Moor, 25th of April, and at Hexham, 15th of May, the deposed king lurked for more than a year among the moors of Lancashire and Westmorland, till he was at last betrayed by a monk of Addington, and seized as he sat at dinner in Waddington Hall in Yorkshire, in June 1465. He was immediately conducted to London and consigned to the Tower, where he remained in close confinement, till the extraordinary revolution of October 1470 again restored him, for a few months, to both his liberty and his crown. Ile was carried from London to the battle of Barnet, fought 14th of April 1471, and there fell into the hands of Edward, who immediately remanded him to his cell in the Tower. The old man survived the final defeat of his adherents, and the death of his son at Tewkesbury, 4th of May; and a few days after an attempt, which had nearly succeeded, was made by Thomas Nevil, celled the Bastard of Falconberg, to break into his prison and carry him off by force. This probably determined Edward to take effectual means for the prevention of further disturb ance from the same quarter. All that is further known is that on Wednesday the 22nd the dead body of Henry was exposed to public view in St. Paul's. Generally however it bee been believed that he was murdered, and that his murderer was the king's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. Henry VI. was after his death revered as a martyr by the Lancastrians, and many miracles were reported to have been wrought at his tomb. An attempt was made in the next century by his successor Henry VII. to prevail upon Pope Julius II. to canonise him; the pope referred the matter to the examination of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of London, Winchester, and Durham; hut it came to nothing. "The general opinion was," says Bacon (' Life of Henry VII.'), "that Pope Julius was too dear, and that the king would not come to his rates. But it is more probable that that pope, who was extremely jealous of the dignity of the see of Rome, and of the acts thereof, knowing that king Henry VI. was reputed in the world abroad but for a simple man, was afraid it would but diminish the estimation of that kind of honour, if there were not a distance kept between innocents and saints."