DRAMATIS PERSONE.

1. KING HENRY THE SIXTH. See note 1, I. Henry VI. 2. HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, his uncle. See note 3, I. Henry VI.

3. CARDINAL BEAUFORT, Bishop of Winchester, greatuncle to the king. See note 5, I. Henry VI.

4. RICHARD PLANTAGENET, Duke of York. See note 7, I. Henry VI. As the children of York figure in this play, it may be well to record the fact that Richard Plantagenet inarried Cicely Neville, daughter of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, by his second marriage with Joan, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and widow of Sir Robert Ferrers. By this marriage he obtained the support of the powerful Neville family and their many connections. How many these were may be guessed from the fact that Cicely was the eighteenth of a family of twenty-two, of whom the first nine were by the earl's first wife, Margaret, the daughter of Hugh, Earl of Stafford. The duke had, altogether, by his wife Cicely, eight sons and four daughters. Four sons died young. Of the other four two are mentioned below, Edward and Richard. The other two were Edmund, Earl of Rutland, and George, Duke of Clarence, of whom memoirs will be given in the next play. Of the four daughters the eldest, Aune, married first, Henry Holland, second and last Duke of Exeter, who figures in the next play; the second, Elizabeth, married Jolin de la Pole, the son of the Duke of Suffolk; the third, Margaret, became the third wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy; and the fourth died young.

5. EDWARD and RICHARD PLANTAGENET. The historic period of this play extends from April, 1445, to May, 1455. At the latter date Edward was only thirteen years old, having been born in 1422; while Richard was barely three years old, having been born in October, 1452. The account of these two characters will be more appropriately given in the notes of the next play.

6. EDMUND BEAUFORT, DUKE OF SOMERSET, succeeded his brother, John Beaufort, in 1444. See I. Henry VI. note 6. Collins says (vol. i. p. 223) he was "Earl of Mortien in Normandy, and created Marquis of Dorset on June 24th, 1443. In 24th Henry VI. (i.e. 1446) he was Regent of Normandy; and in 26th Henry VI. (i.e. 1448) created Duke of Somerset." According to Holinshed (vol. iii. p. 208) it would seem that the Duke of York was originally appointed Regent of France after the decease of the Duke of Bedford, for a period of five years, and that his appointment was to be renewed for another period of five years; but the Duke of Somerset obtained the office, and replaced the Duke of York in 1446. Somerset's appointment, said to be owing mainly to the

influence of Suffolk, very much increased the enmity which existed between him and the Duke of York. (See, I. Henry VI. note 198.) Both Collins and French say that he was created Duke of Somerset in 1448, the 26th year of Henry VI.'s reign. By a curious mistake both Hall and Holinshed talk of Edmund, Duke of Somerset, in the year 1440; while Holinshed under the year 1438 (vol. iii. p. 192) says: "After this, Henrie earle of Mortaigne, sonne to Edmund duke of Summerset, ariued at Chierburgh with foure hundred archers, and three hundred speares, and passed through Normandie, till he came into the countie of Maine." Under the years 1439, 1440, Holinshed gives an account of the military exploits of the Duke of Somerset, whom he calls (vol. iii. p. 196) "Edmund duke of Summerset," and speaks of him as accompanying the Duke of York, then Regent of France; but here he only copies Hall (p. 194) "he himself (ie. York) accompanied with Edmond duke of Somerset, set forward into the Duchie of Aniow." We must therefore suppose that both Hall and Holinshed have made a mistake. What is certain is that this Edmund was the Duke of Somerset on whom devolved the command of the English armies in France after 1445; he seems to have been extremely unfortunate. Lingard (vol. iv. p. 87), speaking of his position in Normandy, in 1449, says: "The Duke of Somerset, surrounded with disaffection and treason, un able to face the enemy in the field, and forbidden to hope for assistance from England, was compelled to shut himself up in the capital, and to behold from the walls of the castle the fall of the fortresses around him." Opposed to him was the celebrated Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, the most able general on the French side. Some attempt to render him assistance seems to have been made, on the part of the home government, in 1450; but the small body of men, sent to his assistance under Sir Thomas Kyriel, were defeated April 18, 1450; and by August in that year, the whole of Normandy was reconquered by the French, and in another twelve months all the English possessions in France, except Calais, had submitted to Charles. In October, 1450, the Duke of Somerset returned from France; and, although his ill fortune could not be attributed to any want of valour or good faith on his part, he was looked upon as a traitor, and, together with Suffolk, became the object of popular detestation. In 1452, at the instance of the Duke of York, Somerset was ordered into custody on a charge of treason. This charge he retorted on his accuser; York, in his turn, was arrested, and, had the advice of the Duke of Somerset been followed, would then and there have been executed as a traitor, and the Wars of the Roses would, probably, never have taken place. In November, 1453, York having been recalled into the cabinet, Somerset was committed to the Tower. In the following year the government of Calais was taken away from him and given to his rival. Shortly

afterwards, the king having been restored to health, Somerset was liberated; the king putting an end to all disputes between the two rivals on that point by himself assuming the government of Calais. In that year the flames of civil war that had so long been smouldering burst forth; and in the very first battle, that of St. Albans, Somerset was slain. He married Eleanor, second daughter and co-heir of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. He had four sons and four daughters. Of these sons the eldest, Henry, the one mentioned in the passage in Holinshed above, succeeded his father as third duke. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Hexham, 1464, and there beheaded by the Yorkists the day after the battle. He was succeeded by Edmund, the fourth and last duke, who figures among the Dramatis Persone in the next play. Two younger brothers, John and Thomas, died without issue, and with them terminated the male issue of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

7. DUKE OF SUFFOLK. This is the Earl of Suffolk of the last play. (See note 10.) He was created Marquis of Suffolk in 1444, as a return for his supposed good services in arranging the marriage between the king and Margaret of Anjou, and Duke of Suffolk in 1448. He married Alice, widow of Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. (See I. Henry VI. note 9.) She was the Earl of Salisbury's second wife, and was granddaughter of Chaucer, the poet. She had by the duke two sons, of whom the elder, John de la Pole, was restored to the title of Duke of Suffolk in the third year of Edward IV. He married Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV., and daughter of the Duke of York of this play. Their son John, Earl of Lincoln, was declared heir to the crown by Richard III., his uncle, in default of issue to his own son, the Prince of Wales. This Lincoln, in 1487, countenanced the imposture of Lambert Simnel, who pretended to be Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick. He was killed, with many other leaders of the insurgents, at the battle of Stoke, on June 16th, 1487.

8. DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. This was Humphrey Stafford, the only son of the Stafford mentioned in III. Henry VI. i. 1. 7-9:

Lord Clifford and Lord Stafford, all abreast,
Charg'd our main battle's front, and breaking in
Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.

His mother was Anne Plantagenet, eldest daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, youngest son of Edward III., who was murdered at Calais in the reign of Richard II. He was made Duke of Buckingham, 1444, just after the king's marriage with Margaret of Anjou was decided upon, being one of those upon whom the king, at that time, conferred special honours, as Hall says (p. 204): "both for the honour of his realme, and to assure to hymself more special frendes." He married Anne Neville, third daughter of Ralph, first Earl of Westmoreland. One of his daughters, Catherine, married John Talbot, the third Earl of Shrewsbury, and grandson of the great Lord Talbot. Of his three sons the eldest, Humphrey, was killed at the battle of St. Albans, 1455. He married Margaret Beaufort, daughter of Edmund, Duke of Somerset. (See above, note 6.) By her he left a son, Henry, who succeeded his grandfather as third duke,

and is the Buckingham of Richard III. The third son, John Stafford, was created Earl of Wiltshire by Edward IV. (French says in 1470), and is alluded to in III. Henry VI i. 1. 14, 15:

And, brother, here's the Earl of Wiltshire's blood,
Whom I encounter'd as the battles join'd.

According to Lingard, the Earl of Wiltshire fought on the side of the Lancastrians at the battle of Towton in 1461, was taken prisoner while attempting to escape with the Earl of Devon, and was beheaded. There must have been two persons with this title, for Holinshed mentions "the Earle of Wiltshire, sonne to the Duke of Buckingham" as being among the noblemen who accompanied King Edward on April 14th, 1470, when he entered Exeter in pursuit of Warwick and Clarence. The Duke of Buckingham of this play, however, was a loyal adherent of the house of Lancaster. He was supposed to have been concerned with Suffolk in the conspiracy against Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in 1446 (see Holinshed, vol. iii. p. 210); and was one of the noblemen specially denounced by Jack Cade in 1450. He was killed at the battle of Northampton, July 10th, 1460. In III. Henry VI. he is wrongly represented as having been killed at the battle of St. Albans, where Edward says (i. 1. 10-13):

Lord Stafford's father, Duke of Buckingham,

Is either slain or wounded dangerously;

I cleft his beaver with a downright blow.
That this is true, father, behold his blood.

9. LORD CLIFFORD. This is Thomas, eighth Lord de Clifford, son of John de Clifford, and Elizabeth Percy, the daughter of Hotspur, by his wife Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edmund Mortimer, third Earl of March. (See I. Henry VI. note 13.) Lord de Clifford was therefore directly descended from Edward III. through his maternal grandmother. He was sheriff of Westmoreland, 1422, and appears to have sat in parliament from the fifteenth to the thirty-first years of Henry VI. He was the only son. After his father's decease, his mother married Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. Lord Clifford was a most ardent Lancastrian. He was killed at the battle of St. Albans, May 22d, 1455, when only forty years old. He married Joan, daughter of Lord Dacre of Gilsland, by whom he had four sons and five daughters. The eldest son, John de Clifford, is the Young Clifford of this and the Lord Clifford of the following play.

10. EARL OF SALISBURY was Richard Neville, the father of the king-maker. (See I. Henry VI. note 8, second paragraph.) At first attached to Henry VI. he was afterwards induced by family ties to join the party of the Duke of York, who had married his sister. (See above, note 4.) He held the chief command in the army of the Yorkists at the first battle of St. Albans, 1455. After that an earnest attempt was made to reconcile the two factions, an attempt which promised at first to be successful. Two years passed without any sign of renewed hostilities between them, and in 1457, according to Fabyan (p. 631): "the quene suspectynge the cytie of London. and demyd it to be more fauourable vnto the duke of Yorkys partye than hyrs, causyd the king to remoue from London vnto Couentre, and there helde hym a longe In whiche tyme the duke of Yorke was sent for

season.

thyther by pryuey seale, with also the erle of Salesbury, and the erle of Warwyke, where, by covyne of the quene, they were all iii in great daunger. Howe be it by monysshement of theyr frendys they escapyd; and soone after the sayd duke or erle went into the Northe, and the erle of Warwyke, with a goodly company, saylyd vnto Calays." The very next year an affray took place between one of the servants of the king and a servant of the Earl of Warwick, and the hollowness of the peace which the gentle Henry had patched up between the two factions was soon made manifest. Warwick having been threatened by some of the king's servants professed to be in fear of his life, and took refuge at Calais. Seeing that Warwick had escaped, the queen with her party resolved to attack the Earl of Salisbury; and Lord Audley, with ten thousand men, was sent to arrest him and bring him prisoner to London (see Fabyan, p. 634). Salisbury, though at the head of a much smaller force, attacked Lord Audley at Bloreheath in Staffordshire. The battle was very fiercely contested. Salisbury's forces did not number more than half of that of his opponent; but he gained a complete victory and Lord Audley was slain. The number of killed amounted to 2400 in this battle, which may be said to have been the renewal, if not the commencement of the civil war. After the battle of St. Albans the Duke of York made a quasi-submission to the king in the parliament held at Coventry in 1460. Salisbury was attainted of high treason as well as the other lords who had joined the Duke of York, and in the same year the battle of Northampton was fought, in which Salisbury took an important part, and the king's forces were defeated; but fortune changed in the next year; for, at the battle of Wakefield, the Duke of York was killed; Salisbury and others being taken prisoners, were beheaded at Pomfret by order of the queen. By his wife Alice he had six sons and six daughters. Of the daughters, Eleanor and Catherine married respectively Lord Stanley and Lord Hastings, who both appear among the Dramatis Persona of Richard III.; while Margaret became the wife of the Earl of Oxford who figures in the next play. Of the sons the eldest, Richard, is the celebrated king-maker. The second, Sir Thomas Neville, was killed at Wakefield. The third, John Neville, is the Marquis of Montague in III. Henry VI; and the fourth, George Neville, was made Archbishop of York. The two remaining sons died young. The brother, whose death is alluded to, III. Henry VI. ii. 3. 15, was a bastard. (See note 152 on that play.)

11. EARL OF WARWICK. Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known as the King-maker, really makes his first appearance in this play. (See I. Henry VI. note 8.) He seems not to have come into any prominence until the battle of St. Albans, 1455. From that day he became one of the leaders, if not absolutely the chief leader, of the Yorkist party. Towards the end of the same year, the Duke of York having been appointed protector of the realm during the illness of the king, the Earl of Salisbury was made chancellor, and his son Warwick governor of Calais. In 1458 the custody of the sea was taken from the Duke of Exeter, and given to Warwick for a term of five years. On May 29th of that same year he attacked a fleet of twenty-eight sail with a very inferior force. Fabyan

(p. 633) says that they were Spanish ships, but they appear really to have been a fleet belonging to the citizens of Lubeck; and complaint having been made against Warwick of this wanton attack upon them, he was summoned to attend at Westminster, on which occasion the affray, mentioned above in note 10, took place. Before taking his departure for Calais he appears to have arranged with his father and with the Duke of York a plan of the future campaign; and on his return to France he immediately set to work to enlist under him the veterans who had served in Normandy and Guienne. In September of next year he joined the Duke of York and his father at Ludlow. The greater part of these veterans seem to have been under the command of Sir Andrew Trollope, who, on finding the real purpose of the Yorkists was treasonable, deserted to the king with all his soldiers. This alarmed the Yorkists, and they broke up their forces, Warwick returning to Calais. In November of the same year a parliament was held at Coventry, in which an attainder was passed against the Duke of York and all his party, including the Earl of Warwick, who was now superseded both in the government of the fleet and in the government of Calais; in that of the former by the Duke of Exeter, and in that of the latter by the Duke of Somerset; but most of the ships as well as the town of Calais remained faithful to Warwick. His popularity was such that he was now recognized by the Duke of York himself as the chief hope of his party. On July 10, 1460, the battle of Northampton took place, in which the Yorkists under Warwick were victorious, and King Henry was taken prisoner. At the end of the same year, on December 30th, the battle of Wakefield was fought, in which York was killed and his army totally defeated by the Lancastrians under Queen Margaret. Warwick took no part in this battle; but on February 17th of the same year he was defeated at St. Albans by the Queen's army, and King Henry, who was under the Earl's charge, was restored to his wife and son. In spite of this victory, York's eldest son, Edward, succeeded in uniting his forces with those of Warwick. He entered London on March 4th, and was proclaimed king, under the title of Edward IV., on March 29th. In the following year, 1461, the battle of Towton was fought. The Lancastrians were completely defeated; and the popularity of Edward IV. was such that Warwick ceased to occupy that paramount position among the Yorkists which he had hitherto enjoyed. Whether his real reason for deserting the Yorkists and joining the Lancastrians was that given by the old chroniclers, and alluded to in III. Henry VI. iii. 3. 188, may be doubted. Perhaps the insult offered by the king to one of his female relatives was a mere excuse, snatched at by one who, having been so long accustomed to play the first rôle, now found himself cast for an inferior part. Be this as it may, either personal pique or disappointed ambition induced the great earl, in 1470, to declare himself in favour of Henry VI. By the end of this year Henry was again King of England, and Warwick had again resumed his offices as Chamberlain of England and Captain of Calais. In March of the following year Edward, having been formally deposed, landed with a few hundred men at Ravenspurg. At first there seemed little chance of his regaining the crown he had lost; but Clarence, who