of Gloucester, the main and strong pillar of the House of Lancaster; he drew on himself and this kingdom the greatest joint-loss and dishonor, that ever it sustained since the Norman Conquest.  Of whom it may truly be said which a counsellor of his own spake of Henry the Third of France, “Qu’il estait tme fort gentile Prince; mais son reigne est advenu en une fort mauvais temps:”  “He was a very gentle Prince; but his reign happened in a very unfortunate season.”

It is true that Buckingham and Suffolk were the practicers and contrivers of the Duke’s death:  Buckingham and Suffolk, because the Duke gave instructions to their authority, which otherwise under the Queen had been absolute; the Queen in respect of her personal wound, “spretaeque injuria formae,"[5] because Gloucester dissuaded her marriage.  But the fruit was answerable to the seed; the success to the counsel.  For after the cutting down of Gloucester, York grew up so fast, as he dared to dispute his right both by arguments and arms; in which quarrel, Suffolk and Buckingham, with the greatest number of their adherents, were dissolved.  And although for his breach of oath by sacrament, it pleased God to strike down York:  yet his son the Earl of March, following the plain path which his father had trodden out, despoiled Henry the father, and Edward the son, both of their lives and kingdom.  And what was the end now of that politic lady the Queen, other than this, that she lived to behold the wretched ends of all her partakers:  that she lived to look on, while her husband the King, and her only son the Prince, were hewn in sunder; while the Crown was set on his head that did it.  She lived to see herself despoiled of her estate, and of her moveables:  and lastly, her father, by rendering up to the Crown of France the Earldom of Provence and other places, for the payment of fifty thousand crowns for her ransom, to become a stark beggar.  And this was the end of that subtility, which Siracides calleth “fine” but “unrighteous:”  for other fruit hath it never yielded since the world was.

And now it came to Edward the Fourth’s turn (though after many difficulties) to triumph.  For all the plants of Lancaster were rooted up, one only Earl of Richmond excepted:  whom also he had once bought of the Duke of Brittany, but could not hold him.  And yet was not this of Edward such a plantation, as could any way promise itself stability.  For this Edward the King (to omit more than many of his other cruelties) beheld and allowed the slaughter which Gloucester, Dorset, Hastings, and others, made of Edward the Prince in his own presence; of which tragical actors, there was not one that escaped the judgment of God in the same kind And he, which (besides the execution of his brother Clarence, for none other offence than he himself had formed in his own imagination) instructed Gloucester to kill Henry the Sixth, his predecessor; taught him also by the same art to kill his own sons and successors, Edward and Richard.  For those kings which have sold the blood of others at a low rate; have but made the market for their own enemies, to buy of theirs at the same price.