Four really splendid books tell of this period. One of them is by S. R. Crockett, “Black Douglas.” If you have read any of this writer’s stories, you will know there is a treat before you with this one, and you won't be disappointed. It is set in a stirring time, and it makes the most of it.
Then there is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Black Arrow.” It is a book that takes you right into the England of Henry VI and Edward IV, and leads on from one adventure to the other. You can hardly set it down once you ’ve begun it. Its hero is as fine a young fellow as ever drew bow, and bears himself well, both in joy and trouble. The language has a quaint flavor of the ancient time, without being in the least difficult to understand, and we are taken all through England, with her lovely country, and old towns, and all her varied population. In the regular histories, these warring roses may seem tiresome, with now one ahead and now the other, and nothing much mattering with either. But in these two adventurous books that take you straight into the thick of affairs, it is all real and alive, and you won't find a dull second, between your sympathy for your hero and your hatred of the villains whom he is fighting—in fact, you will just become one of the roses yourself.
Miss Yonge has two books that cover this same troublous time. One is called “Grisly Grissell,” the other, “Two Penniless Princesses.” The latter is especially interested in Scotland, though it takes its readers to France and Burgundy, and England, too, and it is a lovely tale which you will enjoy.
After Henry is deposed, the house of York, at whose head stands the huge figure of Warwick, comes to the top. Warwick dominates England at this time, and in Bulwer Lytton’s splendid story, “The Last of the Barons,” you are given a full-length portrait of this man that is unforgetable.
Bulwer is thoroughly in sympathy with his great hero, and has closely studied the entire period of which he writes. He gives a most careful, but not for that reason a tiring picture of English society in all its degrees, with all its pomp and glory, all its misery and suffering. He shows us, too, the beginnings of the new England that is to rise with the coming of the seventh Henry, and that will take another step toward the freeing of the individual, he he poor or rich, noble or simple.
He draws King Edward to the life, with all his virtues, all his faults. He shows how it came about that the King-Maker finally quarreled with his liege, and he brings apon his stage a whole host of important and interesting personages, among them the dark and already dangerous Richard of Gloucester, first as a lad, later as a man of growing power and ambition. And he never loses your interest, This book is one of the real stories of the world, one you should in no case miss reading, and which is indispensable in the chain of our historic novels.
A very gentle, delightful story is one written by A. J. Church, many of whose books you have surely read. It is called “The Chantry Priest of Barnet,” and is supposed to be the personal account, written by a monk, of such things as came under his own observation during a long stretch of time, for the narrative begins as early as 1450, about the middle of Henry VI’s reign, and continues to 1516, with a description of the battle of Flodden Field, told to the monk by one of the men who fought through it. It was in this battle that England conquered James I, whom you read of in “The Caged Lion,” killing him and the flower of the Scottish nobility, and taking the country back under the crown of England.
The writer is attached to Edward IV, and goes to London with him, where he sees many interesting things. He also has something to say of Caxton and his work. And he is on the field of Barnet, where the great Earl of Warwick is killed, and Henry defeated, to die or be murdered soon after, no one knows surely which. This story does not aim at being so historically accurate as Bulwer’s book, but it succeeds in giving a good idea of what England was like then, and shows the other side of the conflict between Edward and the rebellious baron.
Scott's “Quentin Durward,” which, with “Ivanhoe,” is one of the most exciting stories he ever wrote, treats of these years, though much of the action is in France. And an excellent story, thrilling and true to fact, is Eleanor C. Price's “The Queen’s Man,” but it is hard to find, worse luck!
Richard was the next king on England's throne, and I have not been able to get hold of many books about him. There is the play of Shakspere, which is one of the most powerful of his historic plays, And there is a story by G. P. R. James, called “The Woodman.” This is an exciting romance, and contains a fine description of the bad king, with whom we are made closely acquainted, and of whose softer side we catch glimpses. It ends with the battle of Bosworth, in 1485, where Richard, after but two troubled years on the English throne, is killed by Richmond, who becomes Henry VII.
Herewith the houses of Lancaster and York cease to be the rulers of England. They made a lot of racket, and touched some glorious heights. And now England begins to move swiftly onward to its most splendid period.
