Lord Talbot, the most daring of their leaders, forded the Somme with the water up to his chin to relieve Crotoy, and threw his men across the Oise in the face of a French army to relieve Pontoise.
[Sidenote: Richard of York] Bedford found for the moment an able and vigorous successor in the Duke of York.

Richard of York was the son of the Earl of Cambridge who had been beheaded by Henry the Fifth; his mother was Anne, the heiress of the Mortimers and of their claim to the English crown as representatives of the third son of Edward the Third, Lionel of Clarence.

It was to assert this claim on his son's behalf that the Earl embarked in the fatal plot which cost him his head.

But his death left Richard a mere boy in the wardship of the Crown, and for years to come all danger from his pretensions was at an end.

Nor did the young Duke give any sign of a desire to assert them as he grew to manhood.