But Somerset was no longer at the head of the royal party.

With the birth of her son the queen, Margaret of Anjou, came to the front.

Her restless despotic temper was quickened to action by the dangers which she saw threatening her boy's heritage of the crown; and the demand to be invested with the full royal power which she made after a vain effort to rouse her husband from his lethargy aimed directly at the exclusion of the Duke of York.

The demand however was roughly set aside; the Lords gave permission to York to summon a Parliament as the king's lieutenant; and on the assembly of the Houses in the spring of 1454, as the mental alienation of the king continued, the Lords chose Richard Protector of the Realm.

With Somerset in prison little opposition could be made to the Protectorate, and that little was soon put down.