Neither oaths nor the numerous Acts which had settled and confirmed the right to the crown in the House of Lancaster could destroy, he pleaded, his hereditary claim.

The bulk of the Lords refrained from attendance, and those who were present received the petition with hardly concealed reluctance.

They solved the question, as they hoped, by a compromise.

They refused to dethrone the king, but they had sworn no fealty to his child, and at Henry's death they agreed to receive the Duke as successor to the crown.
[Illustration: The Wars of the Roses] [Sidenote: Wars of the Roses] But the open display of York's pretensions at once united the partizans of the royal House in a vigorous resistance; and the deadly struggle which received the name of the Wars of the Roses from the white rose which formed the badge of the House of York and the red rose which was the cognizance of the House of Lancaster began in a gathering of the North round Lord Clifford and of the West round Henry, Duke of Somerset, the son of the Duke who had fallen at St.Albans.York, who hurried in December to meet the first with a far inferior force, was defeated and slain at Wakefield.

The passion of civil war broke fiercely out on the field.