Charles VII. was King. The English were driven out of France, and the
Hundred Years' War ended in defeat (1453). England had lost Aquitaine,
which for two hundred years (since Henry II.) had been hers, and had
not a foot of ground on Norman soil.

The long shadow cast by Edward III upon England was deepening. A
ruinous war had drained her resources and arrested her liberties; and
now the odium of defeat made the burdens it imposed intolerable. The
temper of every class was strained to the danger point. The wretched
government was held responsible, followed, as usual, by impeachments,
murders, and impotent outbursts of fury.

[Sidenote: Jack Cade's Insurrection, 1450]

While, owing to social processes long at work, feudalism was in fact a
ruin, a mere empty shell, it still seemed powerful as ever; just as an
oak, long after its roots are dead, will still carry aloft a waving
mass of green leafage. The great Earl of Warwick when he went to
Parliament was still followed by 600 liveried retainers. But when Jack
Cade led 20,000 men in rebellion at the close of the French war, they
were not the serfs and villeinage of other times, but farmers and
laborers, who, when they demanded a more economical expenditure of
royal revenue, freedom at elections, and the removal of restrictions on
their dress and living, knew their rights, and were not going to give
them up without a struggle.

But the madness of personal ambition was going to work deeper ruin and
more complete wreck of England's fortunes. We have seen that by the
interposition of Parliament, the House of Lancaster had been placed on