comparatively speaking, and left his dominions to a child who was not a
year old, the ill-fated Henry VI. Then would have broken out the
quarrel that came to a head at the beginning of the next generation,
but for two circumstances. The first was, that the King's uncles were
able men, and maintained their brother's policy, and so continued that
foreign distraction which prevented the occurrence of serious internal
troubles for some years. The second was, that the Clarence or Mortimer
party had no leader.

There is a strange episode in the history of Henry V., which shows how
unstable was the foundation of that monarch's throne. While he was
preparing, at Southampton, for the invasion of France, a conspiracy was
discovered to have been formed to take the throne from him. The chief
actor in it was the Earl of Cambridge, who was speedily tried,
convicted, and beheaded, sharing the fate of his associates. Cambridge
was a son of the Duke of York, fifth son of Edward III., and he had
married Anne Mortimer, daughter of Roger Earl of March; and the
intention of the conspirators was to have raised that lady's brother,
Edmund Earl of March, to Henry's place. March was a feeble character,
and Cambridge is believed to have looked to his own wife's becoming
Queen-Regnant of England. The plot, according to one account, was
betrayed by March to the King, and the latter soon got rid of one whose
daring character and ambitious purpose showed that he must be dangerous
as an opposition chief. Henry's enemies were thus left without a head,
in consequence of their leader's having lost his head; and the French
war rapidly absorbing men's attention, all doubts as to Henry's title
were lost sight of in the blaze of glory that came from the field of
Agincourt. The spirit of opposition, however, revived as soon as the
anti-Lancastrians obtained a leader, and public discontent had been
created by domestic misrule and failure in France. That leader was the