her, some lessons that would counteract the influences of the court in which she had reigned during her false, fair husband's lifetime, and she may have profited by the sweet uses of adversity; but she inherited the characteristic features of her mother Jacquetta, and her own early career was one of vanity and foolish ambition. Anyhow, the lady Margaret had the upper hand ; she kept her son straight and the court fairly pure, both during his wife's life and after her death, when the discipline was so close that poor Katharine of Aragon had to write home to her father that she could not get a mouthful of meat in Lent. The history of the first half of the reign is the story of the struggle with which this trebly attested title to the throne was maintained ; a bloody story, it is true, but, take it all in all, scarcely to be compared with what goes before and follows. The struggle is not altogether dynastic; it is not in all its details a contest of competitors ; and, in fact, each of the incidents in it has a shade of its own, common as the colouring seems at a distance. There were dynastic rivalries, there were personal intrigues and party blood-feuds that made use of the dynastic rivalries to secure their victory or revenge, and there were administrative difficulties emerging in discontents, which had little to do with either dynastic or hereditary struggles, but lent aid to both and borrowed pretext from both. It is hardly necessary for me perhaps to recall to your minds what roots of dynastic bitterness still subsisted : but for the sake of clearness I will enumerate them. There was the Dowager Margaret of Burgundy, ready to say or do or believe anything for the sake of revenge ; there was the son of Clarence, a prisoner in the king's hands ; there were the De la Poles, the five sons of John, Duke of Suffolk, b / Elizabeth of York, the eldest of whom had been recognised by Richard III as his presumptive heir ; and there was the