became king.

CHAPTER XII.

ILLNESS OF THE KING.

[Sidenote: Strange reverses.]

The circumstances of poor Margaret's case seem to have reversed all
ordinary conditions of domestic happiness. The birth of her son placed
her in a condition of extreme and terrible danger, while the immediate
bursting of the storm was averted, and the sufferings which she was in
the end called upon to endure in consequence of it were postponed for
a time by what would, in ordinary circumstances, be the worst possible
of calamities, the insanity of her husband. Happy as a queen, says the
proverb, but what a mockery of happiness is this, when the birth of a
child is a great domestic calamity, the evils of which were only in
part averted, or rather postponed, by an unexpected blessing in the
shape of the insanity of the husband and father.

[Sidenote: The king's insanity.]

[Sidenote: His condition concealed.]

[Sidenote: Margaret's policy.]

Henry's health had been gradually declining during many months before
the little Edward was born. The cares and anxieties of his situation,
which often became so extreme as to deprive him of all rest and sleep,
became, at length, too heavy for him to bear, and his feeble
intellect, in the end, broke down under them entirely. The queen did
all in her power to conceal his condition from the people, and even
from the court. It was comparatively easy to do this, for the
derangement was not at all violent in its form. It was a sort of
lethargy, a total failure of the mental powers and almost of
consciousness--more like idiocy than mania. The queen removed him to
Windsor, and there kept him closely shut up, admitting that he was
sick, but concealing his true situation so far as was in her power,
and, in the mean time, carrying on the government in his name, with
the aid of Somerset and other great officers of state, whom she
admitted into her confidence. Parliament and the public were very
uneasy under this state of things. The Duke of York was laying his
plans, and every one was anxious to know what was coming. But Margaret
would allow nobody to enter the king's chamber, under any pretext
whatever, except those who were in her confidence, and entirely under
her orders.

[Sidenote: Death of the archbishop.]

[Sidenote: 1454.]

[Sidenote: A deputation.]

At length, about two months after Edward was born, the highest
dignitary of the Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died. This
even