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192 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. den decease of his arch-enemy Beaufort, "a prelate much more proper for the world than the Church," only eight weeks subsequently. Crime is from its very nature short-sighted, and the enemies of the Duke of Gloucester soon experienced this truth by the influx of results inimical to their wishes and anticipations. So long as the duke, the heir presumptive to the crown, continued alive, the popular voice would have been too strongly in his favor to admit of the pretensions, however well founded, of another ; but as his death removed an important safeguard from the reigning monarch, so it encouraged the Duke of York, descended from a branch senior to the house of Lancaster, to an indirect attempt upon the succession, by securing an exten- sive interest in his claims, although not appearing personally on the scene. To increase also the national discontent, Ed- mund, Duke of Somerset, who had been some time since appointed governor of Normandy, was obliged to dismiss the greater portion of his troops from want of pecuniary supplies ; and Charles of France, by a diligent employment of the period of the truce, having collected and disciplined fresh forces, re- newed the war with England, with the success which might have been anticipated. This and a complication of other cir- cumstances conspired to render the childless queen of England apparently devoted to the interests of her own relatives in France, and at the same time careless of those at home ; and the unfavorable impression, studiously fomented by the duke's party, drew upon Margaret daily increasing odium and mis- trust. Suffolk, advanced by the queen to the rank of duke, was branded with the appellation of "the favorite," and it was complained that the council had been filled, at his suggestion, by her partisans, under the king's authority, without the small- est consideration of their fitness for the posts to which they were promoted, until the general tumult reached its acme upon the expulsion of the English from France, and the entire loss of possessions, some of which had been united to the crown of England for a period of three centuries. The Duke of York had meanwhile been removed from the more public arena, and sent to quell a rebellion in Ireland ; and here not only did he distinguish himself by the skill and credit of his administration but "so assuaged the fury of the wild and savage people, that he won such favor among them as could never be separated from him and his lineage." Richard, a