Edward was merry and good-natured when not angered, and had quite sense and ability enough to have been a very good king, if he had not been lazy, selfish, and full of vices.  He actually set out to conquer France, and then let himself be persuaded over and paid off by the cunning King of France, and went home again, a laughing-stock to everybody.  The two kings had an interview on a bridge over the River Somme in France, where they talked through a kind of fence, each being too suspicious of the other to meet, without such a barrier between them.  As to George, the king had never trusted him since his shameful behavior when Warwick rebelled; besides, he was always abusing the queen’s relations, and Richard was always telling the king of all the bad and foolish things he did or said.  At last there was a great outbreak of anger, and the king ordered the Duke of Clarence to be imprisoned in the Tower; and there, before long, he too was killed.  The saying was that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine, but this is not at all likely to be true.  He left two little children, a boy and a girl.

So much cruel slaughter had taken place, that most of the noble families in England had lost many sons, and a great deal of their wealth, and none of them ever became again so mighty as the king-maker had been.  His daughter, Anne, the wife of poor Edward of Lancaster, was found by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, hidden as a cook-maid in London, and she was persuaded to marry him—­as, indeed, she had always been intended for him.  He was a little, thin, slight man, with one shoulder higher than the other, and keen, cunning dark eyes; and as the king was very tall, with a handsome, blue-eyed face, people laughed at the contrast, called Gloucester Richard Crook-back and were very much afraid of him.

It was in this reign that books began to be printed in England instead of written.  Printing had been found out in Germany a little before, and books had been shown to Henry VI., but the troubles of his time kept him from attending to them.  Now, however, Edward’s sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, much encouraged a printer named Caxton, whose books she sent her brother, and other presses were set up in London.  Another great change had come in.  Long ago, in the time of Henry III., a monk name Roger Bacon had made gunpowder; but nobody used it much until, in the reign of Edward III., it was found out how cannon might be fired with it; and some say it was first used in the battle of Crecy.  But it was not till the reign of Edward IV. that smaller guns, such as each soldier could carry one of for himself, were invented—­ harquebuses, as they were called;—­and after this the whole way of fighting was gradually altered.  Printing and gunpowder both made great changes in everything, though not all at once.  King Edward did not live to see the changes.  He had hurt his health with his revellings and amusements, and died quite in middle age, in the year 1483:  seeing, perhaps, at last, how much better a king he might have been.