On the other hand the individual sense of personal duty, the political consciousness of each citizen that national order and national welfare are essential to his own well-being, had not yet come.

The bonds which had held the world together through so many ages loosened and broke only to leave man face to face with his own selfishness.

The motives that sway and ennoble the common conduct of men were powerless over the ruling classes.

Pope and king, bishop and noble, vied with each other in greed, in self-seeking, in lust, in faithlessness, in a pitiless cruelty.

It is this moral degradation that flings so dark a shade over the Wars of the Roses.