The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses and calling card is a black arrow, cause Dick to suspect that his guardian Sir Daniel Brackley and his retainers are responsible for his father's murder. Dick's suspicions are enough to turn Sir Daniel against him, so he has no recourse but to escape from Sir Daniel and join the outlaws of the Black Arrow against him. This struggle sweeps him up into the greater conflict surrounding them all. The novel is set in the reign of "old King Henry VI" (1422–1461, 1470–1471) and during the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487). The story begins with the Tunstall Moat House alarm
Black Death in England to recover, since it disproportionately affected infants and young men. This was also the case with the next occurrence, in 1369, where the death rate was around 10−15 percent. Over the following decades the plague would return on a national or a regional level at intervals of five to 12 years, with gradually dwindling death tolls. Then, in the decades from 1430 to 1480, the disease returned in force. An outbreak in 1471 took as much as 10–15 percent of the population, while the death rate of the plague of 1479–80 could have been as high as 20 percent. From