The Wars of the Roses

On the afternoon of Saturday Edward left London, and late in the evening of that day he reached Barnet. As the Yorkist army approached the town, the king's outriders, meeting those of the earl, chased them past the embattled tower of the church dedicated to St. John, and advanced till, through the darkness, they perceived the army of Warwick. On being informed that the earl was so near, the king ordered his army to move through Barnet, and encamped in the darkness, close to the foe, on Gladsmuir Heath. The king took up his quarters for the night in the town, and his soldiers lay on the heath. They had no sleep, however, for so near was the Lancastrian camp that the voices of men and the neighing of horses were distinctly heard.

Both armies had artillery; and Warwick's guns were, during the night, fired perseveringly at the foe. The king, it appears, did not reply to this salutation. Indeed, Edward early discovered that the Lancastrians were unaware of the exact position of the Yorkist army, and thanked his stars that such was the case; for, though Edward's intention had been to place his men immediately in front of their foes, the darkness had prevented him from perceiving the extent of Warwick's lines, and thus it happened that, while ranging his forces so as far to outstride the earl's left wing, he had failed to place them over against the right. Seldom has an error in war proved so fortunate for a general. The earl happened to have all his artillery posted in the right division of his army, and concluded that the Yorkists were within reach. Edward, as the fire from Warwick's guns flashed red through the darkness, saw the advantage he had unintentionally gained, and issued strict orders that none of his guns should be fired, lest the enemy "should have guessed the ground, and so leveled their artillery to his annoyance." This precaution was successful, and the earl's gunners thundered till daybreak without producing any effect.

Ere the first streak of day glimmered in the sky, the armies were in motion; and when the morning of Easter Sunday dawned, a flourish of trumpets and a solemn tolling from the bell of the Church of St. John aroused the inhabitants of Barnet, and announced that the game of carnage was about to begin. The weather was by no means favorable for that display of martial chivalry which, in sunshine, the field would have presented to the eyes of spectators. The morning was damp and dismal. A thick fog overshadowed the heath; and the mist hung so closely over both armies that neither Yorkists nor Lancastrians could see their foes, save at intervals. The fighting men of that age were as superstitious as their neighbors; and the soldiers on both sides concluded that the mists had been raised to favor the king by Friar Bungey, the potent magician whose spells were supposed to have raised the wind that kept Margaret of Anjou from the shores of England.

Nevertheless, at break of day the earl ordered his trumpets to sound, and proceeded to set his men in battle order. The task was one of no small delicacy; but it seems to have been performed with great judgment. Though Warwick was the soul and right arm of the Lancastrian army, the battle was so arranged as to give no umbrage to the time-tried champions of the Red Rose. The centre host, consisting chiefly of archers and bill-men, was commanded by Somerset; Oxford, who appears to have been trusted by the Lancastrians, shared the command of the right wing with the conqueror of Hexham; and, in command of the left, Exeter, who had helped to lose battle after battle, had the distinction of participating with "the setter-up and plucker-down of kings."

Meanwhile, Edward had roused himself from his repose, arrayed himself royally for the battle, placed on his head a basnet surrounded with a crown of ornament, mounted his white charger – in that age regarded as the symbol of sovereignty – and taken the field to vindicate his right to the throne of his two great namesakes who reposed at Westminster in the Confessor's Chapel.

Edward, in marshaling his army, had to contend with none of the difficulties that beset Warwick. The Yorkist army was devoted to his cause, as the chief of the White Rose; and the captains shared each other's political sympathies and antipathies. Moreover, they were the king's own kinsmen and friends – kinsmen who had partaken of his prosperity, and were eager to contribute to his triumph – friends who had accompanied him into exile, and were ready to die in his defense. Under such circumstances, the disposition of the Yorkist army was easily made. Edward, keeping the fickle Clarence and the feeble Henry in close attendance, took the command of the centre, and was opposed to that part of the Lancastrian forces commanded by Somerset. At the head of the right wing was placed Gloucester, though still in his teens, to cope with Exeter, the husband of his sister, and Warwick, the sworn friend of his sire. At the head of the left was posted Hastings, to face his brothers-in-law, Oxford and Montagu. Besides these divisions, the king kept a body of choice troops in reserve to render aid, as the day sped on, where aid should be most required.

Agreeably to the custom of the period, the king and the earl addressed their adherents, each asserting the justice of his cause – Edward denouncing the patrician hero as rebel and traitor; while Warwick branded his royal adversary as usurper and tyrant. This ceremony over, the hostile armies joined battle. At first fortune with fickle smile favored the Lancastrians. The error made by the Yorkists in taking up their position on the previous evening now caused them serious inconvenience. In fact, the Lancastrian right wing, composed of horsemen, so overlapped the king's troops opposed to them that Oxford and Montagu were enabled to crush Hastings as in a serpent's fold. The Yorkist left wing was completely discomfited; and many of the men spurred out of the fog, escaped from the field, dashed through Barnet, galloped along the high north road to London, and excused their flight by reporting that the earl had won the day.

The conclusion at which the fugitives had arrived was quite premature. Indeed, could these doughty champions of the White Rose have seen what was passing in other parts of the field, they would probably have postponed their ride to the capital. Fearful difficulties encompassed the right wing of the Lancastrian army. Gloucester was proving how formidable a war-chief a Plantagenet could be even in his teens, and enacting his part with such skill and courage as would have done credit to warriors who had led the Yorkists to victory at Towton and Northampton. With an eye that few things escaped, the boy-duke availed himself of the advantage which Montagu and Oxford had turned to such account in their struggle with Hastings; and, urging on the assault with characteristic ferocity, he succeeded in placing his adversaries in the unfortunate predicament to which the left wing of the Yorkists had already been reduced. At the same time, the Lancastrians opposed to Gloucester were dispirited by the fall of Exeter, who sunk to the ground wounded with an arrow; and so dense continued the fog over Gladsmuir Heath that they were not even consoled with the knowledge of Oxford's signal success. Edward, however, early became aware that his left wing had been destroyed, and charged the Lancastrian centre with such vigor as threw Somerset's ranks into confusion.

The ignorance of the Lancastrians as to the success of their right wing, was not the only disadvantage they suffered from the fog. The soldiers considered the dense watery vapors not as ordinary exhalations, but as supernatural means used by Friar Bungey to aid the Yorkist cause; and, from the beginning, the gloom had been decidedly favorable to Edward's operations. Ere the battle long continued, the fog did better service to the king than could have been rendered to him by hundreds of knights.

Among the retainers of feudal magnates of that age it was the fashion to wear a badge to indicate the personage whose banner they followed. From the time of the Crusades the badge of the house of De Vere had been a star with streams; and from the morning of Mortimer's Cross, the cognizance of the house of York had a sun in splendor. At Barnet, Oxford's men had the star embroidered on their coats; Edward's men the sun on their coats. The devices bore such a resemblance that, seen through a fog, one might easily be mistaken for the other; and it happened that on Gladsmuir Heath there was such a mistake.

When Oxford had pursued the Yorkists under Hastings to the verge of the Heath, it occurred to him that he might render a signal service to his party by wheeling round and smiting Edward's centre in the flank. Unfortunately some Lancastrian archers, who perceived without comprehending this movement, mistook De Vere's star, in the mist, for Edward's sun, drew their bows to the head, and sent a flight of shafts rattling against the mail of the approaching cavalry. Oxford's horsemen instantly shouted "Treason! treason! we are all betrayed!" and Oxford, amazed at such treatment from his own party, and bewildered by the cry of "Treason!" that now came from all directions, concluded that there was foul play, and rode off the field at the head of eight hundred men.

The plight of the Lancastrians was now rapidly becoming desperate; and Edward hastened their ruin by urging fresh troops upon their disordered ranks. Warwick, however, showed no inclination to yield. "The Stout Earl" in fact had been little accustomed to defeat; and such was the terror of his name that, on former occasions, the cry of "A Warwick! A Warwick!" had been sufficient to decide the fate of a field. But at St. Albans, at Northampton, and at Towton Field, the earl's triumphs had been achieved over Beauforts, Hollands, and Tudors, men of ordinary courage and average intellect. At Barnet he was in the presence of a warrior of prowess and a war-chief of pride, whose heart was not less bold, and whose eye was still more skillful than his own.

Edward, in fact, could not help perceiving that nothing but a violent effort was now required to complete his victory. Up to this stage he appears to have issued commands to his friends with the skill of a Plantagenet: he now executed vengeance on his foes with the cruelty of a Mortimer. Mounted on his white steed, with his teeth firmly set, the spur pressing his horse's side, and his right hand lifted up to slay, he charged the disheartened Lancastrians, bearing down all opposition; and, instead of crying, as on former occasions, "Smite the captains, but spare the commons!" he said, "Spare none who favor the rebel earl!"

While the king's steed was bearing him over the field, and his arm was doing fearful execution on the foe, the king-maker's operations were, unfortunately for the Lancastrian cause, limited to a single spot. In former battles, with a memorable exception, Warwick had fought on horseback. When mounted, the earl had been in the habit of riding from rank to rank to give orders, of breaking, with his sword or his battle-axe in hand, into the enemy's lines, with the cry of "A Warwick! A Warwick!" and encouraging his army by deeds of prowess, wherever the presence of a daring leader was most necessary. At Barnet, however, he had been prevailed on to dismount, and send his steed away, that he might thus, as when he killed his horse at Towton, prove to his adherents that he was determined never to leave the field till he was either a conqueror or a corpse. Most unfortunate for the earl proved this deviation from his ordinary custom, when the day wore on and the men grew weary, and looked in vain for the presence of their chief to cheer their spirits and sustain their courage.

It was seven o'clock when the fight began. Long ere noon both wings of the Lancastrian army had vanished, and the chiefs of the Red Rose had disappeared from the field. Oxford had fled to avoid being betrayed. Somerset had fled to escape death. Exeter, abandoned by his attendants, lay on the cold heath of Gladsmuir among the dead and dying. But Warwick was resolved that the battle should only terminate with his life; and, at the head of the remaining division, opposed to the Yorkists whom Edward commanded in person, the earl posted himself for a final effort to avert his doom. Montagu, it would appear, was by his brother's side.

More furiously than ever now raged the battle; and far fiercer than hitherto was the struggle that took place. Opposed more directly to each other than they had previously been, the king and the earl exerted their prowess to the utmost – one animated by hope, the other urged by despair. The example of such leaders was not, of course, lost; and men of all ranks in the two armies strained every nerve, and struggled hand to hand with their adversaries.

"Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well."

On both sides the slaughter had been considerable. On Edward's side Lord Say and Sir John Lisle, Lord Cromwell and Sir Humphrey Bourchier, with about fifteen hundred soldiers, bit the dust. On Warwick's side twenty-three knights, among whom was Sir William Tyrrel, and three thousand fighting men fell to rise no more. At length, after a bloody and obstinate contest had been maintained, Edward saw that the time had arrived to strike a sure and shattering blow. There still remained a body of Yorkists who had been kept in reserve for any emergency. The king ordered up these fresh troops, and led them to the assault. Warwick fronted this new peril with haughty disdain; and, in accents of encouragement, appealed to his remaining adherents to persevere. "This," said he, "is their last resource. If we withstand this one charge the field will yet be ours." But the earl's men, jaded and fatigued, could not encounter such fearful odds with success; and Warwick had the mortification of finding that his call was no longer answered by his friends, and that his battle-cry no longer sounded terrible to his foes.

Warwick could not now have entertained any delusions as to the issue of the conflict. He was conquered, and he must have felt such to be the case. The disaster was irremediable, and left him no hope. The descendant of Cospatrick did not stoop to ask for mercy, as Simon de Montfort had done under somewhat similar circumstances, only to be told there was none for such a traitor; nor did he, by a craven flight, tarnish the splendid fame which he had won on many a stricken field. Life, in fact, could not any longer have charms for him; and, ceasing to hope for victory, he did not feel any wish to survive defeat. A glorious death only awaited the king-maker – such a death as history should record in words of admiration and poets celebrate in strains of praise.

Under such circumstances, the great earl ventured desperately into the thickest of the conflict; and, sword in hand, threw himself valiantly among countless enemies. Death, which he appeared to seek, did not shun him; and he faced the king of terrors with an aspect as fearless as he had ever presented to Henry or to Edward. The king-maker died as he had lived. In the melancholy hour which closed his career – betrayed by the wily archbishop; deserted by the perjured Clarence; abandoned on the field by his new allies; and conquered by the man whom he had set on a throne – even in that hour, the bitterest perhaps of his life, Warwick was Warwick still; and Montagu, perhaps caring little to survive the patriot earl, rushed in to his rescue, and fell by his side.

Naturally enough, the Yorkists breathed more freely after Warwick's fall; and, with some reason, they believed that the last hopes of Lancaster had been trodden out on the field of Barnet. Edward, as he rode from the scene of carnage toward London, imagined his throne absolutely secure; and, not dreaming that ere a few days he would have to gird on his armor for a struggle hardly less severe than that out of which he had come a conqueror, the king made a triumphal entry into the capital, repaired to St. Paul's, presented his standard as an offering, and returned thanks to God for giving him such a victory over his enemies.

The bodies of Warwick and Montagu were placed in one coffin, conveyed to London, and exposed for three days at St. Paul's, that all who desired might assure themselves that the great earl and his brother no longer lived. Even Warwick's death did not appease Edward's hatred; and he would have cared little to refuse interment befitting the earl's rank to the corpse of the departed hero. The king, however, mourned the death of Montagu; and, from regard to the memory of the marquis, he ordered that both brothers should be laid among their maternal ancestors.

During the fourteenth century, one of those Earls of Salisbury, whose name is associated with the era of English chivalry and with the noblest of European orders, had founded an abbey at Bisham, in Berkshire. This religious house, which stood hard by the River Thames, and had become celebrated as the sepulchre of the illustrious family which the king-maker, through his mother, represented, was chosen as the last resting-place of Warwick and of the brother who fought and fell with him at Barnet. At the Reformation, Bisham Abbey was destroyed; and, unfortunately, nothing was left to mark the spot where repose the ashes of "The Stout Earl," whom Shakspeare celebrates as the "proud setter-up and puller-down of kings."

CHAPTER XXX

BEFORE TEWKESBURY

It was Easter Sunday, in the year 1471, and the battle of Barnet had been fought. Exeter lay stretched among the dead and the dying on the blood-stained heath of Gladsmuir; Oxford was spurring toward the north; Somerset was escaping toward the west; Henry of Windsor had been led back to his prison in the Tower; the bodies of Warwick and Montagu were being conveyed in one coffin to St. Paul's; and Edward of York was at the metropolitan cathedral, offering his standard upon the altar, and returning thanks to God for his victory over the Red Rose of Lancaster and the flower of the ancient nobility, when Margaret of Anjou once more set foot on the shores of England. Nor, in circumstances so inauspicious, did she arrive as a solitary victim. Accompanied by the son of the captive king and the daughter of the fallen earl, and attended by Lord Wenlock, Sir John Fortescue, and the Prior of St. John's, came the Lancastrian queen on that day when the wounded were dying, and the riflers prying, and the ravens flying over the field of Barnet.

At Weymouth, on the coast of Devon, Margaret landed with the Prince and Princess of Wales. From Weymouth, the ill-starred queen was escorted to the Abbey of Cearne, a religious house in the neighborhood. While at Cearne, resting from the fatigues of her voyage, she was informed of the defeat of the Lancastrians and the death of Warwick.

Margaret had hitherto, through all perils and perplexities, been sustained by her high spirit. She had won the reputation of being one of the race of steel, who felt her soul brighten in danger, and who never knew fear without such a feeling being succeeded by a blush at having yielded to such weakness. On hearing of the defeat at Barnet, however, she evinced the utmost alarm, raised her hands to heaven, closed her eyes, and, in a state of bewilderment, sunk swooning to the ground. Her first idea, on recovering consciousness, was to return to France; but, meanwhile, for the sake of personal safety, she hastened to the Abbey of Beaulieu, in Hampshire, and registered herself and her whole party as persons availing themselves of the privilege of sanctuary.

A rumor of the queen's arrival reached the chiefs of the Red Rose party; and to Beaulieu, without delay, went Somerset, with his brother, John Beaufort, whom the Lancastrians called Marquis of Dorset, and John, Earl of Devon, head of the great house of Courtenay. These noblemen found Margaret plunged in grief, and resolved on returning to France till God should send her better fortune. Their presence, however, in some degree, revived the courage which had so often shone forth in adversity; and Somerset strongly urged her to brave fortune and the foe on another field. With the utmost difficulty Margaret was brought to consent to the proposal, and even then she hesitated and grew pale. Indeed, the ill-fated heroine confessed that she feared for her son, and intimated her wish that he should be sent to France, there to remain till a victory had been won. But to this scheme decided opposition was expressed. Somerset and the Lancastrian lords argued that the Prince of Wales should remain in England to lead the adherents of the Red Rose to battle, "he being," as they said, "the morning sun of the Lancastrian hopes, the rays of which were very resplendent to meet English eyes;" and the royal boy, we can well believe, was prepared rather to die at once on a field of fame, than live through years of exile to expire in inglorious obscurity.

At length Margaret yielded to the general wish, and the Lancastrian chiefs formed their plans for mustering an army. No insuperable difficulties presented themselves. Shortly before Barnet was fought, John Beaufort and the Earl of Devon had gone westward from Coventry to levy forces, and Jasper Tudor had been sent into Wales on a similar errand. The idea of the Lancastrians was to draw together the men enlisted in the west, to join Jasper Tudor, who was still zealously recruiting in Wales, to secure the services of the archers in which Lancashire and Cheshire abounded, and to summon the prickers of the northern counties to that standard under which they had conquered at Wakefield and Bernard's Heath. The plan of campaign was, as we shall hereafter see, such as to place Edward's throne in considerable peril; and the imaginations of the Lancastrian chiefs caught fire at the prospect of triumph. Somerset openly boasted that the Red Rose party was rather strengthened than enfeebled by Warwick's fall; and Oxford, who had recovered from the bewilderment which had lost his friends a victory at Barnet, wrote to his countess, Warwick's sister, "Be of good cheer, and take no thought, for I shall bring my purpose about now by the grace of God."

Unfortunately for the champions of the Red Rose, they had to contend with no ordinary antagonist. Almost ere they had formed their plans, the king was aware that they were in motion; and, somewhat alarmed, he faced the new danger with the energy and spirit that had laid Warwick low. Within a week after his victory at Barnet, Edward, having placed Henry of Windsor securely in the Tower, and also committed George Neville, Archbishop of York, to the metropolitan fortress, marched from London with such forces as were at hand; and at Windsor, within the castle of his regal ancestors, he remained nearly a week to celebrate the feast of St. George, to await the remainder of his troops, and to obtain such intelligence of the enemy's movements as might enable him to defeat their project. As yet the king was utterly uncertain whether the Red Rose chiefs intended marching toward London or leading their adherents northward. His predicament was, therefore, awkward. If he hastened on to protect the north from being invaded, he left London at their mercy; if he remained to guard the capital, he left the north free to their incursions. The king's great object, under such circumstances, was to bring the Lancastrians to battle at the earliest possible period. His army, indeed, was small; but, as affairs then were, he had little hope of its being increased; and he appears to have placed much reliance on the artillery, with which he was well provided. But, anxious as Edward might be to meet his foes face to face, he checked his natural impetuosity, and declined to advance a mile without having calculated the consequences.

Meanwhile, the Lancastrian standard was set up at Exeter, and to "the London of the West" the men of Devon, Somerset, and Cornwall were invited to repair. The Red Rose chiefs perfectly comprehended the dilemma in which Edward was placed, and were prepared to act just as circumstances rendered safe and expedient. If they could draw their potent foe from the neighborhood of London, they would march on the metropolis. If they could keep him in the neighborhood of London, they would cross the Severn, join Jasper Tudor, march into Lancashire and Cheshire, and raise the men of the north to overturn the Yorkist throne. One thing they did not desire – that was an early meeting with the conqueror of Towton and Barnet.

At Exeter, Margaret of Anjou, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, joined the adherents of the Red Rose, and prepared for those military operations which, she hoped, would hurl Edward of York from the throne. Ere venturing upon the terrible task, however, the queen, with the Lancastrian chiefs, made a progress throughout the west to collect recruits. From Exeter she proceeded with this object to Bath, a town which then consisted of a few hundreds of houses, crowded within an old wall, hard by the Avon, and which derived some renown from those springs whose healing qualities Bladud had discovered under the guidance of hogs, and whose virtues had recommended the place to the Romans when they came to Britain as resistless conquerors.

At Bath, Margaret's friends learned that Edward was watching her movements with a vigilance that rendered an early junction with Jasper Tudor extremely desirable; and, having considerably increased in number, the Lancastrians took their way to Bristol, a town with strong walls, which the Flemings, brought over by Philippa of Hainault, had made the seat of an extensive woolen trade.

The inhabitants of Bristol had manifested much loyalty to Edward, when, during the harvest-time of 1462, the young Yorkist king appeared within their walls, and executed Sir Baldwin Fulford and other Lancastrians. Since that event, celebrated by Chatterton as "The Bristowe Tragedy," well-nigh nine years had elapsed, and, during that time, their attention had been attracted from the Wars of the Roses to a war nearer home. It is probable that the contentions of York and Lancaster had excited less interest than the feud between the houses of Berkeley and Lisle; and that the field of Barnet had created less excitement than that of Nibley Green, where, one March morning in 1470, William Lord Berkeley and Thomas Talbot, Lord Lisle, fought that battle known as "The English Chevy Chase."

But, however loyal the citizens of Bristol might be to Edward of York, they knew that Margaret of Anjou was not a woman to be trifled with; and, however little they might relish the spectacle of Lancastrian warriors crowding their streets, they were ready enough to furnish the Red Rose chiefs with money, provisions, and artillery. After receiving these supplies, the Lancastrian queen, anxious to cross the Severn, relieved Bristol of her presence on the 2d of May – it was a Thursday – and led her army toward that valley which, of old, had been depicted by William of Malmesbury as rich in fruit and corn, and abounding in vineyards.

The king's pursuit of his enemies had, in the mean time, been at once absorbing as a game of chess and exciting as a fox-hunt. For a time, he was unable to comprehend their movements, and forced to act with extreme caution. Indeed, Edward was not unaware that the Lancastrian leaders were exercising their utmost energy to outwit him; and he knew full well that one false step on his part would, in all likelihood, decide the campaign in their favor. At length, becoming aware that they were spreading rumors of their intention to advance to London by Oxford and Reading, the king concluded that their real intention was to march northward; and, leading his army forth from Windsor, he encamped at Abingdon, a town of Berkshire, on the River Thames. Learning, at Abingdon, that Margaret and her captains were still at Wells, he moved a little northward to Cirencester, in Gloucestershire, and was then informed that the Lancastrians were about to leave Bath and give him battle on the 1st of May – the anniversary of his ill-judged and ill-starred marriage.

Eager for a conflict, the king marched his army out of the town of Cirencester, and, encamping in the neighboring fields, awaited the arrival of his foes. Edward soon found, however, that he had been deceived; and, in hopes of finding them, marched to Malmesbury, in Wiltshire. Learning, at that town, that the Lancastrians had turned aside to Bristol, he went to Sodbury, a place about ten miles distant from the emporium of the west: and, at Sodbury, from the circumstances of his men, while riding into the town to secure quarters, encountering a body of the enemy's outriders, and the Lancastrians having sent forward men to take their ground on Sodbury Hill, he believed that their army was at no great distance. Eager for intelligence, Edward sent light horsemen to scour the country, and encamped on Sodbury Hill. About midnight on Thursday, scouts came into the camp, and Edward's suspense was terminated. It appeared beyond doubt that the Lancastrians were on full march from Bristol to Gloucester; and the king, awake to the crisis, lost no time in holding a council of war. A decision was rapidly arrived at; and a messenger dispatched post-haste to Richard, Lord Beauchamp of Powicke, then Governor of Gloucester, with instructions to refuse the Lancastrians admittance and a promise to relieve the city forthwith in case of its being assailed.

Events now hastened rapidly onward. The king's messenger had no time to lose; for the Lancastrian army, having marched all night, was pushing on toward the vale of Gloucester. The vale, as the reader may be aware, is semicircular – the Severn forming the chord, the Cotswold Hills the arc; and Cheltenham, Gloucester, and Tewkesbury making a triangle with its area. Into the second of these towns Margaret expected to be admitted; and she calculated on being enabled, under the protection of its walls and castle, to pass the Severn without interruption, and to form a junction with Jasper Tudor, who was all bustle and enthusiasm in Wales.

A grievous disappointment awaited the Lancastrian army – a bitter mortification the Lancastrian queen. On Friday morning, a few hours after sunrise, Margaret of Anjou, with the warriors of the Red Rose, appeared before Gloucester. But Beauchamp, having received Edward's message, positively refused to open the gates; and when Margaret, with a heavy heart, turned aside and proceeded toward Tewkesbury, he still farther displayed his Yorkist zeal by hanging on the rear of the Lancastrians and doing them all the mischief he could. Even Somerset must have confessed that the aspect of affairs was now the reverse of bright; and, after leaving Gloucester behind, every thing began to go wrong. The march lay through woods and lanes, and over stony ground; and the soldiers, hungry and foot-sore, were oppressed with the heat of the weather. Moreover, the peasantry, inclined, for some reason or other, to oppose the progress of the Lancastrians, secured the fords by which the Severn might have been crossed; and Beauchamp not only harassed the rear of the queen's army, but succeeded in capturing some artillery, which she was in no condition to spare. At length, on Friday afternoon, after having marched thirty-six miles, without rest, and almost without food, the Lancastrians, weary and dispirited, reached Tewkesbury, a little town standing on the left bank of the Severn, and deriving some dignity from a Norman abbey, known far and wide as the sepulchre of a mighty race of barons, whose chiefs fought at Evesham and fell at Bannockburn. At this place, which had been inherited from the De Clares, through Beauchamps and Despensers, by the Countess of Warwick, the Lancastrian leaders halted to refresh their men.

Early on that morning, when the queen and her captains appeared before Gloucester, Edward left Sodbury, and led his army over the Cotswolds, whose sheep and shepherds old Drayton has celebrated. His soldiers suffered much from heat, and still more for want of water; only meeting, on their way, with one brook, the water of which, as men and horses dashed in, was soon rendered unfit for use. Onward, however, in spite of heat and thirst, as if prescient of victory, pressed Edward's soldiers, sometimes within five miles of their enemies – the Yorkists in a champaign country, and the Lancastrians among woods – but the chiefs of both armies directing their march toward the same point. At length, after having marched more than thirty miles, the Yorkists reached a little village situated on the River Chelt, secluded in the vale of Gloucester, and consisting of a few thatched cottages forming a straggling street near a church with an ancient spire, which had been erected in honor of St. Mary before the Plantagenets came to rule in England. At this hamlet, which the saline springs, discovered some centuries later by the flight of pigeons, have metamorphosed into a beautiful and luxurious city, Edward halted to recruit the energies and refresh the spirits of his followers. At Cheltenham the king received intelligence that the foe was at Tewkesbury; and, marching in that direction, he encamped for the night in a field hard by the Lancastrian camp.

Ere the king reached Cheltenham the Lancastrians had formed their plans. On arriving at Tewkesbury, Somerset, aware that the Yorkists were fast approaching, intimated his intention to remain and give Edward battle. Margaret, as if with the presentiment of a tragic catastrophe, was all anxiety to cross the Severn; and many of the captains sympathized with their queen's wish. Somerset, however, carried his point; and, indeed, it is not easy to comprehend how the Lancastrians could, under the circumstances, have attempted a passage without exposing their rear to certain destruction. Somerset's opinion on any subject may not have been worth much; but he does not appear to have been in the wrong when he decided on encamping at Tewkesbury, and when he declared his intention there to abide such fortune as God should send.

So at Tewkesbury, through that summer night, within a short distance of each other, the armies of York and Lancaster, under the sons of those who, years before, had plucked the roses in the Temple Garden, and encountered with mortal hatred in the streets of St. Albans, animated moreover by such vindictive feelings as the memory of friends and kinsmen slain in the field and executed on the scaffold could not fail to inspire, awaited the light of another day, to fight their twelfth battle for the crown of England.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE FIELD OF TEWKESBURY

On Saturday the 4th of May, 1471, ere the bell of Tewkesbury Abbey tolled "the sweet hour of prime," or the monks had assembled to sing the morning hymn, King Edward was astir and making ready to attack the Lancastrians.

Mounted on a brown charger, with his magnificent person clad in Milan steel, a crown of ornament around his helmet, and the arms of France and England quarterly on his shield, the king set his men in order for the assault. The van of the Yorkist army was committed to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, whose skill and courage on the field of Barnet had made him, at nineteen, the hero among those of whom, at thirty, he was to be the headsman. The centre host Edward commanded in person; and by the side of the royal warrior figured the ill-starred Clarence, never again to be fully trusted by his brother. The rear was intrusted to the guidance of Lord Hastings, and to Elizabeth Woodville's eldest son, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset. Thus arrayed, flushed with recent victory over mighty adversaries, the Yorkist warriors, in all the pride of valor, and all the confidence of victory, prepared to advance upon their foes.

Meanwhile, the Red Rose chiefs were not idle. Having encamped south of the town of Tewkesbury, on some rising ground, part of which is still known as "Queen Margaret's Camp," the Lancastrians appear to have made the most of their advantages. Defended as they were in their rear by the Abbey, and in front and on both sides by hedges, lanes, and ditches, they intrenched their position strongly, in the hope of keeping Edward at bay till the arrival of Jasper Tudor, who was believed to be rapidly approaching; and, at the same time, they left openings in their intrenchments, through which, should such a course seem expedient, they might sally forth upon the assailing foe.

Their camp thus fortified, the Lancastrian leaders disposed the army of the Red Rose in three divisions. Of the first of these Somerset, aided by his brother, John Beaufort, took the command; the second was committed to the auspices of Edward, Prince of Wales, the Prior of St. John, and Lord Wenlock, who, having shared the Lancastrian defeat at St. Albans and the Yorkist triumph at Towton, had once more, in an evil hour, placed Queen Margaret's badge on his gorget; and the third was confided to the Earl of Devon, the youngest of three brothers, two of whom, after wearing the coronet of the Courtenays, had died on the scaffold for their fidelity to the Red Rose.

While the Lancastrians were forming their line of battle, King Edward gave the order to advance; and, with banners displayed, with clarions and trumpets sounding a march, and with Gloucester leading the van, and perhaps even then dreaming of a crown, the Yorkist army moved forward, gay with knights and nobles in rich armor and broidered vests, their lances gleaming in the merry sunshine, their plumes and pennons dancing in the morning breeze, and their mailed steeds, with chaffrons of steel projecting from barbed frontals, caracoling at the touch of the spur. Within a mile of the Lancastrian camp Edward halted his men; and his large blue eye, which took in the whole position of his enemies, wandered jealously to the park of Tewkesbury, which was situated to the right of Somerset's division. Suspicious of an ambuscade, the Yorkist king dispatched two hundred spearmen from his army to proceed in that direction, and ordered them, in case of their not finding any foe lurking in the wood, to take such part in the battle as circumstances should render expedient. Having satisfied himself with this precaution, the king ordered his banners to advance, and his trumpets to sound an onset.