III. Battle of Tewksbury. : CHAP. of Barnet. She was hardly recovered from the fatigue of the voyage, when a messenger arrived with the fatal intelligence. All her hopes were instantly broken: she sank to the ground in despair and as soon as she came to herself, hastened with her son to the sanctuary of Beaulieu. But the Lancastrian lords, who still remained faithful to the cause, induced her to quit her asylum, conducted her to Bath, and raised a considerable body of troops to fight under her banner. If this army could have joined that under the earl of Pembroke in Wales, the crown might perhaps have been again replaced on the head of Henry. But the citizens of Glocester had fortified the bridge over the Severn: and May 4. when she reached Tewksbury, Edward had already arrived with a more numerous army. The Lancastrians, posted behind a lofty intrenchment, easily repulsed the assailants: and the duke of Somerset, flushed with this temporary success, sallied out to harass their retreat. But few followed their gallant leader: the rest were restrained by the treason or timidity of the lord Wenlock. The Yorkists turned on their pursuers, chased them back to the foot of the intrenchments, and put most of them to the sword. Distrust and dismay now spread through the ranks of the Lancastrians: the rampart was but faintly defended: first the banner of the duke of Glocester, soon that of Edward, waived in the midst of the camp: and Somerset in III. despair, riding up to Lord Wenlock, at one CHAP. stroke beat out his brains. The queen and her son were made prisoners. The former was reserved to grace the conqueror's triumph; the latter was led to his tent, and being asked what had brought him to England, boldly but ingenuously replied, "To preserve my father's crown and my own inheritance." Edward had the barbarity to strike the young prince in the face with his gauntlet: Clarence and Glocester, or perhaps the knights in their retinue, dispatched him with their swords.76 duke of It is probable that many of the Lancastrian Execution leaders might have escaped by flight, if they had not sought an asylum within the church. While Somerset. they were triumphant, they had always respected the right of sanctuary; and a hope was cherished that gratitude for the preservation of his wife, his children, and two thousand of his partisans, would restrain Edward from violating a privilege, to which he was so much indebted. But the murder of the young prince had whetted his appetite for blood. With his sword drawn he attempted to enter the church: but a priest, bearing the host in his hand, ran to the door, and refused to move from the threshold till the king had given a reluctant promise to spare the lives of all who had taken refuge within the walls. For two days the promise was observed: 78 Cont. Croyl, 556. Hollingshead, 1340. Stow, 424. CHAP. III. May 6. Murder of on the third a body of armed men burst into the church, seized the duke of Somerset, with the lord of St.John's, six knights, and seven esquires, and dragging their victims to a scaffold, struck off their heads." There now remained but one person whose life could give uneasiness to Edward. As long as the son lived to claim the crown of his father, the blood of Henry was not worth the shedding: but now that the young prince was no more, to remove the old king, was to remove the last May 22. temptation from his adherents. In the morning of the eve of the Ascension Edward made his entry into London; in the evening of the same day Henry perished in the Tower. To satisfy the credulous it was reported that he had died of grief: but though the conqueror might silence the tongues, he could not control the belief or the pens of his subjects:78 and the writers who lived under the next dynasty, not only proclaim the murder, but ascribe the black deed to the advice, if not to the dagger, of the younger of the three brothers, Richard duke of Glocester.79 77 Lel. Collect. ii. 506. 78 Parcat, says the monk Croyland, Deus, et spatium pœnitentiæ ei donet, quicumque tam sacrilegas manus in Christum Domini ausus est immittere. Unde et agens, tyranni; patiens que, gloriosi martyris titulum mereatur. He wrote during the reign of Richard. Cont. Croyl. 556. 79 Mr. Laing in a dissertation printed at the end of Henry's his tory (vol. xii. p. 393), labours to clear the memory of Richard from the murder of Henry. With this view he attempts to prove that Henry did not die on the evening of the day, on which Edward III. The body, surrounded with guards and torches, CHAP. was conducted to St. Paul's, and thence to the abbey of Chertsey, where it was buried. By the friends of the house of Lancaster, Henry was revered as a martyr. It was soon whispered that miracles had been wrought at his tomb, and Richard III., apprehensive of the impression which such reports might make on the public mind, removed his bones from Chertsey to Windsor. Henry VII. placed, or intended to place, them among the tombs of his ancestors in Westminster abbey.80 Before I proceed with the reign of Edward, it Fate of the entered London, because, as Malone observes (Shakespeare, xi. 653), "it appears on the face of the public accounts allowed in the exchequer for the maintenance of Henry VI. and his numerous attend"ants in the Tower, that he lived till the twelfth of June, twenty“two days after the time assigned for his pretended assassination.” These accounts are to be found in Rym. xi. 712. But they afford no proof that Henry lived till the 12th of June. The latest date of any particular charge is that of William Sayer for the maintenance of Henry and ten guards for a fortnight, beginning the 11th of May, and of course ending on the day on which the king is said to have been buried. The mistake arises from this, that Malone has taken the day of the month on which the accounts were allowed at the exchequer, for the day on which the expences ceased: which is so far from being the case that it even belongs to a different year, 1472 and not 1471: as appears from the two next accounts, which though allowed on the 24th of June, refer to expenses in September and October of 1471. See them in Rym. xi. 713, 714. 80 Rous, 217. Rym. xiii. 103. Pope Julius in his brief says of Henry's death, ante diem facto, ut creditur, æmulorum, debitum naturæ persolvit-and of the translation of his body, that it was made by the same æmuli, qua mente ducti, ignoratur. Ibid. Yet Henry VII. gives the reason mentioned above. Wilk. Con. iii. 653. Lancastrians. III. Queen of Exeter. CHAP. may not be amiss to notice the history of the surviving adherents of Henry. 1. Margaret was confined first in the Tower, afterwards at Windsor, and lastly at Wallingford, with a weekly allowance of five marks for the support of herself and her servants. After a captivity of five years she was ransomed by Louis of France, and died The duke in 1482 in her own country. 2. Henry Holand duke of Exeter, and great grandson of John of Ghent by his second daughter Elizabeth, had been conveyed, as the reader has seen, from the field of battle to the sanctuary at Westminster. It was expected that he would obtain his pardon by the influence of his wife Anne, the eldest sister of Edward. But that lady solicited and Nov. 12. obtained a divorce in 1472, and married sir Thomas St. Leger. The duke was at the time in the custody of the king, with the weekly allowance of half a mark: the next year his dead body was found floating in the sea between Dover The earl and Calais. 3. Vere earl of Oxford, had escaped of Oxford. from Barnet into Scotland, and thence into France: but disdaining a life of indolence, he collected a small squadron of twelve sail, swept the narrow seas, kept the maritime counties in perpetual alarm, and by frequent captures enriched himself and his followers. With about four hundred men he surprised the strong fortress of mount St. Michael in Cornwall, whence 1473. May. Sept. 30. 81 81 Stow, 426. |