'In the reign of King Henry the Sixth, so they say. Ay, it were Henry, for it were the same name, I mind me, as the old Squire.'
'Reigned 1422 to 1461, married Margaret of Anjou,' put in Bobby, who liked to air his knowledge.
'I don't know who he married; it weren't nothing to do with marryin'. It were fightin' first in those days, though I suppose they married, too, like other folk, when they found time.'
'Who were fighting?' inquired Bobby.
'Why, it was the Wars of the Roses, of course,' answered Peggy crushingly.
'Nay, it weren't no wars of roses, I can tell you. It was real bloody battles they fought then, with swords and pikes and spears and the like; for there was two Kings, both with a notion of reignin', and when Kings falls out, it's their subjects has to do the fightin' for them, I takes it.'
'Henry VI. and Edward IV.,' put in Peggy. 'Please go on, David.'
'There was Vaughans at the Abbey then, just as there is Vaughans at the Abbey now,' continued the old man, staring meditatively into his foxglove brew, as though he could see a mental picture in the pot. 'And him as had it then was Sir Richard Vaughan, the one as lies under the cracked old monument in the corner at church.'
'With the dragon and the crooked arrows on it,' nodded the children.
'Well, this Sir Richard Vaughan, he favoured King Henry of Lancaster, and went out to fight for him with forty gentlemen and yeomen at his back, to say naught of lesser folk. They met Duke Edward of York, him as afterwards became King, at Mortimer's Cross, which ain't so far from here, neither, for I went once myself when I were a lad with my aunt's cousin, who drove a good horse and gig. Let me see: how many years will it be agone?'