The body of the fallen tyrant was speedily stripped of his valuable armour and ornaments, and the soldier who laid hands upon the crown hid it in a hawthorn bush. But strict quest being made after it, it was soon discovered and carried to Lord Stanley, who placed it upon the head of Henry, and the victor was immediately saluted by the general acclamations of the army with "Long live King Henry!" and they sang Te Deum, in grand chorus, on the bloody heath of Bosworth. From the poetical circumstance of the hawthorn bush, the Tudors assumed as their device a crown in a bush of fruited hawthorn. Lord Strange, the son of Lord Stanley, being deserted by his guards, as soon as the defeat was known, made his way to the field, and joined his father and the king at the close of the battle.
King Henry VII. advanced from the decisive field of Bosworth, at the head of his victorious troops, to Leicester, which he entered with the same royal state that Richard had quitted it. The statements of the numbers who fell on this field vary from 1,000 to 4,000, but of the leaders, the Duke of Norfolk, and Lord Ferrars of Chartley, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, Sir Robert Percy, and Sir Robert Brackenbury, fell with the king. On the side of Henry fell no leaders of note.
Henry used his victory mildly; he shed no blood of the vanquished, except that of the notorious Catesby, and two persons of the name of Brecher, who were probably men of like character and crimes. Thus, in one day, the world was relieved of the presence of Richard and of his two base commissioners of murder, Catesby and Ratcliffe.
Richard's naked body, covered with mud and gore, was, according to the local traditions of Leicester, flung carelessly across a horse, and thus carried into that town; his head, say these historic memories, striking against the very post which the blind beggar had said it should, and the rude populace following it with shouts of mockery. The corpse was begged by the nuns of the Grey Friars, to whom Richard had been a benefactor, and was decently interred in their church.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
The Study of Latin and Greek—Invention of Printing—Caxton—New Schools and Colleges—Architecture, Military, Ecclesiastical, and Domestic—Sculpture, Painting, and Gilding—The Art of War—Commerce and Shipping—Coinage.
It might be very reasonably supposed that during a century spent almost entirely in war, and during the second half of it in the most rancorous intestine strife, there could not be much national progress. There is no doubt but that the population was greatly decreased. It was calculated that at the beginning of the century the population of England and Wales amounted to about 2,700,000. At the end of it, it is supposed that there were not 2,500,000.
In these depopulating wars, there can be no question that, besides the actual destruction of so many men, there must have been terrible sufferings inflicted, and an immense interruption of all those peaceful transactions by which nations become wealthy and powerful.