During these moments that England was without a legal monarch, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, remained motionless as a statue upon his black steed, solitary, unheralded, forgotten.
"Body o' God, men! we'll give him a horse," he heard them wildly shouting; and then impassively regarded them while they lashed the bent, and now naked body upon the broad back of a lively hackney. It was the final and brutal expression of a righteous indignation.
From every part of the field there rang in Henry's ears loud cries of exultation over the dead and vanquished Richard, which merged presently into a riotous pandemonium of inarticulate sound when the horse, bearing its gruesome burden, was paraded before the men in the direction of Market Bosworth Road.
"Le roi est mort,—vive le roi!" the clear voice of Henry's squire made itself manifest above the din.
Something the faintest of smiles broke upon the impassivity of the Earl's countenance as he turned his head in the direction whence this cry had come. Sir Richard, bearing a jeweled crown outstretched in his hands, was just leaping above the clump of copse-wood whereupon the body of Sir John Cheyney was lying.
Lord Stanley, who, by this time, had resumed seat upon his horse, quickly stationed himself between the approaching young knight and the Earl of Richmond. Then, taking the crown that had encircled Richard's helmet throughout the battle, he set it solemnly upon that of Henry.
Whereupon—"The King is dead, long live the King!" the cry rippled abroad over the sanguinary field of Bosworth; and the blazing August sun beat down upon a circle of upraised, flashing swords, unsheathed in promise of fealty to the new monarch.