It was met by Prince Edward's defiant reply—
"I came to recover my father's kingdom, and mine own inheritance, out of the hands of them that had no right to hold it."[#]
[#] Only the opening words of this speech are commonly quoted.
Some chroniclers say that Edward dashed his gauntleted hand in the face of his young cousin. Others assert that he merely flung a sign to those around him. Either action was well understood. Hastings, the King's faithful servant, and Thomas Grey, his step-son, the affianced of Anne of Exeter, hurried Prince Edward out of his presence to the next tent, where the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester were standing. There they flung him down. One cry of pitiful appeal rang through the evening air—"Clarence! Brother!" but Clarence stood deaf and motionless. Gloucester was equally still, but from a very different motive. Then came a second and a lower moan—"Jesu, Doming!" That was heard. Another instant, and they had no more that they could do. Edward Plantagenet was with God.
Not that night did Marguerite of Anjou learn all the awful news in store for her. She heard—from the gentle lips of John Combe—that her army was routed, and the day lost: heard it, with the young Princess by her side, seated in that charette in which it had been so difficult to keep her, for she suspected already that fate was going against her, and she was scarcely restrained from mounting her horse, and taking the command of her troops. The one worst item—the loss of her boy—did not reach her then. But what she did hear made her sink down in the charette, "half-dead."
Those about the Queen—very few they were—felt the necessity of doing for her what she was not in a position to do for herself. They hurried the royal ladies away from their dangerous place to a little religious house outside Tewkesbury, where they entered them in sanctuary. Alas for their innocence, if they expected Edward of York to keep promises or reverence sanctuary! At that moment he was presenting himself with drawn sword at the door of the church where so many of the Lancastrian nobles had taken refuge. All honour be to the brave priest who, pix in hand, resolutely barred the victor's entrance, until he had given a solemn promise of pardon to the fugitives. Alas for the fugitives, that they trusted it! All might have escaped, but trusting to that honour of which Edward knew so little, they remained in their asylum until the Monday, when they were marched out and beheaded before the door. Somerset richly deserved his fate: but this cannot be said of many others. Even Humphrey Audley was not spared, though King Edward and he were second cousins.[#]
[#] He was the younger son of Alianora de Holand, Lady Audley, daughter of Constance of York, King Edward's grand-aunt.
Notwithstanding all his specious words, ties of blood, no less than those of gratitude, weighed as nothing with Edward of York when a man stood in his way.
There was a long funeral procession that day in Tewkesbury Abbey. The Duke of Somerset, as we are told by his herald, who was present, was buried "before the image of Saint Jame at an autar in ye said monastery churche on the northe parte."[#] But it was in the very midst of the church, just under the tower, that they laid the flower of the Red Rose, "the gallant-springing young Plantagenet," who in the endeavour to recover his father's kingdom had sacrificed himself. The rest were buried in one great grave, dug close to that of the Prince in the nave of the Abbey.
[#] Harl. MS. 545.—This tomb was removed at a later date, and is now on the south side of the chancel.