In the Wars of the Roses: A Story for the Young

by Evelyn Everett-Green

Paul, in his quiet west-country home, watched the progress of events, and saw in the tragedies which successively befell the scions of the House of York the vengeance of Heaven for the foul murder of the young Lancastrian prince.

The Duke of Clarence, who had been one of the first to strike him, fell a victim to the displeasure of the king, his brother, and was secretly put to death in the Tower. Although Edward himself died a natural death, it was said that vexation at the failure of some of his most treasured schemes for the advancement of his children cut him off in the flower of his age. And a darker fate befell his own young sons than he had inflicted upon the son of the rival monarch: for Edward of Lancaster had died a soldier's death, openly slain by the sword in the light of day; whilst the murderer's children were done to death between the stone walls of a prison, and for years their fate was shrouded in terrible mystery.

The next death in that ill-omened race was that of King Richard's own son, in the tenth year of his age. As Duke of Gloucester, he had stood by to see the death of young Edward, even if his hand had not been raised to strike him. He had then forced into reluctant wedlock with himself the betrothed bride of the murdered prince--the unhappy Lady Anne. He had murdered his brother's children to raise himself to the throne, and had committed many other crimes to maintain himself thereon; and his own son--another Edward, Prince of Wales--was doomed to meet a sudden death, called by the chroniclers of the time "unhappy," as though some strange or painful circumstance attached to it, in the absence of both his parents: and lastly, the lonely monarch, wifeless and childless, was called upon to reap the fruits of the bitter hostility and distrust which his cruel and arbitrary rule had awakened in the breasts of his own nobles and of his subjects in general.

Paul Stukely, now a married man with children of his own growing up about him, watched with intense interest the course of public events; and when Henry of Richmond--a lineal descendant of Edward the Third by his son John of Gaunt--landed for the second time to head the insurrection against the bloody tyrant, Sir Paul Stukely and a gallant little following marched amongst the first to join his standard, and upon the bloody field of Bosworth, Paul felt that he saw revenged to the full the tragedy of Tewkesbury.

He was there, close beside Henry Tudor, when the last frantic charge of the wretched monarch in his despair was made, and when Richard, after unhorsing many amongst Henry's personal attendants in order to come to a hand-to-hand combat with his foe, witnessed the secession from his ranks of Sir William Stanley, and fell, crying "Treason, treason!" with his last breath. He who had obtained his crown by treachery, cruelty, and treason of the blackest kind, was destined to fall a victim to the treachery of others. As Paul saw the mangled corpse flung across a horse's back and carried ignominiously from the field, he felt that the God of heaven did indeed look down and visit with His vengeance those who had set at nought His laws, and that in the miserable death of this last son of the House of York the cause of the Red Rose was amply avenged.

A few years later, in the bright summertide, when the politic rule of Henry the Seventh was causing the exhausted country to recover from the ravages of the long civil war, Sir Paul Stukely and his two sons, fine, handsome lads of ten and twelve years old, were making a little journey (as we should now call it, though it seemed a long one to the excited and delighted boys) from his pleasant manor near St. Albans through a part of the county of Essex.

Paul had prospered during these past years. The king had rewarded his early fealty by a grant of lands and a fine manor near to St. Albans, whither he had removed his wife and family, so as to be within easy reach of them at such times as he was summoned by the king to Westminster. The atmosphere of home was dearer to him than that of courts, and he was no longer away from his own house than his duty to his king obliged him to be. But he had been much engaged by public duties of late, and the holiday he had promised himself had been long in coming. It had been a promise of some standing to his two elder sons, Edward and Paul, that he would take them some day to visit the spots which he talked of when they climbed upon his knee after his day's work was done to beg for the story of "the little prince," as they still called him. Paul himself was eager again to visit those familiar haunts, and see if any of those who had befriended the homeless wanderer were living still, and would recognize the bronzed and prosperous knight of today.

And now they were entering a familiar tract; and the father told his boys to keep their eyes well open, for the village of Much Waltham could not be far off and every pathway in this part of the forest had been traversed by him and the prince in the days that had gone by.

"I hear the sound of hammering," cried the younger Paul in great excitement soon. "O father, we must be getting very near! It is like a smith's forge. I am sure it must be Will Ives or his father. Oh, do let us ride on quickly and see!"

The riders pressed onward through the widening forest path, and, sure enough, found themselves quickly in the little clearing which surrounded the village of Much Waltham. How well the elder Paul remembered it all! the village church, the smithy, and the low thatched cottages, the small gardens, now brighter than he had seen them in the dreary winter months; the whole place wearing an air of increased comfort and prosperity.