Mangled with wounds, on his own earth lay dead;
Upon whose body Clifford down him sate,
Stabbing the corpse, and cutting off the head,
Crowned it with paper, and to wreak his teene,
Presents it so to his victorious queene,
and the “victorious queene,” the haughty Margaret of Anjou, in the insolence of her short-lived triumph, gave the order,—
Off with his head, and set it on York gates,
So York may overlook the town of York,
Dr. Whitaker tells us that when the news reached Hornby that Sir Thomas and Sir John Harrington, father and son, with their kinsman, Sir William Harrington, Lord Bonville of Aldingham, were slain, the widow of Sir Thomas withdrew to her daughter for consolation, but her son’s widow, Matilda, a sister of the Black-faced Clifford, partaking, as it would seem, of her brother’s hard nature, remained, and “was at leisure to attend to business.”
With Sir John’s death the male line of this branch of the Harringtons terminated. He left two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, his co-heirs, then aged respectively nine and eight years. Their paternal uncle, Sir James Harrington, took forcible possession of the estates and claimed them as his own, but on an appeal to the Court of Chancery, he was dispossessed and committed to the Fleet, when the wardship of the two young heiresses and the custody of their inheritance were granted to Thomas Lord Stanley, who considerately married the eldest, Anne, to his third son, Sir Edward Stanley, the hero of Flodden Field, and the youngest to his nephew, John Stanley, of Melling, the son of his brother, the first Sir John Stanley[18] of Alderley, in Cheshire.