Edward, however, had to punish as well as reward, and such of the Lancastrians as fell into the hands of the victors were treated with extreme severity. Somerset, who knew not where to turn, who had no reason to expect mercy in England, and no reason to expect protection in Scotland—since his revelations as to Mary of Gueldres had led Warwick to break off matrimonial negotiations on behalf of Edward—was discovered lurking in a wood, carried to Hexham, tried by martial law, and beheaded. The ill-starred duke died unmarried, but not without issue; and his descendants, in the illegitimate line, were destined to occupy a high place among the modern aristocracy of England. It happened that a fair being, named Joan Hill, without being a wife, became a mother. Of her son, Somerset was understood to be the father. After the duke's execution, the boy went by the name of Charles Somerset; and, as years passed over, he won the favor of the Tudors. By Henry the Eighth he was created Earl of Worcester; and by Charles the Second the Earls of Worcester were elevated in the peerage to the dukedom of Beaufort.
About the time when Somerset perished on the scaffold, the Red Rose lost a chief, scarcely less conspicuous, by the death of Lord de Roos. His widow found a home with her eldest daughter, the wife of Sir Robert Manners, of Etal; his son Edmund escaped to the Continent; and his Castle of Belvoir, inherited through an ancestress from William de Albini, was granted by King Edward to William Hastings, who, since Towton, had become a baron of the realm, and husband of Warwick's sister, Katherine Neville, the widow of Lord Bonville, slain at Wakefield. Hastings hurried to Leicestershire, to take possession of Belvoir; but the county, faithful to the banished De Roos, turned out under an esquire named Harrington and compelled the Yorkist lord to fly. Perceiving that to hold the castle under such circumstances would be no easy task, Hastings returned with a large force, spoiled the building, and carried off the leads to the stately pile he was rearing at Ashby de la Zouch.
The Lord Hungerford, with Sir Humphrey Neville, and William Tailbois, whom the Lancastrians called Earl of Kent, died, like Somerset, on the scaffold. But a punishment much more severe was added in the case of Sir Ralph Grey. This unfortunate renegade, when found in the Castle of Bamburgh, was condemned, ere being executed, to degradation from the rank of knighthood. Every thing was prepared for the ceremony; and the master cook, with his apron and knife, stood ready to strike off the gilded spurs close by the heels. But from respect to the memory of the knight's grandfather, who had suffered much for the king's ancestors, this part of the punishment was remitted.
The hopes of the Lancastrians could hardly have survived so signal a disaster as their defeat at Hexham, if one circumstance had not rendered the victory of Montagu incomplete. Margaret of Anjou had, as if by miracle, escaped; and, while she was in possession of life and liberty, friends and adversaries were alike conscious that no battle, however bravely fought or decisively won, could secure the crown or assure the succession to the house of York.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
THE WOODVILLES.
About the opening of 1464, Edward, King of England, then in his twenty-fourth year, was diverting himself with the pleasures of the chase in the forest of Whittlebury.
One day, when hunting in the neighborhood of Grafton, the king rode to that manor-house and alighted to pay his respects to Jacqueline, Duchess of Bedford. The visit was, perhaps, not altogether prompted by courtesy. He was then watching, with great suspicion, the movements of the Lancastrians, and he probably hoped to elicit from the duchess, who was a friend of Margaret of Anjou, some intelligence as to the intentions of the faction to which she belonged—forgetting, by-the-by, that the duchess was a woman of great experience, and had long since, under trying circumstances, learned how to make words conceal her thoughts.