The Prince of Wales had hitherto fought with courage; and there is some reason to believe that he fell fighting manfully on the field where so much blood was shed to vindicate his claims to the crown of England. Poets, novelists, and historians have, however, told a different tale, and produced an impression that, when the heir of Lancaster found himself abandoned by Somerset, and perceived the fortune of the day decidedly adverse to the Red Rose, he followed the multitude, who, shrinking from the charge of Edward on his berry-brown steed, and of Gloucester with his boar's-head crest, fled confusedly toward the town.
But, however that may have been, all the warriors of the Red Rose did not fly. Destruction, indeed, awaited every man who stood his ground; but even the certainty of death can not daunt those who are inspired by honor. Knights and nobles, after fighting with courage, fell with disdainful pride, and hundreds upon hundreds of the Lancastrians of inferior rank lost their lives in the cause for which, at the summons of their chiefs, they had taken up arms. There fell the Earl of Devon; and John Beaufort, the brother of Somerset, and, save the duke, the last male heir of the house of Beaufort; and Sir John Delves, the chief of a family long settled at Doddington, in the County Palatine of Chester; and Sir William Fielding, whose descendants, in the time of the Stuarts, became Earls of Denbigh; and Sir Edmund Hampden, one of that ancient race which had flourished in the eleventh century, and which, in the sixteenth, produced the renowned leader of the Long Parliament.
At length, when three thousand Lancastrians had perished on the field of Tewkesbury, the resistance and carnage came to an end; and Edward, having knighted Warwick's cousin, George Neville, the heir of Lord Abergavenny, sheathed his bloody sword, and Gloucester laid aside his lance; and the king and the duke rode to the abbey church to render thanks to God for giving them another victory over their enemies.
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED.
While Edward of York was smiting down his foes on the field of Tewkesbury, and the blood of the Lancastrians was flowing like water, a chariot, guided by attendants whose looks indicated alarm and dread, might have been observed to leave the scene of carnage, and pass hurriedly through the gates of the park. In this chariot was a lady, who appeared almost unconscious of what was passing, though it had not been her wont to faint in hours of difficulty and danger. The lady was Margaret of Anjou, but with a countenance no longer expressing those fierce and terrible emotions which, after Northampton, and Towton, and Hexham, had urged her to heroic ventures in order to regain for her husband the crown which her son had been born to inherit. Pale, ghastly, and rigid—more like that of a corpse than of a being breathing the breath of life—was now that face, in which the friends of the Lancastrian queen had in such seasons often read, as in a book, resolutions of stern vengeance to be executed on her foes.
Fortune, indeed, had at length subdued the high spirit of Margaret of Anjou, and she made no effort to resist her fate. When witnessing the battle, and becoming aware that her worst anticipations were being realized, the unfortunate queen appeared reckless of life, and abandoned herself to despair. Alarmed, however, at the dangers which menaced the vanquished, Margaret's attendants placed their royal mistress in a chariot, conveyed her hastily from the field, and made their way to a small religious house situated near the left bank of the silver Severn: there she found the Princess of Wales and several Lancastrian ladies, who had followed the fortunes of the Red Rose and shared the perils of their kinsmen. No need to announce to them that all was lost. Even if the disastrous intelligence had not preceded her arrival, they would have read in Margaret's pale face and corpse-like aspect the ruin of her hopes and of their own.
The religious house in which the queen found a temporary resting-place was not one which could save her from the grasp of the conquering foe. But so sudden had been the rout of one party, and so signal the victory of the other, that the vanquished had no time to think of escaping to a distance. The abbey church was the point toward which most of the fugitives directed their course, and within the walls of that edifice Somerset, the Prior of St. John, Sir Henry de Roos, Sir Gervase Clifton, Sir Thomas Tresham, many knights and esquires, and a crowd of humble adherents of the Red Rose, sought refuge from the sword of the conquerors. Unhappily for the Lancastrians, the church did not possess the privilege of protecting rebels, and Edward was in no humor to spare men who had shown themselves his bitter foes. Without scruple, the victor-king, on finding they had taken refuge in the abbey, attempted to enter, sword in hand; but at this point he found himself face to face with a power before which kings had often trembled. At the porch, a priest, bearing the host, interposed between the conqueror and his destined victims, and protested, in names which even Edward durst not disregard, against the sacred precincts being made the scene of bloodshed. Baffled of his prey, Edward turned his thoughts to the heir of Lancaster, and issued a proclamation, promising a reward to any who should produce the prince, dead or alive, and stating that in such a case the life of the royal boy would be spared.
Among the warriors who fought at Tewkesbury was Sir Richard Croft, a Marchman of Wales. This knight was husband of a kinswoman of the Yorkist princes, and had figured as Governor of Ludlow when Edward, then Earl of March, was residing during boyhood in that castle with his brother, the ill-fated Rutland. Passing, after the battle of Tewkesbury, between the town and the field, Croft encountered a youthful warrior, whose elegance arrested his attention, and whose manner was like that of one strange to the place. On being accosted, the youth, in an accent which revealed a foreign education, acknowledged that he was the heir of Lancaster; and, on being assured that his life was in no hazard, he consented to accompany the stalwart Marchman to the king.