"Young Howard single with an army fights;
When, moved with pity, two renownèd knights,
Strong Clarendon and valiant Conyers, try
To rescue him, in which attempt they die.
Now Surrey, fainting, scarce his sword can hold,
Which made a common soldier grow so bold,
To lay rude hands upon that noble flower,
Which he disdaining—anger gives him power,—
Erects his weapon with a nimble round,
And sends the peasant's arm to kiss the ground."—
Bosworth Field, by Sir John Beaumont, Bart.
If we may credit tradition or the chroniclers, all this was literally true. When completely exhausted, Surrey presented the hilt of his sword to Talbot, whom he requested to take his life, and save him from dying by an ignoble hand. He lived to be the Surrey of Flodden Field, and the worthy transmitter of "all the blood of all the Howards."
When Richard was about to make that renowned charge, which historians describe as the last effort of despair, he was bringing up his main body, and intelligence reached him that Richmond was posted behind the hill with a slender attendance. His plan was formed on the instant; nor, although fiery courage or burning hate might have suggested it, was it ill-judged or reckless. Three-fourths of the combatants, if we include the Stanleys, were ready to side with the strongest. Richmond's army, without Richmond, was a rope of sand. His fall would be the signal for a general scattering, or a feigned renewal of hollow allegiance to the conqueror. Neither did the execution of the proposed coup de main betoken a sudden impulse inconsiderately acted upon. Richard rode out at the right flank of his army, and ascended a rising ground to get a view of his enemy, with whose person he was not acquainted. He summoned to his side a chosen body of knights, all of whom, with the exception of Lord Lovell, perished with him; and he paused to drink at a spring, which still goes by his name. That Richard's horse was slain is very doubtful; and, for aught we know, it was White Surrey that bore him, like a thunderbolt, against the bosom of his foe; and it was spear in rest that he dashed against Richmond's surprised and fluttered bodyguard.
The personal prowess of the pair who were contending for a kingdom, is thus estimated by Hutton: "Richard was better versed in arms, Henry was better served. Richard was brave, Henry was a coward. Richard was about five feet four, rather runted, but only made crooked by his enemies; and wanted six weeks of thirty-three. Henry was twenty-seven, slender, and near five feet nine, with a saturnine countenance, yellow hair, and grey eyes." According to Grafton, Richard, so soon as he descried Richmond, "put spurs to his horse, and, like a hungry lion, ran with spear in rest towards him." He unhorsed Sir John Cheney, a strong and brave knight,[72] and rushing on Sir William Brandon, Henry's standard-bearer, cleft his skull, tore the standard from his grasp, and flung it on the ground. "He was now," says Hume, "within reach of Richmond himself, who declined not the combat." Others say that Richmond drew back, as a braver man might have done in his place—
"No craven he, and yet he shuns the blow,
So much confusion magnifies the foe."
Fortunately for him, Sir William Stanley came up at the very nick of time, "with three thousand tall men," and overpowered Richard, who died, fighting furiously, and murmuring with his last breath, Treason! Treason! Treason! So nicely timed was Stanley's aid, that Henry afterwards justified the ungrateful return he made for it, by saying: "He came time enough to save my life, but he stayed long enough to endanger it." Richard received wounds enough to let out a hundred lives; his crown had been struck off at the beginning of the onset; and his armour was so broken, and his features were so defaced, that he was hardly to be recognised when dragged from beneath a heap of slain.
And can that stripped and mutilated corpse be the crowned monarch who at morning's rise led a gallant army to an assured victory, who had recently been described by Philip de Commines as holding the proudest position held by any King of England for a hundred years? Nothing places in a stronger light the depth of moral degradation and insensibility, fast verging towards barbarism, to which men's minds had been sunk by the multiplied butcheries of these terrible conflicts, than the indignities heaped upon the dead King, with the sanction, if not by the express orders, of his successor. The body, perfectly naked, with a rope round the neck, was flung across a horse, like the carcase of a calf, behind a pursuivant-at-arms, and was thus carried in triumph to Leicester. It was exposed two days in the Town-hall, and then buried without ceremony in the Gray Friars' Church. At the destruction of the religious houses, the remains were thrown out, and the coffin, which was of stone, was converted into a watering-trough at the White Horse Inn. The best intelligence that Mr. Hutton, who made a journey on purpose in 1758, could collect concerning it, was that it was broken up about the latter end of the reign of George I., and that some of the pieces had been placed as steps in the cellar of the inn. "To what base uses may we return!" The sign of the White Boar at Leicester, at which Richard slept, was forthwith converted into the Blue Boar; and the name of the street called after it has been corrupted into Blubber-lane.
Leicester and Richard III. are associated in traditional history, which the Corporation have handed down, with a newly-built bridge, in two inscriptions:—1. "This bridge was erected by the Corporation of Leicester, in the mayoralty of S. Viccars, Esq., a.d. 1862, on the site of the ancient Bow Bridge, over which King Richard III. passed, at the head of his army, to the battle of Bosworth Field, August, 1485. Joseph Whetstone, Chairman of Highway Committee; S. Stone, Town Clerk; E. S. Stephens, Borough Surveyor." The plate on the opposite side bears the legend in verse, according to Speed's History of Great Britain:—
"Upon this bridge [as tradition hath
Delivered] stood a stone of some height,
Against which King Richard, as he passed
Towards Bosworth, by chance struck his spur,
And against the same stone, as he was brought
Back, hanging by the horse's side, his head
Was dashed and broken, as a wise woman
[Forsooth] had foretold, who, before Richard's
Going to battle, being asked as to his success,
Said that where his spur struck, his head
Should be broken."
This is legendary evidence of Richard's belief in omens, in addition to that recorded at page [305].