About three weeks after that battle of Barnet, there was another at Tewkesbury, where Edward of York took Queen Margaret and her son Edward prisoners; for they had come to England again, in hopes the Earl of Warwick would get the kingdom back for the Lancastrians.
When they were brought before King Edward, he asked the boy how he dared to come to England. The brave lad answered, that he came to try to get back his father’s crown; upon which Edward cruelly struck him on the face, and his brothers Clarence and Gloucester, and two other lords, stabbed the poor prince till he died.
This was even more cruel than anything Margaret had ever done.
That miserable queen was sent to prison in the Tower immediately afterwards, where her poor husband was a prisoner. But a very few days after the battle of Tewkesbury, Henry was found dead in his prison, and he was most likely murdered. The King of France paid Edward a large sum of money to set Queen Margaret free.
Now, all Edward of York’s enemies being either dead or overcome, he feasted and enjoyed himself, and was very wicked and cruel. His foolish brother, the Duke of Clarence, quarrelled with the queen and her relations, and also with the Duke of Gloucester. So Edward had Clarence sent to the Tower, where he was put to death. Many people thought that the Duke of Gloucester murdered King Henry the Sixth, and caused the Duke of Clarence to be drowned in a cask of Malmsey wine; but I am not sure of this.
About four years after this, King Edward the Fourth died, and left two little sons and five daughters.
I can say very little good of him, except that he was brave and handsome, and good-humoured in company; but then he was cruel and revengeful, and, when the wars were over, he loved his own pleasure and amusement too well to do anything good or useful for the people, and he did them much wrong.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
EDWARD V.—Only ten weeks of 1483.
How Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was guardian to the young King Edward the Fifth; how he put Lord Hastings to death, and made himself King; and how the little King Edward and his brother were murdered in the Tower.
When Edward the Fourth died, his son Edward, Prince of Wales, was only thirteen years old; and his younger son, Richard, Duke of York, only ten.