[45a] Edmund Lord Grey, of Ruthen, was the grandson and heir of Sir Reginald Grey (being the son of Sir John Grey, his eldest son, who died in his lifetime, by his first wife Margaret, daughter of William Lord Roos), and was created Earl of Kent, in the fifth year of Edward IV. His desertion from the cause of Henry VI. is mentioned by Leland, who states that “In the tyme of the civile war, betwixt King Henry the VI. and King Edwarde the IV., there was a battaille faught hard without the south suburbes of Northampton,” and that the Lord Fanhope took King Henry’s part; and Leland proceeds thus:—“The Lorde Gray, of Ruthine, did the same in countenance. But a litle afore the feeld he practisid with King Edward, & other, saying that he had a title to the Lorde Fannope’s landes at Antehil and there aboute, or depraving hym with false accusations, so wrought with King Edwarde, that he, with al his strong band of Walschemen, felle to King Edwardes part, upon promise that if Edwarde wan the feelde, he shaul have Antehil and such landes as Fannope had there.”
“Edwarde wan the feelde, and Gray opteinid Antehille cum pertinentiis: and stil encreasing in favour with King Edwarde, was at the laste, made by hym Erle of Kente.”—Leland’s Itinerary, vol. i. fo. 120 [113].—Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, is the place meant as having belonged to Lord Fanhope.
[45b] Holinshed’s Chronicles, vol. i. fo. 654.
[45c] Stow’s Annals, fo. 409. Speed’s History, fo. 844.
[46a] The number of the slain and drowned is stated to have amounted to nearly 10,000. There seems to have been, from times of very remote antiquity, a bridge over the river at Northampton, near the castle; but from the narrow and inconvenient form of bridges at the date of the battle, it could not afford much chance of escape to many of the fugitives. The present bridge is modern, and not upon the site of the old one.
[46b] “The Erles of March, Warwick, and Salisbyri, cam from Calays to Dovar, and so to London and Northampton, and there faute with owte the town, where the Duke of Bokingham, the Erle of Shrobbesbyri, the Viscount Beaumont, the Lorde Egremont, were slayn, and many knighttes and squyers with other, and the King taken prisoner.”—Leland’s Coll. vol. ii. fo. 497 [714].
[46c] John Talbot, second Earl of Shrewsbury, was the son and heir of John Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, the celebrated commander, renowned for his warlike exploits in France, and slain by a cannon shot at the battle of Castillon, near Bourdeaux, on the 7th [46f] of July, 1453, and of his wife Maud, daughter and heiress of Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival.
[46d] He was originally John Lord Beaumont, son of Henry Lord Beaumont and Elizabeth his wife, daughter of William Lord Willoughby of Eresby, and was in the eighteenth year of Henry VI. advanced to the dignity of a Viscount (a title not previously used in England), by the title of Viscount Beaumont, with precedence over all Barons of the realm; after his death at the battle of Northampton, he was succeeded in his title, and his principles, by his son and heir, William Viscount Beaumont, who fought on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Towton, for which he was included in the act of attainder of 1st Edward IV., but was restored by Parliament in the first, and died in the twenty-fourth year of Henry VII.
[46e] Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, originally Sir Thomas Percy, Knight (the third son of Henry, the second Earl of Northumberland, who was slain at the first battle of Saint Alban’s in 1455, and Eleanor his wife, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, and widow of Richard Lord Spencer), was created Lord Egremont, in the twenty-eighth year of Henry VI.
[46f] On the 7th of July, 1453, according to Ralph Brooke, p. 196; on the 20th of July, according to Dugdale, vol. i. p. 330; but on the 7th of July, on the same page, where he professes to give a copy of the epitaph of the Earl of Shrewsbury, slain in the battle near Bourdeaux, from his monument at Whitchurch, in Shropshire.