The old chronicler Hollingshed describing this unhappy transaction tells us with greater truth,—
"When the daie was closed, those that were about the king (in number a twenty thousand) hearing how euill their fellowes had sped, began utterlie to despair of the victorie, and so fell without anie long tarriance to running awaie. By reason whereof, the nobles that were about the king, perceiving how the game went, and withall saw no comfort in the king, but rather a good will and affection toward the contrarie part, they withdrew also, leauing the king accompanied by the Lord Bonneuille and Sir Thomas Kiriell of Kent, which vpon assurance of the king's promise, tarried with him and fled not. But their trust deceived them, for at the queenes departing from Saint Albons they were both beheaded, though contrarie to the mind and promise of her husband."
No record exists of Lord Bonville's burial place. At the first battle of St. Alban's, in 1455, the Abbot craved the bodies of the slain nobles from the victors, and buried them in the choir of the Abbey Church. But after this second engagement, Margaret's ill-paid, freebooting soldiers pillaged the town and abbey, so that probably those that perished were hastily interred near where they fell. This plundering the abbey "entirely changed the worthy Abbot Whethamstede's politics, and from being a zealous Lancastrian, he became a Yorkist."
Lord Bonville's ancestors in the direct line were mostly, if not all, buried in the choir of Newenham Abbey Church, near Axminster, of which hardly a trace now remains.
At the death of Lord Bonville, his brother Thomas of Tamerton-Foliot, was still alive, and survived until 11 Feb., 1467. He left one son John, who deceased in 1494, leaving a daughter Anne, married to Philip Coplestone. Some years anterior to this, the little child-heiress of Shute, Cicely Bonville, grown to woman's estate, was wedded,—and so, before the fifteenth century had closed, the antient and influential name of Bonville was extinct.[15]
It is with feelings of relief that we turn away, at least for a time, from these scenes of horror. The Wars of the Roses appear to us, we regret to say, to have been imbued with very little, if any, chivalry. They were in the main, only fought for the selfish purpose, lust of power, and as a consequence, were attended by the congenial sinister characteristics of cruelty, treachery, and revenge. It is noteworthy however, that notwithstanding so many of the common people shed their blood and lost their lives thus freely, and it may be added ignorantly, partly lured and partly compelled probably to take part in these conflicts, at the bidding of their superiors in station and wealth striving for the mastery, it was not upon them as a class the great social misfortunes of the war fell. As a general result, the engagements being over, their little houses and surroundings were scarcely ever ravaged or destroyed, the humble partizans in these sanguinary encounters, if victors, do not seem to have laid waste or appropriated their beaten neighbours' possessions, but simply kept their legions together, until their antagonists had time to rally, and again gather themselves in array for another trial of strength; an extraordinary, in its way, but by no means uncommon hallucination, that has first and last, in the world's history, cost millions of lives, wasted to determine the unmanly and degrading sentiment as to who should be a nation's master and rule over them;—a totally opposite aspiration to a people engaged fighting against a tyranny for liberty. But not thus comparatively scatheless, did the great actors in and promoters of this sanguinary drama, come off from the effects of the internecine strife. These men were desperate gamblers for high stakes, and the loss of the game to them was a fatal mischance, resulting in the deprivation of their lives, the confiscation of their estates, and occasionally—as with Bonville and the elder strain of Courtenay, extermination of their race also. No such terrible social quarrel ever convulsed England, nor heart-rending dissension so bitter, sown between the nearest and dearest relatives and friends, that the very commonest ties of humanity were outraged, dyed in blood, and trampled under foot, until at last the majority of the most illustrious families in the land were wrecked in misery and destruction.
Over such a relation as this, friend of mine, fraught with contingencies and evils so desperate, let us close the record for awhile.
Old Shute Park! A royally descending gift of demesne,—as such, sacred from the intrusion of despoiling hands, and therefore happily preserved to us undesecrated of Nature's abounding charms and native beauty.
Here we are, seated on one of its pleasant knolls, throned in luxuriant ferns, surrounded by magnificent trees, and a calm, sunny, summer evening. Overhead a congregation of noisy rooks are flapping about, quarrelling with us apparently for thus intruding on the solitude of their domain. Below, across the openings of a densely foliaged avenue, a shadowy train of flying horn and bounding hoof has passed noiseless as an apparition into the adjoining covert, where they presently assemble in timorous conclave, at safer distance, alert and watchful.