Both roses flourish, red and white,
Alluding to the marriage of Henry VII. with Elizabeth, which united the two warring lines of York and Lancaster.
And it was proved in Bosworth-field.
The battle of Bosworth Field, in Leicestershire, was fought in 1485.
Not long the Avenger was withstood—
Earth helped him with the cry of blood.
Henry VII.—who, as Henry, Earl of Richmond, last scion of the line of Lancaster, had fled to Brittany—returned with Morton, the exiled Bishop of Ely, landed at Milford, advanced through Wales, and met the royal army at Bosworth, where Richard was slain, and Henry crowned king on the battlefield. The "cry of blood" refers, doubtless, to the murder of the young princes in the Tower.
How glad is Skipton at this hour—
Though lonely, a deserted Tower.
Skipton is the "capital" of the Craven district of Yorkshire, as Barrow is the capital of the Furness district of Lancashire and Westmoreland. The castle of Skipton was the chief residence of the Cliffords. Architecturally it is of two periods: the round tower dating from the reign of Edward II., and the rest from that of Henry VIII. From the time of Robert de Clifford, who fell at Bannockburn (1314), until the seventeenth century, the estates of the Cliffords extended from Skipton to Brougham Castle—seventy miles—with only a short interruption of ten miles. The "Shepherd-lord" Clifford of this poem was attainted—as explained in Wordsworth's note—by the triumphant House of York. He was "committed by his mother to the care of certain shepherds, whose wives had served her," and who kept him concealed both in Cumberland, and at Londesborough, in Yorkshire, where his mother's (Lady Margaret Vesci) own estates lay. The old "Tower" of Skipton Castle was "deserted" during these years when the "Shepherd-lord" was concealed in Cumberland.
How glad Pendragon—though the sleep
Of years be on her!