With Bosworth Field the Wars of the Roses ceased (SS299, 300). During
the thirty years they had continued, fourteen pitched battles had been
fought, in a single one of which (Towton) (S303) more Englishmen lost
their lives than in the whole course of the wars with France during
the preceding forty years. In all, eighty princes of the blood royal
and more than half of the nobility of the realm perished.
Of those who escaped death by the sword, many died on the scaffold.
The remnant who were saved had hardly a better fate. They left their
homes only to suffer in foreign lands. A writer of the day[4] says,
"I, myself, saw the Duke of Exeter, the King of England's
brother-in-law, walking barefoot in the Duke of Burgundy's train, and
begging his bread from door to door."
[4] See the "Paston Letters."
Every individual of two families of the great houses of Somerset and
Warwick (SS296, 300) fell either on the field or under the
executioner's ax. In tracing family pedigrees it is startling to see
how often the record reads, "killed at St. Albans," "slain at Towton,"
"beheaded after the battle of Wakefield," and the like.[5]
[5] Guest's "Lectures on English History."
When the contest closed, the feudal baronage was broken up (SS113,
114, 150). In a majority of cases the estates of the nobles either
fell to the Crown for lack of heirs, or they were fraudulently seized
by the King's officers. Thus the greater part of the wealthiest and
most powerful aristocracy in the world disappeared so completely that
they ceased to have either a local habitation or a name.
But the elements of civil discord at last exhausted themselves.
Bosworth Field was a turning point in English history. When the sun
went down, it saw the termination of the desperate struggle between
the White Rose of York and the Red Rose of Lancaster; when it ushed in
a new day, it shone also on a new King, Henry VII, who introduced a
new social and political period.