THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED.
While Edward of York was smiting down his foes on the field of
Tewkesbury, and the blood of the Lancastrians was flowing like water,
a chariot, guided by attendants whose looks indicated alarm and dread,
might have been observed to leave the scene of carnage, and pass
hurriedly through the gates of the park. In this chariot was a lady,
who appeared almost unconscious of what was passing, though it had not
been her wont to faint in hours of difficulty and danger. The lady was
Margaret of Anjou, but with a countenance no longer expressing those
fierce and terrible emotions which, after Northampton, and Towton,
and Hexham, had urged her to heroic ventures in order to regain
for her husband the crown which her son had been born to inherit.
Pale, ghastly, and rigid--more like that of a corpse than of a being
breathing the breath of life--was now that face, in which the friends
of the Lancastrian queen had in such seasons often read, as in a book,
resolutions of stern vengeance to be executed on her foes.
Fortune, indeed, had at length subdued the high spirit of Margaret
of Anjou, and she made no effort to resist her fate. When witnessing
the battle, and becoming aware that her worst anticipations were
being realized, the unfortunate queen appeared reckless of life, and
abandoned herself to despair. Alarmed, however, at the dangers which
menaced the vanquished, Margaret's attendants placed their royal
mistress in a chariot, conveyed her hastily from the field, and made
their way to a small religious house situated near the left bank of
the silver Severn: there she found the Princess of Wales and several
Lancastrian ladies, who had followed the fortunes of the Red Rose and
shared the perils of their kinsmen. No need to announce to them that
all was lost. Even if the disastrous intelligence had not preceded her
arrival, they would have read in Margaret's pale face and corpse-like
aspect the ruin of her hopes and of their own.
The religious house in which the queen found a temporary resting-place
was not one which could save her from the grasp of the conquering foe.
But so sudden had been the rout of one party, and so signal the victory
of the other, that the vanquished had no time to think of escaping
to a distance. The abbey church was the point toward which most of
the fugitives directed their course, and within the walls of that
edifice Somerset, the Prior of St. John, Sir Henry de Roos, Sir Gervase
Clifton, Sir Thomas Tresham, many knights and esquires, and a crowd of
humble adherents of the Red Rose, sought refuge from the sword of the
conquerors. Unhappily for the Lancastrians, the church did not possess
the privilege of protecting rebels, and Edward was in no humor to spare
men who had shown themselves his bitter foes. Without scruple, the
victor-king, on finding they had taken refuge in the abbey, attempted
to enter, sword in hand; but at this point he found himself face to
face with a power before which kings had often trembled. At the porch,
a priest, bearing the host, interposed between the conqueror and his
destined victims, and protested, in names which even Edward durst
not disregard, against the sacred precincts being made the scene of
bloodshed. Baffled of his prey, Edward turned his thoughts to the heir
of Lancaster, and issued a proclamation, promising a reward to any who
should produce the prince, dead or alive, and stating that in such a
case the life of the royal boy would be spared.
Among the warriors who fought at Tewkesbury was Sir Richard Croft,
a Marchman of Wales. This knight was husband of a kinswoman of the
Yorkist princes, and had figured as Governor of Ludlow when Edward,
then Earl of March, was residing during boyhood in that castle with
his brother, the ill-fated Rutland. Passing, after the battle
of Tewkesbury, between the town and the field, Croft encountered
a youthful warrior, whose elegance arrested his attention, and
whose manner was like that of one strange to the place. On being
accosted, the youth, in an accent which revealed a foreign education,
acknowledged that he was the heir of Lancaster; and, on being assured
that his life was in no hazard, he consented to accompany the stalwart
Marchman to the king.
Toward the market-place, a triangular space where met the three streets
that gave to Tewkesbury the form of the letter Y, Croft conducted
his interesting captive. Tewkesbury has little changed since that
time; but the old Town Hall, which then stood in the market-place,
has disappeared. It was to a house in the neighborhood of this
building, however, that the king had repaired after the battle, and
there, surrounded by Clarence and Gloucester, Hastings and Dorset,
the captains who had led his host to victory, sat Edward of York when
Edward of Lancaster was brought into his presence.
The king had that morning gained a victory which put his enemies under
his feet, and had since, perhaps, washed down his cravings for revenge
with draughts of that cup to which he was certainly too much addicted.
It is not difficult to believe those historians who tell that, under
such circumstances, satiated with carnage, and anxious for peace and
repose, he was in a frame of mind the reverse of unfavorable to his
captive, nor even to credit an assertion that the wish of Edward of
York was to treat the heir of the fifth Henry as that king had treated
the last chief of the house of Mortimer, to convert the prince from
a dangerous rival into a sure friend, and to secure his gratitude by
bestowing upon him the Duchy of Lancaster and the splendid possessions
of John of Gaunt. To the vanquished prince, therefore, the victor-king
"at first showed no uncourteous countenance." A minute's conversation,
however, dissipated the king's benevolent intentions, and sealed the
brave prince's fate.
[Illustration: THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED.]
"What brought you to England," asked Edward, "and how durst you enter
into this our realm with banner displayed?"
"To recover my father's rights," fearlessly answered the heir of
Lancaster; and then asked, "How darest thou, who art his subject, so
presumptuously display thy colors against thy liege lord?"
At this reply, which evinced so little of that discretion which is
the better part of valor, Edward's blood boiled; and, burning with
indignation, he savagely struck the unarmed prince in the mouth with
his gauntlet. Clarence and Gloucester are said to have then rushed
upon him with their swords, and the king's servants to have drawn
him into another room and completed the murder. In the house where,
according to tradition, this cruel deed was perpetrated, marks of
blood were long visible on the oaken floor; and these dark stains
were pointed out as memorials of the cruel murder of the fifth
Henry's grandson, by turns the hope, the hero, and the victim of the
Lancastrian cause.
Having imbrued his hands in the blood of the only rival whom he could
deem formidable, and too fearfully avenged the murder of Rutland,
Edward appears to have steeled his heart to feelings of mercy, and
to have determined on throwing aside all scruples in dealing with
his foes. It was only decent, however, to allow Sunday to elapse ere
proceeding with the work of vengeance. That day of devotion and rest
over, the Lancastrians were forcibly taken from the church. Those of
meaner rank were pardoned; but Somerset, the Prior of St. John, Sir
Henry de Roos, Sir Gervase Clifton, Sir Thomas Tresham, John Gower, and
the other knights and esquires, were brought to trial. Gloucester and
John Mowbray, the last of the great Dukes of Norfolk, presided, one as
Constable of England, the other as Earl-marshal; and the trial being,
of course, a mere form, the captives were condemned to be beheaded.
On Tuesday, while the scaffold was being erected in the market-place of
Tewkesbury for the execution of those who had risked all in her cause,
Margaret of Anjou was discovered in the religious house to which she
had been conveyed from the field on which her last hopes were wrecked.
The Lancastrian queen was brought to Edward by Sir William Stanley,
still zealous on the Yorkist side, and little dreaming of the part he
was to take at Bosworth in rendering the Red Rose finally triumphant.
Margaret's life was spared; but her high spirit was gone, and, on
being informed of her son's death, the unfortunate princess only gave
utterance to words of lamentation and woe. Now that he around whom
all her hopes had clustered was no more, what could life be to her?
what the rival Roses? what the contentions of York and Lancaster?
Her ambition was buried in the grave of her son, who had been her
consolation and her hope.
Sir John Fortescue was among the Lancastrians whom the victory of
Tewkesbury placed in Edward's power; and the great lawyer was in some
danger of having to seal with his blood his devotion to the Red Rose.
Fortescue, however, had no longings for a crown of martyrdom; and
Edward, luckily for his memory, perceived that the house of York would
lose nothing by sparing a foe so venerable and so learned. It happened
that, when in Scotland, Fortescue had produced a treatise vindicating
the claims of the house of Lancaster to the English crown, and the king
consented to pardon the ex-chief-justice if he would write a similar
treatise in favor of the claims of the line of York. The condition was
hard; but that was an age when, to borrow old Fuller's phrase, it was
present drowning not to swim with the stream; and Fortescue, consenting
to the terms, applied himself to the arduous task. The difficulty was
not insuperable. In his argument for Lancaster he had relied much on
the fact of Philippa of Clarence having never been acknowledged by her
father. In his argument for York he showed that Philippa's legitimacy
had been proved beyond all dispute. On the production of the treatise
his pardon was granted; and the venerable judge retired to spend the
remainder of his days at Ebrington, an estate which he possessed in
Gloucestershire.
About the time that Fortescue received a pardon, John Morton, who, like
the great lawyer, had fought on Towton Field, and since followed the
ruined fortunes of Lancaster, expressed his readiness to make peace
with the Yorkist king. In this case no difficulty was interposed.
Edward perceived that the learning and intellect of the "late parson
of Blokesworth" might be of great service to the government. Morton's
attainder was therefore reversed at the earliest possible period, and
he soon after became Bishop of Ely.
Meanwhile, on the scaffold erected in the market-place of Tewkesbury,
the Lancastrians were beheaded, the Prior of St. John appearing on the
mournful occasion in the long black robe and white cross of his order.
No quartering nor dismembering of the bodies, however, was practiced,
nor were the heads of the vanquished set up in public places, as after
Wakefield and Towton. The bodies of those who died, whether on the
field or the scaffold, were handed over to their friends or servants,
who interred them where seemed best. Most of them, including those of
the Prince of Wales, Devon, Somerset, and John Beaufort, were laid in
the abbey church; but the corpse of Wenlock was removed elsewhere,
probably to be buried in the Wenlock Chapel, which he had built at
Luton; and that of the prior was consigned to the care of the great
fraternity of religious knights at Clerkenwell, of which he had been
the head.
After wreaking his vengeance upon the conquered, Edward moved northward
to complete his triumph, and forgot for a while the blood he had shed.
Years after, however, when laid on his death-bed, the memory of those
executions appears to have lain heavy upon his conscience, and he
mournfully expressed the regret which they caused him. "Such things,
if I had foreseen," said he, "as I have with more pain than pleasure
proved, by GOD'S Blessed Lady I would never have won the courtesy of
men's knees with the loss of so many heads."