Part 29 (1/2)

When he saw that he was deserted by those on whose help he had counted, he uttered the cry of ”Treason! treason!” and dashed forward into the thick of the fight. With the fury of despair he hewed his way into the very presence of Henry Tudor, and killing the standard bearer, flung the Lancastrian banner to the ground. But he could go no further. Numbers overpowered him, and he fell.

During the battle Richard had worn his crown. After all was over, it was found hanging on a hawthorn bush[1] and handed to the victor, who placed it on his own head. The army then gathered round Henry Tudor thus crowned, and moved by one impulse joined in the exultant hymn of the Te Deum.[2] Thus ended the last of the Plantagenet line (S159).

”Whatever their faults or crimes, there was not a coward among them.”[3]

[1] An ancient stained-gla.s.s window in the east end of Henry VII's Chapel (Westminster Abbey) commemorates this incident.

[2] ”Te Deum laudamus” (We praise thee, O G.o.d): a Roman Catholic hymn of thanksgiving, now sung in English in the Episcopal and other churches.

[3] W. Stubb's ”Const.i.tutional History of England.”

316. End of the Wars of the Roses (1485); their Effects.

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 n.o.bility 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 n.o.bles 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.

317. Summary.

The importance of Richard's reign is that it marks the close of the Wars of the Roses. Those thirty years of civil strife destroyed the predominating influence of the feudal barons. Henry Tudor (S314) now becomes the central figure, and will ascend the throne as Henry VII.

General Reference Summary of the Lancastrian and Yorkist Period (1399-1485)

I. Government. II. Religion. III. Military Affairs.

IV. Literature, Learning, and Art. V. General Industry and Commerce.

VI. Mode of Life, Manners, and Customs

I. Government

318. Parliament and the Royal Succession.

The period began with the parliamentary recognition of the claim to the crown of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III. By this act the claim of Edmund Mortimer, a descendant of Edward III by his third son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, was deliberately set aside, and this change in the order of succession eventually furnished an excuse for civil war.[1]

[1] Before the accession of Henry III, Parliament made choice of any one of the King's sons whom it considered best fitted to rule. After hat time it was understood that the King's eldest son should be chosen to succeed him; or incase of his death during the lifetime of his father, the eldest son of the eldest son; and so forward in that line. The action taken by Parliament in favor of Henry IV was a departure from that principle, and a rea.s.surtion of its ancient right to choose and descendant of the royal family it deemed best. (See Genealogical Table, p. 140.)

319. Disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Electors; Benevolences.

Under Henry VI a property qualification was established by act of Parliament which cut off all persons from voting for countyy members of the House of Commons who did not have an income of forty s.h.i.+llings (say 40 pounds, or $200, in modern money) from freehold land. County elections, the statute said, had ”of late been made by a very great, outrageous, and excessive number of people...of which the most part were people of small substance and of no value.”