intrenched his forces. How much the country is changed, one who visits it will see from what Holinshed had observed immediately before. "About four of the clock in the afternoon (of Friday, May 13th), they came to Tewkesbury, having travelled, that night last past, and that day, six and thirty long miles, in a foul country, all in lanes, and stony ways, betwixt woods, without any good refreshing, so that as well the men as the horses were right weary." His fellow commanders objected to the position Somerset had fixed on, but the men could not go on, and to attempt to cross the Severn when a larger army was within a very few miles of them, and hastening on with all possible speed, would have ensured destruction. Yet the place chosen does seem injudicious. It appears to have been a short distance from the town, just by what is now called the "Bloody Meadow," and so situated as to render retreat impracticable, the Severn and the Avon being directly in the rear. To take up such a position in the face of an army flushed with recent victory, while his own troops were newly raised and untried, was a bold venture. But Somerset had evidently resolved to act on the defensive, no doubt in the hope that if he could gain time he should be joined by the Earl of Pembroke, who had assembled an army on the other side of the Severn. He had, too, so strengthened his position, that it appears from Holinshed that Edward could not force it. But however skilfully he had fortified his station, he suffered Gloucester to entice him out by a stratagem, and being unsupported by Lord Wenlocke, who commanded the centre, he was quickly defeated, and then followed the terrible slaughter. Somerset was a brave man, and perhaps had he been aided at the right moment by Wenlocke the result might have been otherwise. When he found all lost he returned and took swift vengeance on Wenlocke. Advancing to the place where he still looked on without moving, though he saw his fellow-soldiers in disorder, Somerset, "after he had reviled him and called him traitor, with his axe struck the brains out of his head." The old chronicler calls it in his margin truly enough 66 a terrible stroke," but it was a not undeserved one. Holinshed hints that Wenlocke "dissembled the matter for King Edward," and it is not easy to account for his supineness in any other way. The real struggle and the greatest slaughter appear to have occurred in the meadow before mentioned. The defeat of the Queen's army was complete. Her troops never made the feeblest attempt to rally the number of them slain in the field and chase was about 3000, together with the Earl of Devonshire, Sir Edward Hampden, and other leaders. The scene that occurred on the following day is well known from the pages of Shakspere, as well as from the histories. Shakspere wrote with Hall's Chronicle' before him, and adhered closely to it. : In reading the history of the war of the Roses it appears simply a struggle of the rival families. There is no great principle contended for by either party, and the leading partisans passed from the one side to the other with a facility that almost appears childish. In fact, if the figures were not living and breathing men, and life and death at issue on every encounter, it would appear little more deserving regard than the play of so many school-boys, or at best a mere quarrel about genealogy and precedence, carried on with a bitterness a little more intense than such quarrels now are in ordinary life, because occurring in a ruder age, and because the stake was of more importance. The grand poetic features of it might excite interest—with Shakspere to point them out they would be even prominent-but for all those great moral purposes which render history so important a study, this period would seem little more than a blank. Yet if we look more closely into the inner life of the country, we shall see that this struggle was really fruitful in most important consequences. It gave the deathblow to feudalism. The great feudal lords were annihilated by it, and the long period through which it was protracted sufficed to raise up a third estate that should go on steadily increasing in power, till it should be at least able to resist the encroachments of both the others. It was during the Barons' war that towns became of importance. It was the war of the Roses that brought the people to feel that they also had rights, and that they might venture some day to assert and successfully maintain them. THE END. LONDON: WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET. |