VII

BLORE HEATH

75

the Lancastrians drew back, "leaving dead on the field most of those notable knights and squires of Chesshire that had taken the badge of the Swan.”

In the night Salisbury drew off his men and marched round the defeated enemy, who still lay in front of his position. A curious story is told of his retreat by the chronicler Gregory. "Next day," he says, "the Earl of Salisbury, if he had stayed, would have been taken, so great were the forces that would have been brought up by the Queen, who lay at Eccleshall only six miles from the field." But the enemy knew nothing of Salisbury's departure, "because an Austin friar shot guns all night in the park at the rear of the field, so that they knew not the Earl was departed. Next morrow they found neither man nor child in that park save the friar, and he said that it was for fear that he abode in that park, firing the guns to keep up his heart."

Salisbury was now able to join York at Ludlow without further molestation, and Warwick came in a few days later without having seen an enemy. The Duke and the younger Earl called out their vassals of the Welsh March, and their united forces soon amounted to twenty thousand men. They made no hostile movement however, though the Lancastrian force defeated at Blore Heath was now being joined by new reinforcements and lay opposite them in great strength. But the Duke and the two Earls went forward to Worcester, and there in the cathedral took a solemn oath that they meant nothing against the King's estate or the common weal of the realm. They charged the Prior of Worcester and Dr. William Lynwood to lay before the King a declaration "that they would forbear and

avoid all things that might serve to the effusion of Christian blood," and would not strike a blow except in self-defence, being only in arms to save their own lives.

The refusal of the Yorkist lords to assume the offensive, if creditable to their honesty, was fatal to their cause. For the next three weeks the levies of Northern and Central England came pouring into the Queen's camp, and the King himself, waking up for once, assumed the command in person. A curious record in the preamble of an Act of Parliament of this year tells us how he buckled on his armour, "and spared not for any impediment or difficulty of way, nor intemperance of weather, but jeopardied his royal person, and continued his labour for thirty days, and sometimes lodged in the bare field for two nights together, with all his host, in the cold season of the year, not resting in the same place more than one night save only on the Sundays." About October 12th, the King, whose army now amounted to as many as fifty thousand men, pushed slowly forward on to Ludlow, putting out as he went strongly-worded proclamations which stigmatised the Duke and the Earls as traitors, and summoned their followers to disperse, promising free pardon to all save Salisbury and the others who had fought at Blore Heath.

York and Warwick had, of course, no intention of abandoning their kinsman; they paid no heed to the royal proclamation, but they soon found that their followers were far from holding it so lightly. The Yorkists were so manifestly inferior in numbers to the enemy, less than half their force indeed, that the men's

VII

THE ROUT OF LUDFORD

77

hearts were failing them. Their position on the Welsh Border, with the King's army cutting them off from England, and with the Welsh in arms behind them, was unsatisfactory, and none of the Yorkist barons had succeeded in joining them except Lord Clinton and Lord Grey of Powis. The inaction of their leaders had allowed them time to think over their position, and it would appear that the news of the King's proclamation had reached them, and the announcement of pardon worked its effect. York seems to have recognised that the use of the royal name against him was the fatal thing, and proceeded to spread a rumour through his camp that King Henry was really dead. He even ordered his chaplains to celebrate the mass for the dead in the midst of the camp. But the stratagem recoiled on his head next day, when the truth became known, and the King was seen, with his banner displayed at his side, leading forward in person the van of the Lancastrian army. At nightfall on October 13th the armies were only separated by the Teme, then in flood and covering the fields for some way on each side of its course. The Duke set some cannon to play upon the King's line, but the darkness or the distance kept them from doing any hurt. This was all the fighting that was destined to take place.

That night demoralisation set in among the Yorkist ranks. It commenced with the veteran Trollope, who secretly led off his six hundred Calais troops from their place in the Yorkist line and joined the enemy. Lord Powis followed his example, and at dawn the whole army was melting away. York bade the bridges be broken down, and began to draw off, but nothing

could keep his men together; they were dispersing with such rapidity that he could no longer hope to fight. Accordingly he bade those who still followed him to save themselves, and made off with his two sons Edward and Edmund, Warwick and Salisbury, and a few devoted retainers, to seek some place of refuge.

Thus by the Rout of Ludford all the work of Blore Heath and St. Albans was entirely undone.

CHAPTER VIII

WARWICK IN EXILE

THE adventures of Warwick after the army of York broke up have luckily been preserved to us in some detail. He and his father, together with the Duke and his two sons Edward and Edmund, fled southwards together with a few score of horse, hotly pursued by Sir Andrew Trollope and his men. So close was the chase that John and Thomas Neville, who lingered behind their brother and father-both having been wounded at Blore Heath-were taken prisoners. Presently the party was forced to break up by the imminence of their peril. The Duke of York and his second son Edmund turned off into Wales, with the design of taking ship for Ireland. Salisbury, Warwick, and Edward Plantaganet, the young Earl of March, York's eldest son and Salisbury's god-child and nephew, accompanied by Sir John Dynham and only two persons more, fled across Herefordshire by cross-roads, avoiding the towns, and then by a hazardous journey through Gloucestershire and Somersetshire reached the coast of Devon, apparently somewhere near Barnstaple. There the fugitives turned into a fishing village, where Sir John Dynham bought for two hundred and twenty-two nobles-the sum of the