st the Scots; and knowing the importance of celerity in all civil
wars, he instantly hurried down, that he might give battle to the
rebels. He approached Piercy near Shrewsbury, before that nobleman was
joined by Glendour; and the policy of one leader, and impatience of the
other, made them hasten to a general engagement.

The evening before the battle, Piercy sent a manifesto to Henry, in
which he renounced his allegiance, set that prince at defiance, and, in
the name of his father and uncle, as well as his own, enumerated all the
grievances of which, he pretended, the nation had reason to complain;
He upbraided him with the perjury of which he had been guilty, when, on
landing at Ravenspur, he had sworn upon the Gospels, before the earl of
Northumberland, that he had no other intension than to recover the duchy
of Lancaster, and that he would ever remain a faithful subject to King
Richard. He aggravated his guilt in first dethroning, then murdering
that prince, and in usurping on the title of the house of Mortimer, to
whom, both by lineal succession, and by declarations of parliament,
the throne, when vacant by Richard's demise, did of right belong. He
complained of his cruel policy in allowing the young earl of Marche,
whom he ought to regard as his sovereign, to remain a captive in the
hands of his enemies, and in even refusing to all his friends permission
to treat of his ransom; He charged him again with perjury in loading
the nation with heavy taxes, after having sworn that, without the
utmost necessity, he would never levy any impositions upon them. And he
reproached him with the arts employed in procuring favorable elections
into parliament; arts which he himself had before imputed as a crime
to Richard, and which he had made one chief reason of that prince's
arraignment and deposition.[*] This manifesto was well calculated to
inflame the quarrel between the parties: the bravery of the two leaders
promised an obstinate engagement; and the equality of the armies, being
each about twelve thousand men, a number which was not unmanageable by
the commanders, gave reason to expect a great effusion of blood on both
sides, and a very doubtful issue to the combat.

We shall scarcely find any battle in those ages where the shock was more
terrible and more constant. Henry exposed his person in the thickest of
the fight: his gallant son, whose military achievements were afterwards
so renowned, and who here performed his no