rabble prosper, and your properties will be despoiled,
your lives insecure, all law struck dead. What differs Richard of
Warwick from Jack Cade, save that if his name is nobler, so is his
treason greater? Commoners and soldiers of England, freemen, however
humble, what do these rebel lords (who would rule in the name of
Lancaster) desire? To reduce you to villeins and to bondsmen, as your
forefathers were to them. Ye owe freedom from the barons to the just
laws of my sires, your kings. Gentlemen and knights, commoners and
soldiers, Edward IV. upon his throne will not profit by a victory more
than you. This is no war of dainty chivalry,--it is a war of true men
against false. No quarter! Spare not either knight or hilding. Warwick,
forsooth, will not smite the Commons. Truly not,--the rabble are his
friends! I say to you--" and Edward, pausing in the excitement and
sanguinary fury of his tiger nature,--the soldiers, heated like himself
to the thirst of blood, saw his eyes sparkle, and his teeth gnash, as he
added in a deeper and lower, but not less audible voice, "I say to you,
SLAY ALL! [Hall.] What heel spares the viper's brood?"

"We will! we will!" was the horrid answer, which came hissing and
muttered forth from morion and cap of steel.

"Hark! to their bombards!" resumed Edward. "The enemy would fight from
afar, for they excel us in their archers and gunners. Upon them, then,
hand to hand, and man to man! Advance banners, sound trumpets! Sir
Oliver, my bassinet! Soldiers, if my standard falls, look for the plume
upon your king's helmet! Charge!"

Then, with a shout wilder and louder than before, on through the hail
of the arrows, on through the glare of the bombards, rather with a rush
than in a march, advanced Edward's centre against the array of Somerset;
but from a part of the encampment where the circumvallation seemed
strongest, a small body of men moved not with the general body.

To the left of the churchyard of Hadley, at this day, the visitor may
notice a low wall; on the other side of that wall is a garden, then but
a rude eminence on Gladsmoor Heath. On that spot a troop in complete
armour, upon destriers pawing impatiently, surrounded a man upon a sorry
palfrey, and in a gown of blue,--the colour of royalty and of servitude;
that man was Henry the Sixth. In the same space stood Friar Bungey,
his foot on the Eureka, muttering incantations, that the mists he had
foretold, [Lest the reader should suppos