Mary Shelley

The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck Mary Shelley

He seemed breathless, heartless, faint and wan. And all his armour sprinkled was with blood. And soiled with dirty gore, that no man canDiscern the hue thereof. He never stood. But bent his hasty course towards the idle flood.-Spenser. After a long series of civil dissension-after many battles, whose issue involved the fate of thousands-after the destruction of nearly all the English nobility in the contest between the two Roses, the decisive battle of Bosworth Field was fought on the 22d of August, 1415, whose result was to entwine, as it was called, the white and red symbols of rivalship, and to restore peace to this unhappy country. The day had been sunny and warm: as the evening closed in a west wind rose, bringing along troops of fleecy clouds, golden at sunset, and then dun and grey, veiling with pervious network the many stars. Three horsemen at this hour passed through the open country between Hinckley and Welford in Leicestershire. It was broad day when they descended from the elevation on which the former stands, and the villagers crowded to gaze upon the fugitives, and to guess, from the ensigns they bore, to which party they belonged, while the warders from the near castle hastened out to stop them, thus to curry favour with the conqueror; a design wholly baffled.