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And suddenly, as the chime ceased, there was heard, from the eminence hard by, a shriek of agony, a female shriek, drowned by the roar of a bombard in the field below. On pressed the Yorkists through the pass forced by Alwyn.
Griffith fell at the great battle of Mortimer's cross, which was won for York by a desperate charge made right at Pembroke's banner by Griffith and his Welshmen, when the rest of the Yorkists were wavering. His last words were: "Welcome, Death! since honour and victory make for us."
Thus Henry had affirmed his own inherent right to the throne; and had hedged that round with an unqualified parliamentary title. In the meantime he had also disqualified one possible figure-head for the Yorkists by lodging the young Earl of Warwick in the Tower. It remained for him to convert the other and principal rival into a prop of his own dignities by marrying Elizabeth of York.
"My cuffs will never wash white again, and all I have found is a mare's-nest. However, I'll go to the bottom now. There may be a gold seal they used to put them in with the deeds three hundred years ago. A charter of Edward the Fourth, I declare! Ah, the Yordases were Yorkists halloa! what is here? By the Touchstone of Shepherd, I was right after all! Well done, Long-headed Duncombe!"
But notwithstanding this adjustment of the rival interests, the rule of Henry, the Lancastrian, failed to satisfy the Yorkists; and this party, with the aid of Margaret of Burgundy sister of Edward IV and James IV of Scotland, set up two impostors, one after the other, to claim the English throne.
He feigned a retreat, and allured Audley to follow him with precipitation; but when the van of the royal army had passed the brook, Salisbury suddenly turned upon them, and partly by the surprise, partly by the division of the enemy's forces, put this body to rout; the example of flight was followed by the rest of the army; and Salisbury, obtaining a complete victory, reached the general rendezvous of the Yorkists at Ludlow.
"Well, thou hast seen enough of the Lancastrian raptrils to make thee true to the Yorkists. I would I could say as much for the king himself, who is already crowding the court with that venomous faction, in honour of Dame Elizabeth Gray, born Mistress Woodville, and now Queen of England. Ha, my proud Isabel, thou wouldst have better filled the throne that thy father built!"
As the words left the duke's lips, and Warwick, one foot on his dumb friend's corpse, gave the mandate, a murderous discharge from the archers in the covert rattled against the line of the Yorkists, and the foe, still advancing, stepped over a hundred corpses to the conflict.
Albans, but the royalists not taking advantage of their victory, Edward, son of the Duke of York, accompanied by Warwick, marched on London, and was proclaimed king as Edward IV. Soon after the Yorkists gained a complete victory at Towton , the bloodiest field of the whole war.
The king felt himself safe; the consent of the queen-mother to his contemplated marriage with her daughter Elizabeth appeared to secure him against any danger from the discontented Yorkists; and Henry, alone and in exile, seemed a small danger. Henry however had no sooner landed at Milford Haven than a wide conspiracy revealed itself.
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