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A young man, the best mounted and armed, evidently an esquire, rode forward, exclaiming, 'Well met, fair Lady Anne! Great have been the Mother Prioress's fears for you, and she has called up half the country side, lest you should be fallen into the hands of Robin of Redesdale, or some other Lancastrian rogue. 'Much she heeded me in comparison with hawk and heron! responded Anne.
Then, with an unscrupulousness worthy of the time and the cause, Warwick opened communication with the fugitive Queen, offering her his services, betrothed his daughter to the young Edward, Prince of Wales, took up the red Lancastrian rose from the dust of defeat, brought the captive he had sent to the tower back to his throne only to see him once more dragged down again by the Yorkists and for the last time returned to captivity; leaving his wife a prisoner and his young son dead at Tewksbury, stabbed by Yorkist lords.
Or the Lancastrian fortunes might revive, he might go home in triumph, and then would she give him her ring and her renunciation, and either earn enough to obtain entrance to a convent or perhaps be accepted for the sake of her handiwork! Any way the prospect was dreary, and the affection which grew upon her as Leonard recovered only made it sadder.
For in that day clanship was still strong, and these followers had been bred in allegiance to Lancastrian lords, whose confiscated estates were granted to the Yorkist favourites.
The little plateau half way down the sheltering hill, with fertile fields sloping to the southeast and its never failing springs, was and is an attractive spot; but its material advantages to the pioneer of 1645 were far greater than those apparent to the Lancastrian of this nineteenth century in the changed conditions of life.
"Eh but you've grown a gradely mon, Mester Adrian!" she cried, in her long-drawn Lancastrian, dandling her bundle energetically from side to side in the excess of her admiration, and added with a laugh of tender delight: "Eh, but you're my own lad still, as how 'tis!" when, blushing, the young man crossed the room and stooped to kiss her, glancing shyly the while at the white bundle in her arms.
After a time, and perhaps informed by weather prophets that the Lancastrian wind blowing over in England was but a fickle breeze, he consented to forget his hereditary sympathies. The duke was first advised that he was dead, which did not trouble him much for he loved the Lancaster line far better than that of York.
He despatched the Lancastrian Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, who had found refuge ever since Towton at his court, to carry fair words to Margaret. The queen and her son were still at Paris, detained as it was said by unfavourable winds, but really by the wish of Lewis to hold a check upon Warwick and by their own distrust of him.
A council of Yorkist lords, hastily summoned, resolved that the compromise agreed on in Parliament was at an end and that Henry of Lancaster had forfeited the throne. The final issue however now lay not with Parliament, but with the sword. Disappointed of London, the Lancastrian army fell rapidly back on the North, and Edward hurried as rapidly in pursuit.
He communicated the design to his adherents, who promised him their concurrence; they took to arms in the night-time, and hastened with loud acclamations to Edward's quarters; the King was alarmed at the noise, and, starting from bed, heard the cry of war usually employed by the Lancastrian party.
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