Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/559

Rh distinguish them, a body of the Lancastrians were attacked by their friends, and driven off the field. Warwick did all that experience, conduct, or valour, could suggest to retrieve the mistake, but in vain. He had engaged on foot that day, contrary to his usual practice, in order to shew his troops, that he was resolved to share every danger with them; and now, sensible that all was lost, unless a reverse of fortune could be wrought by some extraordinary effort, he rushed into the thickest of the engagement, and fell, covered with a multitude of wounds. His brother, underwent the same fate; and as Edward had issued orders to give no quarter, a great and undistinguishing slaughter was made in the pursuit.

Queen Margaret, and her son prince Edward, now about eighteen years of age, landed from France the same day on which that decisive battle was fought. She had hitherto sustained the shocks of fortune with surprizing fortitude; but when she received intelligence of her husband's captivity, and of the defeat and death of the earl of Warwick, her courage failed her, and she took sanctuary in the abbey of Beaulieu, in Hampshire.

Encouraged, however, by the appearance of Tudor, earl of Pembroke, and several other noblemen, who exhorted her still to hope for success, she resumed her former spirit, and determined to assert to the last her son's claim to the crown of England. Putting herself once more at the head of the army, which increased in every day's march, she advanced through the counties of Devon, Somerset and Gloucester. But the ardent and expeditious Edward overtook her at Tewkesbury, on the banks of the Severn, where the Lancastrians were totally routed and dispersed. Margaret and her son