Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/51



It is worth remarking, that tradition preserves the recollection of the spot where this inhuman tragedy was acted; an house on the north side of the Tolsey. Margaret, after the loss of the day, had concealed herself in a waggon on the field of battle; but being discovered in nearly an insensible state, she was taken prisoner, and dispatched to the Tower; whence, after continuing there four years, the King of France ransomed her for fifty thousand crowns.

Most of the warriors who perished in this memorable conflict, or fell under the axe of the executioner after it, were buried in the adjoining church; a magnificent ancient structure which presents itself very advantageously to the eye, as we approach the town, the road taking a circuitous course in order to humour the flexure of a river. This edifice is almost the only remain of the mitred monastery of Tewksbury, whose lord-abbot sat in the House of Peers till its dissolution in the thirty-first year of Henry VIII. and conveys a grand idea of the former extent and splendour of this famous abbey. Its plan is cruciform, three hundred feet long; the transepts one hundred and twenty feet