Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/249

 Vere their own party fired upon them. The earl and his men cried ‘Treason! treason!’ and fled from the field (, p. 16; Arrivall of Edward IV, pp. 19–20).

Oxford succeeded in escaping to France, according to one account by way of Scotland, in another version through Wales (ib.;, p. 456). Early in 1473 he fitted out a small squadron at Dieppe, carrying a force variously estimated at 397 and 80 men, and, accompanied by his brothers George and Thomas and by Lord Beaumont, landed near St. Osyth in Essex on 28 May, but re-embarked on the approach of a royal force under the Earl of Essex (Paston Letters, ii. 88, 90). A few days later he was reported off Thanet, and on 30 Sept. he seized St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall (ib.;, p. 26; Itin. p. 122). Orders were sent to Henry Bodrugan of Bodrugan, ‘the chief ruler’ in those parts, to drive him out. But Bodrugan, who seems to have been a very lawless personage, allowed him to revictual the castle (ib.; Rot. Parl. vi. 139). The king in December transferred the command to John Fortescue, the sheriff of the county, with four ships and nine hundred men (exaggerated by William Worcester into eleven thousand). Despite which the siege dragged on for nearly two months longer, until Oxford, finding his men were being successfully tampered with, agreed to surrender on promise of their lives (ib. vi. 149). He was sent to the castle of Hammes, near Calais, and attainted early in 1475 (ib. vi. 145). His wife had to depend on charity and her needle until the king in 1481 granted her 100l. a year (, i. 198;, p. 250; , p. 663). After three years' confinement, Oxford ‘lyepe the wallys and wente to the dyke, and into the dyke to the chynne; to whatt entent I can nott telle; some sey, to stele away and some thynke he wolde have drownyd hymselffe’ (Paston Letters, iii. 235). Richard III was on the throne before he succeeded in escaping (by August 1484), with the help of Sir James Blount, the governor of Guines and Hammes, with whom he joined the Earl of Richmond in Paris, leaving a garrison in Hammes to hold it for Richmond (, p. 566). When Hammes was threatened from Calais, Oxford came to its relief and obtained leave for the garrison to depart with bag and baggage (, p. 200).

Landing with Henry in Wales in the summer of 1485, Oxford acted as captain-general of his army, and would naturally command its right wing at Bosworth (, p. 29). It was a successful movement of his which decided Lord Stanley to abandon his attitude of neutrality, and the continuator of the Croyland history (p. 574) eulogises him as a ‘most valiant soldier.’

Oxford had no reason to complain that Henry showed himself ungrateful. His attainder was reversed, and the hereditary chamberlainship of England restored to the family after being in other hands for close upon a century (Rot. Parl. vi. 281; Rutland Papers, p. 5). Before the end of 1485 he became a privy councillor, and was made constable of Rising Castle and of the Tower of London, high steward of the duchy of Lancaster (south of Trent), steward of the forests of Essex, and admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine (, ii. 734). He helped to execute the office of high steward at Henry's coronation. Framlingham and other forfeited estates were bestowed upon him, he was made K.G. before April 1486, and the stream of lucrative offices did not cease to run in his direction (, i. 198;, p. lxxvi).

Oxford led the van of the royal army at the battle of Stoke, but Polydore Vergil must be mistaken in stating that he commanded the troops sent to Flanders in 1489 (, Collectanea, iv. 210, 214, 247). He had probably in his mind the expedition to Picardy in 1492, when Oxford commanded the van (, p. 447). Henry in his will, made a few months before, appointed Oxford one of his executors (Rot. Parl. vi. 444). In the following years he received additional posts of profit in his own county of Essex. When the Cornish rebels came up to London in June 1497 he cut off their retreat at Blackheath (, i. 111).

In the summer of 1498 Oxford entertained the king for about a week, and to this occasion is generally referred the well-known story of his incurring a heavy fine of fifteen thousand marks by collecting a large body of retainers with his badge and livery in his anxiety to receive Henry at Castle Hedingham with proper honour (, p. 211; Excerpta Historica, p. 119). But Bacon only speaks of it as a report that had come down to his day, and the amount of the fine sounds incredible.

Oxford was high steward for the trial of the Earl of Warwick in November 1499. Towards the end of the reign infirmities and private business kept him from court, but he spent some days with the king at Stratford and Greenwich in July 1508 (, p. 125). His last appearance in a public capacity was as a commissioner of array in Essex in January 1513. He died on 10 March following, and was buried in the priory at