Page:Life and death of Jane Shore.pdf/18

 on pain of death and confiscation of goods, no one should harbour her in their houses, or relieve them with food or raiment; so that she went wandering up and down to find her food on bushes and dunghills, where some friends she had raised would throw bones with more meat than ordinary, and crusts of stale bread in the places where she generally haunted. And a baker, who had been condemned to die for a riot in king Edward's reign, and saved by her means, as he saw her pass along, in gratitude for her kindness, trundled a penny loaf after her, which she thankfully took up and blessed him with tears in her eyes. But some malicious neighbour informing against him, he was taken up and hanged for disobeying king Richard's proclamation; which so terrified others, that they durst not relieve her with any thing, so that in miserable rags almost naked, she went about a most shocking spectacle, wringing her hands, and bemoaning her unhappy circumstances.

Thus she continued till the battle of Bosworth Field, wherein Richard was slain by Henry Earl of Richmond, who succeeded him by the name of Henry the Seventh; in which reign she hoped for better days; but fortune raised her another adversary, for he married Elizabeth eldest daughter to Edward the fourth,