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 A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE together were obliged to spread false reports of the king's death. After dark Sir Andrew Trollope and Sir John Blount, veterans of the French war, drawn from the garrison at Calais, deserted to Henry. The Yorkists melted away, and their leaders sought refuge in flight from the kingdom. Ludlow was sacked by the royal troops, and the duchess of York, who was found there, was placed under the charge of her sister, the duchess of Buckingham. ^^^ During the Lancastrian ascendency, which lasted for several months, Herefordshire remained tranquil, and when the young earl of March (the future Edward IV) landed at Sandwich with Salisbury and Warwick on 26 June, 1460, and fourteen days later overthrew the Lancastrians at the battle of Northampton, the county acquiesced quietly in the change, and chose Sir William Herbert to represent it in Parliament in October. The duke of York crossed from Ireland and landed near Chester in the second week in September. The victors at Northampton had on their arrival in London procured for the duke of York ' dyvers straunge commissions fro the kyng for to sitte in dyvers townys comyng homward,' among others Hereford, ' to punych them by the fawtes to the kyngs lawys.' He passed through Ludlow and Hereford, where he was joined by his wife on his way to London.^^^ His death at the battle of Wakefield on 30 December was the prelude to a year of war. The young earl of March, who was at Gloucester when the tidings came, at once raised a large force from the Marches. He was about to proceed north to meet the Lancastrian forces, when he heard that the earl of Pembroke, the king's half-brother, had arrived in Wales by sea with a body of Frenchmen, Bretons, and Irishmen, who were ready to fall on his rear. Pembroke was joined by the earl of Wiltshire, who had fought at Wakefield. On 2 February Edward met and defeated the Lan- castrians at Mortimer's Cross on the Lugg, five and a half miles above Leominster. A pillar in commemoration of the conflict was erected there in 1799. The pursuit was carried as far as Hereford, and Owen Tudor, Pembroke's father, who had married Henry V's widow, Catherine of France, was taken and executed at Hereford. Till the last he refused to believe his doom — wenyng and trustyng all eway that he shulde not be hedyd tylle he sawe the axe and the blocke, and whenn that he was in hys dobelet he trustyd on pardon and grace tylle the coler of hys redde vellvet dobbelet was ryppyd of. Then he sayde ' that hedc shalle ly on the stocke that was wonte to ly on Quene Kateryns lappe,' and put his herte and mynde holy unto God, and fulle mekely toke hys dethe. His head was placed on the top of the market cross, and a madde woman kembyd his here and wysche a way the blode of hys face, and she gate candellys and sette aboute hym brennynge, moo then a C. His body was buried in the chapel of the Greyfriars' Church at Hereford.^'* In March the battle of Towton decided the fate of England, and in August Edward IV began a progress through the south and west intended to establish his authority. He visited Herefordshire in the middle of September 266 Whethamstede, Registrum (Rolls Ser.), i, 342-5 ; Rot. Pari. (Rec. Com.) v, 348-9 ; Robert Fabyan, Neo). Chron. (i8ll), 634 ; Waurin, Recueil des Croniques (Rolls Ser.) v, 321-2 ; Gregory's Chron. (Camd. See), 205-6. '" Pas ion Letters, i, 525 ; A Chron. of London (ed. Nicolas and Tyrrell 1827), 141. '^ Gregory's Chron. (Camd. Soc), 211 ; Engl. Chron. (ed. Davies, Camd. Soc), iio; Will, of Worcester, Annals (ed. Hearne), 486 ; Three Fifteenth Century Chron. (Camd. Soc), 77 ; Hall's Chron. (i8og), 251-2. 374