Page:VCH Rutland 1.djvu/239

 POLITICAL HISTORY Rutland must have suffered as the raiders passed from Grantham to Stam- ford.'^' The Earl of Warwick's lands at Greetham and Essendine lay tempt- ingly near the line of march, his other group of manors, Uppingham, Preston, and Barrowden, lying farther off. But none of the inhabitants of the county appear to have taken a conspicuous part in the struggle, nor is any fighting recorded as occurring in Rutland till 1470, when a quarrel between Richard Lord Welles and Sir Thomas Burgh of Gainsborough caused Edward IV to summon Welles and his brother-in-law. Sir Thomas Dymoke, to London, and to march north to quell the unrest in Lincolnshire. Sir Robert Welles raised the Lincolnshire men on his father's behalf, and was supported by Warwick and Clarence, who had come over from Calais with treasonable plans carefully concealed. They had completely deceived Edward, who issued a commission to them to raise forces on his behalf. The Lincolnshire men were moving to join them at Leicester, but turned back towards Stamford in the hope of sur- prising the Royalists, who arrived there on 12 March. Edward at once put Lord Welles and Dymoke to death, and his forces marched out to meet the insurgents at Empingham ' in a felde called Hornefelde.''^" One discharge of his artillery was enough to scatter them, and many were slain in the pursuit. The fugitives flung aside their ' coats ' to escape more swiftly, and this fact gave to the battle the name of Losecoat Field. During the action the rebels raised cries of 'A Clarence !' ' A Warwick !' and some of them wore Clarence's livery. This proved to Edward the treachery of his brother and Warwick, and further proof was found in the casket of Sir Robert Welles, in the shape of ' many mervelous billez, containing matter of the grete seduccion.' '*'* No doubt Warwick's Rutland tenants were among the rebels, and the engage- ment was followed by the confiscation of his lands there and elsewhere. '^^ But before the year was out Edward was a fugitive, and Henry VI was restored by the king-maker to a shadowy rule of a few months. On Edward's reinstatement in 1471 Thomas Flore of Oakham and Robert Edmond of Empingham were among the large number of men arrested, apparently as Lancastrians ; no further record of Edmond appears, but Flore was eight months later one of the commissioners of array for the county,'"^ so that he must have made his peace with the king. Another interesting connexion of Rutland with the troubles of the time is found in a list of merchants of the staple at Calais, who were pardoned in August 1470 for offences committed, possibly involuntarily, during Warwick's tenure of the office of constable. Of the thirty-five mentioned no fewer than five were Rutland men, while a more comprehensive list of the following year, includ- ing soldiers of the garrison as well as merchants, mentions William Boyvile of Rutland.'" "' V.C.H. Lines, ii, 268. '" Act of Attainder of Welles, Dymoke, and others, Rot. Pari, vi, 144. According to Blore {Hist. Rut. 142), the place was still in his time known as the Bloody Oaks, and the name Losecoat Field was given to a place between Stamford and Little Casterton. '" The official Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lines. (Camd. Sec. Misc. vol. i), with the usual mediaeval exaggeration, puts the number of the rebels at 30,000, and Hall, Chron. (ed. 1809), 277, says that 10,000 were killed, the battle being ' sore fought on bothe partes ' ; but the Cropland Continuation (Gale, Scriptores, i, 553) says that Edward ' simul eos vidit atque vicit.' See also ^.C.//. Z,/«a. ii, 268-9. Mr. Oman, ^i«/w;V^ the Kingmaker, 196-8, doubts the complicity of Warwick and Cl.irence. '" Cal.Pat. 1467-77, p. 218. "" Ibid. 286, 350. '" Ibid. 212, 290. Four of the merchants belonged to Oakham and one to Langham. 179