The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck

He seemed breathless, heartless, faint and wan,

And all his armour sprinkled was with blood,

And soil'd with dirty gore, that no man can

Discern the hue thereof. He never stood,

But bent his hasty course towards the idle flood.

SPENSER.

After a long series of civil dissension—after many battles, whose issue involved the fate of thousands—after the destruction of nearly all the English nobility in the contest between the two Roses, the decisive battle of Bosworth Field was fought on the 22nd of August, 1415, whose result was to entwine, as it was called, the white and red symbols of rivalship, and to restore peace...