ild with terror and remorse. Active to the last, through
all this, he issued vigorous proclamations against Henry of Richmond and
all his followers, when he heard that they were coming against him with a
Fleet from France; and took the field as fierce and savage as a wild
boar--the animal represented on his shield.

Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at Milford Haven, and came
on against King Richard, then encamped at Leicester with an army twice as
great, through North Wales. On Bosworth Field the two armies met; and
Richard, looking along Henry's ranks, and seeing them crowded with the
English nobles who had abandoned him, turned pale when he beheld the
powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom he had tried hard to retain)
among them. But, he was as brave as he was wicked, and plunged into the
thickest of the fight. He was riding hither and thither, laying about
him in all directions, when he observed the Earl of Northumberland--one
of his few great allies--to stand inactive, and the main body of his
troops to hesitate. At the same moment, his desperate glance caught
Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights. Riding hard at
him, and crying 'Treason!' he killed his standard-bearer, fiercely
unhorsed another gentleman, and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself,
to cut him down. But, Sir William Stanley parried it as it fell, and
before Richard could raise his arm again, he was borne down in a press of
numbers, unhorsed, and killed. Lord Stanley picked up the crown, all
bruised and trampled, and stained with blood, and put it upon Richmond's
head, amid loud and rejoicing cries of 'Long live King Henry!'

That night, a horse was led up to the church of the Grey Friars at
Leicester; across whose back was tied, like some worthless sack, a naked
body brought there for burial. It was the body of the last of the
Plantagenet line, King Richard the Third, usurper and murderer, slain at
the battle of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year of his age, after
a reign of two years.

CHAPTER XXVI--ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH

King Henry the Seventh did not turn out to be as fine a fellow as the
nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of their deliverance from
Richard the Third. He was very cold, crafty, and calculating, and would
do almost anything for money. He possessed considerable ability, but his
chief merit appears to have been that he was not cruel when there was
nothing