ed. So he sent a
messenger to the earl, offering to act as mediator between him and his
brother, in hopes of finding some mode of arranging the quarrel; but
the earl, instead of accepting the mediation, sent back only
invectives and defiance.

"Go tell your master," he said to the messenger, "that Warwick is not
the man to follow the example of faithlessness and treason which the
false, perjured Clarence has set him. Unlike him, I stand true to my
oath, and this quarrel can only be settled by the sword."

Of course, nothing now remained but to fight the battle, and a most
desperate and bloody battle it was. It was fought upon a plain at a
place called Barnet. It lasted from four in the morning till ten.

[Illustration: DEATH OF WARWICK ON THE FIELD OF BARNET.]

Richard came forward in the fight in a very conspicuous and prominent
manner. He was now about eighteen years of age, and this was the first
serious battle in which he had been actually engaged. He evinced a
great deal of heroism, and won great praise by the ardor in which he
rushed into the thickest of the fight, and by the manner in which he
conducted himself there. The squires who attended him were both
killed, but Richard himself remained unhurt.

In the end, Edward was victorious. The quarrel was thus decided by the
sword, as Warwick had said, and decided, so far as the earl was
concerned, terribly and irrevocably, for he himself was unhorsed upon
the field, and slain. Many thousands of soldiers fell on each side,
and great numbers of the leading nobles. The bodies were buried in one
common trench, which was dug for the purpose on the plain, and a
chapel was afterward erected over them, to mark and consecrate the
spot.

It is said in respect to King Henry, who had been taken from the Tower
and made to accompany the army to the field, that Edward placed him in
the midst of the fight at Barnet, in the hope that he might in this
way be slain, either by accident or design. This plan, however, if it
were formed, did not succeed, for Henry escaped unharmed, and, after
the battle, was taken back to London, and again conveyed through the
gloomy streets of the lower city to his solitary prison in the Tower.
The streets were filled, after he had passed, with groups of men of
all ranks and stations, discussing the strange and mournful
vicissitudes in the life of this hapless monarch, now for the second
time cut off from all his friends, and immured hopelessly in