Identifier: countiesofenglan01ditc (find matches)
Title: The counties of England, their story and antiquities
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Ditchfield, P. H. (Peter Hampson), 1854-1930
Subjects: Great Britain -- History England -- Antiquities
Publisher: London : G. Allen
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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e taint of usurpation. In Julyof that year the Percys, who had been the mainstay ofHenrys power in the north, threw off their allegiance,and marched southward against him. Their forces, ledby Hotspur, son of the Earl of Northumberland, metthose of the king near Shrewsbury, and on the spot nowmarked by the church of Battlefield a fierce contesttook place. The result was a great victory for the king.Hotspur was himself slain, with an unusually largenumber of distinguished men on both sides, and a blowwas struck at feudalism from which it never whollyrecovered. The interest of the battle of Shrewsbury will,however, always find its centre, not in prose, but in verse;not in the pages of the chronicler, but in those of thedramatist. Shakespeare has immortalized the contest inhis Henry /F., and by his creation of the character ofFalstaif has given us a fictitious hero who is better knownthan the real heroes of the fight. Those who rememberlittle about the king or Hotspur, are well acquainted
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LUDLOWCASTLE 302 Shropshire with the deeds and sayings of that fat and doughtyknight. After another half-century of tranquillity, the countywas called to bear its part in the Wars of the Roses.Richard, Duke of York, the father of Edward IV., paidseveral visits to Shropshire, and was so great a favouritein Shrewsbury that his statue, which now fills a nichein the Old Market Hall, was set up over the gate whichgave admission at the Welsh Bridge. At the time ofhis death, his son Edward was staying in Shrewsbury,and it was from thence he marched southward, and byhis victory over the Lancastrian forces at Mortimers Cross,near Ludlow, secured for himself possession of the throne. After a troubled reign of twenty-two years,Edward IV. died in 1483, and his power passed into thehands of his son, a child of eleven. The reign ofEdward V., as might be expected from the temper ofthe times, was merely nominal. Before three months hadelapsed his uncle Richard usurped the throne, and theboy king, alo

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