Advancing still further into the midlands, Henry met the king at Bosworth Field, near Leicester. Richard's army was twice the size of that of the earl. He must have conquered if his men had fought honestly for him. But when the battle was joined, the Earl of Northumberland, who led one wing of Richard's host, drew aside and would not fight, and presently Lord Stanley appeared with his contingent and charged the king in flank. The Yorkists began to disperse and fly, for they fought with little heart for their cruel master. But Richard himself would not turn back, though his attendants brought him his horse and besought him to save himself. He plunged into the thick of the fray, cut his way to Richmond's banner, and was there slain, fighting desperately to the last. With him fell his most faithful adherent, John Lord Howard, whom he had made Duke of Norfolk, and a few more of his chief captains. His favourite, Sir William Catesby, was taken prisoner and executed when the battle was over. Richard's crown, beaten off his helmet by hard blows, was found in a hawthorn bush, and placed on Richmond's head by Lord Stanley, who then saluted him as king by the name of Henry VII. The dead monarch's body was taken to Leicester, and exposed naked before the people, but ultimately given honourable burial in the church of the Grey Friars. [Sidenote: =Character of Richard III.=] Thus ended the prince who had wrought so much evil, and won his way to power by such unscrupulous cunning and cruelty. He was only thirty-three when he was cut off. There have been worse kings in history, and had his title been good and his hands clean of the blood of his kinsmen, he might have filled the English throne not unworthily. But the consequences of his first fatal crime drove him deeper and deeper into wickedness, and he left a worse name behind him than any of his predecessors. The historians of the next generation drew his portrait even darker than he deserved, making him a hideous hunchback with a malignant distorted countenance. As a matter of fact, his deformity was only that his left arm was somewhat withered, and his left shoulder consequently lower than his right. His portraits show a face not unlike that of his brother Edward, but thinner and set in a nervous and joyless look of suspicion. CHAPTER XX. HENRY VII. 1485-1509.