When the armies were drawn up, facing each other, waiting for the signal to begin, the Abbot of Shrewsbury left the royal army and came to Percy, in the hope of effecting peace between the two parties. On behalf of the king he offered pardon to Percy and his adherents, if they would lay down their arms, and a redress of grievances. The stern temper of the Earl of Worcester however rejected all attempts at conciliation; and both sides flew to arms. The two armies were not equal in numbers. Percy had 14,000 men, including a large force of Cheshire archers. The royal array was probably nearly double that number; for 40,000 men are said to have been engaged in the battle. The battle commenced by a fierce discharge of arrows on both sides, and raged with violence. Percy, with the Earl of Douglas and some thirty others, in the heat of the battle, bent on the king’s destruction, valiantly forced their way into the centre of his forces. At one period Henry’s van was broken, his standard overthrown; his son Prince Henry was wounded in the face by an arrow; Edmund, Earl of Stafford, Sir Walter Blount, and three other persons armed like the king, were slain; and the king himself was unhorsed, and likely to be slain, had he not been withdrawn from danger by Dunbar, the Scottish Earl of March. At an important moment, Henry brought up his reserve, which seems to have turned the scale; and Percy himself was killed by an unknown hand, either by a spear, or by an arrow which pierced his brain, alone, and surrounded by his foes. The king at once took advantage of this, and shouted aloud, “Henry Percy is dead;” and the insurgent forces gave way and fled in every direction. The battle had lasted three hours. On Henry’s side, 3,000 are said to have been wounded, and about 1,600 slain, including Edmund Earl of Stafford, Sir Hugh Stanley, Sir John Clifton, Sir John Cokaine, Sir Nicholas Gausel, Sir Walter Blount, Sir John Calverley, Sir John Massey, of Puddington, Sir Hugh Mortimer, Sir Richard Sandford, and Sir Robert Gausel. On Percy’s side the loss of those slain in the battle or pursuit has been estimated at 5,000, including Sir John Massey, of Tatton, and 200 knights and gentlemen of Cheshire. The Earl of Worcester, Sir Richard Venables, and Sir Richard Vernon, were taken prisoners, and beheaded on the 21st at the High Cross at Shrewsbury. Worcester’s head was set up over London Bridge; his headless body is conjectured to have been buried in the Leyburnes’ tomb in the chapel of the Holy Trinity in St. Mary’s Salop. Percy’s body was at first decently interred by his kinsman Lord Furnival; but was afterwards taken up, and placed for public exhibition between two millstones near the pillory in Shrewsbury, and then beheaded and quartered, and portions sent to several towns in England.