Edward Strong, the mason who built St. Paul's Cathedral in London under the direction of Wren, is also buried in this church. Its chief tenants, however, are the slain at the second battle of St. Albans in the Wars of the Roses. At the first of these battles, fought in 1455 on the east side of the town, Henry of Lancaster was wounded and captured by the Duke of York. The second battle, a much more important contest, was fought on Shrove Tuesday, February 17, 1461, at Barnard's Heath, north of the town, and near St. Peter's Church. Queen Margaret of Lancaster led her forces in person, and was victorious over the Yorkists under the Earl of Warwick, liberating the captive king, who was in the enemy's camp, and following the battle by a ruthless execution of prisoners. King Henry, who had gone to St. Alban's shrine in tribulation when captured in the earlier contest, also went there again in thanksgiving when thus liberated six years later. The town of St. Albans, by the growth of time, has stretched across the Ver, and one straggling suburb reaches into the north-western angle of the ruins of ancient Verulam, where it clusters around the little church of St. Michael within the Roman city. This is a plain church, built in patches, parts of it nearly a thousand years old, and is the burial place of Francis Bacon, who was Baron of Verulam and Viscount St. Albans. Within a niche on the side of the chancel is his familiar effigy in marble, where he sits in an arm-chair and contemplatively gazes upward. From these ruins of Verulam is obtained the best view of St. Alban's Abbey, with the town in the background, overlooked by its clock-tower. [Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S, VERULAM.] [Footnote A: This word means _expiate_.] HATFIELD HOUSE.