So, out through the north gate of Shrewsbury, on a Friday afternoon, swept the army of the king, fourteen thousand strong, and, back from the abbey foregate and the Severn's banks, dropped the Percies' host, thirteen thousand banded English, Scotch, and Welsh. In a space of open, rolling country known as Hately Field--fit name for a place of battle between former friends,--three miles from Shrewsbury town, the rival armies pitched their tents, drew their battle lines, and waited for the dawn. It is the morning of Saturday, the twenty-second of July, 1403. Both camps are astir, and in the gray light that precedes the dawn the preparation for battle is made. The sun lights up the alder-covered hills, the trumpet sounds to arms, the standards sway, the burnished armor gleams and rings as knights and squires fall into their appointed places; the cloth-yard shafts are fitted to the archer's bows, and then, up from a sloping field, sweet with the odor of the pea-blossoms that cover it, there comes in loud defiance the well-known war-cry of the Percies: "_Esperance, esperance!_ Percy, ho, a Percy!" and Hotspur with his Northumbrian archers sweeps to the attack amidst a terrible flight of arrows and of spears. "Play up, sir trumpeter!" shouted Harry of Monmouth, rising in his stirrups. "Play up your answering blast. Shake out our standard free. Now, forward all! Death to traitors! St. George--St. George for England!" "St. George for England!" came the answering echo from King Henry's line; "_Esperance_, Percy!" sounded again from the rebel ranks, and "in a place called Bullfield," both armies closed in conflict. "So furiously, the armies joined," runs the old chronicle: "the arrows fell as fall the leaves on the ground after a frosty night at the approach of winter. There was no room for the arrows to reach the ground; every one struck a mortal man." The first attack was against the king's own ranks. Hotspur, with his Northumbrian arrows, and Douglas, with his Scottish spears, pressed hotly upon them, while Worcester's Cheshire archers from a slope near by sent their whizzing messengers straight into the king's lines. Though answering valiantly, the terrible assault was too severe for the king's men. They wavered, staggered, swayed, and broke--a ringing cheer went up from the enemy, when, just at the critical moment, with an "indignant onset," Harry of Monmouth dashed to his father's aid. His resistless rush changed the tide of battle, and the king's line was saved.