Some say that this was the last occasion on which the ruby has figured in battle, whilst others are of opinion that so striking a jewel would always have been in the crowns of succeeding monarchs. If this was so another decisive battle, though not on the victorious side, may be added to its war record. A little more than a hundred years after the battle of Agincourt was fought in England another battle of importance, which decided not only a local quarrel, but influenced the course of the history of the nation. In this battle, which was fought at Bosworth Field, Richard III, the Hunchback, was defeated by Henry Tudor. According to the well-known story, when the tide of battle turned against him, Richard, who had worn his crown throughout the day, though probably behind a safe barbed wire of knights, was seized with panic, and to ensure a less conspicuous retreat, took off his crown and hid it in a hawthorn bush. There some lucky underling, doubtless in quest of loot, found it in good and appropriate season, so that the victorious army was through its appointed leaders enabled to crown there and then, amidst the dead and dying, Henry VII King of England. Let us hope that the great ruby was in the crown on this historic occasion, for it was the birth of the House of Tudor. Henry VII was the issue of a romance nearly connected with the Black Prince, and through him with the ruby. When Henry V died, Katherine, his widow, having first tasted of royalty, became a mere woman, and for love of a mere man married a plain but stalwart soldier from the ranks named Owen Tudor. It was their grandson who was the victor at Bosworth, and who was there crowned Henry VII. The next recorded adventure of the great ruby came more than a century later, though doubtless if it could speak it would have much to say of what it saw or suffered during those hundred and sixty-four intervening years. When Charles I was beheaded, it was ordered by Parliament that all the insignia of royalty should be destroyed and the gems set therein sold to the best advantage. In the list which we have of the Regalia, which was in accordance with this order totally destroyed, defaced, or sold, we find the item: “To one large ballas ruby wraped in paper value £4.” Thus humbly disguised and lowly priced the Black Prince’s ruby passed to some unknown purchaser. He may have been a Royalist in disguise, or he may have been a dealer in stones, or this may have been a spurious deal to favour a Parliamentarian whom it was wished to gratify; perchance even it passed by favour to a fair lady beloved of a Roundhead. But whatever its adventures during the Commonwealth era, we find the ruby safe and sound back in the State Crown of Charles II.