Thus far for the coming of the knight; our next care will be to trace, as far as means available enable us, his progress and actions during the eventful days in which he lived. The strife between the contending factions of the Red and White Roses, in his younger years was strongly predominant, and so thoroughly had the fierce rivalry for supreme power permeated society, that probably it was almost impossible to remain neutral, while men so blindly, yet withal so devotedly, risked their lives and fortunes in partizanship with the contending claimants of the divine right. To choose a side was an absolute necessity,-- "Under which king, Bezonian? speak or die!" was the question of the hour, and had to be answered with all its contingent risk. In the west country the adherents of the Red Rose seemed to have the preponderance, the detestable craft and cruelty of Richard III. doubtless had its effect of estranging from sympathy with him, all except just those who were allied to his rule by the hollow tie of self-interest, and the usual glamour of adhering to the powers that be, no matter how arrived at or constituted, or what its actions were. The first important social function we find Sir Robert Willoughby discharging, is that of Sheriff of Devon, 21 Edward IV., 1481, being the year preceding the one in which his friend Sir Giles Daubeney held the same office. And then, in harmony with the prevailing distracted state of public affairs we have described, we next observe him in active sympathy with the claims of the Red Rose, and consequent enlistment in the cause of Richmond of York, in the company of a large number of west country gentlemen, the Marquis of Dorset (representative of Bonville), Giles Daubeney, the Courtenays, John Cheney, Walter Hungerford, and others, in their rising and march to Salisbury, in order to effect a junction with, and aid the movement in Wales of the ill-fated Duke of Buckingham, in 1483. But the extraordinary swollen state of the Severn--"an inundation so remarkable that for a hundred years afterward it was called the _Great Water_, or _Buckingham's Water_, said to have lasted ten days, and that men, women, and children were carried away in their beds by the violence of it"--placed a barrier between their forces from effecting a junction, leaving the unfortunate Stafford in Richard's power, who forthwith consigned him to the scaffold at Salisbury, and sent Sir Robert and his companions in speedy flight to the south coast, and thence 'beyond seas' over to Richmond in Brittany, thereby escaping a similar sanguinary fate, which would have been remorselessly meted out to them. For this defection his lands were seized, and Broke and Suthwyke were bestowed by Richard on his favourite Sir Richard Radcliffe.