Treachery of this kind was not likely to be lightly passed over by Edward, justly angry at the defeat of his army, and ingratitude of the man he had so recently honoured. Orders were sent to the Sheriffs of Somerset and Devon to seize Stafford wherever they could find him, and put him to immediate death. The Earl had returned to Somerset, he was taken at the village of Brentmarsh, promptly conveyed to Bridgwater, and there at once beheaded in the market-place on the 17 Aug., 1469. His body was conveyed to Glastonbury, and buried under the south arch of the great tower, at the cross of the Abbey Church. He had made his will some years before, bearing date 3 September, 1463, wherein he "_bequeathed his body to be buried in the Church of our Lady at Glastonbury, and appointed Mr. Michael Goss, and Mr. Watts, then Wardens of the Grey Friars in Exeter, should for the salvation of his soul, go to every parish church, in the counties of_ _Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, Devon, and Cornwall, and say a sermon in every church, and town, and other. And because he could not recompense such whom he had offended, he desired them to forgive his poor soul, that it might not be in danger_" (Dugdale). So perished Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, still quite a young man, for he could not have been more than thirty years of age,--"he enjoyed," continues Cleaveland, "but a little time that honour and estate which he got by procuring the death of its right owner, and he was in derision called _The Earl of three months standing and no more_." The Earl married Isabel daughter of Sir John Barry, knt.,--and after his death she remarried with Sir Thomas Bourchier, knt., fifth son of Henry Bourchier, second Earl of Ewe, and 30 June, 1461, created Earl of Essex, who was also Lord Treasurer of England, and who died in 1483,--by his wife Isabel, daughter of Richard, Duke of York, and sister to King Edward IV., another strange conjunction, her thus marrying a nephew of the man who had so vindictively beheaded her first husband. But sentiment had little place in those days; ambition, station, and love of rule were the things sought after, all else seems to have been forgotten. Weever gives the following inscription as occurring in the church of Ware, Herts, where both herself and second husband appear to have been buried,-- =Hic iacet Thomas Bourchier miles filius Henrici comitis Essex; ac Isabella uxor eius nuper comitissa Devon, filia et heres Johannis Barry militis: qui obiit ... 1491 et Isabella ob. 1 die Marcij 1488, quorum animabus &c.= Whereon the old 'epitaphist' is induced to further moralize,--