At the time when his father perished at Wakefield, Edward was occupied, by the direction of the former, in raising forces in the marches and the borders of Wales: a district where he had immense patrimonial possessions, and where the circumstance of his being of the lineage of the Mortimers, gave him great sway and influence. He was at Gloucester when he received the account of his father’s death. After having raised a large army, which some writers have stated to have amounted to as many as 23,000 men, he prepared to march against Queen Margaret, and avenge the death of his father. Edward had, according to the accounts given by several of the old historians, proceeded as far as Shrewsbury, when he received tidings, that James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire, {69a} and Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, {69b} half brother to King Henry the Sixth, had assembled a large army of Welsh and Irish, in order to attack him; and Edward, in consequence of that intelligence, {72a} was induced to return promptly in order to encounter them. The two hostile armies met and fought, on Candlemas Day, the 2nd of February, 1461, {72b} in the parish of Kingsland, in Herefordshire, between Leominster and Wigmore, not far from East Hereford, and very near Mortimer’s Cross; {72c} from which place the battle acquired its name. In those days the appearance of so unusual a phenomenon in the sky, as a parhelion, or mock sun, was considered a strange and unheard-of prodigy, which had its weight with ignorant men, as an omen of good or bad fortune, exciting within them either hopes or fears. The rare phenomenon, of the appearance of three suns in the sky, presented itself to view, on the morning of the battle; and, after showing themselves for some time, they suddenly joined and seemed to form one sun. “Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; Not separated by the racking clouds, But sever’d in a pale clear shining sky. See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss, As if they vow’d some league inviolable: Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.” SHAKESPEARE’S _Henry VI._, part iii. act 2, scene 1. (_Near Mortimer’s Cross_.) Edward had the sagacity to affect to believe, or really did believe, that this natural phenomenon {73a} was an omen of his success. He afterwards, in commemoration of it, assumed the sun in its splendour, as his device or badge. {73b}