It is also a well-authenticated historical fact, which has not been disputed by any author, that the Duke of Somerset, John Longstrother the Lord Prior of St. John’s, Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir Gervase Clifton, and other knights and esquires, when the battle was lost, fled to the Abbey of Tewkesbury, and other places in the town. The distance was, as already mentioned, only about half a mile from the rear of the Lancastrian position to the Abbey Church and town; and if Margaret’s forces had not awaited the approach of, and given battle to, the Yorkists on the southward side of Tewkesbury, or, in other words, on the side of the town which the Yorkists must naturally approach on the road from Cheltenham, and with the abbey and the town in the rear of the Lancastrians, it would have been utterly impossible for the fugitives to have fled either to the abbey or town. CHAPTER VIII. THE FIELD OF THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH. {157a} _King Richard_.— “Caparison my horse: Call up Lord Stanley, bid him bring his power: I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain, And thus my battle shall be ordered. My foreward shall be drawn out all in length, Consisting equally of horse and foot; Our archers shall be placed in the midst: John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey, Shall have the leading of this foot and horse. They thus directed, we will follow In the main battle; whose puissance on either side Shall be well winged with our chiefest horse.” SHAKESPEARE’S _Richard III._ act scene 3. (_Bosworth Field_.) ON the 3rd of June, 1856, I visited the celebrated Field of the Battle of Bosworth, {157b} so called from its contiguity to the town of Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire, which is in sight of, and little more than a mile distant from, the field. It is a locality of great interest, from being the place where Richard III., the last of the Plantagenet Kings, {158a} lost his throne and life, on the 22nd of August, 1485, in battle; the result of which placed his rival, Henry Earl of Richmond, {158b} upon the throne of England, by the title of Henry VII. The description of the field and of the battle, given by that painstaking antiquary W. Hutton, F.S.A., is so full, that I am unable to add much to the stock of information on those subjects, which is contained in his interesting work, to which, however, several references will be found in the following pages.