Norfolk should have commanded the van, but, seized with a sudden sickness, he had remained at Pontefract with the rear-guard. His orders were to bring forward his command, with any reinforcements that might reach him. Edward anxiously awaited his arrival. The battle raged for hours; the imprisoned peasantry in Saxton Church fearfully awaited the end; and Edward was scarcely less anxious, for the murderous butchery of the hand-to-hand fight favoured neither army. Norfolk was steadily marching through the wintery weather with his hardy soldiers, and messenger after messenger reached him requesting him to hurry up the reserves. The form of battle was lost, as the two hosts were locked in the sanguinary struggle. The dark and stormy day was glooming to a wild and early night, when a louder tumult of battle rose on the Lancastrian left flank at North Acres. Norfolk was on the field, and had struck his enemy. The Lancastrians could not bear up under the augmented storm, and the retreat commenced. In the confusion the retiring wings struck each other, and the difficulties of the position were increased. Edward urged his infuriated soldiery to unsparing vengeance, and the Lancastrians turned again and again upon their pursuers. Ere they reached the river Cock--a tributary of the Wharfe--the Lancastrian army had merged into a dense and tumultuary crowd of fugitives, upon whose flank and rear the Yorkists hung with the blood-thirsty fury of barbarians. On reaching the stream the massacre became frightful, and the waters were tinged with gore and darkened with the slain, and are stated to have communicated their dreadful burthen and sanguinary stains to the Wharfe. For three days the Lancastrians were hunted out and butchered by the victors. On the gloomy night of that fatal 29th of March, 1461, a stormy rout of knights and men-at-arms urged their jaded war-horses through the narrow streets of York, calling loudly upon the King and Queen to mount in hot haste and ride for their lives. That night the King and Queen, with the young prince, rode through Bootham, through the gloom of Galtres forest, fugitives, _en route_ for Scotland. The total loss was computed at 40,000 souls, the Lancastrians being heavily in excess. The death-roll contains the names of the Earls of Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Shrewsbury; of Lords Dacres and Wells, and Sir Andrew Trollope. At York Edward executed the Earls of Devonshire and Ormond, Sir Baldwin Fulford, Sir William Talboys, and Sir William Hill. The Earl of Wiltshire suffered at Newcastle on the 1st of May. The heads of York and Salisbury were replaced by those of Devonshire and Hill. According to tradition, "The Lord Dacres was slain in Nor-acres." Having removed his gorget he was shot in the throat by the cross-bow bolt of a lad lurking behind a burtree, or elder-bush.