In 1466, Lord de Vesci died, and Lady Clifford, as his heiress, succeeded to his estates, when a rumour reached Londesborough from the Court that the King suspected that the children were in concealment there, upon which Lady Clifford sent the shepherd, with his wife and young Henry, to a farm in a remote and wild part of Cumberland, where there were few inhabitants, and no roads upon which passengers would travel, excepting from one sheep track to another. In this lonely solitude, tending his sheep on the bleak hills, Henry grew up from boyhood to youth, and from youth to manhood--a mere shepherd and little more. His fare was that of an ordinary peasant--oaten or rye bread, occasionally swine flesh, and water from the running brook. His bed consisted of sheepskins on a heap of straw, and his shelter from the inclemency of the weather a straw-thatched cottage. He associated with the few scattered people of the district as one of themselves, and joined the young men in the rude sports of the period. He grew up without any education whatever, and knew neither how to read nor write; yet he had a soul attuned to higher things, and when abroad at night with his sheep would observe the constellations in the heavens, and weave theories in his own mind relative to the origin, motions, and uses of the glittering specks which studded the firmament over his head, a study which he afterwards pursued with more intelligence, in company with the Canons of Bolton at Barden Tower. Thus he lived until his thirty-second year, thinking only to live and die a Cumberland shepherd, and possibly to marry, and be the progenitor of a race of peasants, who should have no reminiscences of the glories of Skipton, or the martial deeds of their illustrious ancestors. The political world of England, however, had not stood still in the interval, mighty events had been taking place. Edward, the King, had been gathered to his fathers, after the judicial murder of his brother, the Duke of Clarence. His sons, Edward V. and the Duke of York, were murdered by their uncle, Richard of Gloucester, who usurped the throne. Henry, Earl of Richmond, with Lancastrian blood in his veins, invaded England, and the battle of Bosworth was fought in the year 1485, when the usurper Richard was slain, and Richmond ascended the throne as King Henry VII.