near him the Earl of Northumberland and
Lord Clifford. The Lancastrians, flying through
the gardens, left their king almost alone under
his standard. The arrows driving round him
"as thick as snow," he was wounded, and had to
take refuge in a baker's shop, where the Duke
of York came on his knees to beg forgiveness,
assuring him that now Somerset was dead
all would be well. "For God's sake stop the
slaughter of my subjects!" said the humbled
king. York, with feigned deference, led the
king by the hand, first, to the shrine of St.
Albans, then to his apartments in the abbey.
"Many a tall man was that day slain," says
Grafton the chronicler. Historians differ (they
often do differ) about the number. Hall says
eight thousand; Stowe five thousand; Crane,
in a letter to one of the Pastons, six score;
William Stonor, steward of the abbey, the best
authority, deposes only to the burial of forty-
eight.

King Henry, who had early in his reign
visited St. Albans, and granted a charter of
privilege to the abbey, visited Hertfordshire
again in the Easter of 1458. At his departure
the careless king ordered his best robe to be
given to the prior. The royal treasurer,
however, knowing the king's poverty, redeemed
the robe for fifty marks. The king unwillingly
yielded to this prudent arrangement, but
charged the prior to follow him to London for
the money, which he insisted on personally
seeing paid.

In 1461, the storm of war again broke on St.
Albans. This time, the death of York had
roused both sides to the utmost ferocity. Leaving
over York-gate the head of York crowned
with paper, the savage queen had marched
to London to release her husband from the
grip of Warwick, who was acting as regent in
the absence of the young Duke of York
(afterwards Edward the Fourth), in Wales. The
queen encamped north of the town. The
king-maker posted his sturdy archers thick
round the great cross in the market place.
The Lancastrians came swarming on through
a lane into St. Peter's-street; and Warwick's
men, being unsupported, were forced back to
Barnet-heath, where the vanguard was
encamped. The Yorkist Londoners soon fell
back before the strong northern men from
the Cumberland mountains and the Yorkshire
fells. Lovelace and the City bands remained
neutral. At the approach of night the Yorkists
fled, leaving the almost imbecile king cowering
in his tent with only two or three attendants.
A faithful servant ran to tell Lord Clifford, and
presently the queen flew into her husband's
arms. Proudly showing her son, the young
prince, who had been by her side through all
the battle, Margaret requested Henry to at
once knight him, and fifty more of the bravest
of his adherents. This done, the king, queen,
and all the northern nobles went in procession
to the abbey, tattered and bloodstained as they
were, to return thanks to God for the king's
deliverance. The abbot and monks received
them with hymns of triumph and wafts of
incense at the church door. Two or three
thousand men fell in this battle, and the queen,
brutalised and driven mad by her persecutors,
ordered Lord Bonville and Sir Thomas Kyriel,
two Yorkists, in defiance of the king's
promises, to be beheaded, in the presence of
herself and child. After this second battle of St.
Albans, Queen Margaret's troops plundered
the town. When Edward the Fourth ascended
the throne, the royal displeasure fell on St.
Albans as a Lancastrian foundation; the wise
abbot Wheathamstead, however, averted the
wrath of the new king, and obtained the
confirmation of his charter.

To Gorhambury-park, in June, 1621, retired
the owner of the stately house, now a ruin, the
disgraced Lord Chancellor Bacon. He had
pleaded guilty to twenty-three charges of
bribery. In one case he had received from a
suitor gold buttons worth fifty pounds; in
another case, a rich cabinet, valued at eight
hundred pounds; in a third, a diamond ring,
costing five or six hundred pounds; in a fourth,
a suit of hangings, worth one hundred and sixty
pounds. From some London apothecaries he
accepted ambergris and a gold taster, and he
took from certain French merchants one thousand
pounds. The defence set up for these acts
is this: it was the custom at that time all over
Europe to make such presents to judges. In
nearly all the cases the presents were made
after the suits were decided, and in many cases
the presents were received by Bacon's servants
without his knowledge. The Chancellor himself
always adhered to this line of defence. He
wrote, on his fall, to his royal master: "This
is my last suit that I shall make to your majesty
in this business, prostrating myself at your
mercy-seat after fifteen years' service, wherein
I have served your majesty in my poor endeavours
with an entire heart, and, as I presume to
say unto your majesty, am still a virgin in
matters that concern your person or crown, and
now craving that, after eight steps of honour, I
be not precipitated altogether.

And Bacon says again in another letter:

"For the briberies and gifts, wherewith I
am charged, when the book of hearts shall be
opened, I hope I shall not be found to have
the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart in a
depraved habit by taking rewards to pervert
justice, howsoever I may be frail and partake
of the abuses of the times."

And he wrote to Buckingham, with all the
boldness of innocence: "However I have
acknowledged that the sentence is just, and for
reformation sake fit, I have been a trusty, and
honest, and Christ-loving friend of your lordship,
and the justest chancellor that hath been
in the five changes since my father's time."

Fined forty thousand pounds, sent to the
Tower, though but for a short time, and
deprived of the Great Seal, Bacon exiled at
Gorhambury, has left a record of his own feelings
in that solitude. He calls himself, touchingly,
"old, weak, ruined, in want, and a very
subject of pity." He longs for York House in
the Strand or Gray's Inn, where he might