having seen indeed but little, but having learned from fugitives
that we had been defeated. He guided me to the farmhouse, which
otherwise I should assuredly never have reached. His master
was favourable to our party, and let the man take one of the cart
horses, on which he rode as my guide until he had placed me upon
the high road to St. Albans, and I was then able to gallop on at
full speed."

"And Warwick and his brother Montague are both killed?"

"Both. The great Earl will make and unmake no more kings. He has
been a curse to England, with his boundless ambition, his vast
possessions, and his readiness to change sides and to embroil the
country in civil war for purely personal ends. The great nobles
are a curse to the country, wife. They are, it is true, a check
upon kingly ill doing and oppression; but were they, with their
great arrays of retainers and feudal followers, out of the way,
methinks that the citizens and yeomen would be able to hold their
own against any king."

"Was the battle a hard fought one?"

"I know but little of what passed, except near the standard of
Warwick himself. There the fighting was fierce indeed, for it was
against the Earl that the king finally directed his chief onslaught.
Doubtless he was actuated both by a deep personal resentment
against the Earl for the part he had played and the humiliation
he had inflicted upon him, and also by the knowledge that a defeat
of Warwick personally would be the heaviest blow that he could
inflict upon the cause of Lancaster."