Excerpt from The Battles of Wakefield: An Historical Narrative of the Battle of Wakefield in 1460; Also, an Account of the Engagement on Wakefield Green, in 1643

Gained a signal trimph over the House of York. On that field fell the great Duke of York, and his second son, the Earl of Rutland, was mercilessly butchered while attempting to escape from the scene of his father's defeat. It might be better in some respects that the records of war - and especially civil war should be obliterated from the page of History. It is not pleasant to remember that our forefathers were engaged in deadly feud against each other; that some quiet locality where corn is now growing, or sheep grazing, was once the spot on which armies met, and thousands of brave men perished in the battle. But there is a moral to be obtained from even such unpleasant remembrances as these. We rejoice that the times are gone when the English crown was an object of contention to the leading houses of the realm, and that in our day it rests so securely upon the head of one who has shewn herself so fit to wear it. We rejoice that Queen Victoria has no need, like Queen Margaret, to put herself at the head of an army to oppose the preten sions of some other aspirant to the throne. We lament the fact, that in the times of Queen Margaret the English people were regarded as the mere prey of those who could gain the rule over them - to do them feudal service - to pay them heavy taxes - and to fight for them, against their brothers and their friends. We lament the fact that a quarrel about the succession between rival princes should have involved our country in all the miseries of a lengthened civil war. We live in a better era, and we read the story of the.

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