heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

270 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
The great dramatist of Stratford has vividly portrayed this scene
(Henry VI. part iii., Act i. Sc. 2). Rutland speaks, as the soldiers are
approaching,
"Ah! whither shall I fly to escape
Ah !
their hands?
tutor, see where bloody Clifford comes !
Enter Clifford and soldiers.
"Clifford.
Chaplain, away! thy priesthood saves thy life.
As for the brat of this accursed Duke,
'Whose father slew my father, he shall die.
"Tutor. Ah! Clifford, murder not this innocent child,
Lest thou be hated both of God and man."
The youth pleads with Clifford to spare
his life:
"Ah! gentle Clifford, kill me with thy sword,
And not with such a cruel, threatening look.
Sweet Clifford, hear me speak before I die ;
O, let me pray before I take my death,
To thee I
pray ; sweet Clifford, spare me."
He reminds him of his own one son, and implores him, as he desires
God's blessing on him, to spare his life, but in vain. The savage answer
is returned, " Thy father slew my father, therefore die."
I am afraid that Shakespeare in these words only too faithfully
idealized the wanton cruelty of this passionate, revengeful act, of which
the cutting off of the Duke of York's head and placing
it on Micklegate
Bar encircled with a paper crown was but a natural sequel, and far more
likely to be his act than, as Shakespeare represents it, the act of Queen
Margaret.
Clifford's
own end came soon, for, on the eve of the battle of Towton
he was slain by a bird-bolt in the neck, in a skirmish at Dinting Dale.
Truly, as the old chronicler says of him " For this act was Lord
:
Clifford accounted a tyrant and no gentleman."
It was a black deed, even
according to the standard of those days, and " Blackfaced Clifford " was
the title not unjustly bestowed.
His son Henry was spared the divine retribution which poor young
Rutland had forecasted for him, and
his mother while still
carried off by
a child, to Threlkeld, in Cumberland, the residence of her second husband,
Sir Lancelot Threlkeld his very existence was carefully concealed ; and,
placed under the charge of the shepherds, he grew up in the rank of a
simple shepherd, ignorant of his title and possessions, a stranger to the
luxuries and pleasures of his rank, inured to hardships and privations,
and utterly unlearned, except in the book of nature always before him.
Wordsworth thus describes him :