“He continued to enjoy his titles, ranks, and great possessions, until his death, which took place on the 21st of December, 1495. He did not leave any issue, and was interred in the Abbey of Keynsham. Is it possible to find, in the whole history of the English peerage, a nobleman who experienced more strange and astonishing vicissitudes of fortune? Well may it be said that truth is stranger than fiction!”
{ 72a} _Rot. Parl._ 1 Edward IV. (1461), vol. v. fo. 462.
{ 72b} The year, according to the present style, was 1461; but at that time the legal year did not commence until the 25th of March following; and until that day arrived, the then year would be called 1460.
{ 72c} I have three times visited the field of battle of Mortimer’s Cross: viz., in May 1854, May 1855, and May 1856.
{ 73a} On the occasion of my last visit to the field of battle, on the 24th of May, 1856, I witnessed there a rare and very beautiful natural phenomenon; a species of rainbow, of remarkable grandeur, appeared, not as an arch in the sky, as is usual, but forming a splendid and broad border to the horizon, and encircling and appearing to rest with its under edge upon the earth, towards the north, and to touch with its upper edge a canopy of clouds, the darkness of which formed a striking contrast, which set off its brilliant prismatic colours to great advantage. Its beauty and singularity strikingly brought to my mind, the remarkable phenomenon, seen by Edward, on the same spot, so many years before.
{ 73b} Many years afterwards, at the battle of Barnet, Edward’s device was accidentally of great service, because in the mist, the star with rays, the device of the Earl of Oxford, who was fighting on the side of Lancaster, was mistaken for that of Edward, the sun in splendour; and the Lancastrian archers, deceived by the resemblance, shot at the followers of the Earl of Oxford, and the mistake contributed considerably to the loss of the battle by the Lancastrians.
{ 73c} Hall says, “he fiercely set on his enemies, and them shortly discomfited.”
{ 73d} He is called Sir Owen Tudor by Hall, Holinshed, Speed, and Grafton, in their respective accounts of the battle, and he is also so called by Sandford in his _Genealogical History_, p. 297, and Sir Owen ap Merydeth ap Tudor, _ibid._ p. 242, which are certainly high authorities for believing that he was a knight; but Sandford elsewhere calls him “Owen Tudor” only, _ibid._ p. 283, 284. Yet Baker, in the part of his _Chronicles_ in which the marriage of Owen Tudor with Katherine, widow of King Henry V., is mentioned, calls him “Owen Tudor an Esquire of Wales.” He is also called “a Squyer of Wales” in Leland’s _Collectanea_, vol. ii. fo. 492 [708]. Ralph Brooke, in his _Catalogue of the Nobility_, &c., says that Katherine married “a noble Gentleman named Owen Theoder of Wales.” Fabyan, fo. 627, calls him a knyght of Wales.