Note 40c — Chapter III · THE FIELD OF THE BATTLE OF NORTHAMPTON. [39a]

Thomas Lord Scales, of Nucels, in Herefordshire, was a commander of celebrity in the French wars. After being compelled to surrender the Tower of London, subsequently to the battle of Northampton, in 1460, he endeavoured to escape by water; but, being discovered by some of the Earl of Warwick’s men, was captured and put to death by them. His daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, was married, first, to Henry Bourchier, second son of Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex; and afterwards to Anthony Wideville or Wodeville, eldest son of Richard Wideville or Wodeville, Earl Rivers, by Jaquette his wife, daughter of Peter of Luxembourg, Earl of St. Paul, and widow of John Duke of Bedford, Regent of France and third son of King Henry IV., who succeeded to the earldom of Rivers after his father’s death. Anthony Wodeville became, in right of his wife Elizabeth (daughter of Thomas Lord Scales), Lord Scales, and afterwards Earl Rivers. He was brother of Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV. (See Fenn’s Collection of Original Letters, vol. i. p. 139, note 3; Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. i. p. 618, vol. iii. pp. 231–233; Catalogue of Nobility, by Ralph Brooke, pp. 193, 194.) He was, when Earl Rivers, beheaded at Pontefract, by order of the Council, during the Protectorate, and, as is believed, at the instigation of Richard Duke of Gloucester, without any trial, on the 13th of June, 1483. Lord Richard Grey (son of the Queen Dowager Elizabeth, by her first husband, Sir John Grey of Groby, son of Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers, of Groby) and Sir Thomas Vaughan were executed there at the same time. The Wodevilles were originally of the Lancastrian party; and Sir John Grey of Groby, the first husband of Elizabeth, lost his life fighting for that party, at the first battle of St. Alban’s, in 1455; but, after Elizabeth’s charms had made a conquest of the heart of Edward, and he had married her, the Wodevilles became staunch Yorkists.