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Home  »  library  »  prose  »  Henry de Essex, Standard-Bearer to Henry II.

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Henry de Essex, Standard-Bearer to Henry II.

By Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)

From ‘The Worthies of England’

IT happened in the reign of this King, there was a fierce battle fought in Flintshire in Coleshall, between the English and Welsh, wherein this Henry de Essex, animum et signum simul abjecit,—betwixt traitor and coward,—cast away both his courage and banner together, occasioning a great overthrow of English. But he that had the baseness to do, had the boldness to deny, the doing of so foul a fact, until he was challenged in combat by Robert de Momford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon his large inheritance was confiscated to the King, and he himself, partly thrust, partly going, into a convent, hid his head in a cowl, under which, between shame and sanctity, he blushed out the remainder of his life.