YORK AND LANCASTER NOSE. 59 
It is with a sense of immense relief that we see in the 
death of Richard ILI. the end of the sanguinary struggle, 
and most happily does that tremendous work close with 
the healing words of Henry VII., when upon Bosworth 
Field he declares— 
“The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead |” 
and crowns the victory with an act of clemency and an 
expression of pious hope— 
‘““Proelaim a pardon to the soldicrs fled, 
That in submission will return to us ; 
And then, as we have ta’en the sacrament, 
We will unite the white rose and the red, 
Smile, Heaven, upon this fair conjunction, 
That long hath trown’d upon their enmity! 
What traitor hears me, and says not Amen +” 
Returning to our flower, it will be observed that we 
have wandered far away from it, for the Wars of the Roses 
were represented by a white rose for Lancaster and a red 
rose for York. And what may they have been? In 
Shakespeare’s time there were probably many kinds of 
roses in the Temple Gardens, but it was not so in the 
days of the Plantagenets. Then, in all probability, the 
only roses known in gardens were the wild roses of the 
woods. Supposing the scene which Shakespeare has so 
filled with the reality of life to be, not a creation of his 
own, but a scrap of genuine history, then we can find 
no other roses for the partisans than those described by 
Chaucer as— 
“The bramble flour that bereth the red hepe ;” 
that is, the dog rose, the “canker of the hedge,” which 
gives in one thicket flowers of the most delicate rosy-pink 
hue, and in another flowers of the purest white. They 
