Before however this could be accomplished, the energetic Margaret, flushed with success, and hurrying southward in hope to secure the metropolis, was upon him; and the furious battle of St. Albans on the 18 Feb., 1460-1, was the result. There she at first received a check, but by turning the position she fell on Warwick's army, and the combat was carried on over the undulating country, between St. Albans and Barnet, in which two thousand Yorkists are said to have perished. At nightfall, Warwick found himself beaten at all points, and made precipitate retreat, leaving the King, who was accompanying the army as a prisoner, behind.
It would require no seer to divine the vindictive thoughts of Margaret, on regaining possession of her captive husband, and the consummate danger environing those in whose custody she found him, whether for preservation or otherwise. The Queen and her son discovered the helpless man in his tent with one personal attendant only, Lord Montague his Chamberlain. But there were at least two other distinguished men near, who were said to have remained to guard him from the lawless soldiery, one was the brave Sir Thomas Kyriel, and the other Lord Bonville. Both could doubtless have fled with the rest of the fugitives, had they been so minded, but it is recorded, that out of chivalrous feelings, when urged by the King to remain by him and protect him, they did so, under the assurance from him that their lives should be preserved.
A fatally hazardous undertaking in those days of merciless reprisals, and so it turned out. Whatever the well-meaning King may have promised and perhaps really wished, his wife, the determined Margaret, was the "master of the situation," and the arbiter of their destiny; nor was she probably wanting in prompters calculated to urge her to wreak the worst vengeance upon her husband's guardians. However that may be, it is recorded, that as she turned from the battle-field in the evening, she left orders for their decapitation the next day, and the barbarous sentence was promptly carried out.
"Sir _Thomas Kiriell_ was beheaded with the Lord _Bouvile_ the day after the second battell at _St. Albons_, in the raigne of king Henry the sixth: or slain in the battell according to John Harding.