The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses Black Arrow" appeared in "Young Folks" (October 1883): The Battle of Shoreby, a fictitious battle that is the main event of Book 5, is modelled after the First Battle of St Albans in the Wars of the Roses. This battle in history as in the novel was a victory for the House of York. The presence of an abbey church in Shoreby is reminiscent of the abbey church of Tewkesbury to which the Lancastrians fled for sanctuary after the battle on 4 May 1471. In the "prologue" Stevenson intimates that the Tunstall of "The Black Arrow" is a real place:
English overseas possessions in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms English overseas possessions in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms Between 1639 and 1651 English overseas possessions were involved in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars and wars that were fought in and between England, Scotland and in Ireland. At the beginning of the war, fifty thousand Englishmen inhabited some twenty colonies in the Americas. Most of the colonies were founded in the decade prior to the start of the English Civil War (1642–1651) with the oldest existing being the Colony of Virginia (1607). The vast majority of the adult population were first generation settlers