The Rose of Rouen would northern lords over-run the south, but more, that "they would then live in it and take what they needed including wives and daughters." This is the fate, says the poem, that Edward of York saved England from. Like other political poetry of the period, it is careful to identify its protagonists by their cognizances rather than naming them: Edward, of course, is a white rose, his father Richard of York, Duke of York, is a falcon and fetterlock, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick a ragged staff, his uncle William Neville, Lord Fauconberg a fish hook, and John Mowbray, Duke
To the Rose upon the Rood of Time Rood of Time” is firstly one that is constant, binding past and present through its spiritual and romantic referents. Stephen Coote notes that the rose on the rood was a symbol worn around the neck of those belonging to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: the “female” rose is impaled upon the “male” cross. The union of these two elements was intended to help the wearer transcend beyond the physical and into the spiritual: “the rose could also be seen as intellectual, spiritual and eternal beauty impaled upon the world and suffering with mankind as transcendence becomes immanence." As