This is part 4 of my escapist attempt to give the history of the Wars of the Roses. Those who are tired of present politics may find the politics of England 550 years ago to be entertaining. Or not.
No prior knowledge required!
Part 1 showed the roots of the conflict arose in a disputed succession, a lost foreign war, and a weak king.
Part 2 covered the initial combat in 1455, followed by an uneasy peace until 1459, when hostilities were renewed.
Part 3 covered the rapid changes of fortune from the fall of 1459 to early 1461, which left the rebel Yorkists in control of the country, and the disposed Lancastrians largely in exile or in custody.
The war in the north
From 1461 to 1464, the Lancastrians, based in Scotland, and, sometimes in France, kept on a struggle in the Northumberland region, the part of England that is closest to the Scots border. The strategic keys to this region were four castles along the North Sea coast: Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh, Alnwick and Warkworth. These castles changed hands a number of times, mostly on account of treachery or surrender; sieges were rare. In 1464, the Yorkists won two final victories over the Lancastrians, at Hedgeley Moor, on 25 Apr 1464, and at Hexham on 15 May 1464.
Flight of Queen Margaret and Capture of Henry VI.
the Lancastrian Queen consort Margaret Anjou (1430-1482) and her son, Edward Westminster, had sailed to France in the fall of 1463. In 1465 the Yorkists captured the fugitive Lancastrian king, Henry VI (Windsor) (b1421; reigned 1422-1450 and 1470-1471); and brought back to London, where he was held in captivity for the next 5 years. Henry's wife, So long as Margaret and the Prince of Wales were at liberty, the House of York dared not execute Henry VI (actually the more likely method of killing would have been secret murder) for if they did so, the Lancastrians abroad would declare his son as king.
The war in Wales
Similar to the situation in Northumberland, the Lancastrians had strong support among the local populations in Wales. Again, a njmber of fortresses initially resisted the Yorkists, but by 1462, only Harlech Castle, standing on a cliff overlooking the Irish Sea, still held out. (The siege of Harlech lasted seven years, until 1468, and is believed to have been the longest siege in the British Isles.)
Kingmaker
In 1464, with the elimination of the Lancastrian resistance in Northumberland, and the capture of King Henry VI (Windsor), the Yorkists first came into undisputed power. The Yorkists were not however a monolithic party. The King, Edward Plantagenet, reigning as Edward IV of England, (b.1442; reigned 1461-1470 and 1471-1483), was a proven battle leader at age 22. A handsome man who stood 6'4” tall, he must have been much like his famous grandson Henry VIII (b1492; reigned 1509-1547), at least during Henry's younger days, except that Edward never grew into a paranoid monster like Henry. In fact, one of Edward's great weaknesses was his apparently inability to hold a grudge.
A close supporter of the King was Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (1429-1471), known to history as the Kingmaker. Warwick was not himself considered to be of royal blood, although he was a close relative of the King (Warwick's father and Edward's mother were brother and sister.). And the common circumstances of war had driven them together; for example after the Lancastrian victory at Wakefield on 30 Dec 1460, both of their father's heads had been impaled on spikes and set atop Micklegate Bar at the entrance to the city of York. Warwick, enormously rich, was the classic example of the "overmighty subject." Warwick had no sons, but he did have two daughters who were approaching marriage age (at least as that was viewed in the 1400s). By 1465 or so it appears Warwick was scheming to marry them to princes of royal blood.
Marriage of the king.
By 1464, with the Lancastrian resistance almost vanquished, and with the Lancastrian king a prisoner in his hands from 1465 on, Edward IV, then only 22 years old, was the most eligible bachelor in England. Now, in those times, commoners were free to marry whom they might chose. But nobles, and especially royals, were expected to marry someone with, oh, huge tracts of land. And Warwick, the de facto prime minister, was busy negotiating a marriage with a French princess. When Warwick told the king that he was about to complete the negotiations successfully, the king gave him the shocking news that he was already married !
The king it turns out, had married in secret a commoner, Elizabeth Woodville (1437-1492), who was not only 5 years older than the king, but who had two sons already by her first husband, who had been killed fighting on the Lancastrian side. And worse yet, she had 12 (yes 12) brothers and sisters, all unmarried, whom she wanted to marry up into the upper ranks of the nobility with the unstated but palpable pressure of the King's displeasure should anyone decline such a marriage.
Just what Warwick said when he heard about this marriage has been lost to history, however one suspects it must have been something like:
Holy Freakin' Moley!
Pornography 1460s-style (Hot, hot hot! -- hide the kiddies, Ethel!)
At the time, nobody could quite figure out what the King was doing. No one could ever remember a King marrying a commoner (mistresses were quite another thing!) and indeed it appears that nothing of the kind had ever occurred at least since the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066.
It seems pretty clear that Edward loved Elizabeth, or at least lusted after her. By all accounts she was reckoned to be a beautiful woman.
In such pass time, in most secret manner, upon the first day of May, King Edward spoused Elizabeth, late the wife of Sir John Grey, knight, which before time was slain at Towton or York field [actually it was at Second St. Albans] which spousals were solemnised early in the morning at a town named Grafton, near Stony Stratford; at which marriage was no persons present but the spouse, spousess, the Duchess of Bedford her mother, the priest, two gentle-women, and a young man to help the priest sing. After which spousals ended he went to bed and tarried thereupon three or four hours, and after departed and rode again to Stony Stratford, and came in manner as though he had been on hunting and there went to bed again.
"Tarried thereupon for three or four hours" -- I swooneth !
But the king of course could (and very often did) have his pick of the women of the kingdom, so there must have been something else going on. In those days, there was much speculation. Some say that Elizabeth, much like Ann Boleyn, refused to be bedded by the King unless and until she was actually married. There doesn't seem to be much evidence for this. Others said that Elizabeth, inveigled the King by witchcraft.
On balance, it seems to me that (a) the King truly did love Elizabeth and (b) he saw in the avaricious (and numerous) Woodvilles an opportunity to counter the great power of the Nivelles. Edward would not have been so stupid as to think he could marry Elizabeth Woodville and not grant preferment to her relatives.
Warwick's bid for power.
Elizabeth bore children to the King, but no sons, at least not for some time. So long as no son was born, the king's brother, George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, (1449-1478) was the heir to the throne, it then being thought not possible for a woman to become queen regnant. Clarence, as he was known, was an upper class twit who really thought that he should be king, and not his brother Edward. By 1467, Clarence's much older, and far more wily first cousin Warwick was filling Clarence's rather empty head with dreams of the crown.
In 1469, certain uprisings began in the country, these were led by two mysterious figures, Robin of Redesdale and Robin of Holderness. ("Robin" was then a by-name for "rebel"). The King managed to capture and behead Robin of Holderness, but Robin of Redesdale, active in the north, was giving him more difficulty. The King organized a military expedition to march north to deal with the rebels. Marching north, by 10 Jul 1469, the King had reached Newark, in Nottinghamshire.
Military coup.
By the end of June, 1469, Warwick's plans had come to a head. Warwick had persuaded Clarence to marry his daughter Isabella, which probably wasn't that hard, since Isabella, jointly with her sister Anne, was possibly the richest heiress in the kingdom. Warwick, Clarence, Isabella and others then took ship to Calais (then an English position under Warwick's control), where, on 11 Jul 1469, Clarence was married to Isabella, with full legal formalities so that there could be no doubt as to the validity of the marriage. All this of course was high treason.
Warwick and the rest of the plotters then returned to Kent, where Warwick was using his enormous resources as well as whatever the 1469 version of a Rolodex was to raise a substantial force capable of taking and holding London. These forces met Warwick at Canterbury, and he then moved north to London, proclaiming that he was only a loyal subject of the King Edward. Of course there would have been many then who would have recalled the summer of 1460 when Warwick had similarly come from Calais with an army, and likewise claimed to be a loyal subject King Henry VI, whom he not long later had been instrumental in deposing from power.
Warwick prevails in battle with royal army.
Warwick was able to talk his way into London with his army, and meanwhile Robin of Redesdale, who was in fact an agent of Warwick's, was moving south towards the King. Edward was expecting reinforcements which never arrived. These forces clashed at Edgecote Field on 26 Jul 1469, with the King however being separate from his army at Nottingham, where he was apparently expecting reinforcements to arrive. Not as much is known about the details of the battle of Edgecote Field, but the net result was that the Royal army was destroyed. After the battle, Warwick, without even the pretense of legality, had two of the captured royal commanders beheaded.
This left King Edward without an army to withstand Warwick's forces, and he was practically deserted by all but a few of his most loyal supporters. Remaining with Edward were his brother, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, and Lord Hastings. (We shall hear much of them in the next part of this series.) Left with no real choice, Edward then surrendered to the “protection” of Warwick, who, continuing his reign as capo di tutti capi, was able, in August, to run down and execute two of the senior Woodvilles, his most hated enemies.
Warwick then had under his control two kings, Edward IV, and the man Edward had overthrown, Henry VI. He also had married his daughter to the heir, Clarence. This was an situation without precedent in English history. Warwick was sitting in fabled catbird seat.
The Wheel of Fortune.
The people of the middle ages had a fascination with a philosophical concept called the wheel of fortune, where those at the top might end on the bottom as fortune's wheel spin round. As it happened, in the 1460s, the jailbird Sir Thomas Malory was busy writing his masterpiece Le Morte d'Arthur, a work whose central theme is fortune's wheel, from the birth of Sir Tristam to the betrayal and death (or was it?) of King Arthur. The events in the 18 months from late 1469 to early 1471 were a classic illustration of fortune's wheel.
Warwick tried to rule as using Edward as a puppet king as the Yorkists had done with King Henry. This didn't work, as Edward was by no means as pliable as his predecessor. Meanwhile a variety of feuds among the aristocracy brought out, which include sieges of each other's castles and so forth, all of which the King was supposed to prevent or mediate. Meanwhile some of Warwick's Neville relatives on the Lancastrian side were stirring up trouble in Northumberland. Their family relationship to Warwick did not prevent him from having the rebel leaders executed once they were captured. With no one willing to follow Warwick's orders, England was falling into chaos.
Warwick releases the King from "protective custody".
Warwick felt compelled to release King Edward from “protection” by mid-September 1469. The King then returned to London and resumed active rule. Astoundingly, King Edward did not seem to be immediately interested in taking action against Warwick, who, in taking up arms against the King, killing the king's officers and the Queen's kinsmen, and imprisoning the King himself, had committed treason in its purest form. Instead, the king, outwardly at least, talked in a conciliatory way and held, from November 1469 through March 1470 a series of meetings. Warwick's position was still very strong. With no son born to the King and Queen, and his daughter married to the malleable heir male Clarence, Warwick still stood a good chance of coming into control of the kingdom.
A second military confrontation between the Yorkists.
In March 1470 came the Lincolnshire rebellion which arose out of a complicated feud going being the local landowners. One side looked to Warwick for assistance, and this was all it took for the Kingmaker to seize the opportunity to use the unrest as an excuse to call up an army with the ultimate objective of fighing King Edward. Outwardly however, Edward treated both Warwick and Clarence as loyal and they in turn proclaimed their loyalty to him. King Edward moved north from London on 9 Mar 1470 to put down the rebellion. Warwick and Clarence were then ensconced in the town of Warwick. They begin to raise forces, although not as effectively as they wished, and advanced towards Lincolnshire on roads roughly parallel to the King's army, again, ostensibly with the common objective of putting down the rebellion, which of course Warwick was in fact planning to join as soon as was politic.
On 12 Mar 1470, the King's forces met the Lincolnshire rebels at the town of Eppingham. The King's army was victorious, with the battle becoming known with the punning name of “Lose-cote Field” on account of all the equipment abandoned on the field by the rebels as they fled. Edward then send a message to Warwick, informing him of the victory and summoning Warwick and Clarence to come to the King, without their army. Warwick maintained the pretense, congratulated the King on the victory, but meanwhile made excuses for not immediately hastening to the King's presence. In fact Warwick was trying to raise more forces to oppose the King, but following a complicated series of maneuvers and messages, it turned out that Warwick and Clarence felt they had no other choice but to flee.
Warwick and Clarence in desperate flight.
Warwick was in a desperate situation. He and Clarence sought help from various sources, but ultimately no lord was willing to assist Warwick so long as King Edward was pursuing him. Warwick had left his wife (from whom he drew his title) Anne Beauchamp, 16th Earl of Warwick, (1426-1492) and his two daughters Isabella (1451-1476) and Anne (1456-1485), at his stronghold, Warwick Castle. As stated, Isabella had married Clarence, the Yorkist heir male, and she was near to delivering her first child. When the threat from King Edward loomed near, Warwick, Anne and their daughters, and Clarence, moved as quickly as possible to Dartmouth, in Cornwall, where they embark on a ship, and headed eastwards with a small fleet up the English Channel to Calais, the last English possession in France, where Warwick had been widely popular with the garrison as Captain General.
Refusal at the fortress
According to one account, Warwick and Clarence were for a nasty surprise when they got to Calais on 16 Apr 1470, when the commander of the garrison, Sir John Wenlock, refused to open the fortress to them, and fired the fort's cannon upon Warwick's fleet. According to another story, Wenlock was playing a double game, and pretending to oppose Warwick. In any case, it appears that Warwick landed briefly in an attempt to attack or, more likely, use his unmatched ability to talk or bribe his way into the fortress, which did not work, and on 20 Apr 1470, Warwick abandoned his effort to regain Calais.
The stillborn prince
Warwick's daughter, Isabella, Duchess of Clarence, was then offshore in a boat, and in difficult labor. The child, a boy, was born dead. One story says the child was buried near Calais, another story says the body was cast into the sea. Had the child lived, he would have been one of the very few of the highest nobility, a prince of the blood royal, and second in the male line for the throne. The country, hungry for peace, would be likely to back a stable monarch with an assured heir. In this context, the stillbirth, for Warwick, and especially for Clarence, was as bad as losing a battle.
Warwick and his family knew it at the time. One can only imagine how Anne Beauchamp, Duchess of Warwick, then 44 years old, perhaps the richest woman in England outside of the royal family, must have felt upon finding herselfin a small boat off a foreign shore, trying to comfort and care for her daughter, following the stillbirth of their only grandchild. Clarence himself likely would have recalled a similar moment on 12 Oct 1459, when he and his brother Richard Gloucester, had clung to their mother Cicely Nivelle, in the market place of Ludlow, when the men of the House of York had deserted them after the battle of Ludford Bridge.
Landing in France.
Warwick did not waste time, and put to sea again, headed for France. Once at sea, Warwick encountered a fleet of Flemish merchant ships, and pirate that he was, Warwick took advantage of the situation to capture and loot these ships. This put the Duke of Burgundy into a rage, which of course was exactly what Warwick knew would happen. The Duke was the brother-in-law of Edward (being married to Edward's sister), and was also the enemy of France, then under the rule of Louis XI, known to history as the Universal Spider.
Warwick switches sides to Lancaster.
Residing in France since 1463, were the Lancastrian Queen of England, Margaret Anjou, and her son, Edward Westminster, the Lancastrian Prince of Wales. Warwick, who had always been pro-French when the bulk of the Yorkists favored Burgundy, found a ready abetter in Louis XI, who did not come by his nickname of the Universal Spider for nothing. Edward Westminster was just entering military age, and more importantly as far as Warwick was concerned, marital age.
Warwick, whose daughter Isabella was married to the Yorkist heir apparent, Clarence, now hit on the idea of marrying his other daughter, Anne, to Edward Westminster, the Lancastrian heir. This would require Warwick to reach an agreement with Queen Margaret.
Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbury, had been executed by the Lancastrians after the battle of Wakefield on or about 30 Dec 1460, and his head had been stuck on a spike and placed over the fortifications of the city of York. It was widely believed that this had been done on the orders of Margaret. Certain the head stayed up there so long as Margaret was in power. Warwick, on the other hand had spread rumors that Edward Westminster was a bastard, and not King Henry's son, and he had waged open war against Margaret, driving her husband off the throne and herself and her son into exile. or with the acquiescence of Margaret.
But Margaret and Warwick were well matched in their lust for power and their ruthlessness, and they now had a common enemy, Edward IV. So, in Angers on 2 Jul 1470, Warwick was forced to kneel for one-quarter hour, to pledge his loyalty to the House of Lancaster. On 5 Jul 1470 Edward and Anne were betrothed, and in December of the same year they were formally married.
Warwick, Louis and Margaret plan an invasion.
The plan was for Louis to finance an expedition by Warwick into England, regain the throne for Henry VI, and when this once complete, for both England and France to make joint war upon Burgundy. But what of Clarence? As recently as 20 Apr 1470, Warwick had promised him a throne. Now the best Warwick could do for him even if they were to conquer England was to be made the brother-in-law of the 17 year-old Prince of Wales, and inherit the throne even in the unlikely even that he and Anne Neville, then aged 15, should have no children. Back in England, King Edward, through his spies, knew of Clarence's dissatisfaction, and began efforts to suborn Clarence away from Warwick.
Meanwhile Warwick, strengthened by the wealth of France, as well as by the loot from the ships of Burgundy he'd plundered, prepared to invade England. Again, Warwick resorted to his tried and true tactic of fomenting rebellion, this time again in northern England. Ships of Burgundy were blockading Warwick's fleet in the mouth of the Seine, but on 13 Sep 1470, a favorable wind forced the Burgundy ships off their stations and allowed Warwick's ships to sail for England. Warwick landed at Plymouth and made for London. At this time, Edward was still in the North, putting down the rebellion.
King Edward flees to Burgundy.
King Edward had made the mistake of trusting Warwick's John Neville, Marquis Montagu, with an army organized ostensibly for dealing with the rebellion. Once Warwick landed, Montagu switched sides, leaving the King without an army, caught between the forces of Warwick in the south and Montagu in the north. With only a few loyal retainers, Edward barely managed to escape by commandeering some fishing boats and sailing for Flanders, then under the control of the Duke of Burgundy, his ally against Warwick and France, arriving there on 13 Oct 1470. Even though Edward's sister was the Duchess of Burgundy, her husband the Duke was engaged in a never-ending contest of diplomacy and, on occasion, war, with France. He did not want to be seen as overtly favoring Edward, who was of course the enemy of Warwick, the ally of the king of France.
Henry VI resumes the throne.
Warwick then brought forth Henry VI for his re-adeption (or return) to the throne. Henry reportedly was “not so cleanly kept as should seem such a prince.” However, Warwick was the real power, ruling as the "Lieutenant of England."
Meanwhile Edward's wife, the Yorkist Queen Elizabeth Woodville then went into sanctuary, where, on 1 Nov 1470, she gave birth to a son, who was named Edward, like his father. (The reason for so many Edwards, an ancient Saxon name which means “noble guardian”, was that King Edward the Confessor (b1003; reigned 1042-1066) was considered the patron saint of England until 1348, and after that was the patron saint of the royal family; the coronation regalia of England were said to have been those of Edward the Confessor.)
Meanwhile, with King Edward in Flanders, together with his youngest brother, Richard Gloucester, the middle brother, who seems to have been the Fredo of the family, stayed in England with his ally and father-in-law, Warwick. The Duchess of Burgundy, sister to these three men, sent continual messages to Clarence urging him to rejoin his brothers.
The return of King Edward.
Edward gradually assembled the ships, troops and money to return to England to reclaim the crown. On 11 Mar 1471, he sailed for England with 36 ships and 1,600 men; not a large force. Edward was able to recruit additional men rapidly, particularly because he remained popular in London and among the merchant class, which had benefited from the improved government under his previous reign. Then began again the usually marshalling of troops, organization of armies, maneuvers and negotiations between the parties.
Of course all of this was very hard on the nation, and it must have become very wearisome for the population to have to deal with a third year (1469, 1470, and 1471) of warfare in spring and summer when crops needed to be sown, livestock tended, and, in general, life be gotten on with.
Reconciliation of Clarence and Edward.
Clarence who was supposed to be raising an army for Warwick, took his troops and, in return for forgiveness of his treason, switched sides and rejoined his brother King Edward. The sole contemporary source for the return of King Edward, and the subsequent military campaigns, is history prepared by a Yorkist chronicler called The Historie of the Arrivall of King Edward IV. A.D. 1471. While the Historie is clearly biased towards Yorkist, it was also prepared in translation, for the King of France, who had backed Lancaster. As such, it had to be reasonably credible, as any exceptional fabrications would forfeit credibility, given the French King's spy network. The Historie is well worth reading for anyone interested in this topic, as it is not long, and while somewhat old-fashioned, is readily comprehensible to modern English speakers, even though it will be exactly 550 years old this year.
Returning to the reconciliation of Clarence and Edward, the Historie describes it as such (spelling modernized):
And, when they were together, within less than an half mile, the King set his people in array, the banners [displayed] and left them standing still, taking with him his brother of Gloucester [later Richard III], the Lord Rivers, Lord Hastings, and few other, and went towards his brother of Clarence. And, in like wise, the Duke, for his party taking with him a few noble men, and leaving his host in good order, departed from them towards the King. And so they met betwixt both hosts, where was right kind and loving language betwixt them two, with perfect accord knit together for ever here after, with as heartily loving cheer and countenance, as might be betwixt two brethren of so great nobility and estate.
Edward captures London.
With Clarence's forces joined to his, Edward felt strong enough to advance towards London, leaving Warwick behind at Coventry. When Edward arrived outside the gates of London, Warwick's partisans tried to encourage the citizens to reside him by riding Henry VI in a circuit around the city. This backfired, as Henry's wretched appearance was a distinct contrast to the much younger and far better looking Edward. Edward also had the much more material advantage of owing huge amounts of money to the London merchants, and if he were defeated, their debts would likely never be paid. And so he was able to gain admission to London, and afterwards he went to Westminster, then a separate city, where his wife, Queen Elizabeth was in sanctuary with their children, including their infant son, whom Edward had never yet seen. The Historie describes the scene:
… in right great trouble, sorrow, and heaviness, which she sustained with all manner patience that belonged to any creature, and as constantly as hath been seen at any time of so high estate to endure; in the which season nat the less she had brought into this world, to the King's greatest joy, a fair son, a prince, where with she presented him at his coming, to his heart's singular comfort and gladness, and to all them that him truey loved and would serve.
The historical artist Graham Turner has painted a fine work called The Arrivall, named after the Yorkist history, which shows the return of King Edward to the city on 11 Apr 1471. Click on the link for a good discussion of how to research and paint a work of historical art. This painting is worth studying, as Turner is a good historian as well as an excellent artist.
The Battle of Barnet and the death of Warwick.
Warwick and his brother, the Marques Montagu then moved south from Coventry with their army. The King marshalled his forces and marched north to meet them. The two forces came into contact about ten miles north of London at a town called Barnet. The battle was fought in the fog, and the armies had difficulty distinguishing their opponents from their own forces. There was a back and forth struggle for three hours, with heavy casualties on both sides. Eventually the King's forces were able to gain the advantage, and Montagu was slain “in plain battle.” Warwick was killed, characteristically while trying to flee as the battle turned against him.
Turner's painting, Challenge in the Mist, represents his idea, probably reasonably accurate of what the soldiers on the field must have contended with as they sought to distinguish friend from foe.
Display of the bodies of Warwick and Montague.
I think Edward loved Warwick like a father. They were close relatives, they had been through so much adversity together, and Edward seemed always willing to forgive Warwick. And even when Warwick had Edward in his custody, Warwick could not bring himself to have Edward murdered. Some say that even at Barnet, Edward tried to keep Warwick from being killed, but was unable to control his own soldiers. But with both Warwick and Montague dead, Warwick took no chances that false stories about them still being alive would get about, and so he had both of their bodies displayed naked at the church of St. Pauls, to guard against “feigned fables” in the Historie's words.
The Lancastrian invasion.
On the same day as the Battle of Barnet, the Lancastrian army landed in the west part of England, with the Prince of Wales in nominal command, and actual command being shared by Queen Margaret and the Duke of Somerset. They quickly learned of Warwick's defeat and death, but rather than abandon the enterprise, they decided to press on, and head for the Lancastrian strongholds of Wales, Lancashire, and Cheshire, where they hoped to pick up recruits sufficient to best King Edward. There was a general idea also that they were probably better off without Warwick, particularly as he was an unreliable ally and King Edward's army had been badly damaged in the course of the victory at Barnet.
Defeat at Tewkesbury.
The Lancastrians then moved north towards Gloucester, Tewkesbury and the bridges crossing the River Severn, which they hoped to use to retreat into Wales and join forces with Jasper Tudor. By forced marches, they were eventually able to reach Tewkesbury by 3 May 1471, where their troops collapsed from exhaustion. Edward also had pushed his army hard, and was close by. The Lancastrians resolved to stand and give battle, which began on the morning of 4 May 1471. It was said that the Lancastrian leaders, the military commander, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, Edward, Prince of Wales, and Margaret Anjou, walked among their troops to encourage them as they were forming into their line of battle. The situation was quite desperate. The Lancastrians had just one night of rest, and they were being cornered by a superior force under King Edward, a superb military commander.
But armies in this times had been known to prevail against heavy odds, the battle of Agincourt, in 1415, where Prince Edward's grandfather, Henry V, had commanded the victorious English. Shakespeare, appreciating the drama of the moment, gave his characters some magnificent lines in 3 Henry VI, Act 5, Scene 4
In fact, there wasn't a lot of time for speeches. The Lancastrians had to form up into battle line to face the Yorkists, sight their artillery, etc. (Cannon were used during many of the battles, although they were primitive they were recognized as valuable weapons.) The combat began somewhat well for the Lancastrians. As usual, and completely contrary to the Hollywood version of medieval battles, all ranks, including the commanders, fought on foot and not on horseback. (Horses were too easily killed by arrows from the longbow, then in decline as a weapon but still quite deadly.)
Death of the Prince of Wales
The Yorkists were able to mount a successful flanking attack which caused the Lancasterian line to collapse and lead to a rout of the Lancastrian soldiers. Edward, the Prince of Wales, was killed, whether in the battle itself or as a result of murder after being captured is not known, and the sources are in dispute. Shakespeare imagined the defiant Prince of Wales brought before King Edward, and murdered when he tells Edward that it is he would should "speak like a servant." Somerset and some other commanders were captured, given a court-martial, and executed promptly in the public square of Tewkesbury. Queen Margaret was captured at a convent. The Prince's body was entombed in the nearby (and to this day still intact) Tewkesbury Abbey,
Attack of the Bastard of Fauconberg on London.
While King Edward was compaigning in the west, an illegitimate son of one of the Nevilles, Lord Fauconberg, an adventurer, sailor and warrior named Thomas Neville but generally called the Bastard of Fauconberg, landed in Kent on May 8, 1471. The Bastard had once been a Lancastrian, but had switched sides after the battle of Towton in 1461. He was well-loved by his fellow man of action, King Edward, whom the Bastard served well until he switched sides again to support Warwick.
The Bastard owes his unusual title to the fact that "bastard" was once term close to one of honor and not of opprobrium. (See here for the delightful history of the word "bastard".)
In any case, the Bastard rapidly raised a large army that was more like a mob, and, with the aid of some professional soldiers and some artillery, he marched on London. He nearly captured the city in a series of attacks from 15 to 17 May; however, as King Edward drew near with his army, the forces of the Bastard melted away, and the attack failed.
Death of King Henry.
According to the Yorkist Historie, on the very day that King Edward returned to London, 23 May 1471, King Henry, learning for the first time of the various defeats, and the death of his son, died of "pure displeasure and melancholy"
Regarding the word "died", in the manuscript of the Historie, someone has written the words "or was mordered." Undoubtedly this was so. Kings who lost their throne and who failed to flee their country were not kept alive long; the precedents of Edward II and Richard II were ready proof of that. The sole reason for the Yorkists keeping Henry alive was that upon his death, Queen Margaret would simply crown the Prince of Wales King, and with a young vigorous king, foreign backing and a good portion of the country in support, this would be a far greater threat to the house of York.
But once the Prince of Wales was killed, there was no further purpose to keeping King Henry alive, and the attack of the Bastard of Fauconberg proved, if any more evidence was needed, that the very fact of his being alive was a continuing danger to the Yorkists. Undoubtedly King Henry was murdered. This could not have been done except upon the orders of King Edward.
An interesting question is whether Richard Gloucester, the King's brother, and later to brief rule as Richard III, was the one who actually committed the murder. Chroniclers in Tudor times assigned guilt to him, and certainly this was the version adopted by Shakespeare. There is no evidence actually showing that Gloucester committed the murder; however, that does not mean he did not. Edward would have commissioned only a person in whom he had absolute trust to carry out the murder, and Richard Gloucester was one (but not the only one) of the few who fit this category.
Preview of next installment.
In our next installment, we will move quickly through the years of the second half of Edward's reign, to the dramatic events that followed his death, in 1483, in what is called the Year of three KIngs.