Battle Royal

by Hugh Bicheno

  The king’s retinue included the Dukes of Somerset and Buckingham, and their heirs with the courtesy earldoms of Dorset (Henry Beaufort) and Stafford (Humphrey Stafford). The substantive earls were Pembroke, Northumberland, Wiltshire and Devon. There were also six barons: the king’s old friends Lords Dudley and Sudeley, plus Roos, Clifford, Salisbury’s brother William, Lord Fauconberg, and Buckingham’s half-brother John Bourchier, newly created Lord Berners. The party included only one bishop, William Percy of Carlisle, who was Northumberland’s brother. The best estimate for the sum of their retinues, of which the king’s would have been the largest, is 2,000 men.

  Closing on St Albans from the east were York, his 13-year-old heir Edward, Earl of March, Salisbury and Warwick. They had been joined by Buckingham’s eldest half-brother Henry, Viscount Bourchier, and his son Humphrey, plus the Northamptonshire lord John, Baron Clinton, and Edward Brooke, Baron Cobham. They had at least 3,000 men, of whom York perhaps raised half in his progression from Yorkshire, past his manors in Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire. Most of the rest were Neville retainers with experience of the border wars.

  With Salisbury’s brother Fauconberg and the younger Bourchier in the king’s party, it is reasonable to assume that York, the Nevilles and the older Bourchier were well informed about its numbers and composition. Since Somerset did not even know they had come south until York’s Royston letter arrived, it is also reasonable to suppose the king’s men were as much in the dark about their opponents’ numbers as they were about their intentions.

  After receipt of the Ware letter, the king took Buckingham’s advice not to show fear by proceeding as planned to St Albans. At this point he replaced Somerset with Buckingham as Constable of England. There is much room to speculate about why Henry did this. At the simplest level, if there were to be negotiations, Somerset could not be a party to them, as he was completely unacceptable to York and the Nevilles. At another level, it may have been intended as a signal that the king was not wedded to Somerset. As we know he was, it follows Buckingham’s appointment was a stratagem, to buy time until reinforcements arrived.

  If this was the purpose of the Buckingham appointment, however, Somerset should have kept keep his head down. Instead, he sent insulting messages to York and Salisbury through an emissary he knew would be obnoxious to them. To understand the provocation, it is necessary to understand the function of heralds in medieval warfare. Their task was to communicate terms before a battle and to issue challenges if terms were not agreed. The herald had four junior officials under him known as poursuivants. They all wore surcoats, called tabards, which displayed the coat of arms of their master.

  It was common for the principals in any imminent trial of arms to parley using their political allies’ heralds – at St Albans, York used the Duke of Norfolk’s – because their own heralds could not pose as neutral intermediaries. Quite the opposite intention can be firmly deduced from Somerset sending one of Exeter’s poursuivants. This was a red rag to his opponents’ bull, and the use of a junior official may have been insulting as well. The message he brought was blunt: submit or face attainder.

  There are three possible interpretations of Somerset’s actions. The first is that Somerset had agreed to the venerable negotiating tactic of playing bad cop to Buckingham’s good cop. Given what we know about the chilly relations between them, this seems unlikely. The second is that Somerset, knowing the only issue was his political future, wanted to prevent meaningful negotiations. This would imply he was afraid the king might fold under the pressure and act as he had with Suffolk in 1450, sending him away with a promise of reinstatement when tempers had cooled down. Suffolk’s fate would have loomed large in Somerset’s mind, and he may have been trying to pre-empt a repeat performance.

  Related to the second, the third and most probable alternative is that Somerset was running a bluff, based on an underestimation of his enemies’ resolve. He had been a gambler all his life, so why play it safe now, when he was riding a winning streak? Accordingly, the last message York and the Nevilles claimed to have received from the king may have been an invention they produced to justify their actions.*2 But it could also have been a further bluff by Somerset, taking the king’s name in vain, or a last display of the false hair on the chest Henry had been flaunting since he emerged from catatonia:

  I, King Henry, charge and command that no manner of person, of what degree or state or condition that ever he be, abide not but void the field and not be so hardy to make any resistance against me in mine own realm for I shall know what traitor dare be so bold to raise a people in mine own land, wherethrough I am in great dis-ease and heaviness. And by the faith that I owe to St Edward and to the Crown of England I shall destroy them every mother’s son and they be hanged and drawn, and quartered that may be taken afterward of them to have example to all such traitors to beware to make any such rising of people within my land, and so traitorly to defy their King and governor. And for a conclusion rather than they shall have this day any Lord here with me at this time I shall this day for their sake and in this quarrel myself live or die.

  *1 Thanks to Charles Armstrong’s brilliant ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans, 1455’ in the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research.

  *2 The source is the strongly Yorkist Stowe Relation. Perversely, textual details like ‘every mother’s son’ are so contrary to what one would expect from Henry that a forgery would have omitted them.

  XIII

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  Coup d’état

  Members of the knightly class were reared for war from childhood – it was what had won them their lands and titles, and the justification for their place in society. At St Albans on 22 May 1455 there were men on both sides who also had considerable experience of command in war, in France and along the Scottish border. We should, therefore, expect to find evidence of intelligent calculation in the way the battle was fought.

  On the king’s side, Buckingham was not only the senior duke but also the most experienced senior commander on either side. He chose to advance to St Albans partly because he believed the king should not be seen to flinch in the face of a challenge to his authority, but also because he knew the town was highly defensible. It was surrounded by a trench and embankment known as the Townman or Tonman ditch, and where roads crossed it there were structures into which heavy beams could be inserted to bar access to the town. He also knew from his experience in France that fighting in a built-up area gave the advantage to the defenders.

  York and the Nevilles – for convenience the ‘Yorkists’ – either arrived after the royal party, or else chose not to enter St Albans to avoid the strong possibility that the two sides’ troops might clash spontaneously. They turned left off the Hatfield road and formed up in an area known as Keyfield, halfway to the Barnet road and about 250 yards from the ditch. York was nearest the Hatfield road, Salisbury nearest the Barnet road, with Warwick in between.

  They had achieved strategic surprise by advising their affinities along the way to be ready to join them but not to alert the authorities by gathering beforehand, and operational surprise by intercepting the king before he reached Leicester. They knew the king could not possibly accede to their minimum demand, which was to abdicate his authority and hand Somerset over to them. Therefore, they arrived at St Albans intending to fight, and the only remaining questions were how to disguise their intent, and how to avoid a knock-down, drag-out battle with heavy casualties. That required tactical surprise.

  If not before, then soon after arriving they would have known the ditch and the barred roads ruled out the use of cavalry. They would have seen the banners of Northumberland and Clifford at the barriers, and knew they were held by tough northerners who would make them pay dearly should they launch a frontal assault. A breakthrough at Sopwell Street, or a right hook through Cock Lane, would have involved a further advance along streets where they could be sure the royalists would have posted archers in the houses on either side – becaus
e that was what they would have done. The weaker of the two barriers was on Butts Lane, flanked by market gardens, but it was consequently more heavily manned.

  Keyfield was in full view of the defenders at the barriers and along the embankment, and from the bell tower overlooking the marketplace, where the king and his retinue were located. We have no way of knowing where the retinues of the other lords might have been, but some may have been posted along the embankment between the two barriers. It was a clear day and the royalists must have been confident it would be impossible for the Yorkists to achieve tactical surprise. Both sides knew the obvious tactic would be a strong feint at one of the barriers to draw in the reserves, followed by the main thrust at the other.

  And that, following an hour or two of heralds pointlessly trotting back and forth, was exactly what the defenders saw coming at them. First, a column led by Salisbury, banners displayed and drums beating, attacked the Sopwell Street barrier. A while later, a larger column led by the banners of York and Warwick marched to attack the Butts Lane barrier. So far so predictable – a third of the force to make the feint, two-thirds to make the main attack. The lords and knights with the king in the marketplace still did not hurry to get into harness, so confident were they that Clifford and Northumberland would easily repel the attacks.

  Although his banners were at the front of the column with York, Warwick was at the back with Ogle’s 600 archers. After the head of the column had been become fully engaged, and the nearby enemy troops along the embankment drawn towards the barrier, he and Ogle peeled off. Without banners or fanfare, they crossed the now lightly defended ditch 100 yards below the barrier, into the market gardens on the other side. If the townscape was indeed as portrayed in Map 10, the manoeuvre was in plain sight of the men at the Butts Lane barrier. They, naturally, would have seen it as an attempt to outflank their position.

  The first reaction of whoever was in command in Butts Lane – probably Somerset, who seems to have joined Northumberland once the Yorkist attack began – would have been to reposition archers to cover the flank of the men-at-arms at the barrier. Some of Ogle’s men would have loosed a volley or two to maintain the illusion, but Warwick’s main force was charging for a gap between two of the many inns along Holywell Street that catered to the pilgrim trade.

  With the observers in the tower frantically clanging the curfew bell overhead, Warwick’s men burst into the centre of the town, making as much noise as possible to increase shock. In the words of The Stow Relation: ‘They ferociously broke in by the garden sides between the sign of the Key and the sign of the Chequer in Holywell Street, and immediately they were within the town, suddenly they blew up trumpets and set a cry with a shout and a great voice “A Warwick! A Warwick!”’

  The essence of tactical surprise is the dislocation of expectations. An enemy is never so vulnerable as when he believes victory is in his grasp. The men at the Butts Lane barrier believed they had stopped the main Yorkist attack, and thought they had beaten off a flank attack. Nothing, however, can keep troops in line when they hear the noise of battle to their rear. After Warwick’s men erupted into Holywell Street, Northumberland’s men broke and fled across the market gardens towards the road leading north, back to their homes. A group of men-at-arms, including Somerset and his son, fell back towards the town centre, but were cut off by Warwick’s men and took refuge in the Castle Inn.

  If there was one thing above all the Yorkists did not want to do, it was to kill the king. It would have put them irretrievably in the wrong and they could expect the moral power of the Church to turn on them. The Scriptures were unequivocal (I Samuel 26): ‘…who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?… The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord’s anointed.’

  Yet, possibly because the king’s standard-bearer fled and his banner dropped to the floor, Ogle’s archers shot indiscriminately into the mass of royalists in the marketplace. Four of the king’s bodyguard were killed in his presence, and an arrow grazed Henry’s neck before he was hustled to cover in a tanner’s cottage. Buckingham and his son, badly wounded, were taken by their men to the abbey church.

  Northumberland was probably killed somewhere along Butts Lane, and Clifford in Sopwell Street. The only one whose fate we can be sure of was Somerset. Called upon to surrender, he sortied from the Castle Inn and is said to have killed four men before he was brought down and clubbed to death. His son Henry, badly wounded at his side, survived. Abbot Whethamstede, an appalled eyewitness, wrote, ‘here you saw one fall with his brains dashed out, there another with a broken arm, a third with a cut throat, and a fourth with a pierced chest, and the whole street was filled with dead corpses’.

  Lord Dudley, who must have been near his friend the king, was hit in the face by an arrow. The other lords – Pembroke, Devon, Sudeley, Roos, Fauconberg and Berners – presumably took cover until it was safe to emerge. Wiltshire fled first to the abbey church and then, disguised as a monk, got clean away. Another notable royalist casualty was John Wenlock, who had served as the queen’s chamberlain until 1453. He recovered remarkably rapidly from a disabling wound to become Speaker of the Commons in the Parliament elected seven weeks later. Deeply wounded in his dignity was Bishop Percy of Carlisle, who was stripped of his possessions and driven out of the town on foot and in his underclothes.

  We know the names of sixty of those killed, practically all royalists and many of them members, some quite humble, of the king’s household. Apart from them, the casualty list is top-heavy with knights and esquires who fell with Northumberland, Clifford and Somerset – proof, if any were needed, that it was a decapitation strike as well as a coup d’état. Men in harness were not easily killed, and there can be little doubt the York and Neville retainers were settling old scores. Another contemporary account states ‘all who were on the side of Somerset were killed, wounded or at least despoiled’.

  Before Somerset was killed, York had found the king and escorted him to safety in the abbey church. After the fighting ended and his troops turned to stripping the dead and looting, he made his way back to the church and demanded that Buckingham and Wiltshire should come out, or else they would be taken out by force. Buckingham duly emerged but Wiltshire had by now wisely fled. York, Salisbury and Warwick then entered the church and knelt before their king to beg his forgiveness for putting his life at risk. They had, they said, only wished to free him from the clutches of the traitor Somerset.

  Showing surprising realism and presence of mind, Henry did not waste time with protests and received their homage, asking only that the fighting should cease. One can discern behind this the entreaties of the abbot that the rampaging Yorkists should be brought under control before they turned their attention to the abbey and its many treasures. Order was restored, and the wounded and dead brought into the abbey precinct for treatment and burial. Somerset, Northumberland and Clifford were buried in the Lady Chapel, and the proper reverence for their memories was to be the cornerstone of the king’s last, sadly unsuccessful attempt to stop the slide into all-out war three years later.

  York and the Nevilles escorted Henry back to London, where a ceremonial parade was staged with York and Salisbury riding on either side of the king, while Warwick rode in front bearing the royal sword, point uppermost. Henry was lodged at the Bishop of London’s palace, and agreed that writs be issued for a Parliament on 9 July. The Whitsun celebrations went ahead as usual, and on Whitsunday (27 May), at the crown-wearing ceremony at St Paul’s cathedral, the king insisted it should be Richard of York, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, who placed the crown on his head. It was a subtle move. Archbishop and Chancellor Bourchier might construe it as a snub engineered by York, but it also underlined that York had usurped the authority granted to Henry by God.

  Henry’s biographers have devoted few pages to the remainder of his reign, and it is true he scarcely features as a leading protagonist in the following years. Yet here we have him, only
days after the brutal shock of St Albans, perpetrating a highly symbolic act of passive aggression. Although his brief spasm of active leadership had led to disaster, it is unwise to believe he ceased trying to influence events. Unfortunately for him and for his kingdom, the time for subtle hints and signals was over: the rules of the game had changed irrevocably.

  XIV

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  Marguerite’s Counter-coup

  Marguerite saw with crystal clarity that York’s action at St Albans must lead, sooner or later, to the usurpation of the crown. A puppet monarch, no matter how benign the puppet master, offended intolerably against the medieval concept of kingship by divine right. Henry and Somerset had blown away her attempt to create a neutral royal centre, and the polarization resulting from Henry’s connivance in Somerset’s efforts to destroy York now left her with no option but to build up a Lancastrian faction.

  Of the dukes, she could count on the unconditional support of the rabid Exeter and the slain Edmund Beaufort’s vengeful son Henry, now Duke of Somerset, but both were affinity-light. Buckingham should have been ripe for recruitment after St Albans, but she did not, at this time, try to win him. Possibly she blamed him for persuading Henry to go there in the first place, and his Bourchier half-brothers may also have compromised him in her eyes.

  Of the earls, the king’s half-brothers Richmond and Pembroke had not had time to develop useful affinities. Only Wiltshire, Shrewsbury and the new Earl of Northumberland could summon numbers to support the Lancastrian regime. The Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth were led by the ineffectual Westmorland, and Oxford was still a maybe. Marguerite could also count on the unconditional support of Viscount Beaumont and several barons, notably Rivers, Roos, Welles, the veteran warrior Scales and, in particular, John, the new Lord Clifford, who shared Somerset’s and Northumberland’s passionate desire for revenge.