by Charles Ross
There remained the problem of the many fugitives who had taken refuge in the abbey of Tewkesbury and hoped to find sanctuary behind the skirts of Holy Church. Probably Edward broke into the abbey and took them out by force. On Monday, 6 May, they were brought to trial before the duke of Gloucester as Constable of England and the duke of Norfolk as marshal. Duke Edmund of Somerset, Sir John Langstrother, prior of the Hospitallers, Sir Gervase Clifton and some nine or ten other die-hard Lancastrians were sentenced to death and summarily executed in Tewkesbury market-place, though they were spared any of the usual indignities and given honourable burial afterwards. Not too much should be made of this incident as a lapse from Edward’s record of clemency to his opponents. The victims were all men who had shown themselves irreconcilable, and nearly all had been pardoned by Edward in the past, only to abuse his generosity. Given their records, they could have expected little else, and, by contemporary standards, deserved little else. But it is worth noticing that the king also spared a number of Lancastrian captives. These included not only some lawyers and civilians, like the former Chief Justice John Fortescue, who had been Henry VI’s chancellor in exile, but also soldiers like Sir Henry Roos and Thomas Ormond, who had been guilty of nothing but sturdy loyalty to their king, and who had not defected after a pardon from Edward.2
Tewkesbury completed the ruin of the Lancastrian cause as Barnet had destroyed the Nevills. The arch-enemies of the house of York, the Beauforts, had now been entirely eliminated in the male line. The House of Lancaster itself was on the verge of extinction, with Prince Edward dead, and Henry VI soon to perish in the Tower. Only Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, and his young nephew, Henry of Richmond, remained even of the half-blood branch of the family. Soon after the battle, Queen Margaret, who had taken refuge in a nearby house of religion, fell into Edward’s hands, and at last her capacity for trouble-making was at an end.
Yet Edward’s trials were not yet over. Immediately after the battle, reports reached him of further dangers at opposite ends of his realm. From Kent came news that the Bastard of Fauconberg, reinforced by 300 men sent to him by the pro-Nevill command at Calais, had brought his fleet ashore and was now stirring Kent to rebellion.1 From the north there was news of large-scale risings of Lancastrian partisans, stimulated by the news of Queen Margaret’s landing three weeks before. These Edward judged to be the more serious threat, and, as in 1470, he did not wish to risk northern rebellions getting out of hand. He therefore left Tewkesbury on 7 May, heading for Worcester and the north, and relying on Rivers, Essex, Arundel, Sir John Scott and the London authorities to resist Fauconberg. But when he reached Coventry, where he awaited the arrival of fresh troops from 11 to 14 April, the earl of Northumberland came in person to inform him that as soon as the news of Tewkesbury reached the north, the insurrections there had collapsed. Since there was now no Nevill to lead them, and Northumberland himself was loyal, the local captains had laid down their arms and come in to beg Percy’s good offices with the king.2
The news from the south-east was much less reassuring.3 The Bastard of Fauconberg had already attracted much support not only from Calais and the Cinque Ports but more generally in Kent, a county much given to rebellion in the later middle ages. The rebel force included a substantial element of gentry and yeomen, drawn from almost every hundred in Kent, nor were they in any way deterred by the news of Edward’s victory at Tewkesbury: they may still have hoped to get the good government which was such a strong and general feeling in the fifteenth century from someone other than Edward IV. There was backing too from Essex and Surrey. Not all this support need be seen as evidence of Edward’s unpopularity. The rising contained its element of needy and lawless men, attracted by the hope of plunder in London, and, within the city, according to the Arrivall, many of the poorer sort were ready to join them, for they would ‘have been right glad of a common robbery, to the intent that they might largely have put their hands in rich men’s coffers’. This fear of pillage deeply alarmed the mayor and council, and strengthened their will to resist, as few other towns, including London itself, resisted an army during the Wars of the Roses. Some of the rebels had local grievances, like the men of Essex who donned their wives’ smocks and wore cheese-cloths to show resentment of the low prices paid by London buyers for their dairy produce. Others again are said to have been forced by fear to join the Bastard’s host. It was a substantial force, backed by the Bastard’s ships in the Thames, which demanded entry into London on 12 May. But the citizens stoutly resisted an attempt to force an entry over London Bridge. The next day an effort by the rebels to cross the river at Kingston and then ravage Westminster and the western suburbs was finally abandoned. On 14 May the rebels renewed their assault. Bombardment from the ships’ guns; another attack across London Bridge; and an assault on the gates on the east side of the city north of the river – all were beaten off by the city levies led by the recorder of London, Thomas Urswick, stiffened by the knights and gentry in the retinues of the lords in the city, Rivers, Essex and Dudley, who was lieutenant of the Tower. The rebel discomfiture was completed when Rivers, with a picked band of troops, sallied forth from a postern in the Tower, and drove the enemy across the fields to Poplar and Stepney, where many were killed or taken prisoner. The rest withdrew to their ships and crossed to the south side of the river.
Even after this reverse the Bastard was reluctant to abandon his attempt on London, though he gradually withdrew his men to Black-heath. But the arrival of an advance-guard of 1,500 men from the king’s army, and the news that Edward himself was nearing the city, greatly demoralized the rebels. Leaving his ally, Nicholas Faunt, mayor of Canterbury, and the Kentishmen to fend for themselves, Fauconberg took his Calais soldiers and his sailors first to Rochester and then to Sandwich. The Calais men sailed on across the Channel, but the Bastard stayed in Sandwich, apparently still confident that he could extract a pardon from the king.
On Tuesday, 21 May, Edward entered his capital in triumph.1 The mayor and aldermen went out to meet him in the meadows between Islington and Shoreditch. Never neglectful of good service to his cause, Edward halted, and there and then knighted the mayor, John Stockton, eleven aldermen, and Thomas Urswick, the recorder, who was soon promoted chief baron of the exchequer – a distribution of civic knighthoods hitherto without parallel. He then made his way into London at the head of a great force, with banners and standards unfurled, and trumpets and clarions playing. With him rode his brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, the dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk and Buckingham, six earls and sixteen barons, ‘together with other nobles, knights, esquires and a host of horsemen larger than had ever been seen before’. The carriage of the captive Queen Margaret provided the symbol of his victories on this day of Roman triumph.
Effective resistance to Edward’s authority was now virtually at an end. The truculent Calais garrison soon made its submission in the confident hope of pardon. Only far away in West Wales, where Jasper Tudor held out in Pembroke Castle, were men still in arms against the king.2 The death of Henry VI in the Tower on the very night of Edward’s return to London took place in circumstances altogether too convenient for Edward for anyone to believe that he died a natural death. Though Richard of Gloucester, as its constable, may have been present in the Tower at the time – and has often been blamed for Henry’s death – the responsibility lies clearly enough with the king himself. It is very likely, as the Milanese ambassador in France reported, that ‘King Edward caused King Henry to be secretly assassinated … he has, in short, chosen to crush the seed’.3 Thus was removed the last threat from the House of Lancaster; as another contemporary observed, ‘no one now remained in the land of the living who could now claim the throne from that family’.4 How decisive and complete was the Yorkist triumph in 1471 may be seen from the twelve years of domestic peace which it introduced. Apart from the earl of Oxford’s abortive descent on St Michael’s Mount in 1473, there was to be no further fighting on English soil for the rest of Edward’s reign.
The House of York was at last firmly and unquestionably established on the English throne.
‘The Recoverie of England’ in 1471 was very much Edward’s personal triumph. As Polydore Vergil observed, he had been fortunate: ‘Truly King Edward was in these last wars the happiest man in the world, in that his adversaries assailed him at several times.’1 If Margaret had landed earlier, before Warwick’s defeat, or if the Bastard’s attack on London had not come too late, things might have been very different. More decisive action by Warwick in the early stages of Edward’s landing might have nipped the whole enterprise in the bud. But at least Edward had taken full advantage of the opportunities offered him. In the Tewkesbury campaign he showed again the qualities which had brought him victory over Warwick – self-confidence, initiative and speed of movement. His success owed much to the extraordinary energy he showed in pursuing and crushing Margaret before she could join with Pembroke or her friends in the north. His modern admirers have made rather exaggerated claims for Edward’s military ability. Only in a very limited and domestic sense can he be regarded as ‘the greatest general of his age’.2 Barnet was essentially ‘a soldier’s battle’, where success owed nothing to tactics or generalship. Both at Barnet and Tewkesbury the king had attacked boldly under conditions which could easily have brought disaster. In both battles smaller royal armies were able to defeat larger forces under Warwick and Margaret, and these successes probably owed something to the extent of baronial support which Edward enjoyed. The baronial retinues which fought for Edward are likely to have been more professional and disciplined than the popular levies which formed much of the rank-and-file of his enemies’ armies. The campaigns of 1471 demonstrated the importance of committed baronial support against wide popular backing.
Yet it remains true that the challenge of 1471 brought out the best in Edward. He showed an energy and a determination at other times conspicuously lacking in him. Perhaps, like Charles II, his experience of exile made him unwilling to go on his travels again, but the greater ruthlessness and decision which marks his actions in 1471 suggests a man shaken out of his normally rather easy-going ways, driven along by a righteous anger against the ingratitude and treachery of men who had repeatedly abused his trust. In 1471 he was determined on the final defeat of his enemies. His leadership in these difficult days not only did much to secure the Yorkist dynasty on the throne, it also greatly increased his personal authority. More fully than before, Edward was now master in his own house.
1 For comment on these difficulties, see Appendix IV.
2 Men were sent from Beverley on 26 April ‘pro repressione Rob. de Redesdale et aliorum inimicorum Domini Regis’, and returned home after nine days (Hist. MSS Comm. Reports, Beverley Corporation MSS, 144). This provides some independent confirmation for a rising at this early date, which otherwise depends on ‘Brief Latin Chronicle’ (Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, 183), and a Cambridge fragment, apparently of very contemporary date, which puts the rising ‘at the end of April and in the month of May’ (Abbreviata Cronica, ed. J. J. Smith, Cambridge Antiquarian Soc., no. 11, 1840, p. 13).
1 Modern scholars, following Ramsay, Lancaster and York, II, 339, have accepted this identification. But ‘Robin of Holderness’ was executed (as below), whilst Robert Hillyard the elder was still alive in March 1470 when appointed to a commission (CPR, 1467–77, 199), and his son, ‘yong Hilyard of Holdrenes’, submitted to Edward in the same month, after having taken part in the Yorkshire rising of that year (Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire, 17). John Stow, Annales, 421, identified him with Robin of Redesdale.
2 Polydore Vergil, English History, 121–2, followed by Scofield, I, 490–1; Ramsay, op. cit., II, 338–9; Kendall, Warwick the Kingmaker, 241. Polydore also says it was stirred up by Archbishop Nevill at Warwick’s instigation. For the dispute with St Leonard’s, VCH, Yorkshire, III, 336, 342; RP, IV, 249–50; CPR, 1467–77, 131–2.
3 Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, 183.
4 For the dating of Robin of Holderness’s rebellion, see Appendix IV.
5 For a different view, see Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 555; J. Gairdner, PL, I, 246; Roskell, The Commons and their Speakers, 281.
1 Warkworth, Chronicle, 6–7. Warkworth is the only contemporary to identify Redesdale by name, and calls him William Conyers, but see DNB, XLVIII, 433, for the view that he was John.
2 CC, 542 (First Continuation); Warkworth, Chronicle, 6; Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, 182, which speaks of ‘many … petitioners seeking the reform of many things in the realm’.
3 Below, pp. 173–4.
4 Scofield, I, 489; Ramsay, op. cit., II, 336.
5 CPR, 1467–77, 170. The commission also included the dukes of Clarence, Gloucester and Suffolk, 6 earls, 12 barons, 12 judges and 2 knights.
1 P.R.O., Warrants for Issues, E. 404/74/2; Scofield, I, 491–2. On 20 June orders were sent out for the mobilization of the royal artillery (CPR, 1467–77, 163).
2 PL, V, 28–33; CC, 542; Scofield, I, 492.
3 CC, 542; Coventry Leet Book, ed. M. D. Harris, II, 341–2.
4 Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 405–6; CC, 542.
5 PL, V, 35–6.
1 The movements of Warwick and Clarence are reconstructed in detail in Kendall, op. cit., 244–6.
2 Printed in the notes to Warkworth, Chronicle, 46–9. For a discussion of the rebel grievances, see above, pp. 124–5.
3 Scofield, I, 495–6.
4 E.g., ‘Hearne’s Fragment’, in Chronicles of the White Rose of York, 24–5, which says that Edward sent the army which defeated Herbert. Polydore Vergil, English History, 122, which does not mention Devon at all, has two battles, one between Pembroke and the Yorkshiremen, and one between Pembroke and Warwick and Clarence. The very confused account in Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 406–9, places the battle at Tewkesbury.
1 The propaganda put out by Warwick and Clarence as to their intentions certainly confused some contemporary chroniclers, as pointed out by Kendall, Warwick the Kingmaker, 349, but his suggestion (pp. 349–50) that Edward never intended to fight at all, and was confident enough of his hold on the kingdom to confront Warwick in person, rests on unconvincing evidence – a sixteenth-century marginal note to the text of the Great Chronicle, 208–9, and Polydore Vergil’s very contrived and unreliable account. For the rarity of family disloyalty, K. B. McFarlane, ‘The Wars of the Roses’, 105.
2 What follows is based upon CC, 446; Warkworth, 6–7; GC, 209; ‘Hearne’s Fragment’, 24; Edward Hall, Chronicle, 273–4. Though writing much later, Hall is acknowledged to have information on the battles of this period not found elsewhere, and there may be some truth in his story that the main battle was preceded by a preliminary engagement, when the advance force of the earls was repulsed by the northerners; this is confirmed by the evidence of the Welsh poets, who bewailed the battle as a national calamity (Evans, Wales in the Wars of the Roses, 174–85). See the valuable list of Welsh casualties in William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. J. H. Harvey, 339–41, which also claims that 1,500 northerners were killed there.
1 Warkworth, Chronicle, 6–7; CC, 453 (First Continuation). What happened to the lords in his company is not recorded. His letter to Coventry on 29 July (Coventry Leet Book, II, 345) shows that he still had no news of Pembroke’s defeat.
2 Scofield, I, 497–8. For the manner of Devon’s death, Warkworth, Chronicle, 7. The statement in Complete Peerage, IV, 328, that he was beheaded on Edward’s orders because he had deserted the field at Edgecote derives from a later fabrication by Holinshed.
3 Kendall, Warwick, 247, conjectures that only Gloucester and Hastings were with him when he was taken at Olney, though Norfolk and Suffolk had been with him earlier. But many other strong royalists (e.g. Mountjoy, Dinham, Ferrers and Howard) were still in London (Scofield, I, 499).
1 CPR, 1467–77, 165 (grants to Warwick and Hastings), and below, pp. 136–7, for Edward’s grants.
2 Scofield, I, 499.
3 CCR, 1468–76, 85–7; Ca
lmette and Perinelle, op. cit., 108, and Pièce Justificatif no. 30.
1 Scofield, I, 500–1. On 2 September 1469 a proclamation was issued in London against riots and affrays and against all those who did anything contrary to the Burgundian alliance (CCR, 1468–76, 78–9).
2 PL, V, 40–52, 55–7, and discussion by Gairdner, PL, I, 250–4.
3 Below, pp. 138, 408–9; CCR, 1468–76, 138.
4 Scofield, I, 503; CPR, 1467–77, 172 (commission of array to Lord Ferrers, 13 September).
5 CC, 552; Scofield, I, 501–2.
1 For dates of his imprisonment, Scofield, I, 497, 503. For a useful discussion of the contradictory evidence surrounding his ‘liberation’, see Kendall, Richard III, 445–7; cf. Scofield. It is more likely that he simply asserted his freedom of action (as the Croyland Chronicler says, p. 552) rather than that he escaped from custody.
2 Warkworth, Chronicle, 7.
3 PL, V, 62–3 (for the entry into London); ibid., 50, a letter written before 26 September, which speaks of ‘divers of my Lords [of the council] be at the King’s high commandment hastily departed unto his highness’; also p. 53.
4 PL, V, 63.
5 English History, 125.
1 CPR, 1467–77, 176, 195–6; below, pp. 144–5.
2 CC, 552; P.R.O., C. 53/195, m. 2.
3 CPR, 1467–77, 178–80, 185. Reversion of the office to Scales had been included in the grant of the constableship to Rivers on 24 August 1467 (ibid., 19). For grants of land to Richard, including Sudeley Castle and lordship, Gloucestershire, CCR, 1468–76, 102; Kendall, Richard III, 78, 447.
4 Ferrers: constable and steward of Brecon, Hay and Huntington, 16 November; Vaughan, constable of Cardigan Castle, 16 February; Stanley, steward of Denbigh, 14 February; Donne, steward of Haverfordwest, Pembroke, Llanstephan, Cilgerran; CPR, 1467–77, 173, 183, 185. West Wales was largely out of control in the autumn of 1469, and about the same time there was a campaign of civil disobedience and refusal to pay rents and dues in north-west Wales (ibid., 180, 198; Evans, op. cit., 188–90).
