Hastings to Culloden - Battles in Britain 1066-1746

by Glen Lyndon Dodds

  He was conducted back to London where the victors assumed office, ruling in his name. They sent out writs summoning a parliament to meet at Westminster in October with the intention of obtaining the reversal of the attainders passed at Coventry.

  Before parliament assembled, York returned from Ireland on about 8 September and slowly made his way towards London. He reached the capital on 10 October—three days after parliament had assembled—and caused great consternation. He strolled into Westminster Hall and laid his hand on the empty throne as if claiming it as his by right. He expected acclamation. He received none. Even Salisbury and Warwick were evidently surprised and angered by his action. During their recent propaganda campaign they had once again professed loyalty to Henry, stating that they only wished to remove his ‘evil counsellors.’ Hence, like their fellow peers, they refused to accept York’s demand that Henry be deposed and he, York, be accepted as the true king by right of descent. (If a claim to the throne through a female were allowed, as York wished—there was no ruling in English law on this point—his title to the crown was indeed superior to that of Henry).

  Nonetheless, as has been noted, no one of consequence wished to depose Henry in favour of York. All were of course aware of the king’s ineffectiveness. Previously it has been said that Henry’s incapacity for kingship was a major cause of the commencement of the Wars of the Roses, but we can go further. His shortcomings were the chief cause. He had, after all, allowed himself to be dominated by a court faction which not only lost the lands in France won by his father, but was also oppressive and unscrupulous. Furthermore, he had allowed York to become alienated and had failed to control his own wife. In short, as the late K.B. MacFarlane commented, Henry’s ‘head was too small for his father’s crown.’ Nevertheless, he was still the anointed king to whom the lords had sworn allegiance and therefore, much to York’s annoyance, they determined that king he would remain.

  A compromise ensued. On 25 October it was declared that Henry would retain the throne but that York would be his heir instead of the king’s young son, Edward. York was disappointed and angered by this limited success. But what of Margaret? Was she prepared to accept the disinheritance of her son? Far from it. She was adamant—York would never wear the crown in his place. Others felt likewise. It soon became apparent that the compromise would not bring peace, but renewed war.

  Indeed, the queen soon had a formidable following gathered in Yorkshire. On 8 December, York and Salisbury marched north to confront her, while Warwick remained in London. On 30 December the Yorkists were defeated at Wakefield: York and one of his young sons, Rutland, were slain, while Salisbury was killed soon after. Among the victors were the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Northumberland, men whose fathers had perished at St Albans. Their deaths had been avenged.

  The stage was now set for a showdown with Warwick. He had also been at St Albans: his time of reckoning had come. Thus Margaret began moving south. On 17 February she defeated Warwick in the Second Battle of St Albans and in so doing recaptured her feeble husband. She could then have moved on London—whose inhabitants had been greatly alarmed by reports which had reached them of her army’s rapacious behaviour when moving south—but did not do so. After a week or so of indecision, she began moving north to York. En route her army reportedly behaved licentiously again. A contemporary source, the Old English Chronicle, relates that the Lancastrians ‘did harms innumerable, taking men’s carts, wagons, horses, and beasts...robbed the people and led their pillage into the north country, so that men of the shires that they passed by had almost left no beasts to till their land.’

  And what of the Yorkists? Though Warwick had been defeated at St Albans he was very much alive. Moreover, the late Duke of York’s eldest son, Edward Plantagenet, had routed a Lancastrian force at Mortimer’s Cross near Wigmore on 2 or 3 February before joining forces with Warwick in the Cotswolds on about the 22nd.

  On the 26th Warwick and his young kinsman entered London unopposed. With Henry back in the hands of their opponents the Yorkists realized that they had little choice other than to set up their own king in his stead for without Henry they had no claim to the obedience of his subjects. Hence, on 4 March, Edward was acclaimed by his followers and the citizens of London as king and then enthroned at Westminster.

  Though the Yorkists had secured London and installed Edward as monarch, their position was far from secure. Most of the nobility remained loyal to Henry, and thus the Lancastrian army at York was growing in strength as more and more loyal lords and knights rallied to the cause. In such circumstances the Yorkists could not afford to waste time. Aware of this, they soon began assembling an army to engage the Lancastrians’ big battalions.

  On 6 March Edward issued proclamations to areas generally favourable to the Yorkist cause calling, among other things, for recognition of him as king and stipulating that nobody was to offer help or comfort to his adversaries. Then, while Edward remained in London for some days to raise funds, a task which proved fruitful, a number of his lieutenants, including Warwick, dispersed to begin assembling a powerful army.

  On 11 March Warwick’s uncle, Lord Fauconberg, left London and began moving north at the head of a force comprised of infantry. Two days later Edward himself rode out of London accompanied by the Duke of Norfolk and at the head of a force which included a Burgundian contingent sent by Duke Philip of Burgundy.

  Edward arrived at Pontefract in Yorkshire on the 27th, having been joined en route by a number of contingents, including one under Warwick raised in the Midlands. Upon doing so, he sent a detachment under Lord FitzWalter to reconnoitre a crossing of the River Aire at Ferrybridge a short distance to the north and, if possible, seize and hold it. FitzWalter found the crossing unguarded and the bridge destroyed. He thus effected repairs, perhaps by straddling the ruined structure with planks of wood.

  However, unbeknown to FitzWalter and his party, the grim reaper was about to draw near. It did so in the person of a senior Lancastrian nobleman, Lord Clifford, a warlike young man who made his way to Ferrybridge from the Lancastrian army—which by now was likely in the vicinity of Towton, about 10 miles to the north, having marched from York via a crossing of the Wharfe at Tadcaster. Edward Hall, (whose account was written c.1540), states that Clifford did so at the head of a detachment of ‘light horsemen’, intent on attacking ‘such as kept the passage at Ferrybridge.’ Hence, ‘early before his enemies were awake,’ Clifford ‘got the bridge, and slew the keepers of the same, and all such as would withstand him’, including FitzWalter.

  According to Hall, Edward responded promptly upon receiving news of events. Fauconberg and the van were sent to cross the river three miles upstream at Castleford with the purpose of cutting off Clifford’s line of retreat from Ferrybridge, and when the latter realized this he ‘departed in great haste towards King Henry’s army’, whereupon Edward crossed the Aire.

  It is normally held that this was all that transpired in the vicinity of Ferrybridge on 28 March 1461. But is this correct? Or is it merely only part of the canvas, not the whole picture?

  Andrew Boardman has recently argued in The Battle of Towton that Edward moved against Clifford after hearing of the attack on FitzWalter, and that this resulted in a more serious encounter at Ferrybridge. It is a contention which the admittedly rather sparse and generally garbled sources appear to warrant.

  For instance, Warwick’s brother, George Neville, the Bishop of Exeter, who received word of events from ‘messengers and letters, as well as by popular report’, wrote on 7 April that:

  Our adversaries had broken the bridge which was our way across, and were strongly posted on the other side, so that our men could only cross by a narrow way which they had made themselves after the bridge was broken. But our men forced a way by the sword, and many were slain on both sides. Finally the enemy took to flight, and very many of them were slain as they fled.

  Nevi
lle dated this event to 29 March, but as will be seen, it is reasonable to conclude that the 28th was the true date. Moreover, in view of what he says, it is also reasonable to assume that he was referring to an event other than the FitzWalter/Clifford incident.

  Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to note the following by a Burgundian chronicler, Jean de Waurin, who met Warwick some years after Towton and wrote about the campaign in his Recueil des Chroniques D’ Engleterre. He states that on Friday before Palm Sunday (i.e., 27 March), Edward received word that Ferrybridge had been secured by the enemy. A ‘small company’ was thus sent ‘to find out the strength of the enemy, but...went so far...that a guard saw them and raised the alarm.’ Consequently, the ‘small party was in so much danger of being routed that [Edward] had to send reinforcements for his reconnaissance troops.’

  Is de Waurin’s reference to a small forward party of Yorkists being threatened with destruction a garbled reference to the FitzWalter incident? It seems likely. What is interesting, in this context, is that he proceeds to mention that a battle was then fought to secure a river crossing. He relates that the reinforcements sent to the assistance of the reconnaissance party drove ‘the enemy back to the bridge where they formed a defensive line’, and that upon hearing of this Edward advanced with the bulk of his army and gave the order ‘to attack the bridge which had been fortified by the enemy, and it so happened the battle lasted from midday to six o’ clock in the evening and there died more than 3,000 men on both sides.’

  In view of the above, and allowing for a degree of inaccuracy and exaggeration on the part of our sources, it does seem, as noted earlier, reasonable to conclude that two encounters occurred at Ferrybridge on 28 March. If so, it also appears likely that the second followed close on the heels of the first, for although the Clifford/FitzWalter incident is sometimes said by historians to have been a walkover, it is probable that FitzWalter’s force was larger than some believe and that members of it put up a fight. For instance, Hearne’s Fragment, a fifteenth century source, states that FitzWalter was killed in ‘a great skirmish.’ Consequently, it is probable that Edward arrived on the scene shortly after Clifford had overcome FitzWalter’s party, and that he proceeded to sent Fauconberg and the vanguard to Castleford to outflank the Lancastrian.

  Sooner or later Clifford began withdrawing to rejoin his colleagues. En route, however, he was surprised and attacked (presumably by the mounted contingent of the Yorkist van), in Dintingdale, a shallow valley some 2.5 miles or so from Towton and below the southern edge of a plateau upon which Towton is situated. According to Hall, Clifford’s party was ambushed and ‘almost all’ of the Lancastrians were killed. What is certain is that Clifford perished in the encounter, as did another prominent adherent of the House of Lancaster, John Neville, the brother of the Earl of Westmorland.

  It is generally assumed that by now the day was drawing to a close and that Fauconberg and the van thus settled down for the night nearby, most probably on high ground just to the southeast of the village of Saxton. And what of Edward? Where did he spend the night? According to de Waurin, Edward encamped four miles from the enemy, and it has thus been suggested that he did so at Sherburn in Elmet. However, it has to be borne in mind that medieval writers frequently provide inaccurate mileages, and that it is probable that Edward was closer to the subsequent battlesite. Indeed, it is generally assumed that he spent the night near Saxton, having linked up en route with Fauconberg (scouts would have kept them in touch), and this seems most probable. For one thing, it is unlikely that Edward would have been prepared to allow himself to become separated from the van in the heart of enemy country: he had done so earlier in the day only out of necessity.

  The Commanders and their Armies

  Though only nineteen, Edward was an imposing figure, 6ft 3in. tall and strikingly good looking, a fact mentioned by many of his contemporaries. The Croyland Chronicle, for example, comments that he was ‘of most elegant appearance, and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person’: ‘of visage louelye, of body myghtie, strong and cleane made’ states a writer of the next generation, Sir Thomas More. Intelligent and able, he was a man of great charm and a born leader. As Ernest Jacob has observed, ‘in personal relationships he had little sense of class; there was nothing stuffy about Edward.’ He was fond of the good life—to put it mildly celibacy was little to his taste—and was generous and good-natured.

  Although young, Edward had of course tasted battle. He was a confident and able soldier of whom More rightly states, in war he was ‘sharpe and fyerce, in the fielde bolde and hardye.’ No doubt as he settled down for the night of 28-29 March he wondered what was going through the mind of the man in command of the army against which he was to do battle.

  Evidently, his opponent was Henry Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset. Like Edward, he was young (he was born in about April 1436), and was also no stranger to armed conflict. He was for instance a veteran of the First Battle of St Albans, where he was severely wounded, and according to the Paston Letters had had to be ‘caryede hom in a cart.’ He was appointed to the captaincy of Calais in October 1459 and unsuccessfully endeavoured to oust his predecessor, Warwick, from the town. In England, Somerset’s military undertakings proved more successful. He commanded the Lancastrian army at Wakefield and evidently did so again at the Second Battle of St Albans. It is reasonable to conclude that he was a courageous and confident young man.

  According to some sources, Edward’s army numbered around 200,000 men, a figure which has to be discounted as grossly inflated. On the other hand, Hall states that the Yorkist force was 48,660 strong and the Lancastrian, 60,000. However, when it its borne in mind that England’s population was only about 2.5 million it becomes clear that these figures are also erroneous.

  Not surprisingly, modern estimates for the strength of the armies have been significantly reduced. Ernest Jacob, for instance, was of the opinion that the Lancastrian force numbered over 22,000 men and was much larger than that of the Yorkists. Other historians, though, while rejecting the early figures, have made or agreed with higher estimates than this, in some cases maintaining that the combined strength of the armies was about 80,000 men. Charles Ross was one such. He wrote, ‘given the unparalleled number of notables present at the battle—they included some three-quarters of the surviving adult peerage—it is not at all unlikely that as many as 50,000 men were engaged’ at Towton.

  The figure of approximately 50,000 combatants all told, seems the most reasonable estimate. The Lancastrian army, which included the most men of rank, probably numbered around 28,000 men and was thus stronger than that of the Yorkists, especially prior to the arrival of the Duke of Norfolk’s contingent some time after battle had been joined. Some historians maintain that Norfolk had been taken ill at Pontefract, and had thus been left behind with his men by Edward on the undertaking that he would follow the next day, perhaps having been augmented by any late arrivals; while others hold that for one reason or another he was a day’s march behind the rest of the Yorkist army and thus only arrived at Pontefract on 28 March.

  Both armies, like those at the other battles of the Wars of the Roses, included the private forces of the principal men present. A lord’s affinity, i.e., his following, whose members wore his livery or at least his badge, was composed of men who served him in return for protection and payment. Indentured life retainers formed its core. These were men who had contracted to serve in both peace and war (save their allegiance to the king), and among such were knightly tenants of the lord who owing to the traditional allegiance of their house, or fear of retribution, allied themselves to him. Important personages, however, were not only accompanied by their affinities: the bulk of their forces was comprised of ordinary able-bodied members of their tenantry.

  In addition to the private ‘armies’ of the baronage, were forces from crown lands and contingents from the towns of England. The latter were b
rought into being through commissions of array. The commissioners inspected the able-bodied adult males in the towns in which they were authorised to act and chose the men they believed best suited to military service. The communities had to provide the requisite equipment for those chosen.

  Members of Calais’ garrison were also present at Towton. Some had come to England in 1459 under Warwick and shortly after had deserted to the Lancastrians. Most though, had accompanied Salisbury and Warwick in June 1460 and were ranked among the Yorkist forces. These men were professional English soldiers but foreign troops were also present for as noted earlier the Yorkist army included a contingent of Burgundians sent by Duke Philip the Good, while some foreigners were also present in Lancastrian ranks, including men from France and perhaps Scotland.

  Among men-at-arms, that is, persons who possessed a full harness (suit of armour) were aristocrats and wealthy members of the gentry with harnesses of the highest quality, most of which came from northern Italy and Germany. By this date full suits of plate armour were in vogue and had been for several decades. Armour had reached such a high level of sophistication that the longbow, which had proved so effective in battles such as Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415), was no longer regarded as much of a threat unless used at close quarters. By this date shields were no longer generally used by men-at-arms and suits of armour usually had thicker plates on the left and most vulnerable side.

  The plate armour worn during the Wars of the Roses was generally lighter and more articulated than that of previous decades, thereby providing greater freedom of movement. It is certainly erroneous to believe that once encased in a harness the man-at-arms of this era was rendered ponderous. He could, for example, mount his charger without assistance and experiments have demonstrated that a very fit man can even perform certain gymnastics when wearing armour of this period.