Edward, who had been pacifying the north, rode south to meet him. He was not, as far as we can understand, unduly alarmed. He had already satisfied himself that the Marquis of Montagu, despite being Warwick's
1. Charles the Bold of Burgundy had succeeded his father Philip the Good in 1467; in the following year he had married, as his third wife, Edward IV's sister Margaret.
brother, would remain loyal; and with the addition of the northern levies that Montagu was in the process of raising he was confident that the Lancastrian forces would be comfortably outnumbered. He reached Doncaster, however, to find calamitous news awaiting him. His confidence had been misplaced. Six years before, he had rewarded Montagu for his loyalty by creating him Earl of Northumberland; unfortunately, however, and extremely unwisely, he had recently persuaded him to resign that earldom in favour of the heir of the Percys. To compensate him he had raised him to the dignity of a marquis; but since, as Montagu himself said, 'the King had given him but a magpie's nest to maintain his estate with', this had proved more a burden than anything else. And so, in his resentment, Montagu had betrayed him after all. Instead of riding down to his aid with his troops, he had at the last moment declared for Henry and was already at Pontefract, advancing against the Yorkist army.
Had Edward been given two or three days' prior warning of the betrayal, he might have saved the situation. He had several powerful lords on his side, including his brother Richard and his brother-in-law Lord Rivers, each with his own numerous following; but they were widely dispersed, and there was no hope of gathering them together in time to face Montagu's coming onslaught. To remain meant certain death or capture. His only hope lay in flight. With Gloucester, Rivers, his chamberlain Lord Hastings and about eight hundred men, he hurried south-east to the coast of Lincolnshire, commandeered a number of small boats and under cover of darkness crossed the Wash to King's Lynn; and from there, on 2 October, the party took ship for the Low Countries. They were sighted almost immediately, and were pursued all the way to the Dutch coast; but with the help of the Burgundian Governor of Holland they shook off their pursuers. Nine days later Edward was installed as the Governor's guest in his house at The Hague.
In London, the news of the King's flight caused chaos. Vast numbers of Lancastrians emerged from their various places of refuge and took to the streets, where they were joined by followers of the Earl of Warwick and, after the prisons were broken open, a whole rabble of criminals and cut-throats who went on the rampage. Elizabeth Wood-ville and her two daughters sought sanctuary at Westminster, where a month later she was to give birth to Edward's first-born son. On 5 October Archbishop Nevill, Warwick's brother, and old Bishop
Waynnete went down to the Tower, where they found King Henry, after over five years in captivity, 'not so worshipfuUy arrayed nor so cleanly kept as should seem such a prince'. They arranged for him to be dressed in more appropriate robes and then with great reverence brought him, 'mute as a crowned calf, to Westminster. Warwick and Clarence entered the capital on the following day, with the Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Stanley behind them. The King, they saw, had declined both physically and mentally during his captivity; still less now could he ever hope to be anything but a figurehead, and a deeply uninspiring one at that. On 21 October, however, he wore his crown in public. Theoretically at least, as his subjects could see, he was back on the throne. And Warwick, appointed Lieutenant of the Kingdom, settled down to rule.
But not, as it turned out, for long. Warwick's hold on England was tenuous, and he knew it. Queen Margaret still viewed him with intense suspicion. Although she had refused to sail in his company to England she was bound to return there before long, together with her son the Prince of Wales, now seventeen. Would the old antipathy between her and Warwick flare up again, and if so what would be its outcome? Warwick's most important English ally, Clarence, was treacherous and utterly self-seeking; he could not be trusted an inch. There were of course other supporters, more reliable if less powerful; but sooner or later they too would expect rewards, and he had none to give them: after the recent events there were no great forfeited estates to be shared out among his friends. Meanwhile Edward IV, at liberty in Holland and still only twenty-eight, was anything but a spent force - particularly with his brother-in-law Charles the Bold of Burgundy to help him regain his throne.
Edward, however, had initially found Charles something of a disappointment. True, the Duke had put the Burgundian fleet at his disposal while he was in power and had been perfectly prepared to offer him a refuge after his flight; but the keystone of his foreign policy was his struggle with the King of France, for which he needed as an ally the effective King of England, not a refugee pretender. He had therefore entered into negotiations with Warwick, and it was only after these had broken down - Warwick was now, after all, firmly and inextricably bound to Louis XI — that he had even consented to grant his brother-in-law an audience. But then, fortunately for Edward, Louis began spoiling for war against Burgundy and the situation changed. Charles granted him a considerable sum of money for fitting out a fleet, which he was able to supplement with some two dozen other vessels from the Hanseatic League and elsewhere; and on Monday n March 1471, at the head of thirty-six ships and with an army of some 2,000 men, King Edward IV sailed for England. Three days later his ship, the Anthony, docked at Ravenscar on the Humber, exactly where Henry Bolingbroke had landed seventy-two years before. It seemed, on the whole, a favourable omen.
In another respect also Edward was to follow Bolingbroke. Finding that his country received him with little enthusiasm, he was obliged to give out that he had come to claim not the crown, but his dukedom only; to this at least his right was unquestioned. It was thus that he obtained permission to enter York - which was, paradoxically enough, by now firmly Lancastrian — from which he passed on to his family's own castle of Sandal, where his father had been killed eleven years before. Even in his home territories, however, he gathered relatively few adherents; only when he reached the Midlands, at Leicester and Nottingham, did appreciable numbers rally to his standard.
The Earl of Warwick, too, was recruiting in desperate haste. At the end of March he established his headquarters at Coventry, refusing all Edward's attempts to draw him on to the field until he received the reinforcements which he knew to be approaching under Oxford, Exeter, his brother Montagu and the Duke of Clarence. In little more than a week the first three had arrived - Exeter having had some trouble with a Yorkist detachment on the way - but then disaster struck. Almost predictably, Clarence decided once again to change sides and marched off, with 4,000 men behind him, to join his brother. At this point Edward, no longer troubling to conceal his true intentions, would have asked nothing better than a Battle; but Warwick knew he was outnumbered. He knew too that Margaret, with the young Prince of Wales and the reinforcements sent by King Louis, would at any moment be arriving from France; why should he risk an engagement which might well prove disastrous?
On 5 April Edward headed for London. No general likes to advance in the knowledge that he is leaving a strong enemy force in his rear, but he had little choice: if he were ever to wrest the capital - and Henry VI himself - from Warwick's control, now surely was the moment to do so. Recognizing the danger, Warwick sent urgent messages to the Duke of Somerset and the other Lancastrian leaders in the city, enjoining them to hold fast until his arrival; by an ironic chance, however, reports had recently arrived to the effect that Margaret, her son and her army had finally set sail from Harfleur. They were expected from one day to the next on the south coast, and Somerset had already left to welcome them. Authority in the capital now lay with Warwick's brother, George Nevill, Archbishop of York. The poor man did his best, organizing on 9 April what he hoped would be an impressive parade of Lancastrian strength led by King Henry in person; but Henry, in a threadbare gown of blue velvet, barely able to sit his horse and tightly clutching the archbishop's hand, cut such a pathetic figure that the attempt did more harm than good. On the fol
lowing day Nevill submitted, and on the nth Edward entered London without opposition. After a hurried re-coronation at Westminster Abbey - Henry having returned to his former lodgings in the Tower - he went straight to the sanctuary to be reunited with his wife and daughters and to see his baby son for the first time.
But time was short: Warwick was on the march towards London and already approaching St Albans. It seems strange, in retrospect, that he had not waited for Margaret and her army to join him, but there were several uncertainties: how long she would be, where she wouldland, the strength of her army and - most doubtful of all - the extent to which she would trust him and treat him as an ally. His future position would be a good deal more secure if he could come to her as a victor, with a decisive battle behind him. Meanwhile Edward was growing stronger by the minute; the sooner the battle could be fought, the better.
The King, for his part, felt much the same way. He spent Good Friday 12 April in frantic preparations, and on Saturday afternoon -with Gloucester, Clarence, Hastings, Rivers and a number of other lords - led an army estimated at 10,000 men up the Great North Road towards St Albans. Henry too was with him, bewildered as always, but a valuable hostage in case of need. He found Warwick - with Montagu, Oxford and Exeter, and an army that appeared considerably larger than his own - sooner than he expected: on the high ground, a mile or so to the north of the little town of Barnet - and that night, under cover of darkness and in rapidly increasing fog, he drew up his troops opposite them, in what he intended to be a direct confrontation.
At first light on Easter Sunday, to a deafening blast of trumpets, he ordered the advance. The fog had grown thicker, to the point where it took him a little time to discover that he had slightly mistaken his position: his line outflanked Warwick's on the right and was itself outflanked on the left. One end of the Yorkist line, moreover, was unable to see the other - though this ultimately proved an advantage: when Edward's left wing was broken by the Lancastrians under the Earl of Oxford and took flight, the right remained unaware of the fact and fought on undismayed. Again the superbly armoured figure of the King himself, commanding the centre and towering above his soldiers, dominated the battle. He and they fought furiously for three hours, first wearing down Warwick's men and ultimately driving them back. By mid-morning it was all over, with perhaps a thousand men - Montagu among them - lying dead on the field. Warwick himself leaped on to his horse and fled; but he was captured in nearby Wrotham Park and cut down on the spot. His body and his brother's were carried to London and on the King's orders were exposed for two days, 'open and naked', in St Paul's, not as a grisly triumph but in order to refute any dangerous rumours that they might still be alive. King Henry, who had been fitted with armour and optimistically placed in the thick of the fighting, somehow escaped without a scratch and was taken back to the Tower.
That same evening, after three weeks during which she had been delayed again and again by contrary winds in the Channel, Queen Margaret — now forty-one — and her son Prince Edward landed at Weymouth. Next day she went to Cerne Abbey; it was there that she was joined by Somerset and the Earl of Devonshire, who told her of Warwick's defeat. She was, however, given a warm reception in the west country, where there was an immediate general rising in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. At this point she had two choices before her. She could march directly on London, either taking the coast road or by way of Salisbury; alternatively she could head north to Lancashire and Cheshire, where her principal support was to be found and where there was a chance that she might meet up on her way with Jasper Tudor, who was believed to be rallying troops on her behalf. Either way, as she was well aware, Edward would not give her an easy journey.
Nor did he. His agents had watched her every movement since her arrival, and when she chose the second course of action he knew of her decision almost as soon as she knew of it herself. The several feints that she deliberately made in an attempt to put him off the scent were of no avail: on the very day - 29 April - that she arrived in Bath, he and his army reached Cirencester. Hearing of this she withdrew to Bristol, whence she advanced up the Severn valley, Edward following her on a parallel course through the Cotswolds. On 3 May, after an all-night march, she reached Gloucester, only to find its gates - and the Severn bridge behind them - firmly closed against her. Her troops, now scarcely able to drag one foot in front of the other — they had marched with full equipment nearly fifty miles in thirty-six hours, across difficult country, in unseasonably hot weather and with little water -were obliged to struggle on for another ten miles to Tewkesbury, where a shallow ford would enable them to cross the river.
Unfortunately for them, however, they were never able to make use of it. Arriving in the late afternoon, they and their horses were utterly exhausted. They could think of nothing but a few hours' rest; and the next morning, Saturday 4 May, Edward was upon them.
It was a hard-fought fight. The Yorkists had the advantage of vastly superior fire-power, from their archers and hand-gunners alike, and their adversaries soon found themselves cowering under a deluge of arrows and shot. Somerset, who was in command, had no choice but to go over to the offensive and launched a sweeping attack on Edward's left flank. Thanks to the wooded terrain with its hedges and sunken lanes, he was able to take the Yorkists momentarily by surprise; but Richard of Gloucester, commanding the vanguard, sped to his brother's aid. Just as they were beginning to drive back the attackers they were joined by a mobile column of 200 men-at-arms, who had been ordered off by Edward before the battle to guard against possible ambush in a wood. Swooping down from the higher ground, they made short work of the retreating Lancastrians. Young Prince Edward, who had been put in nominal command of the 'middle ward' of the army and had in consequence not been involved in the flanking attack, did his utmost to encourage his men to stay and fight; but they had seen the fate of their companions, and soon they too took to their heels.
The carnage at Tewkesbury was enough to earn the battlefield the name of Bloody Meadow - a name still locally current today; but it was nothing compared to the massacre that followed. Edward's men took no prisoners. Those of the defeated Lancastrians who failed to make their escape from the field were cut down where they stood;
others sought sanctuary in the great abbey that still dominates the town, but the Yorkists smashed down the doors and slaughtered every one of them, shedding so much blood that the building had to be closed for a month before it could be reconsecrated.1 Somerset and several of his colleagues who, like him, had betrayed Edward not once but twice, were beheaded; those leaders who had never wavered from the Lancastrian cause were spared and pardoned.
The fate of Edward, Prince of Wales, is uncertain. According to most accounts he was killed in the battle; Hall, however, claims that he was taken prisoner by the King's former tutor Richard Croft, who delivered him up to the King as the result of a proclamation to the effect that anyone doing so would be rewarded with an annuity of ,£1oo, the Prince's life being guaranteed. He was brought before Edward, who asked him 'how he durst so presumptuously enter his realm with banner displayed?' The boy replied, 'To recover my father's kingdom', whereupon the King struck him with his gauntlet and Clarence, Gloucester, Dorset and Hastings, who were standing by, ran him through with their swords. He was seventeen years old.
His mother, Queen Margaret, had not been present at the battle. She had retired with her ladies to a 'poor religious place' on the Worcester road, and was still there three days later when she was taken prisoner. Brought before the King at Coventry, she was carried on to London, where on Tuesday 21 May, as part of Edward's triumphal entry into the city, she was paraded through the streets before her grimly smiling rival Elizabeth. For the next four years she was under what might be called house arrest, living in adequate style but constantly transferred from place to place. In 1475 Louis XI succeeded in ransoming her for 50,000 gold crowns and a renunciation of all rights to the English throne.
And what, finally, of King Henry himself? On the n
ight of that same 21 May, he died in the Tower. Once again, the circumstances of his death are unclear. According to the subsequent proclamation, it was the result of 'pure displeasure and melancholy'; but both in England
1. Tewkesbury Abbey contains another curious relic of the battle: the door of the sacristy, which is actually the westernmost of the chevet chapels on the south side, is covered on its inner face with metal plates made from the armour worn by soldiers who were killed on the field. And immediately behind the high altar, an iron grating in the floor marks the vault in which the Duke of Clarence was buried after his murder seven years later.
and abroad it was an open secret that he had been murdered, almost certainly by Richard of Gloucester. The most circumstantial contemporary account (by John Warkworth, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, writing some twelve years later) reports that he was put to death the 21st day of May on a Tuesday night betwixt xi and xii of the clock, being then at the Tower the Duke of Gloucester, brother to King Edward, and many other; and on the morrow he was chested1 and brought to St Paul's and his face was open that every man might see him. And in his lying he bled on the pavement there; and afterwards at the Black Friars was brought, and there he bled new and fresh; and from thence he was carried to Chertsey Abbey in a boat and buried there in Our Lady's Chapel.
Shakespeare's Kings Page 33