Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  Meanwhile, Edward IV’s fortunes appeared bleak. For the past two months, having been forced to depend on the hospitality of Louis de Gruthuyse, Edward had waited, at the mercy of Duke Charles of Burgundy. No response to his pleas had been forthcoming. But now Edward found the wheel of fortune turning suddenly in his favour. Bolstered by the promise of support from Warwick and the Lancastrians, in early December Louis XI publicly denounced the Treaty of Péronne, a previous alliance between France and Burgundy, effectively declaring war on the duchy, while he rapidly launched an invasion on Saint-Quentin, moving forces into Picardy. Having been embarrassed at the presence of the exiled Yorkists in Burgundy, Charles had little choice but to embrace Edward and his band of exiles as his only hope against a combined force of French and English aggression. On 26 December, Edward was finally summoned to a personal meeting with the duke, while five days later he had been granted £20,000 ‘for their departure from my lord the duke’s lands to return to England’.68 Edward began his preparations to recover the kingdom he had so suddenly lost. Gathering men and ships for an invasion, he also reached out to those disaffected by the new regime – including his wayward brother, George, duke of Clarence. As soon as Warwick had established Henry VI back on the throne, Clarence realised that he had been sold short of his dream to be recognised as joint ruler of the realm, and heir to the throne. According to one chronicler, Clarence found himself ‘held in great suspicion, despite, distain, and hatred, with all the lords, noblemen, and other, that were adherents and full partakers with Henry … he saw also that they daily laboured amongst them, breaking their appointments made with him, and, of likelihood after that, should continually more and more fervently intend, conspire, and procure the destruction of him and all his blood’.69 When Edward discovered news of Clarence’s treatment, he decided that he might be won back to the Yorkist cause, and arranged for messages to be sent through his mother, the duchess of York, and his sisters, including ‘most specially’ Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, who ‘at no season ceased to send her servants and messengers … so that a perfect accord was appointed, accorded, concluded and assured betwixt them’.70

  On the afternoon of Thursday, 14 March, Edward’s small fleet, scattered by storms, landed at Ravenspur, the port where, seventy-two years before, Henry Bolingbroke had landed in 1399 on his way to depose Richard II. Marching to York, where he managed to convince the citizens that he merely wished to recover his earldom, Edward and his troops continued unhindered southwards. By the time he reached the town of Warwick, he was greeted with the joyous news of Clarence’s defection. As proof of his decision, Clarence had ordered his troops to wear on their breasts the rose of York on top of their Lancastrian collars, indicating that when Clarence had begun raising his men on 16 March, they must have originally believed that they would be fighting for Warwick and the Lancastrians. A meeting between Clarence, Edward, Richard, duke of Gloucester, and the king’s closest friend, William, Lord Hastings, then took place between the two armies, at which there was ‘right kind and loving language betwixt them two, with perfect accord knight together for ever hereafter, with as heartily loving cheer and countenance, as might be betwixt two brethren’. Richard and Clarence again spoke with each other, while all those watching ‘were right glad and joyous’, with trumpets sounding the news of the reunion.71 ‘Not war but peace was in every man’s mouth’, Vergil commented; with armour and weapons on both sides laid down, the brothers embraced each other ‘gladly’.72

  The three brothers then went ‘with great gladness’ to Warwickshire, where once again Edward challenged the earl of Warwick to depart from behind the city walls of Coventry and give fight. News of Clarence’s defection must have been a serious blow to Warwick. Again the earl refused to leave the city. Despite Clarence being dispatched as a negotiator to offer ‘a good accord’, the earl still refused to countenance surrender. With Warwick dug in at Coventry, Edward faced the choice of having to lay siege to the city, with the prospect of a bloody and protracted conflict that would leave many casualties on both sides, or to march onwards to London, where Edward knew he could expect to find a favourable reception. Control of the capital would allow Edward to gain ‘the assistance of his true lords, lovers and servants, which were there, in those parts, in great number’, one chronicler noted. On Friday, 5 April, Edward decided to strike out on his march to the capital.

  Meanwhile, in London, the city had been thrown into a state of panic. The Common Council had received letters from both Edward and Warwick urging their support. Warwick’s brother, George Neville, the archbishop of York, was already present in the city, and attempted to rally support to the Lancastrian cause by parading Henry VI through the streets. Led ‘by the hand’, the king, a broken man and a shadow of his former self, was taken in procession from St Paul’s through Cheapside, dressed in only ‘a long blue gown of velvet as though he had no more to change with’.73 Accompanied by a meagre following of 600 supporters – including the seventy-year-old Lord Sudeley, a veteran of the French wars who bore the king’s sword in front of him – the display of the rapidly fading Lancastrian dynasty evinced more pity than pride, with the city chronicle noting that the procession was ‘more like a play than the showing of a prince to win men’s hearts’, while the sight of Henry ‘pleased the citizens as a fire painted on the wall warmed the old woman’.74

  As the lamentable procession came to an end, news reached the city that Edward and his army were fast approaching the city walls. With the mayor having taken to his bed, other members of the Common Council decided to flee to France. Eventually, after anxious discussion, it was resolved that since Edward ‘was hastening towards the city with a powerful army, and as the inhabitants were not sufficiently versed in the use of arms to withstand so large a force, no attempt should be made to resist him’.75 By this time, Edward had marched through Dunstable and reached St Albans on 10 April. The next day he entered London in triumph, with his army led by a ‘black and smoky sort of Flemish gunners’.76 After Edward and his brothers made an offering at St Paul’s, Edward then made his way to the bishop’s palace to secure Henry VI’s person. Edward gave Henry his hand, while the Lancastrian king, unaware of what exact events were unfurling around him, embraced his longstanding enemy, reportedly exclaiming, ‘My cousin of York, you are very welcome. I know that my life will be in no danger in your hands’, to which Edward replied that ‘he should have no worries and should be of good cheer’.77 Soon after, Henry was ‘seized’ and taken to the Tower, where he was placed along with the archbishop of York.

  Several days later, on 14 April, Easter Sunday, the king met Warwick’s forces just outside Barnet. As dawn broke around half past four in the morning, a thick mist enveloped the surrounding fields. Unfurling his banners and blowing trumpets, Edward’s army descended upon Warwick’s forces – estimated at a superior number of around 15,000 men, compared to Edward’s 12,000 troops – attacking first with cannon fire and, as they drew closer, ‘hand strokes’. The ‘great mist’ that had descended was now so thick that it ‘would not suffer no man to see but a little from him’. Edward, ‘about the middest of the battle’, fought on and ‘manly, vigorously and valiantly assailed’ Warwick’s forces, ‘where he, with great violence, beat and bare down afore him all that stood in his way’.78 In the mist, the fact that the two armies were not directly aligned against each other soon began to tell. According to the accepted version of events, Edward’s right wing and vanguard, led by his brother Richard, had been arranged to extend beyond Warwick’s opposing left wing, while Edward’s left wing, led by William, Lord Hastings, in turn overlapped Warwick’s right wing, led by John, earl of Oxford. The result of this was that Richard, advancing into the mist, discovered that he was not only unopposed, but found that he was going downhill, off the high ground. Realising what had happened, and hearing the noise of the battle taking place at the centre, Richard ordered his men to swing left, and, attacking up the slope, began to launch an attack into Warwick’s le
ft flank, led by the earl of Exeter. Richard may have found that his initial advance downwards led him onto marshy ground, and the consequent fighting seems to have been fierce, with those in his household and fighting close by him sorely injured and killed. Six years later, Richard would remember in his prayers Thomas Parr, John Milewater, Christopher Worsley, Thomas Huddleston and John Harper, ‘slain in his service’.79

  But it was at the other end of the line of Warwick’s forces that the outcome of the battle was to be eventually decided. On the Lancastrian right-hand flank, towards the west of the battlefield, the earl of Oxford found that his advance was also unopposed as a result of the two sides overlapping, and quickly succeeded in putting to flight most of Lord Hastings’s division of 3,000 men, routing them as they were chased towards Barnet.

  Oxford’s men, confident that the battle had been won, returned to pick over the spoils of the dead. Regrouping in the heavy fog, they would have advanced up along the road from London, where the earl would have planned to attack the rear of the Yorkist forces once more. Yet the shifting movements of the battle lines meant that, instead, Oxford’s troops came in direct confrontation with the flank of the Lancastrian forces, led by the marquess of Montagu. In the confusion, and with the mist impairing their own vision, Montagu’s men turned to see what they thought were soldiers wearing the Yorkist livery of the sun with streams on their coats, and, fearing a Yorkist attack, began to fight back. In fact, the troops in front of them wore Oxford’s own livery of ‘a star with streams’, but, as the chronicler Warkworth observed, ‘the mist was so thick, that a man might not profitly judge one thing from another’.

  Chaos ensued. Warwick’s troops turned on the earl of Oxford’s forces, believing them to be their Yorkist enemy. Crying, ‘Treason’, Oxford and his men fled away from the field.80 The cries of treason were perhaps not unfounded. During the battle, according to one account, Montagu decided to switch his allegiance, putting on the king’s livery after he ‘agreed and appointed with King Edward’. When one of Warwick’s men caught sight of the marquess’s defection, he ‘fell upon him, and killed him’.

  The Lancastrian army rapidly disintegrated. For Warwick, there seemed little choice: seeing ‘his brother dead, and the Earl of Oxford fled, he left on horseback, and fled to a wood’. Soon the earl realised that he was trapped, with no means of escape. When one of Edward’s men ‘espied him’, he was set upon, killed and ‘despoiled … naked’.81

  It was not yet eight o’clock on the morning of Easter Sunday. After four hours of close fighting Edward’s forces had ‘won a marvellous, unexpected and glorious victory’.82 Along with Warwick and Montagu, 3,000 men lay dead on the field. Other Lancastrian lords had taken flight, such as the earl of Oxford, who did not pause until he had reached the Scottish Borders. At least Henry VI had been discovered remarkably unharmed, having been placed ‘in the forward during the battle’.83 The same afternoon, Edward rode into the capital with the former king by his side, pathetically still dressed in the old blue gown he had worn days before. As soon as he reached the city, Henry was placed in his familiar home, the Tower, ‘there to be kept’.84 Arriving at the door of St Paul’s, Edward was greeted by the archbishop of Canterbury. The king brought with him two banners, ‘badly torn by missiles’, which he offered up at the rood of the north door as the Easter hymn ‘Salve festa dies’ was sung. Edward then returned to Westminster, to the queen, who had not believed her husband’s victory until a messenger carrying one of Edward’s gauntlets had been sent to her.

  The following day, on Easter Monday, 15 April, at around seven o’clock in the morning, those going about their early-morning business witnessed two chests being brought into St Paul’s Cathedral. There, inside, on open display, were the naked bodies of Warwick and his brother the marquess of Montagu, ‘except for a cloth tied around the private parts of either’. The chests were set upon stones within the church, where thousands would flock to see them over the next few days.85 Edward’s intent in making this humiliating display was clear, ensuring that ‘the people should not be abused by feigned seditious tales … for, doubtless else the rumour should have been sown about, in all countries, that they both, or else, at the least the earl of Warwick, was yet alive, upon cursed intent thereby to have caused new murmurs, insurrections and rebellions against indisposed people’.86 The kingmaker was dead. Nevertheless, Edward spared his cousin the indignity of having his body quartered and sent across the kingdom; instead both corpses were allowed to be interred in the family vault at Bisham Abbey.

  The battle had been won, but the war was far from over. The Lancastrian Sir John Paston, who had fought alongside his patron, the earl of Oxford, wrote to his cousin, warning him not to rally to the Yorkist cause too soon. ‘For the world, I assure you, is right queasy, as ye shall know within the month; the people here feareth it sore. God hath showed himself marvellously like him that made all, and can undo again when him list; and I can think that by all likelihood shall show himself as marvellous again, and that in short time.’87 Events would prove Paston right. On the evening of Easter Sunday, as the cries of the wounded could still be heard on the battlefield at Barnet, as men despoiled the dead of their weapons and armour, Queen Margaret and her son, Prince Edward, and his new wife, Anne, together with ‘other men of the King of France’, came ashore at Weymouth. The countess of Warwick also landed at Portsmouth. When Margaret arrived at Southampton, the news of her husband’s and brother-in-law’s deaths was broken to her. She fled instead into sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest. When she discovered the outcome of the battle the queen was ‘right heavy and sorry’, though she was persuaded that if the Lancastrians were able to assemble a great army, Edward and his forces would not be able to withstand another battle so soon after Barnet. Now was the perfect time to strike.

  Edward was informed of Margaret’s arrival on 16 April. He lost no time in raising fresh troops to replace the men he had lost at Barnet, through either death, injury or exhaustion, ‘which were right many in number’. Three days later, the Yorkist army departed out of London. After a cat-and-mouse game, which saw both armies nearly engage in battle on the outskirts of Bristol, only to track each other across the Cotswolds, past Gloucester and on to Tewkesbury, Edward prepared his army for battle. It was vital that he struck first, preventing the Lancastrians from escaping and marching towards the Severn and into Wales. Edward chose to deploy his forces in a similar formation to that which had proved so successful for him at Barnet: his brother Richard would once more be given command of the vanguard; the middle ‘ward’ or main ‘battle’ would be commanded by Edward himself, together with Clarence, kept close by under the king’s watchful eye; the rearguard was placed under the control of William, Lord Hastings, and the marquess of Dorset.

  Once the three ‘battles’ had been arranged into formation and banners were unfurled, Edward ordered the blaring of trumpets, upon which he ‘committed his cause and quarrel to Almighty God, to our most blessed lady his mother, Virgin Mary, the glorious martyr Saint George, and all the saints; and advanced, directly upon his enemies’.88 Edward’s first move saw him bombard the Lancastrian camp with gunfire and the arrow fire of over 3,000 archers, fronting Richard’s vanguard. ‘The king’s ordnance was so conveniently laid afore them, and his vanguard so sore oppressed them, with shot of arrows, that they gave them a right-a-sharp shower.’ The Lancastrian forces returned their fire, ‘both with shot of arrows and guns, whereof nonetheless they had not so great plenty as had the king’.89 Once again, as commander of the king’s vanguard, Richard was at the centre of Edward’s strategy. ‘The Duke of Gloucester, who lacked no policy, galled them grievously with the shot of arrows.’ Meanwhile, the Lancastrian force ‘rewarded their adversaries home again with like payment, both with shot of arrows and great artillery’, though they stood little chance against the ‘plenty of guns as the king had’.90

  If it was Edward’s tactic to provoke his enemies into a panicked and rash response,
it worked. The Lancastrian earl of Somerset ordered his troops to move down the hill, passing by the side of the king’s vanguard led by Richard, by means of a lane which led his troops into a close where Somerset now launched a direct attack ‘right fiercely’ on Edward’s own men. If the Lancastrians had made a general advance, Somerset’s manoeuvre may have worked: instead, the other Lancastrian commanders, John, earl of Devon, and John, Lord Wenlock, remained in their place. With the Lancastrian army now split, and Somerset left isolated after his charge, Edward seized his opportunity. ‘The King, full manly, set forth even upon them, entered and won the dyke, and hedge, upon them, into the close, and, with great violence, put them up towards the hill, and, so also, the King’s vanguard, being in the rule of the Duke of Gloucester.’91 In combining their forces, Edward and his brother Richard began to repulse Somerset’s attack, pushing his troops backwards through the ditch and back up the hill.