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‘And so, in field and town, everyone called Edward king.’ His accession was hailed by his supporters and propagandists as the restoration of the true Plantagenet line. God would now, it was hoped, look benevolently upon the realm and allow peace and good government to be restored.
On 5 March the new king wrote to the city of Coventry, thanking the citizens for their loyal support. This was intended to forestall them from transferring their allegiance back to Henry VI, whose cause they had formerly supported so staunchly. Edward also rewarded Warwick for his inestimable service by appointing him Great Chamberlain of England, Captain of Dover, and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports; he remained Captain of Calais.
After the Yorkists had entered London, Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou, Prince Edward and the entire Lancastrian army, ‘having little trust in Essex, less in Kent and least of all in London, departed into the north country, where the foundation of their strength and refuge only rested’. With them went their prisoners. They marched to York, shocked and despondent, their men pillaging as they went and leaving havoc and misery behind them.
By retreating to the north the Lancastrians were effectively surrendering the military initiative to the Yorkists. Henry could have given the order to advance on the capital, but the royal troops were by now so disorderly and violent that he refused to do so, being appalled at the atrocities he had witnessed and guessing what the outcome would be and what damage it would do to the Lancastrian cause.
The royal army camped outside the walls of York, while Henry sent letters to his loyal lieges, listing ‘the Earl of March’s misdeeds’ and commanding them to raise their people and attend him ‘defensibly arrayed’ with all speed. The Queen also called upon all true subjects of King Henry to rally to his standard and appealed to Mary of Gueldres for reinforcements. Mary responded with a small force of men. Some chroniclers claim that within days Margaret had increased the size of her army to 60,000 men, but the figure is likely to have been nearer 30,000. Her generals, Somerset, Northumberland and Clifford, now began to plan a decisive campaign, and persuaded Henry and Margaret to remain in York while they rode to face the enemy.
King Edward knew that if he did not take urgent steps to deal with the Lancastrians he would never be secure on his throne; Henry VI had to be overthrown in fact as well as in name. On 5 March he dispatched Norfolk to East Anglia to recruit men, and the next day sent Warwick north, accompanied by ‘a great puissance of people’, to muster support for the Yorkists in his territories in the Midlands. Two days later Warwick received commissions authorising him to array the lieges of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. On the 11th Edward’s foot soldiers, recruited mainly in Wales and Kent, marched out of London on their way north. With them went a number of carts filled with weapons, guns and food.
Edward himself left London on the 13th, via Bishopsgate, and marched north to St Albans with a great host whose ranks were swelled by new recruits as he went. Rumours of the conduct of the Lancastrian army were still driving many to support the Yorkists. However, Edward’s army was not much better behaved, at least to begin with, for at St Albans, although Abbot Whethamstead asked the new king to forbid looting, many soldiers defied the ban and caused such extensive damage to the monks’ quarters that the abbot and his brethren were obliged to lodge in outlying manors until it could be repaired.
Meanwhile, the King’s mother, Duchess Cecily, remained in London, working tirelessly to gain and maintain support for her son’s cause among the citizens, who were fearful as a result of terrifying reports of the depredations of the Queen’s northerners that were filtering south. These made her task much easier, for the Londoners’ loyalty was now almost exclusively to the cause of York.
On 16 March Edward came to Barkway, and the next day to Cambridge, where he met up with Sir John Howard, newly arrived from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, where the abbot and convent had raised £100 for the King, ‘by way of love’. Coventry sent him 100 men, while other contingents were arrayed by the cities of Canterbury, Bristol, Salisbury, Worcester, Gloucester, Leicester, Nottingham and Northampton. By the 22nd Edward had arrived in Nottingham, where – after several false reports – he received certain intelligence that Somerset, Rivers and a strong force were positioned to defend the river crossing at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire. By the 27th he had reached Pontefract, ‘collecting men in thousands’, according to the Milanese ambassador. ‘Some say that the Queen is exceedingly prudent, and by remaining on the defensive, as they say she is well content to do, she will bring things into subjection and will tear into pieces those attacks of the people.’ Edward was now close behind the Lancastrian army, which was blocking the road to York, where lay Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou and their son. Hall says that nearly 30,000 Lancastrians were encamped nearby, and that Edward had 25,000 Yorkists, which would shortly be reinforced by the hosts led by Warwick and Norfolk.
Between them the two armies had between 60,000 and over 100,000 men – possibly two per cent of the total population of England – yet sources differ as to whether the Lancastrians had more than the Yorkists or were of equal strength. Whethamstead saw the coming conflict as a struggle between northerners and southerners, while Waurin says that the northern commanders were inferior to the southern ones.
The Lancastrian army was indeed predominantly northern and was under the command of Somerset, Exeter, Northumberland, Devon, Trollope, and the Lords FitzHugh, Hungerford, Beaumont, Dacre of Gilsland, Roos and Grey of Codnor. It included at least nineteen peers – proof that many magnates still felt that their first allegiance was to Henry VI – while the Yorkists boasted only eight: Warwick, Norfolk, Bourchier, Grey de Wilton, Clinton, Fauconberg and the Lords Scrope and Dacre (Richard Fiennes). Somerset, commander-in-chief of the Lancastrians, was just twenty-four, while King Edward, commander-in-chief of the Yorkists, was not quite nineteen. Somerset and Exeter were in command of the Lancastrian reserve, stationed in the village of Towton, not far from York, while the Yorkist vanguard was commanded by Fauconberg.
On 28 March King Edward sent Lord FitzWalter ahead with a force to secure the bridge over the River Aire, south of Ferrybridge, but they were ambushed by Lord Clifford, leading a large contingent of cavalry. So many were massacred or drowned that hardly any of FitzWalter’s men were left, while he himself was killed and Warwick, who was with him, was wounded in the leg. When the news spread through the Yorkist ranks morale among the men plummeted. King Edward and his captains were worried that this would affect their performance in battle, but Warwick saved the day in dramatic fashion when he killed his horse in full view of the army and vowed that he would rather fight on foot and die with his men than yield another inch.
Meanwhile, King Henry had sent a message pleading for a truce to be negotiated, as it was Palm Sunday on the morrow, but King Edward refused the offer. He knew that a contingent of the main Lancastrian army, under Somerset and Rivers, was waiting two miles away, ready to crush the Yorkists if they overcame Clifford and tried to cross the river, and that if this campaign was to be successful then he must persist. Accordingly, he sent in the Yorkist vanguard under the command of John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, which managed to push the Lancastrians back to the end of the bridge. Messengers raced back to inform King Edward what was happening and he, seeing that reinforcements would be required, marched the main body of his army to Ferrybridge and commanded his men to go to Suffolk’s aid, himself going on foot to fight with them.
At this point, in the midst of a violent struggle, the Lancastrians destroyed the bridge. The Yorkists, undeterred, built a narrow raft, intending to ferry their soldiers across, but it was seized by the enemy. Further furious fighting took place as the Yorkists made a successful but bloody attempt to recover it. Eventually they managed to cross the river a few miles upstream at Castleford, and set up camp on the other side amidst driving snow and freezing hail. In the end they had won the day, their victory having demonstrated to the enemy the new king’s superior qualities as a general; by continually reinforcing his vanguard he had achieved victory, knowing that to do so was critical at this stage. The Lancastrians, although they had fought furiously, had lacked sufficient reinforcements, although they did manage to make off with a great number of Yorkist horses whose owners were fighting on foot with their king.
Lord Clifford, however, had been killed in the fight. As the Yorkists crossed the Aire at Castleford, Fauconberg was the first to go over, at the head of the vanguard. Clifford tried to trap him on the farther bank, and there was an intense struggle on Brotherton Marshes. Clifford fought with heroic courage, but seeing that his men were surrounded and no match for the enemy, gave the order to retreat via the valley of Dintingdale and the village of Saxton; he was by then so shattered with exhaustion that he unwisely loosened his gorget, and as he rode off a headless arrow embedded itself in his exposed throat and he died in great suffering. Edward had neither forgiven nor forgotten Clifford’s brutal murder of young Rutland after Wakefield, and would have considered his brother’s death well avenged.
That night, King Edward lodged at Pontefract Castle. At dawn on 29 March – Palm Sunday – both armies awoke to find themselves in the midst of a snowstorm. Shortly afterwards the Yorkists began their march north, and at eleven o’clock in the morningencamped on the hill south of the village of Saxton, ten miles south of York, with their backs to the village. When Edward drew up his men in battle formation, their lines stretched for a mile along the ridge. At the same time the Lancastrians moved north from Tadcaster along the road from London, via Stutton and Cocksford, and took up their position half a mile to the north of the Yorkists on high ground a hundred feet above meadowland and the village of Towton, six miles north of Ferrybridge. Below them the land sloped gently down to the valley.
The armies were now facing each other across what would shortly be known as the ‘Bloody Meadow’ and a field which is still called North Acres. From an offensive point of view the Lancastrians were in a commanding position and seemingly had the advantage. Behind the Yorkist lines lay the road to London and, beyond that, the River Aire: the Yorkists could easily be defeated by being pushed back along that road and trapped by – or in – the river. However, in the event of a Yorkist victory, the Lancastrian position was in reality horribly vulnerable. To their right, on the far side of the meadow, was a ravine, along which flowed a river called the Cock Beck, which was now in flood due to heavy rain and snow. To their left, a little way off in the direction of Selby and Cawood, lay the road to Tadcaster and the River Wharfe, which was also flooding. The only escape route for the Lancastrians, in the event of a rout, was by Tadcaster Bridge, across the River Wharfe.
‘The lamentable Battle of Towton’, the largest, longest, and one of the most important battles of the Wars of the Roses, took place on Palm Sunday in the midst of a thick blizzard that continued all day. As soon as both armies had taken up their positions, the fighting began. The chroniclers are maddeningly vague as to the tactics and strategies employed, and Waurin’s is the only detailed, if unsubstantiated, account. Edward had brought with him plenty of artillery but there is no record of it being deployed during the battle – probably because of the appalling weather conditions.
At first, the Lancastrians were at a disadvantage because the wind was blowing the snow into their faces and they were unable to see the enemy properly or judge distances. Volley after volley of their arrows fell wide or short of the mark, and all they could hear through the swirling snow was the mocking laughter of Fauconberg’s archers, which was accompanied by a deadly hail of heavy-shafted arrows that created havoc in the bewildered Lancastrian ranks. What the Lancastrians did not know was that the Yorkists had gathered up thousands of enemy arrows from the ground and were firing them back at them, moving deftly backwards, at Fauconberg’s command, to avoid the next haphazard fall of yet more ineffectual Lancastrian arrows.
Before long the Lancastrians became aware of what was happening and of the terrible slaughter that was being wrought in their army, which had as yet gained no advantage. The order was given to lay down bows and arrows and charge into battle across the meadow. The Yorkists, likewise, dropped their bows and rushed into the fray, as Northumberland and Somerset advanced downhill with the Lancastrian vanguard, inflicting numerous casualties as they came and routing Edward’s cavalry flank, which was chased from the field by Somerset’s men.
There then followed one of the most terrible and bloody struggles in English history, as for two hours Lancastrians and Yorkists were locked in a vicious mêlée in driving sleet and bitter winds. By King Edward’s command, no quarter was given nor any prisoners taken; even the common foot soldiers were not to be spared. Edward, remembering the fate of his father and brother, was bent on revenge. He himself was busy commanding his army, aiding his men, or helping to carry the wounded from the field. When his soldiers appeared to be flagging he dismounted in the thick of the fighting and rallied them, crying that he intended to live or die with them that day.
Warwick, in the thick of the mêlée, managed to maintain his position, although his men in particular were very hard pressed by their opponents. ‘There was great slaughter that day at Towton,’ wrote Waurin, ‘and for a long time no one could see which side could gain the victory, so furious was the fighting.’ So many had fallen that the snow was red with blood, yet throughout the battle reserve troops replaced those who had been killed or injured, or were collapsing from exhaustion; some of the latter were unable to rise and were trampled to death by the men who came to take their places.
As the afternoon advanced the fighting showed no signs of abating, and every foot of ground gained by one side would be violently recaptured by the other; thousands perished, and the air was split by the screams of the wounded and the dying. It was not clear who was winning until dusk fell, when at last the Lancastrians were driven back to the western side of the meadow. At this point, a strong force sent by Norfolk, who was terminally ill and unable to come himself, rode up from Saxton into North Acres and attacked the Lancastrian left flank. The Lancastrians, realising then that the day was lost and that they were all dead men unless they got away, fled the field. As their forces broke, the Yorkist cavalrymen raced to the horse park behind their own lines and mounted their steeds to give chase. As they thundered past, the King and Warwick, flushed with victory, yelled, ‘Spare the commons! Kill the lords!’ Their words went unheeded.
By evening, the already swollen waters of the Cock Beck had risen higher, thanks to the snow, yet for many of the defeated this was their only escape route, and before long almost the entire Lancastrian army was in full flight down the steep banks of the ravine, slipping on the snow and ice and plunging into the freezing waters of the flooding stream, which was soon filled with thousands of panic-stricken men, desperately struggling to escape from the fury and arrows of the pursuing Yorkist troops, who were systematically butchering every man they caught.
Most of the fleeing Lancastrians were making for a makeshift bridge of boards at Cocksford, but what they had not anticipated was the strong current in the stream. Many drowned, while others were shot by the enemy, whose arrows were falling thickly amid the snowflakes. The Yorkists were also racing for the bridge, and there was heavy fighting as they tried to prevent the Lancastrians from crossing it to freedom. The bridge had not been built to support a battling mass of men, and as it gave way with a sickening crack hundreds of Yorkists and Lancastrians plunged together into the icy, deep water below, where most of them drowned or suffocated in the press. As they gasped their last, struggling wildly in the water, horses’ hooves trampled them, as more pursuers used their bodies as a bridge to the farther shore. Before long the Cock Beck was running red with blood all the way to the far-off River Wharfe.
As other Lancastrian fugitives came up to find the bridge gone, they were slaughtered by Wenlock’s men or chased into and beyond Tadcaster. Yorkist soldiers pursued the fleeing Lancastrians for some time after the battle, and even smashed the bridge over the River Ouse at Tadcaster, where yet more vanquished soldiers drowned.
The battle lasted in total ten hours, from eleven in the morning until roughly nine at night, although the rout went on for longer, some fugitives being pursued nearly as far as York. When it was over, men dropped down with exhaustion and slept among the dead and wounded. The Yorkists had scored a decisive and overwhelming victory, but at a bitter price.
Towton was probably the bloodiest battle ever to take place on English soil. Casualties were high because large numbers of men had fought intensively in a somewhat confined space. When dawn rose on 30 March, the meadow and North Acres were thick with corpses. King Edward surmised that about 20,000 had been killed; his heralds, after surveying the carnage, estimated 28,000, a figure given by several contemporary chroniclers. However, this only applied to bodies lying on the field, and did not include those who perished during the rout, so the real figure was probably nearer 40,000. Of these, according to John Paston, 8000 were Yorkists, although on 8 April the Venetian ambassador reported Yorkist losses of only 800. Whatever the actual figures, all the contemporary accounts agree that the death toll was unusually high; in fact, the casualty lists for Towton were proportionately higher than those for the Battle of the Somme.
The people of Yorkshire remembered Towton as ‘a great battle’, according to the Arrivall, an official Yorkist account of events, but the memory was bitter because in that battle were slain ‘many of their fathers, their sons, their brethren and kinsmen, and many other of their neighbours’. The slaughter of Towton broke the power of the great families of the north, and the Lancastrians lost some of their best captains: the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Randolph Dacre of Gilsland, Lord Scrope of Bolton, Sir Richard Percy, Lords Welles, Willoughby and Neville, and Sir Andrew Trollope were among the fallen. Lord Dacre, during a brief lull in the fighting in North Acres, had thought it safe to stop and refresh himself and, removing his helmet, used it to scoop up some water from a small tributary of the stream that flowed through the field. Unfortunately he was recognised by a young Yorkist soldier hiding behind a nearby elder tree, who raised his bow and shot Dacre dead. He was buried with his horse in the churchyard at Saxton; in 1861 the animal’s skull was dug up, to the great astonishment of the villagers.
There were so many dead that it was said that blood was spattered on the snow-covered plain all the way from Towton to York. Because of the herculean task of burying so many thousands of bodies, King Edward gave extra wages to the gravediggers. A huge pit was dug at Saxton, in which hundreds of bodies, including that of Lord Clifford, were buried. Others were interred in another large pit in the Bloody Meadow, beside the bank of the Cock Beck; in the nineteenth century the soil in this spot was noted for producing rich, rank grass. Burial mounds are still visible at Low Leads, beyond Castle Hill Wood, by the battlefield, and a small wooden bridge across the Cock Beck now marks the spot where hundreds of Lancastrian corpses were piled high in water, mud and snow. In the 1850s, the owner of nearby Towton Hall had his cellars enlarged, and workmen found a large number of skeletons and bones buried beneath, belonging to men who had perished at Towton.
Relics of the fallen have surfaced over the years. A ploughman found a fifteenth-century ring inscribed: ‘En loial amour tout de mon coer’. ‘Many a lady,’ observed ‘Gregory’ mournfully, ‘lost her beloved in that battle.’ On another occasion a ring was found which bore the lion of the Percies and a motto, ‘Now is thys’; it is now owned by the Duke of Northumberland. In the Castle Museum at York are a crossbow and a gisarm, or disembowelling knife.
Towton had a profound effect on everyone. Savagery on such a scale was thought shocking even in that warlike age, and the Milanese ambassador observed, ‘Anyone who reflects at all upon the wretchedness of the Queen and the ruins of those killed, and considers the ferocity of that country and the state of mind of the victors, should indeed, it seems to me, pray to God for the dead, and not less for the living.’
Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou were in York when the battle was fought. Together with Exeter, Roos and Dr John Morton, a cultivated and intelligent cleric who would one day become Archbishop of Canterbury but who was now committed to supporting the House of Lancaster, they awaited news. When they were told of the terrible Lancastrian defeat, and that their army had been virtually annihilated, they decided on flight, ‘packed up everything they could carry’, gathered up their train, and fled from the city via Bootham Bar, passing north through the forest of Galtres, Margaret vowing fiercely that she would one day be revenged on the House of York. ‘King Henry and his wife were overthrown,’ wrote Waurin, ‘and lost that crown which Henry IV had violently usurped and taken from King Richard II. Men say that ill-gotten goods cannot last.’
Edward IV might have scored a resounding victory, but it was an incomplete one, for Henry, Margaret and their son were still at large, focal points for resistance to Yorkist rule, and he would not be secure on the throne until they were either dead or he had them in his power. The Queen, in particular, would be a thorn in his side for some time to come.
‘When King Edward had won the day at Towton he gave thanks to God for his glorious victory,’ wrote Waurin. ‘Then many knights, earls and barons came into his presence, bowed to him, and asked him what they ought now to do for the best, to which he replied that he would never rest until he had killed or captured King Henry and his wife, or driven them from the country, as he had promised and sworn to do.’ His lords advised him to make for York, because they had heard that the Queen and her supporters were there, but before they could depart the King ordered that the executions of forty-two Lancastrian knights and others captured during or after the battle be carried out. Many Lancastrians would now go into exile, while others, observed the Milanese ambassador, were ‘quitting’ King Henry ‘and coming to tender obedience to this king’. The transfer of allegiance by so many lords meant that Edward was able to consolidate his position and become in fact, as well as in title, master of his realm. Many believed that, by according him so decisive a victory, God had declared His pleasure. There were still a number who regarded Edward as a usurper, but they were now in a minority; nor was the Lancastrian faction any longer in a position to challenge his authority. Nevertheless, although he was in control of most of England, the Lancastrians still held the English border counties in the north and several strategic castles in Wales.
Edward, knowing he needed to win support in the north, did show mercy to a number of northern magnates captured at Towton, including Northumberland’s brother, Sir Ralph Percy. Others were allowed to escape and were later pardoned. Lord Rivers came to Edward and acknowledged him as the rightful king, whereupon Edward forgave his past support of the Lancastrians and promised him and his son Anthony Wydville pardons, which were issued the following July. By March 1463 both men had been admitted to the royal Council. The King also rewarded the men who had fought on his own side. Warwick’s brother, John Neville, had shown such valour in the field that the King raised him to the peerage with the title Lord Montague.
On Good Friday, 3 April, news of the King’s victory was delivered to the Lord Mayor of London; the Duchess of York learned of it the next morning when a letter from the King, written on 30 March, arrived. All her household gathered excitedly in the great hall of Baynard’s Castle to hear her read it out. That Saturday, the Lord Chancellor, George Neville, announced the victory at Paul’s Cross, and there was great rejoicing among the people. One rumour had it that Henry VI had been captured, but the Milanese ambassador shrewdly commented that ‘vain flowers always grow in good news’. In Dover and Sandwich, huge bonfires were lit to signal the news to the royal garrison at Calais, where a third beacon was kindled in response.
On the morning after the battle King Edward rode in triumph to York, ‘with great solemnity and processions’, but as he approached the Micklegate Bar his face set into grim lines as he saw above him the rotting heads of his father, his brother, and his uncle of Salisbury. This dreadful sight turned him visibly grey with anger and sorrow, and he vowed that the Lancastrians would taste his vengeance and that those responsible for the deaths of his kinsfolk would be relentlessly sought out and slaughtered. When he arrived in York his first order was that the heads be taken down and decently interred at Pontefract with the corresponding bodies.
Edward received a warm welcome from the people of York. ‘All the clergy came out to greet him,’ says Waurin, ‘and did reverence to him as their sovereign lord and prince, humbly begging him to forgive them if they had in any way offended him, and he freely forgave them [and] stayed a full week in the city with much joy and celebration.’ Representatives from major towns in Yorkshire came and offered their submission, and he issued commissions of the peace for the arrest of any rebels. The King’s officers soon discovered several Lancastrians in hiding in the city and rounded them up. Devon had barricaded himself in the ancient Norman castle, but had not the resources to defend it, so he too was taken, while Wiltshire was soon afterwards captured at Cockermouth and imprisoned. The King ordered that the Earl of Devon, Sir Baldwin Fulford and Sir William Hill, all prominent Lancastrians, be beheaded in York as an example to the citizens. Their heads replaced those of the Yorkists on the Micklegate Bar, grim reminders of the fate of those who rebelled against their lawful sovereign.
On 5 April, Edward celebrated Easter in York, having ordered his captains to recruit fresh soldiers. He then rode north with his army to Durham, and thence to Newcastle, in pursuit of King Henry and Queen Margaret, who were making for Scotland, accompanied by Somerset, Exeter, Roos and Morton. The city of Coventry had paid Warwick £14 for the expenses of hiring fourteen men to chase after the deposed King. By 7 April the fleeing Lancastrians were resting briefly in Newcastle; they then continued their journey to Alnwick, whence the Queen sent an urgent message to the Bishop of St Andrews, Regent of Scotland, begging him to issue a safe-conduct for their entry into that kingdom. At Wark Castle, near Carham, Henry and Margaret were besieged by a force of Yorkist adherents led by Sir Robert Ogle. Retainers of the late Earl of Northumberland gathered 5-6,000 men in order to relieve the siege, and their intervention enabled the royal party to escape through a little postern gate at the back of the castle and proceed in haste to Berwick. Here, while awaiting word from Scotland, they enjoyed a few days of rest; the Queen even went hunting and shot a buck. But they knew that this respite could not last.
In Scotland, Mary of Gueldres found herself in a difficult position. The Duke of Burgundy was her uncle, and he was hopeful of securing an alliance with Edward IV. A show of friendship by his niece to Edward’s enemies could place this alliance in jeopardy. Warwick was well aware of the Queen Regent’s dilemma and capitalised on it by using diplomatic pressure. Before long, he had extracted from her an agreement that the Scots would not offer military support to the Lancastrians. Nevertheless, he could not stop them from granting asylum to the dispossessed royal family, and the necessary safe-conduct was issued. Henry, Margaret, the Prince and 6000 followers crossed the border into Galloway. Henry sought refuge in the convent of the Grey Friars at Kirkcudbright, while his wife and son travelled on to the Scottish court, then at Linlithgow Palace, where Mary of Gueldres accorded them a sympathetic welcome and ordered that apartments be prepared for them. Margaret stayed here for a time, then at Durrisdeer, then at Dumfries, and finally at Lanark, before the Bishop of St Andrews arranged in July for her to move to more convenient lodgings in Lincluden Abbey near Edinburgh.
The Yorkists pursued their quarry almost to Scotland and, had they succeeded in capturing them, Edward IV would have been spared many problems in the years to come. But they failed, and returned south, much dispirited. Edward himself had arrived in Newcastle on 1 May, where he ordered the execution of Wiltshire, whose head was afterwards displayed on London Bridge.
Because the north of England was still strongly Lancastrian in sympathy, Edward dared not penetrate beyond Newcastle. The north would remain unconquered for some time to come, and Margaret of Anjou would capitalise on this, fuelling discontent against the Yorkists by propaganda and appealing to the loyalties of local landowners. On 18 April, Prospero di Camulio had prophesied: ‘If the King and Queen of England, with the other fugitives, are not taken, it seems certain that in time fresh disturbances will arise.’ He also predicted that ‘before long, grievances and recrimination will break out between King Edward and the Earl of Warwick. King Henry and the Queen will be victorious.’ Both these predictions were to prove strangely accurate.
It was not long before the Queen managed to persuade the Scottish government to conclude a treaty providing for the marriage of Prince Edward to James III’s sister Margaret Stewart. In return, Henry VI would surrender Berwick, as already promised, and when he was restored to the throne of England would grant the Scots lands in England and make the Bishop of St Andrews Archbishop of Canterbury. Furthermore, England was to enter into a tripartite alliance with Scotland and France, her traditional enemies. When Edward IV learned of this agreement, he issued a proclamation, publishing its terms in full and accusing Margaret of ‘exciting and provoking the greatest and largest cruelty against our subjects, unto the execution of her insatiable malice towards them’. He then wrote an angry letter to King James, saying, ‘Whereas ye took and received our traitors and rebels, we require and exhort you to deliver [them] unto us without delay.’ The regents, in James’s name, refused; they would not break such an advantageous alliance, nor jeopardise the Princess Margaret’s marriage.
Life was not easy for the Lancastrians in Scotland, however. Although Queen Mary took Prince Edward into her household to learn the knightly graces, his mother found herself in desperate financial straits. Having pawned her gold and silver plate to raise funds for a fresh onslaught upon the Yorkists, she had to resort to borrowing money from the Queen Regent. Between May and July Mary loaned Margaret a total of £200, but she had no means of paying it back. Before long she was ‘in want of the absolute necessities of life’, according to the French chronicler Le Moine. Nevertheless, for all her poverty, Edward IV feared her more ‘than all the princes of the House of Lancaster combined’.
On 25 April, Margaret, in the name of Henry VI, formally ceded Berwick to the Scots. Needless to say, its surrender infuriated the English and presented the Yorkists with an excellent propaganda weapon. Nevertheless, the loss of the last English-owned fortified border town meant that Edward had lost an invaluable bridgehead for invading Scotland; it weakened his diplomatic bargaining position, and gave the French, Scotland’s allies, a potential advantage. Worst of all, in Scottish hands Berwick became a centre for launching Lancastrian raids into Northumberland.
After dealing with several outbreaks of disaffection and disorder in the north, Edward IV left Newcastle on 2 May and returned to London, where he received a hero’s welcome as the man who had saved the city from the brutality of the northerners. During the summer the King issued a stream of commissions of array, which testify to his fear that a Lancastrian invasion was imminent. Fauconberg was left in overall charge of the north, with instructions to safeguard it from Lancastrian attacks. In May, Geoffrey Gate was commissioned to safeguard Carisbrooke Castle and the Isle of Wight against invasion from the south, and in July, orders went out to Lord Ferrers, Sir William Herbert and Sir James Baskerville to raise the levies of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Shropshire for the defence of the realm against the King’s enemies in Scotland and France. Edward was taking no chances.
In June, Queen Margaret led an army of Scotsmen, retainers of the earls of Douglas and Angus, into England. With her rode Prince Edward, Exeter, Lord Rougemont Grey, Sir Humphrey Dacre, Sir Robert Whittingham, Sir Henry Bellingham and Sir Richard Tunstall. Her objective was to take Carlisle, which she had also promised to the Scots, Her army laid siege to the town and burned its suburbs, but was driven back by a force led by Warwick’s brother, Montague, whose task it was to guard the northern border from attack.
Undaunted, the Lancastrians, who had now been joined by Henry VI himself, who rode at their head, penetrated further south, making for Durham. But King Edward commanded the Archbishop of York to muster his tenants and have them prepare to join a force led by Fauconberg and Montague. When, on 26 June, the Lancastrian standards were raised at Ryton and Brancepeth, the levies raised by the Archbishop, which were now under the command of Warwick himself, repelled the invaders, who retreated north two days later.
Warwick began to root out Lancastrian rebels in the countryside bordering the River Tyne, and by July, thanks to his presence in the region, the Yorkists had gained a foothold in the north and were, by a gradual process, beginning to overcome Lancastrian resistance. On 31 July the King appointed Warwick Warden of the East and West Marches on the northern border, instructing him to bring the north to Edward’s allegiance or reduce it to submission. A month later it was being reported in Milan that Warwick had prevented the Lancastrians from invading Northumberland. Edward was now relatively free to focus his attention upon Wales, where his enemies were still in control of several strategically placed strongholds, and wasted no time in dispatching an army to deal with them also.
On Friday, 26 June, Edward IV was conducted by the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London to the Tower, where custom decreed he must spend a night prior to his coronation. There he created twenty-eight Knights of the Bath, among them his brothers George and Richard, and a further five the following morning. These knights, clad in gowns of blue with white silk hoods on their shoulders, like those worn by priests, then preceded him in a grand procession through the streets of the city to the Palace of Westminster, there to lodge the night before his coronation.
On the morning of Sunday, 28 June 1461 Edward issued a proclamation promising his subjects good and just government, and condemning ‘the oppression of the people, the manslaughter, extortion, perjury and robbery amongst them, the very decay of merchandise wherein rested the prosperity of the subjects’ that had characterised Lancastrian rule. This touched a sensitive nerve in the London merchants, who had suffered much under Edward’s predecessor.
Before leaving the palace, Edward created his brother George, then twelve, Duke of Clarence: later that same year he would be made a Knight of the Garter. The King’s youngest brother, Richard, was just eight, and would for a time remain under their mother’s care.
That Sunday, Edward was crowned in Westminster Abbey in a ceremony of great splendour, amidst public acclaim. ‘I am unable to declare how well the commons love and adore him, as if he were their god,’ wrote one London merchant. ‘The entire kingdom keeps holiday for the event, which seems a boon from above. Thus far he appears to be a just prince, and to mean to mend and organise matters otherwise than has been done hitherto.’
On the 29th, the King went again to Westminster Abbey to give thanks, and on the following day to St Paul’s Cathedral to attend its 800th centenary celebrations and be entertained by a series of elaborate pageants. Everywhere he received an ecstatic welcome. It was obvious to the Londoners that he had the makings of a great ruler: at the very least, he was a considerable improvement on Henry VI.