The Wars of the Roses

Anthony Goodman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138148512
• eBook ISBN: 9781134940486
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 1990. The second half of the fifteenth century was one of the most turbulent periods of English history. Present popular knowledge of the bitter struggle for the throne between the rival houses of York and Lancaster derives largely from Shakespeare's history plays, which in their turn were coloured by Tudor propaganda, and most books on the Wars of the Roses have concentrated on politics and personalities. Discussion of military matters has hitherto been chiefly confined to colourful and sometimes fanciful accounts of the major battles, on which accurate information is scanty. The present work is a military history of the Wars of the Roses. In the first part is presented an overall view of the campaigns, from the first skirmishes of 1452 to the last campaign in 1497 and examines the general ship of the commanders in both camps. In the second covering military organisation- how armies were recruited, paid, fed, billeted, armed and deployed- the author shows that in a period of rapid change in European methods of warfare the English were not so old-fashioned as has sometimes been supposed. In conclusion he assesses the effects of the wars on society in general. The book makes extensive use of fifteenth century sources, both English and Continental, including chronicles, civic records and letters, and presents a vivid picture of the wars as they were seen and described by contemporaries.

Part One
The Campaigns

Chapter 1
Yorkist Rebellions, 1452–60

Richard duke of York’s elaborate and widespread propaganda campaign in the winter of 1451–2 gave the court ample warning of rebellion. In September 1451 he wrote to towns and individuals in Norfolk requesting support for his aims. In November, according to later indictments, his chamberlain Sir William Oldhall was inciting uprisings in eastern England.¹ Tense reactions at court are reflected in a letter which the duke wrote to Henry VI from his castle at Ludlow on 9 January 1452. Informed that, as a result of defamations, Henry was displeased with him, he had declared himself a true liegeman to Reginald Boulers, bishop of Hereford, and the earl of Shrewsbury. He had asked them to report to Henry his willingness to swear his loyalty on the Sacrament in the presence of two or three lords, if Henry cared to send them to Ludlow.²

The duke is unlikely to have received such deferential treatment. He was visited by the mere clerk of the council, who set out from Westminster on I February to summon him to a council at Coventry.³ The mission proved vain. York was on the verge of rebellion. On 3 February he wrote a letter from Ludlow castle addressed to the bailiffs, burgesses and commons of Shrewsbury, blaming the duke of Somerset for the great losses in France, and for the king’s failure to implement the articles which York had put before him in 1450, and accusing Somerset of continually labouring about the king for York’s undoing. Consequently the latter had ‘fully concluded to proceed in all haste against him [Somerset] with the help of my kinsmen and friends’. He requested the town of Shrewsbury to send him in support as many ‘goodly and likely men as ye may’.⁴

The clerk of the council, who returned to Westminster on 12 February, doubtless confirmed rumours of York’s warlike intentions. There were reports, too, of stirrings in the West Country, where the earl of Devon was preparing to join the duke in arms: on 14 February the duke of Buckingham and Lord Bonville were appointed chief commissioners to proceed against the rebels there.⁵ Two days later the king rode northwards out of London, getting that day as far as Barnet, on his way to meet and consult with lords in arms, and perhaps to confront York, in case he advanced eastwards through the Midlands from Ludlow.⁶ A peremptory royal mandate to Lord Cobham dated 17 February, upbraiding him for failure to attend the king like other lords who had been summoned, and enjoining immediate attendance, shows suspicion that he was involved in the rising.⁷ The king headed for Northampton, where he stayed on 22–23 February, and ‘took his counsel and sent for his lords’. He then turned back towards London, pausing at Dunstable, where he was well attended by magnates – the dukes of Exeter, Buckingham and Norfolk; the earls of Salisbury, Shrewsbury, Worcester and Wiltshire; Viscounts Beaumont and Lisle; Lords Clifford, Egremont, Moleyns, Stourton, Camoys and Beauchamp. By their advice he sent letters to the duke of York. These may have been carried by the envoys whom he dispatched to the duke – William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, Viscount Bourchier and Lord Stourton. They relayed the royal prohibition of the rising: York tried to justify it and refused to obey. Henry also wrote, on 24 February, to the mayor, aldermen and commons of London, forbidding them to receive the duke.⁸

Henry’s advance northwards and speedy concentration of formidable support posed a serious threat to the rising. Between 19 and 23 February there were Yorkist demonstrations in eastern England, but the assembly of the royal army may have deterred the demonstrators from moving westwards to join the duke.⁹ York ‘went another way’ to avoid confrontation with the king, possibly through the southern Midlands, a convenient region in which to meet his southern allies, Devon and Cobham. The king’s reversal of direction and message to the Londoners were probably responses to this Yorkist line of advance. The duke may have hoped to make Henry amenable by occupying the city. He and his allies sent a herald requesting the citizens to give them and their army passage. But the governors, obeying the royal command, refused and manned their defences. The Yorkist army abandoned the direct approaches to London, crossing the Thames into Surrey over Kingston bridge.¹⁰

York remained at Kingston for three days, perhaps waiting for reinforcements to come in, perhaps debating the next move, in view of the strength of royal support. But on 29 February, having traversed Surrey, the Yorkists arrived at Dartford in north-west Kent. The following day they were arrayed nearby at Crayford. Possibly they occupied ground between Crayford and the Darent estuary, with the Thames shore on their right flank, and on their left the river Cray, a tributary of the Darent crossed by Watling Street just south-east of Crayford church. York commanded the ‘middleward’, with Devon in command of a ‘battle’ ‘by the South side’ (bounded by the Cray?) and Cobham of one ‘at the water side’ (near the Thames shore?). There was a considerable array of ordnance – perhaps aligned in front of these positions in anticipation of a royal advance from the East along Watling Street.¹¹

To counter York’s move from Kingston to the vicinity of Dartford, the royal army had returned to London. Its ‘foreward’ had arrived there early in the morning of 27 February and passed over London Bridge, lodging in Southwark. The following morning it set out for Kent. That afternoon Henry VI reached London with the rest of his army, and lodged in Southwark at the bishop of Winchester’s hostel by the church of St Mary Overy (now Southwark cathedral). Thence he dispatched bishops to negotiate with York. The latter ‘said he would have the Duke of Somerset, or else he would die therefore’. His situation was not hopeless. Some chroniclers stress that he had a large, well-equipped army in a strong defensive encampment. Though the author of An English Chronicle said that his army was ‘not strong enough for the king’s party’, the author of Arundel MS 19 said that allegedly he had as many soldiers as the king, and ‘great stuff and ordnance’. Seven ships laden with ‘stuff’ kept open a line of riverine communication for the duke.¹²

On I March Henry moved from Southwark with his troops, to Blackheath, and over Shooter’s Hill to Welling, where he lodged that day and the one following, about three miles from the Yorkist position. Bishop Waynflete of Winchester and the bishop of Ely, the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, Viscount Bourchier and Lord Sudeley rode to and fro from the king’s camp as royal emissaries. Strenuous conciliatory efforts may have undermined the will of nobles on both sides to commence what promised to be bloody slaughter of their peers and kinsmen. The Yorkist lords’ will to fight may have been sapped too by the amount and quality of noble support the king had rallied, and by the Kentishmen’s failure to bring promised support. Henry, who hated the effusion of Christian blood, consented to receive York’s petition. Terms were agreed on the afternoon of 2 March, presumably laying down conditions for York’s reception, the disengagement of the armies and the right of Yorkist soldiers to unharmed egress. About noon the next day York, Devon and Cobham rode with forty horsemen into the royal army, which had withdrawn to Blackheath. The Yorkist lords knelt before the king, and the duke presented his articles of accusation against Somerset. To no avail: York was escorted to London, and before being allowed to return to Ludlow he was obliged to make public oath in St Paul’s cathedral that he would never again instigate a rising.¹³

York’s political humiliation stemmed from strategic failure. He had failed to co-ordinate the widespread stirrings which he had incited into a united movement. Constrained by the need to avoid outrageously rebellious behaviour, he did not move boldly against the king. The duke’s unsure progress gave the royal commanders time to assess and respond to the challenge. The king’s strategy may have benefited from the presence in his army of the most famous English soldier of the day, the venerable John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. The following year Talbot was to be killed at Castillon in Périgord, leading an Anglo-Gascon army as aggressively against the French as Henry’s army had gone against York, and attempting an assault on a camp fortified with artillery like York’s at Cray ford.¹⁴

In his 1455 rising York avoided the mistakes of 1452. By basing it on the support of magnates coming from the remote north of England, instead of attempting to appeal widely to southern communities, he achieved a degree of surprise. By heading swiftly for the king’s person, he kept the initiative. The campaign was one of the shortest in the Wars of the Roses. Henry, whose retinues were under Buckingham’s command, was overwhelmed when defending the town of St Albans by York’s forces and those of ‘the captains of this field’ under him, the earl of Salisbury and his eldest son, the earl of Warwick.¹⁵ The king had set off from Westminster the previous day (21 May) on his way to Leicester. There he intended to hold a great council, which the insurgent lords feared might be turned to their disadvantage. About Christmas 1454 or New Year 1455, Henry VI had recovered from the mysterious illness which had incapacitated him mentally. The protectorship of the realm conferred on York to cope with the crisis had been terminated, and his deadly enemy Somerset had been released from prison and reinstated in favour at court. York and his Neville allies felt the situation to be intolerably threatening to their political interests.

When Henry set out from Westminster, he had fewer adult lay peers in his company than at Welling in 1452, and some of these may have come prepared to give counsel rather than military aid. Nevertheless, his tally of thirteen such peers was respectable, and there were well-founded hopes that he would soon be joined in arms by other lords and retinues, belatedly summoned to muster probably for his arrival at St Albans. In response to a royal mandate, the town of Coventry was preparing to send a contingent there, which was disbanded on news of the battle. The earls of Oxford and Shrewsbury, Lord Cromwell and Sir Thomas Stanley all arrived with contingents in the vicinity just too late to participate.¹⁶

The three Yorkist magnates probably had at most only four adult peers in their company, three of them minor barons.¹⁷ But they had a larger army, perhaps outnumbering the king’s, Mr Armstrong conjectures, by two or three thousand men. The date and place of their assembly is not known. A large number of the Yorkist troops were raised in the Marches towards Scotland. Warwick had ‘the March men’ fighting in his retinue, and the Northumbrian knight Robert Ogle led 600 ‘men of the Marches’.¹⁸ Salisbury’s castle at Middleham in Yorkshire, so often to be used as a rallying-point in the wars, is a likely place of assembly. The council knew of the rising by 18 May. On the 20th the Yorkists were as far south as Royston (Herts.) and on the 21st were at Ware. They may have been hoping to reach London before the king left, or were moving parallel to his intended route to Leicester because they were as yet hesitant about a direct confrontation. Moreover, York was particularly anxious to gain the duke of Norfolk’s support, and felt perhaps that an easterly route would facilitate a juncture with his East Anglian contingents. In the event Norfolk brought a retinue into Hertfordshire, but remained militarily neutral.¹⁹

The king and his army spent the night of 21–22 May at Watford. Alerted about his advance there, the Yorkists had turned westwards from Ware in the direction of St Albans. When the king set out on his way there early on the morning of 22 May, news was brought indicating that the Yorkists were much nearer than expected. In a council of war, the duke of Buckingham argued in favour of pushing on to St Albans (7I miles from Watford), confident that York would wait to negotiate.

This course was adopted, and Buckingham’s assessment proved correct. The king’s army moved unmolested into the town, which they ‘strongly barred and arrayed for defence’.²⁰ The topographical spine of the town – which lacked stone fortifications – was formed by a southwest to north-east succession of streets running from the river Ver about 900 yards to St Peter’s church. Holywell street, the road from Watford, climbs up from the river, with the abbey lands to the west of it, into the centre of the town, the market-place, which extends northeast as the broad St Peter’s street. On the abbey and river sides, to the south-west, the ground slopes away steeply. But to the north-east the approaches are more level, especially to St Peter’s street. Its wide northern end was particularly accessible: here ‘at the barrier of the said town … which is high near the parish church [St Peter’s]’ York’s emissary Mowbray Herald was challenged on one of his missions.²¹ The comparative difficulty of assaulting the town up its western slopes – and the inherent danger of becoming involved in an assault on the abbey – probably determined the Yorkists’ lines of attack from the east on the royal position centred on the market-place. The direction of their approach to the town inclined them the same way.

The Yorkist army arrived to the east, probably approaching from Hatfield, soon after the king was installed. They halted the length of a crossbow shot away, in Key Field, and barred exits from the town. The Yorkist lords failed in their strenuous attempts to secure an undertaking from Buckingham that Somerset (in the royal army) should be imprisoned and tried: they were threatened with the penalties of treason. On the stroke of 10 o’clock, according to the Dijon Relation, battle commenced. York’s main assault may have been around the barrier near St Peter’s church. His attacks were frustrated: Lord Clifford ‘kept strongly the barriers’.²² Warwick attempted to break the deadlock by a diversionary attack to the south, through the back closes of Holywell street. He and his men

ferociously broke in by the garden sides between the sign of the Key and the sign of the Chequer [inn signs] in Holywell Street; and anon as they were within the town, suddenly they blew up trumpets, and set a cry with a shout and a great voice. ‘A Warwick! A Warwick! A Warwick!’²³

Entering ‘the other end of the town’ (further south-west than expected?) Warwick’s men disconcerted the defenders. When Ogle’s Marchmen penetrated to the market-place, ‘the alarm bell was rung, and every man went to harness, for at that time every man was out of their array, and they joined the battle anon; and it was done within di [a half] hour’.²⁴ The alarm bell may have been the early-fifteenth-century bell in the clock tower in the market-place, built between 1403 and 1412.²⁵

The king’s men had rallied desperately to defend Henry, who took his stand under his banner in St Peter’s street. The Yorkists burst into the street in several places. Their opponents, hemmed in and densely packed, were unable to deploy effectively, and presented a good target for archers. They soon disintegrated into a rabble seeking mercy or attempting flight. Shamefully the royal banner was abandoned, propped against a house, and so was the king, his neck bleeding from an arrow wound, in a tanner’s.²⁶ The author of Benet’s Chronicle estimated that about 100 were killed in the battle.²⁷ Somerset, Northumberland and Clifford perished. Buckingham was among the prisoners, as was the king himself. He was escorted to the abbey, where the Yorkist lords treated him with due reverence. Next day they took him back to London.

The Yorkist victory was facilitated by royalist tactical miscalculations and failures. The crucial decision was the one pressed by Buckingham – to head for St Alb...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One The Campaigns
• Part Two Military Organization and Society
• Appendix: Campaigning Periods, 1455–85
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index