VICTORY AND DISASTER--NORTHAMPTON AND ST. ALBANS
When the arrival of the three Earls in London was known, all the
Yorkist peers who were within touch of London came flocking in with
their retainers. Thither came Warwick's uncle Edward Neville Lord
Abergavenny, and his brother George Neville Bishop of Exeter, and his
cousin Lord Scrope, and Clinton one of the victors of St. Albans, and
Bourchier and Cobham and Say, and the Bishops of Ely, Salisbury, and
Rochester. It is strange to read that Audley, who had been Warwick's
prisoner in Calais ever since last November, also joined the Yorkists
in arms. He had come to terms with his captor, and had agreed to forget
the death of his father at Blore Heath and to serve the cause of
York. In a few days an army of more than thirty thousand men had been
gathered together.
The first task of the Yorkists was to provide for the blockade of the
Tower of London, where Hungerford and Scales abode in great wrath,
"shooting wild-fire into the town every hour, and laying great ordnance
against it." Salisbury agreed to remain in charge of the city and to
undertake the siege. With him were left Lord Cobham, Sir John Wenlock,
and the greater part of the levy of London, commanded by the Lord
Mayor and by one Harrow, a mercer. They brought batteries to bear on
the Tower from the side of St. Katherine's wharf, "so they skirmished
together daily, and much harm was done."
Meanwhile Warwick and the young Earl of March set out on Saturday
July 5th, having with them the other Yorkist lords, "and much people
out of Kent, Sussex, and Essex with much great ordnance." Marching by
the great north road, past St. Albans and Towcester, they made for
Northampton, where they heard that the King was collecting his host.
The invasion of England had been so sudden and its success so rapid
that the Lancastrians had not had time to call in all their strength,
more especially as it lay to a great extent in the extreme North and
West. But the Midlands were well roused, and, if a Yorkist chronicler
is to be believed, the Queen "had it proclaimed in Cheshire and
Lancashire that if so the King had the victory of the Earls, then
every man should take what he might, and make havoc in Kent, Essex,
Middlesex, Surrey, and Sussex." The Duke of Buckingham had the chief
command, though he was not of the Court party nor a great lover of
the Queen's, but out of sheer loyalty he now--as formerly at St.
Albans--came out with all his retainers when he received the King's
missive. With him were Egremont and Beaumont, both deadly enemies of
the Nevilles and favourites of the Queen, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord
Grey de Ruthyn, and many more. Their forces, though very considerable,
were still somewhat inferior to those of the Yorkists.
The King's camp was pitched just outside Northampton town, in the
meadows south of the Nen, near the Nunnery between Sandiford and
Hardingstone. The position had been strongly entrenched, and the
earthworks were lined with a numerous artillery; the river covered both
flanks, the lines being drawn from point to point in a broad bend of
its course.
Warwick, in accordance with his declaration at St. Paul's on the
previous Thursday, made three separate attempts to secure permission to
approach the King's person; but Buckingham sternly refused to listen to
his envoys, the Bishops of Rochester and Salisbury. "You came here not
as bishops to treat of peace, but as men-at-arms," he said, pointing
to the squadrons arrayed under the bishops' banners in the Yorkist
host. Negotiations were fruitless, and at two in the afternoon Warwick
drew out his army on the rising ground by the old Danish camp, the
Hunsborough, which overlooks the water-meadows, and descended to the
attack. Fauconbridge led the vanguard on the left, the Earl himself the
centre, Edward of March, now seeing his first stricken field, conducted
the right wing. Before the attack it was proclaimed that every man
should spare the Commons, and slay none but the knights and lords, with
whom alone lay the blame for the shedding of all the blood that might
fall that day.
The first assault on the Lancastrian lines failed completely. The
obstacles were far greater than Warwick had imagined; it was six
feet from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the rampart, and the
trenches were full of water, for it had rained heavily in the morning.
How the day would have gone if treachery had not come to the succour
of the Yorkists it is impossible to say; but only a few minutes after
the first gun had been fired, Lord Grey de Ruthyn on the Lancastrian
left mounted the badge of the Ragged Staff, and his men were seen
beckoning to the Yorkists to approach, and leaning over the rampart to
reach their hands to pull them up. Assisted in this way, the Earl of
March's column got within the entrenchments, and sweeping along their
front cleared a space for Warwick to burst in. All was over in half
an hour and with very little bloodshed. Only three hundred men fell,
but among them were nearly all the Lancastrian leaders. On foot and in
their heavy armour the lords and knights could not get away. The aged
Buckingham fell at the door of his own tent, and Beaumont, Egremont,
and Shrewsbury close to the King's quarters, as they strove to protect
his retreat. But the King, helpless as ever, was too late to fly, and
fell into the hands of an archer named Henry Montford. His capture,
however, was not so important so long as his wife and child remained
at large; and Margaret--as adroit as her husband was shiftless--was
already speeding away with the young Prince, bound for North Wales.
Warwick and March conducted King Henry back with all respect to London,
where he was lodged in the palace at Westminster. They had done their
work so rapidly that they had not needed the assistance of the Duke
of York, whose arrival from Ireland--he was two months later than his
promise--was just announced from the West. Even before he appeared the
victors of Northampton had begun to reconstitute the King's ministry.
Henry was made to sign patents appointing Salisbury Lieutenant in the
six northern counties; his son, George Bishop of Exeter, received
the Chancellorship; John Neville another son was made the King's
Chamberlain, and Lord Bourchier got the Treasury. Warwick himself was
re-established _de jure_ in the position he had been so long holding
_de facto_, the captainship of Calais.
The garrison of the Tower of London surrendered nine days after the
battle of Northampton. Most of the defenders went away in safety, but
Lord Scales, who was much hated by the populace of London, was not
so fortunate. He took boat for the sanctuary of Westminster, but was
recognised as he rowed along by some water-men, who gave chase to him
and slew him on the river "just under the river wall of Winchester
House." His body was stripped and thrown ashore into the cemetery of
St. Mary Overy, whence it was removed and honourably buried by the
Earls of March and Warwick that night. "Great pity was it that so noble
a knight, so well approved in the wars of France and Normandy, should
die so mischievously," adds the chronicler.
A Parliament was summoned by the Yorkists to meet on October 9th.
Meanwhile Warwick was well employed. When August came round he ran
across to Calais to see to his old antagonist at Guisnes. Somerset
was now in low spirits, and willingly met the Earl at Newnham Bridge,
there to be reconciled to him and make peace. But after he had embraced
Warwick and assented to all his conditions, he secretly departed
with his follower Trollope, fled through Picardy to Dieppe, and took
refuge in his own south-western county. Meanwhile the Earl conducted
his mother and wife in great state back to London, and re-established
them in their old dwelling of "the Harbour." He spent September in
going on a pilgrimage with the Countess to the shrine of the Virgin at
Walsingham in Norfolk. On this journey he ran great peril, for Lord
Willoughby, an unreconciled Lancastrian, lay in wait for him near
Lichfield on his return, and was within an ace of making him prisoner.
So Warwick came at last to his own Midland estates. And there all the
knights and ladies of his lands came to him "complaining of the evils
that they had suffered in the past year from the Duke of Somerset, who
had pilled and robbed them, and sacked their towns and manors, and
usurped the Earl's castles; but notwithstanding all their troubles they
praised Heaven for the joyous return of their lord."
York had reached Chester early in September, and had marched slowly
through his estates in the Welsh March towards London. When he came
to Abingdon "he sent for trompeteres and claryners from London, and
gave them banners with the royal arms of England without distinction
or diversity, and commanded his sword to be borne upright before him,
and so he rode till he came to the gates of the palace of Westminster."
This assumption of royal state was the beginning of evils.
Meanwhile the Parliament was already sitting before the Duke's arrival.
King Henry opened it with due solemnity, and heard it commence its work
by repealing all the Acts of the Lancastrian Parliament of Leicester,
and by removing the attainders of the Yorkist lords. On the third day
of the session, Richard of York came up in the evening, and entered the
palace, where he rudely took possession of the royal apartments. "He
had the doors broken open, and King Henry hearing the great noise gave
place, and took him another chamber that night."
This unceremonious eviction of his sovereign was only the beginning of
the Duke's violent conduct. Next morning he went to the House of Lords,
and approaching the throne laid his hand on the cushion as if about
to take formal possession of the seat. Archbishop Bourchier asked him
what he would do, and the Duke then made a lengthy reply "challenging
and claiming the realm and crown of England as male heir of King
Richard the Second, and proposing without any delay to be crowned on
All Hallows' Day then following." The lords listened with obvious
disapproval and dismay, and York did not even venture to seat himself
on the throne. The meeting broke up without further transaction of
business.
"Now when the Earl of Warwick, who had not been present that day, heard
this, he was very wroth, and sent for the Archbishop and prayed him to
go to the Duke and tell him that he was acting evilly, and to remind
him of the many promises he had made to King Henry." Warwick in short
remembered his oath of July 4th, and was determined that Henry should
not be despoiled of his throne, but only placed in the hands of Yorkist
ministers. The Archbishop refused to face the Duke.
Then the Earl sent for his brother Thomas Neville, and entered into
his barge, and rowed to the palace. It was all full of the Duke's
men-of-arms, but the Earl stayed not, and went straight to the Duke's
chamber, and found him standing there, leaning against a side-board.
And there were hard words between them, for the Earl told him that
neither the lords nor the people would suffer him to strip the King of
his crown. And as they wrangled, the Earl of Rutland came in and said
to his cousin, "Fair sir be not angry, for you know that we have the
true right to the crown, and that my Lord and Father here must have
it." But the Earl of March his brother stayed him and said, "Brother,
vex no man, for all shall be well." But the Earl of Warwick would stay
no longer when he understood his uncle's intent, and went off hastily
to his barge, greeting no one as he went save his cousin of March.
Next day, when his wrath had cooled down, the Earl sent to his uncle
the Bishops of Ely and Rochester, Lord Audley, and a London citizen
named Grey, to beg and beseech him to give up his enterprise. The Duke
sent them away, with the answer that he would be crowned the very next
Monday, the day of the translation of St. Edward the Confessor (October
13th). The preparations for the coronation were actually made, and the
crowd was mustering in the Abbey, when on a last appeal made by Sir
Thomas Neville in the name of his brother and of all the lords and
commonalty of England, the Duke wavered. Fearing to offend his greatest
supporters beyond redemption he temporised, put off his coronation, and
began to negotiate.
Richard Neville, in fact, had matched his will against that of
his imperious uncle and had won. The Duke was never crowned. The
arrangement at which the parties arrived was that Henry should be King
for life, that York should be made Protector, named Prince of Wales,
Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, and should be acknowledged
as heir to the crown. The Duke, on the other hand, swore to be
faithful to the King so long as he should live. On All Saints' Day
the agreement was solemnly ratified at St. Paul's, whither the lords
went in procession, Warwick bearing the sword before the King, and
Edward of March bearing the King's mantle. "And the crowd shouted
'Long live King Henry and the Earl of Warwick,' for the said Earl had
the good voice of the people, because he knew how to give them fair
words, showing himself easy and familiar with them, for he was very
subtle at gaining his ends, and always spoke not of himself but of the
augmentation and good governance of the kingdom, for which he would
have spent his life: and thus he had the goodwill of England, so that
in all the land he was the lord who was held in most esteem and faith
and credence."
The Act of Parliament which recorded the agreement of York and King
Henry made no mention of Queen Margaret or of the Prince her son. But
it was of little use passing Acts of Parliament while she was at large
and the Lancastrian lords of the North and West unsubdued. Margaret's
first move had been to stir up the Scots, and at her bidding James the
Second crossed the Border and laid siege to Roxburgh, which was then an
English town. Fauconbridge, Warwick's uncle, was sent north to defend
the place, but later events deprived him of aid from England, and he
was forced to surrender, though not till after the King of Scots had
fallen, slain by the bursting of one of his own siege guns.
But the Scotch invasion was only one of Margaret's schemes. Her main
hope lay in a rising of the Lancastrians who had not suffered at
Northampton; and from her retreat at Harlech in North Wales she sent
to summon them together. Their mustering-place was in the North,
where the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Neville, brother of Ralph
Earl of Westmoreland, and Clifford son of the Clifford who fell at
St. Albans, united their retainers as the nucleus of an army. To
them fled Somerset, regardless of his oath at Calais, and Exeter the
late Admiral, and Courtney Earl of Devon, and Willoughby and Roos and
Hungerford, and many more.
The danger was so imminent that the Duke of York, after wearing the
honours of the protectorate for no more than three weeks, resolved
to march north and disperse the gathering of the Queen's friends. He
took with him his second son Edmund of Rutland, a boy of seventeen;
Salisbury accompanied him, and he also left his first-born at home and
went out with his fourth son Thomas Neville. The Duke and the Earl
raised about six thousand men, and proceeded on their way, unopposed
save by a small Lancastrian force which they beat at Worksop, till
they reached Sandal Castle, one of York's family strongholds, close
beside the town of Wakefield. When they arrived there, about Christmas
Eve, they learnt that the Queen's army was much stronger than they
had reckoned, and sent south for reinforcements. But on December 30th
they were themselves assailed by forces tripling their own small host,
under Somerset and Clifford. The Duke rashly fought in the open, though
many of his men were scattered over the country-side foraging. It is
said that he relied on help treacherously promised him by some of the
Lancastrian leaders; but he was disappointed. No one played for his
benefit the part that Grey de Ruthyn had carried out at Northampton.
The defeat of the Yorkists was decisive. Two thousand two hundred men
out of their five thousand were slain. The fate of war fell heavily
on the leaders, hardly one of whom escaped. The Duke fell on the
field, with Thomas Neville and William Lord Harington. The Earl of
Rutland, "the best-disposed young gentleman in England," was slain in
the pursuit as he fled across Wakefield Bridge. Salisbury's fate was
more unhappy still; he was taken prisoner, and beheaded next day at
Pontefract by the Bastard of Exeter, "though he offered great sums of
money that he should have grant of his life." The heads of Salisbury
and his son, of Harington, and of five knights, were set on spikes over
the gate of York, with that of Duke Richard in the midst, crowned with
a paper crown in mockery of the prospective kingship that he had never
enjoyed.
All the Lancastrians of the North and the Midlands rose at once to join
the Queen. She was soon at the head of forty thousand men, largely
composed of the lawless moss-troopers of the Scotch Border, who looked
upon war as a mere excuse for raids, and boasted that everything beyond
the Trent was in an enemy's country. Before moving south they harried
most thoroughly the estates of the northern Yorkists. Salisbury's
patrimony about Middleham and Sherif Hoton bore the brunt of the
plunder, at the hands of the retainers of the elder branch of Neville,
whose head, Earl Ralph of Westmoreland, put his men under the charge
of his brother Thomas, one of the most rabid Lancastrians in the North
Country.
About the middle of January the Queen's army began to roll southward,
pillaging recklessly on all sides, and sacking from roof to cellar
the towns of Grantham, Stamford, Peterborough, Huntingdon, Royston,
Melbourn, and Dunstable, as they passed down the Ermine Street.
The news of the battle of Wakefield reached London about January 5th,
and set the whole South Country in dismay. Warwick, who had been
keeping his Christmas on his own estates, was forced to ride up to
the capital at full speed, and assume the direction of affairs, for
there was now no one to share the responsibility with him. His uncle,
in whose cause he had fought so long, and his father, whose prudent
counsels had guided the party, were both gone; his cousin of March, the
head of the family, was no more than nineteen years of age, and was
moreover at this moment far away by the Severn, looking after the Welsh
March. It devolved on Warwick to assume the responsibility for the
government of the kingdom and the safety of the Yorkist party.
Though there were traitors enough ready to change to the winning
side, as was always the case in this unhappy war, the south-eastern
counties were firm to York even in the darkest hour. Warwick found
ready assistants in the Duke of Norfolk, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the Earl of Arundel, the Lords Bonville, Cobham, Fitzwalter, and the
Commons of Kent and London. "In this country," wrote a partisan of
York, "every man is well willing to go with my Lords here, and I hope
God shall help them, for the people of the North rob and steal, and are
appointed to pillage all this country, and give away men's goods and
livelihood in all the South Country, and that shall be a mischief."
To resist the advance of the Queen on London, Warwick marched out to
St. Albans and arrayed some thirty thousand men to cover the London
road. His army was drawn up not in the great masses which were usual
at this time, but in detachments scattered along a front of three
miles; the right on a heath called No Man's Land, the left in St.
Albans town. The country-side was full of woods and hedges, which
were manned by archers, supported by a body of Burgundian handgun-men
whom Warwick had hired in Flanders. King Henry was taken along with
the army, and stationed in the rear, in charge of Lord Bonville. The
position was strong, but the communication between its various parts
was bad, and the whole force of Warwick's men seems to have been ill
placed for concentration. Owing to some mismanagement of the officer
commanding the mounted scouts, the Lancastrians attacked before they
were expected. "The Queen's men were at hands with the Earl's in the
town of St. Albans while all things were set to seek and out of order,
for the prickers came not home to bring tidings that the Queen was at
hand, save one, and he came and said that she was yet nine mile off."
The first Lancastrian attack on the left, in St. Albans town, was
beaten back, but in another part of the field a fatal disaster took
place. A Kentish squire named Lovelace, who led a company in the right
wing, went over to the enemy, and let the Lancastrians through the
Yorkist line. King Henry was captured by his wife's followers "as he
sat under a great oak, smiling to see the discomfiture of the army."
When the news ran along the front that treachery was at work, and that
the King was taken, the bulk of the Yorkists broke up and fled. Not
more than three thousand were slain or taken, but the whole force was
irretrievably scattered, and the greater part of the leaders fled home
to their own lands as if the war was over.
Queen Margaret showed her joy at the recovery of her husband's person
by an exhibition of savage cruelty. Lord Bonville and Sir Thomas
Kyrriel, who had been in charge of Henry and had been captured with
him, were brought before her. "So she told them they must die, and sent
for her son the Prince of Wales, and said that he should choose what
death they should suffer. And when the boy--he was eight years old--was
brought into the tent, she said 'Fair son, what manner of death shall
these knights, whom you see here, die?' And the young child answered
'Let them have their heads taken off.' Then said Sir Thomas, 'May God
destroy those who taught thee this manner of speech,' but immediately
they drew them out and cut off both their heads" (February 17th, 1461).