Behind Trollope came Somerset with the main battle of the royal army. The Yorkists tried again to bombard the enemy with their artillery, but it had now been rendered completely ineffective, and their arrows, shot into an adverse wind, were falling short of their targets. Nevertheless, the Lancastrians were finding it difficult to breach the Yorkist position, and Warwick might have won the day had it not been for the treachery of Lovelace, who had cautiously held back his troops until he saw that the tide was turning in favour of the Lancastrians, then deserted and raced to join them. The gap in the Yorkist lines left by Lovelace was soon targeted by the enemy commanders, who launched a charge of mounted knights, which shattered the Yorkist lines.
After this, it began to grow dark, and Warwick could see defeat approaching. His left wing was already in flight, and he therefore sounded the retreat and withdrew his centre from the field, drawing them up in a tight defensive position between Sandridge and Cheapside Farm, to the north of St Albans. Here he remained, fighting on until dusk fell.
Those of his army who remained in the field, hard-pressed, looked in vain for the Earl to return with reinforcements. The Lancastrians were causing confusion and it was impossible to ward off their onslaughts. But Warwick was preoccupied with disciplining his raw recruits, who made up the larger part of his army; many had deserted during the battle because they had not been adequately fed. The Earl
had indeed tried to march his centre south to rejoin the fighting, but was thwarted by some of his captains, who urged him to withdraw altogether from the field and make for London. Although Warwick stubbornly insisted on relieving his men, by the time he got to them his left wing on Bernard’s Heath were already fleeing the battlefield, running in panic in all directions, with enemy soldiers in grim pursuit who butchered the Yorkists when they caught them. Whethamstead, who was at the abbey of St Albans at the time of the battle and gives the most detailed account of it, says that those who escaped did so under cover of darkness. At the sight of the carnage, more of Warwick’s inexperienced recruits ran for their lives.
As it was now dark and useless to struggle on further, and as it was obvious that the Lancastrians had scored a decisive victory – in fact, it was to be their most decisive victory of the war – Warwick sounded the retreat and withdrew the remnants of his army in an orderly manner from the field. He then marched west through the night with a force of 4000 men, aiming to link up with Edward of York. He left behind him a battlefield strewn with 2–4000 dead. Sir John Grey was among them.
After the battle, Henry VI was found seated under an oak tree, smiling to see the discomfiture of the Yorkists. Beside him stood the men Warwick had appointed to guard him, Lord Bonville and Sir Thomas Kyriell. Lancastrian officers immediately arrested them, but the King promised them that he would be merciful. Then he was escorted to the tent of Lord Clifford, where he was reunited with his wife and son. He rejoiced to see them after so many months apart, and embraced and kissed them, thanking God for bringing them back to him.
The people of St Albans, however, were horrified by the Yorkist defeat and its implications for them. ‘Gregory’ blamed it on Warwick’s raw recruits, and the incompetence of his scouts, who had failed to warn him of the proximity of the Lancastrian army. Waurin and others held Lovelace to blame. Fortunately, most of the peers in the Earl’s army had escaped; only the Lords Bonville, Berners and Charlton, and Warwick’s brother John Neville had been taken prisoner.
On 18 February, at the Queen’s request, the seven-year-old Prince, wearing a soldier’s brigandine of purple velvet, received his father’s blessing and was then knighted by him. Then came thirty others, who were dubbed knight by the Prince. Trollope was first in the line, and as he knelt, he said, ‘My lord, I have not deserved it, for I slew but fifteen men, for I stood still in one place, and they came
unto me.’ William Tailboys was also honoured for his valour in the field.
There then followed a more macabre ceremony. Bonville and Kyriell were brought before the King, Queen, and Prince to be sentenced. In view of Henry’s promise of mercy they expected to be dealt with leniently, for they had behaved honourably towards him throughout. But the Queen, intervening before her husband could say anything, turned to the Prince and said, ‘Fair son, what death shall these two knights die?’ There was a shocked hush as the child answered, ‘Let them have their heads taken off.’ Bonville, appalled, retorted, ‘May God destroy those who taught thee this manner of speech!’
The executions of Bonville and Kyriell aroused fury among the Yorkists. Both men had been acting under orders, guarding the King, and had taken no part in the fighting. Bonville, however, had recently gone over to the Yorkists and was regarded by the Queen as a traitor, which was enough to secure his fate. The bloodshed did not end there, for several other Yorkist prisoners were brutally put to death on the Queen’s orders.
The King and Queen and their retinues now went into St Albans Abbey to give thanks for the victory. At the porch they were received by the abbot and his monks with triumphal hymns, and processed inside for the service. Afterwards Henry and Margaret were shown to their rooms in the abbey’s guest house, where they would lodge for the next few days.
News of Warwick’s defeat reached London on Ash Wednesday, 18 February. From that day, ‘we lived in mickle dread’, wrote a Yorkist living in the capital, while Bishop Beauchamp told the Venetian ambassador that there was ‘general dread’ in the city at the news. One wealthy citizen, Philip Malpas, whose house had been sacked by Cade’s rebels eleven years earlier, was so frightened that he fled abroad to Antwerp. As the wave of fear swept London, streets emptied as merchants shut up and locked their shops and people barricaded themselves inside their houses. Since Warwick had abandoned them, the Lord Mayor arranged for the city militia to patrol the walls, himself accompanying them. London had for years now been sympathetic to the Yorkist cause, and the reported behaviour of the Lancastrian army disposed the citizens even more in its favour. Already in the south-east there was a conviction that the Wars of the Roses had come to represent a conflict between north and south, and that the Lancastrian victory meant that the prosperous south now lay under a dire threat from the north.
On the 19th it was reported in London that Edward of York was in the Cotswolds. Warwick had ridden there at full speed and met up with him either at Burford or Chipping Norton. After he had greeted the Earl, Edward apologised ‘that he was so poor, for he had no money, but the substance of his men came at their own cost’. Many, however, were more concerned about protecting their homes and families from the Queen’s army than being paid to do so, and Warwick told Edward to be of good cheer, for the commons of England were on his side. The two men then formulated a plan to race for London and have Edward proclaimed king before the Lancastrians got there, both now realising that in this lay their only hope of victory.
Meanwhile, even as the King and Queen were being entertained by the Abbot of St Albans, Margaret’s victorious northerners were enthusiastically pillaging and plundering the abbey and town and the countryside round about, creating a trail of destruction. Abbot Whethamstead persuaded Henry to issue a proclamation forbidding such behaviour, but no one took any notice of it, ‘for they were all at liberty, and licensed, as they asserted, by the Queen and northern lords to plunder and seize anything they could find anywhere on this side of the Trent, by way of remuneration and recompense for their services’. In vain the Queen tried to stop them, promising pardon to all those who had committed any crimes, for they paid her no heed. Their violent behaviour was proof indeed that Yorkist propaganda had not exaggerated, and was so savage that it horrified the abbot, who could only conclude that these people had been brutalised by poverty and deeply resented the prosperity of the southerners. The King insisted that the Queen order them at least to spare the abbey from further harm, and this time she seems to have met with some success, though further afield, throughout Hertfordshire and Middlesex, her men were ravaging the countryside at will.
The royal army was now running desperately short of food, so the Queen sent a chaplain and a squire to the Lord Mayor of London with a peremptory demand for ‘bread and victuals’ and money. The frightened mayor hastily arranged for a number of carts to be laden with coin, meat, fish and other foodstuffs, but the pro-Yorkist citizens, emboldened by the news that Edward and Warwick were now marching together on London, rose in an angry mob, seized the carts and locked the city gates, mounting a guard over them so that no one could get in or out. The food they distributed among themselves and ate; as for the money, ‘I wot not how it departed,’ commented one London chronicler – ‘I trow the purse stole the money!’
When the Queen heard how the Londoners had flouted her demands, she was so furious that she allowed her soldiery to plunder and lay waste the countryside of Hertfordshire almost to the gates of the capital itself. If the King and Queen had then regrouped their army and marched on London, ‘all things would have been at their will’, but Margaret failed to consolidate her victory. She and the King were fearful of further alienating the Londoners by unleashing their uncontrollable troops on the capital, and their captains may well have advised them to wait and intercept the Yorkists as they marched on London. Whatever the reason, Margaret hesitated – and as Lord Rivers soon afterwards certified to the Milanese ambassador, the Lancastrian cause was ‘lost irredeemably’.
Upon receiving news of the victory at St Albans, the Lord Mayor of London had written to the King and Queen, offering his obedience, provided that they could assure him that the city would not be plundered or suffer violence. On 20 February the duchesses of Bedford and Buckingham were sent by Margaret to the mayor ‘and reported that the King and Queen had no mind to pillage the chief city and chamber of their realm, and so they promised’, wrote William Worcester. ‘But at the same time they did not mean that they would not punish the evil-doers.’
The city fathers decided to send the noble ladies back to the King and Queen with four aldermen, in order to come to an arrangement whereby Henry and Margaret might enter their capital, providing that the city did not suffer plunder, punishment or violence. But the Londoners had heard too many reports of the atrocities committed by Margaret’s troops, and were also heartily sick of Lancastrian misgovernment and their French queen. ‘It is right a great abusion,’ wrote one anonymous London commentator at this time,
a woman of a land to be a regent; Queen Margaret, I mean, that ever meant to govern all England with might and power and to destroy the right line. Wherefore she hath a fall, to her great languour. And now she né wrought so that she might attain, though all England were brought to confusion, she and her wicked affinity certain[ly] intend utterly to destroy this region.
The citizens prevaricated and dithered: should they admit the Queen? News of the plundering of St Albans was the deciding factor. The Lord Mayor and a few of his aldermen were virtually the only persons in London who supported her, and they were, predictably, not very popular and were overridden by the angry
citizens, who were fearful for their homes, womenfolk and possessions. The city’s gates were closed.
Around 21 February, Margaret divided her army; the main body retired to Dunstable with her, while a detachment of the best troops was sent to Barnet, where it halted. Feelings were running high among the men, who were unpaid and underfed. Many were on the brink of mutiny, and the Queen knew she had to find food and money soon, or risk disaster. Moving to Barnet, she wrote two letters to the citizens of London, assuring them of her good intentions. Her commanders warned her not to proceed further south, urging her to return to the north and avoid forcing the issue with the Londoners, but the northerners, seeing their prospects of pillaging the capital and its environs receding, erupted in fury. Hundreds deserted, though, since the victory at St Albans had led to new recruits joining the Lancastrian forces, the army was kept more or less up to strength.
Margaret now sent back the deputation of ladies and aldermen to negotiate the terms of the capital’s surrender, ordering the citizens to proclaim Edward of York a traitor and assuring them of an amnesty. They did not trust her, and with good cause, for her next move was to order 400 of her elite troops to march on Aldgate. Here they demanded admittance to the city, in the King’s name, but the mayor, thoroughly cowed by the people, refused it. Another detail of the Queen’s soldiers reached Westminster, but was roughly dealt with by indignant citizens, who drove it back with threats.
The widowed Duchess of York was then in residence at Baynard’s Castle and becoming increasingly concerned for the safety of her younger sons, George and Richard, who might be taken as hostages for their brother’s good behaviour if the Lancastrians entered the city. She therefore placed them on board a ship bound for Burgundy, where they would remain under the protection of Duke Philip until it was safe for them to return to England. She herself remained in London, praying for the safe arrival of her eldest son.
Realising that an attempt on London was impossible, Margaret ordered a retreat to Dunstable, hoping to allay the fears of the citizens. At the same time, Edward was approaching the capital. Prudently, he sent ahead a messenger to proclaim that the Lancastrians had given their soldiers licence to rob and assure the Londoners that he had forbidden his own troops to do so.
Margaret’s retreat gave Edward the chance to advance on London unhindered, and the citizens, eager to demonstrate their support of the Yorkists, collected the then princely sum of £100, which was sent to Edward to help finance his soldiers. The Milanese ambassador
informed his master that the enthusiastic support of the Londoners would probably mean that Edward and Warwick would triumph over their enemies.