On 27 February Edward of York, at the head of 20,000 knights and 30,000 foot soldiers, rode through the gates of London and took possession of the city. The Londoners welcomed him with rapturous acclaim as their saviour, the man who would save them from the Lancastrian menace. Even at eighteen he cut an impressive figure. The people cried, ‘Hail to the Rose of Rouen!’ and one punned, ‘Let us walk in a new vineyard and let us make a gay garden in the month of March with this fair white rose and herb, the Earl of March!’ At Edward’s side rode Warwick, his strongest and most faithful ally, and there were fervent cheers for him also, who had long been a favourite with the Londoners. Edward rode to greet his mother at Baynard’s Castle, while his army set up camp in Clerkenwell Fields outside the city walls.
It was no longer possible for Edward to claim, as his father had done earlier, that he had taken up arms in order to remove Henry VI from the influence of evil counsellors. People were now acknowledging that the endemic disorder was directly attributable to the weak government of Henry VI. This time, therefore, the Yorkists’ intentions were to remove him from power and make Edward king. In fact, they had no alternative, for despite his warm welcome in London, he was not in a strong position, being technically an attainted traitor and lacking funds and the support of a majority of the magnates.
In order to test the mood of the people, whose allegiance was essential to Edward’s success, on Sunday 1 March the Lord Chancellor, George Neville, addressed a crowd of citizens who were mingling with the Yorkist army in St John’s Fields, declaring that Edward of York was the rightful king of England and that Henry of Lancaster was a usurper. When the Bishop asked the Londoners for their opinion, they shouted, ‘Yea! Yea! King Edward!’ and clapped their hands, while the soldiers drummed on their armour. ‘I was there. I heard them!’ wrote one chronicler. The next day Edward, accompanied by Warwick, Fauconberg and Norfolk, rode to Clerkenwell and reviewed his men, knowing that, whatever happened, he would need their services again before long.
Parliament was in session at this time, and therefore Edward must be seen to be elected king by the will of the people, whose assent would be expressed by their public acclamation of him. Evidence of such acclamation had already been displayed at St John’s Fields, and on 3 March the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Salisbury
and Exeter, Warwick, Norfolk, Lord FitzWalter and other peers held a council at Baynard’s Castle, which resulted in all the magnates there present agreeing that Edward should be offered the throne. On the following day a deputation of lords and commons, led by Warwick, went to Baynard’s Castle and presented a petition to him, begging him to accept the crown and royal dignity of England, while outside a crowd of Londoners was crying, ‘King Edward! God save King Edward!’ and begging him to ‘avenge us on King Henry and his wife’. Edward graciously acceded to the lords’ petition and was shortly afterwards proclaimed King Edward IV at Baynard’s Castle.
Edward IV was not a usurper, as Henry IV had been, but the rightful heir to the crown of the Plantagenets legitimately restored to the throne sixty-two years after it had been usurped by the House of Lancaster. Yet although his claim to the throne had been acknowledged by the Lords in Parliament as superior to that of Henry VI, what really determined the issue was the fact that he was in control of the capital and had the military advantage over the Lancastrians. He had become king thanks to the efforts of a small group of magnates headed by Warwick, who had seen that the only way to maintain his position was to uphold the Yorkist claim.
On the day of his accession London’s leading citizens were summoned to St Paul’s, where they enthusiastically acclaimed their new sovereign when he arrived there after being proclaimed king. In the cathedral he made a thanksgiving offering to God, and then, at the invitation of the Lord Chancellor, went in procession to Westminster Hall where he took the oath required of a new monarch. Afterwards, attired in royal robes and a cap of estate, he was enthroned upon the King’s Bench, to the cheers of the assembled lords, who then escorted him past huge crowds, waving and cheering, to Westminster Abbey, where the abbot and monks presented him with the crown and sceptre of St Edward the Confessor. He made more offerings at the high altar and at the Confessor’s shrine before returning to the choir and mounting the coronation chair, which had been hastily placed there. He addressed the congregation, asserting his right to the crown. When he had finished speaking, the lords asked the people if they would have Edward for their king, at which they cried that they indeed took him for their lawful king. The magnates knelt one by one before him and paid homage, placing their hands between his, and afterwards the Abbey was filled with the glorious sound of a
Te Deum
:
at
its conclusion the King made yet more offerings before leaving the church and proceeding to the landing stage at the Palace of
Westminster, where he boarded a boat which took him back to Baynard’s Castle.
Later that day his councillors came with plans for his formal coronation, but Edward vowed that he would not be crowned until Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou had been taken and executed or driven into exile. In his speech in Westminster Abbey Edward had declared that Henry had forfeited his right to the throne by failing to honour the Act of Accord and allowing his wife to take up arms against the true heirs. Henry was deposed, wrote Benet, ‘because he ruled like a tyrant, as had his father and grandfather before him’ – that is to say, without benefit of legal title. Warkworth says that ‘when he had been removed from the throne by King Edward, most of the English people hated him because of his deceitful lords [but] never because of his own faults. They were therefore very glad of a change.’
On 5 March the Milanese ambassador, Prospero di Camulio, heard a rumour that Henry VI, learning of Edward’s accession, had abdicated in favour of his son. The Queen, went the story, was so angry that she ‘gave the King poison. At least he will know how to die, if he is incapable of doing anything else!’ Although the rumour had no foundation in fact, it is testimony that the Queen’s reputation was such that people believed her capable of the deed.
The House of York, in the person of Edward IV, was now established on the throne, but the deposed king and queen were still at large, and in command of a sizeable army. No one believed that the conflict would end here.
‘A
nd 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 nth 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.