The Last Plantagenets (51 page)

That the Kingmaker was seriously disturbed is evidenced in a letter he dispatched to Henry Vernon, the Lord of Haddon Hall, asking him to take the field.

“Henry,” he wrote, “I praye you ffayle me not now, as ever I may do ffor yow.”

It was soon after this that he heard of the defection of Clarence. When Edward was close to Warwick on his march south, he saw a company of horsemen advancing to meet him whose lances carried no token of allegiance to either side. Edward reined in and motioned to his brother Gloucester (afterward Richard III) to draw closer.

“Clarence?” was the question conveyed by the lift of his eyebrows.

Richard nodded in confirmation, a satisfied shake of the head. He was devoted to the handsome and masterful Edward but also loved the weak George enough to be happy to have him rejoin them after his term of apostasy with Warwick.

It took no more than a few words to reach a reconciliation. Clarence was bitter over his treatment at Warwick’s hands, although he could not say in what respect the Kingmaker had broken his word. To have done so would have revealed his own treasonable designs on the throne. Perhaps Edward did not need to be told. He understood Clarence through and through and was still able to retain a spark of affection for him.

The result was that the forces under Clarence pinned the White Rose on their lances and swarmed over to join the returning monarch. The rapidly growing army headed south for London, where they were assured
of a warm reception. Clarence, to give him his due, strove to effect a reconciliation between his brother and Warwick. The king agreed to the extent of offering the Kingmaker a bare pardon. The latter, too deeply involved, scoffed at the suggestion.

The town of Barnet lies on the north road out of London and has the highest elevation between that city and York. It was here that the decisive battle of the war was fought.

Although he had a larger army than Edward and more cannon, Warwick seems to have been reluctant to come to grips with his foe. Perhaps he held the skill of the young Yorkist in some dread, as indeed he had every reason to do. Perhaps a premonition of disaster rode his back and made him postpone the inevitable clash. The issue, however, could only be settled by the sword and on Good Friday, 1471, the Kingmaker led his troops to St. Albans, which was familiar territory. Knowing that Edward was advancing from London to meet him, Warwick led his divisions the following day to Hadley Green and stationed them across the Barnet road in battle order. During the late afternoon the Yorkist troops came within sight of the Lancastrian lines and halted, after driving in Warwick’s pickets. It was too dark to begin the action when the king’s forces had taken their positions and so the two armies settled down to spend the night within earshot of each other.

It is estimated that the Kingmaker had in the neighborhood of 12,000 men. His position was a strong one, lying along Wrotham Park and the ridge which intersected the main road from Barnet. Most estimates place Edward’s strength at 10,000 and it was soon made apparent that he had fewer cannon.

The Lancastrian guns were made of cast iron and they fired rounded stones of considerable weight. The new “corned” gunpowder was used but it lacked the strength to project the missiles any great distance. There was always a grave danger also of the barrels exploding, and so the gunners went about their work warily and with an eye to suitable cover.

Warwick seems to have believed in the power of his guns. Throughout the night, with dark clouds cutting off the light, he kept the gunners at work, pounding the Yorkist lines, or what he conceived to be the position of the enemy. There had been a miscalculation of distances and the Yorkists were much closer than Warwick supposed. As a result, the constant bombardment netted him nothing, the stones falling well beyond
the rear of the enemy line. Edward’s guns made no reply, for the best of reasons. To have done so would make their location clear and the Lancastrian gunners could then have corrected their sights.

Dawn came with both forces standing under arms and waiting the dread moment when the lines would clash and the carnage begin. There was a nightmare quality about the Battle of Barnet. It had started with the incessant booming of the guns and continued when dawn showed faintly through a heavy mist wrapped tightly about Wrotham and the high points of the ridge. The damp fog drifted down over the field, so that Rose tokens became useless and friend could not be told from foe, and Edward in shining armor astride his white charger seemed a fantastic figure out of mythology.

The battle began with the Earl of Oxford’s men, who made up the Lancastrian right wing, charging forward through the yellowish mist and encountering nothing but empty fields and broken hedges. Believing that he had overlapped the Yorkist position, Oxford wheeled to his left and fell on the rear lines of the army of the White Rose. Hastings, the Yorkist commander on this flank, was compelled to fall back. Flushed with what seemed an easy advantage, Oxford drove them before him all the way to Barnet and beyond. This was exceeding instructions, for now Oxford was completely out of touch with the rest of the Warwick forces. When he finally brought his men to a halt, he was unable to round up more than 800 of them. When this handful emerged through the still obscuring mists, the impetuous commander of the Lancastrian center, the young Duke of Somerset, mistook them for the enemy and attacked them vigorously.

Instantly the fatal cry of “Treason!” so often heard in this bitter civil conflict, rose all along the line. Oxford’s men melted away into the murky shadows. Somerset’s men, already desperately engaged with Edward’s center, began to waver.

In the meantime the same situation had developed on the other side of the field. Here young Richard of Gloucester, who had the makings of a great soldier in him, led the Yorkist right wing into a similar gap. Obeying orders, however, he did not endeavor to sweep a clean path to the rear but brought his men around in good order to attack the exposed flank of the Lancastrian left wing, where Warwick himself was in command. His thrust was so effective that he soon threatened the Lancastrian position as far as Wrotham Park.

Warwick’s position was now desperately serious. Having dismounted before the fighting began, the Lancastrian leader found it hard to keep in touch with his lieutenants. He could see that Edward was driving hard against the faltering ranks of Somerset. As fast as the knightly
armor on his back would permit, he moved over to encourage his center.

“Stand fast!” he cried. “Withstand this charge and the day is ours!”

But the fear of treasonable desertions was still disturbing the men under Somerset. The right wing had vanished over the horizon, and on the left the hammer blows of young Richard were opening the way to a dip of land behind Warwick called Dead Man’s Bottom. The voice of the Kingmaker was lost in the pandemonium of sound.

Warwick looked about him with a growing sense of despair. He could see that Edward was moving steadily forward. The glint of swords and axes could be seen through breaks in the rising mist. The occasional roar of a cannon could be heard, blasting away at nothing but creating a sulphurous streak in the fog. Mass murder, most dreadful of sights, had turned nearly a quarter mile of muddy soil into a shambles—and for nothing more important than the settlement of a dynastic dispute.

He must have realized that this was almost certainly the end of all his brilliant ambitions and high hopes, his scheming and conniving, perhaps of his own life.

Suddenly, like the breaking of a dam, the Lancastrian line gave way. The cry of “Treason!” changed to “Save!” “Save!” as the men who had sported the Red Rose threw these useless symbols away and fled in a mass panic. A single vociferous figure, confined in cumbersome iron, could do nothing to steady the lines and save the day.

Warwick tried to reach the position in the rear where his charger was being held for him, but his own men submerged him in their mad rush for safety. He staggered to a thicket but was followed and beaten to the ground. A bloodstained foot soldier broke open the visor with an ax and a companion gave a savage inward thrust with a sword.

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, holder of countless honors and the owner of hundreds of manors, had come to the end of his kingmaking.

T
HE day that Queen Margaret reached the abbey of Cerne to rest after the fatigues of her long sea voyage the word reached her of the defeat and death of Warwick at Barnet. She fell to the floor in a swoon. When she recovered, she loudly bewailed her misfortunes.

“I would rather die,” she cried, “than live longer in this state!”

For the first time in her life of tragic conflict, the queen was willing to consider the Lancastrian cause as lost. Henry VI was still alive but a prisoner in the Tower of London. He would be allowed to live as long as possible by the Yorkists for an obvious reason: any further efforts to renew the struggle would be weakened by the necessity of placing the old man back on the throne, in the event of success. The son of the marriage, young Prince Edward, was high-spirited and brave. He would make a much stronger candidate for the throne than “Harry,” whose gentleness and deeply religious turn of mind would always win him affection—as a man but not necessarily as a king. Queen Margaret was completely realistic and knew that Edward IV would react in the same way she would to certain possible developments. For instance, if young Prince Edward were killed, there would no longer be any reason to keep the poor old prisoner alive.

Because of this the bitterly depressed queen announced that she would return to the continent and that her son would accompany her. Back of the decision, undoubtedly, was the unexpressed thought that in the course of the years the opportunity might arise for him to come back to England and fight again for his rights.

If she had adhered to this decision, the lives of many thousands of men would have been saved, including the two she valued most in all the world—her husband and her son.

Margaret moved to Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest, where she was joined by the Lancastrian leaders who had survived the battle, as well as by the widowed Countess of Warwick and her daughter Anne. They urged her not to give up. At first she refused, being still convinced of the wisdom of her decision. Then the young Duke of Somerset arrived and took matters into his hands. He had commanded the center at Barnet and had fought creditably. It perhaps should be pointed out that he was the son of the Somerset whose name had been linked with that of the queen in the question of the paternity of Edward, a completely false and absurd charge which only a political tactician as Machiavellian as Warwick would have dared to voice. Margaret’s loyalties ran as deep as her enmities. She still liked and believed in the Somersets, and in fact the whole Beaufort connection. When the young duke, believing himself a great military leader, arrived at the abbey, he began a blustering argument in favor of continuing the struggle. Margaret was weak enough to listen.

It is true that Edward of York (so ran the theme of his discourse) defeated and killed Warwick. Is that any reason for fearing him, for believing him invincible? Has it been forgotten that Your Majesty also defeated Warwick at the second Battle of St. Albans?

The swords of all true Englishmen, continued the highly confident Somerset, would be drawn in her support if she animated them by her presence and her wisdom. Coming down to details, he proposed that they proceed without delay to raise an army in the west and north, where Lancastrian sentiment was strongest. Margaret, in an evil moment, allowed herself to be persuaded.

An army of probably 5000 men was raised, a small force in contrast to the unwieldy numbers who had fought to the death at the second Battle of St. Albans, at Towton, and at Barnet. Edward, now wearing his crown again, marched west to meet her with an army somewhat smaller. There were two reasons for this shrinkage in the ranks. First, men had become tired of the incessant struggle and now refused to gamble their lives and their properties any longer. Second, the losses had been great enough to diminish seriously the number of active fighting men. England, in other words, was worn out.

The two armies met at Tewkesbury, close to the junction point of the Severn and the Avon rivers, in a savage and merciless battle. Edward was again the victor.

Barnet had been the decisive battle of the war. Tewkesbury was, in a sense, therefore, an anti-climax. It is chiefly noteworthy because of the death of the young prince and the capture of Queen Margaret. Some
of the chronicles of the day declared that the prince was killed in the field, crying vainly for help to his prospective brother-in-law, Clarence. It is believed by others that the youth was taken prisoner and led into the presence of the victorious Edward.

“How durst ye enter my realms with banners displayed against me?” demanded the king.

“To recover my father’s crown and mine own inheritance,” was the bold response.

In a rage Edward struck him in the face with his gauntleted hand. Whereupon the knightly train about the king surrounded the slender young hope of the Lancastrians and killed him with their daggers. This version is termed by one historian “a more detailed account written in the next generation.” In other words, it is a story told during the reign of Henry VII when nothing was written or published that did not conform with the wishes of that strange king.

The captive queen was taken to London and placed in the Tower, in one of the smallest cells in that great stone breeding place of human grief and despair. The old king was close by in the Wakefield Tower, with his devotional books and the companionship of a melancholy canary. He died the same night that his wife was brought there, some say, of “pure displeasure and grief,” and some say at the hands of assassins.

The next day the body of the dead king, poor Harry of Windsor, was exposed to public view at Black Friar’s and then removed to Chertsey for burial. The Lancastrian line had come to an end in disaster and death.