Wars of the Roses (69 page)

The Lancastrian army numbered around 5–6000 men, the Yorkists around 3500–5000. The King, however, had more noble support than Somerset, and consequently more professional troops with better arms and equipment; nor had his men suffered loss of morale through being hunted down over a number of days.

Somerset’s plan was that Wenlock should attack the Yorkists from the front while he bore down on them from the right side, but it was the King who opened hostilities, leading his army with some difficulty up the hill where the Lancastrians were positioned, and then ordering Gloucester to commence the assault. The Duke led his men across what the
Arrivall
describes as an ‘evil place’ thick with ‘so many hedges and trees that it was right hard to approach them near and come to hands’. For an hour, his soldiers, armed with the cannon captured after Barnet and traditional English longbows, inflicted many casualties, loosing upon the enemy ‘right a-sharp shower’ of arrows, so that it appeared that the Yorkists already had the advantage. Then Gloucester gave the order to sound the retreat, an old ruse intended to provoke the enemy into leaving a good defensive position. Somerset fell into the trap, leading his men in a headlong charge down the hill, shouting at Wenlock and Prince Edward to follow him, and crashing full tilt into the Yorkist left flank.

Because he feared an ambush by Lancastrian cavalry hidden in the trees, the King had prudently detailed 2–300 spearmen to deploy themselves in a wood or park a quarter of a mile to the right of the Lancastrian position, there to await orders. At this point their captain, on learning of Somerset’s collision with Gloucester’s men, entered the battle on his own initiative, attacking Somerset from the rear while the Duke and his men were engaged in heavy fighting with Gloucester’s left wing, which had fallen upon them savagely with axes and swords, and the Yorkist centre under King Edward.

Somerset was now surrounded on every side, yet he and his men at first fought furiously. Wenlock, however, made Prince Edward hold back the Lancastrian centre, refusing to let it advance to Somerset’s aid. As a result, the Duke’s men were cut to pieces, which caused his remaining soldiers to panic and begin to flee. At that
point, the battle was lost. When Somerset returned to the Lancastrian lines with the remnants of his force and realised that Wenlock had not lifted a finger to help him, he publicly branded him a traitor to his face; then, before Wenlock had a chance to answer, the Duke split his head open with his battle mace. This left the inexperienced Prince Edward in sole command of the Lancastrian centre and vulnerable to a Yorkist charge.

Seizing his advantage, Gloucester led his men in a vicious onslaught on the Lancastrian centre. Prince Edward resisted valiantly, but his line broke and his men scrambled off in a full-scale retreat. King Edward now surged forward to fill in the gap left by Somerset, and there followed a desperate rout in which the Lancastrians fled the field, hotly pursued by Yorkists out for their blood. Many were cut down as they ran, while others sought refuge in Tewkesbury Abbey, little realising that it did not enjoy the privilege of sanctuary. Hundreds tried to escape by crossing the River Severn, but perished there by drowning or at the hands of their pursuers. A good many more were trapped and slaughtered near the abbey mill, but the worst carnage was to be seen on the battlefield, which is still called the ‘Bloody Meadow’ and was then rough pasture.

During the rout, bands of Yorkist soldiers forced their way into Tewkesbury Abbey and ran riot through its sacred buildings, looting and vandalising as they went. Anyone who stood in their way was dealt with viciously, and Lancastrian soldiers who had sought refuge were savagely dispatched, their blood desecrating the sanctified ground. In the sacristy today is a wooden door completely covered with plates of armour stripped from Lancastrian casualties or prisoners. In places, the armour is perforated with gunshot or arrow holes.

King Edward had won what Croyland calls ‘a famous victory’, having at last inflicted a devastating and final defeat on the Lancastrians, 2000 of whom were killed in the battle. Among the dead were Somerset’s younger brother, Sir John Beaufort, who was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, Sir Walter Courtenay, Sir William Vaux, Sir Robert Whittingham, Sir William Roos and Sir Edmund Hampden, all stalwart supporters of the Queen. The chief Yorkist casualty was the King’s cousin, Humphrey Bourchier, son of York’s sister Isabella. Yet by far the most important casualty of all was Prince Edward of Lancaster.

Commines and most other contemporary writers state that the Prince ‘died in the field’, and on 6 May Clarence reported that he ‘had been slain in plain battle’. The
Arrivall
, the official Yorkist
account of the battle, says that the Prince ‘was taken fleeing to the townwards and slain in the field’, crying ‘for succour to his brother-in-law, Clarence’.

But Croyland, writing in 1486 after Edward IV and his brothers were dead, states rather ambiguously that the Prince died ‘either on the field, or after the battle, by the avenging hands of certain persons’. The sixteenth-century historians Vergil, More and Hall all implicate Gloucester in his death, stating that the Prince was taken during the rout and brought before King Edward when the battle had ended. The King received him graciously and asked him to explain why he had taken up arms against him. The young man retorted defiantly, ‘I came to recover my father’s heritage. My father has been miserably oppressed, and the crown usurped.’ This made Edward angry, and with ‘a look of indignation’ he slapped the Prince across the mouth with his gauntlet. At that moment Clarence, Gloucester and Hastings raised their swords and cut him down.

This tale may not have been an invention. In the confusion following the battle, it would not have been difficult to make it appear that the Prince had fallen in the field. Tudor chroniclers were happy to slander Gloucester – later the notorious Richard III – but had no reason to defame without due cause Edward IV or Lord Hastings, who was usually depicted by them as a noble hero. If the motive behind the tale was to discredit Gloucester, why not allege that he alone had murdered the Prince? But Edward IV had many sound reasons for wanting the young man dead, and when the opportunity presented itself would doubtless have been happy for his closest supporters to take advantage of it. Indeed, the murder may even have been premeditated and planned. Clarence’s use of the words ‘plain battle’ may have been significantly over-emphatic, and Croyland was certainly hinting that there was more to the Prince’s death than contemporary reports had made clear.

With Prince Edward died the hopes of the House of Lancaster. His remains were ‘homely interred with the other simple corpses in the church of the monastery of the black monks in Tewkesbury’ with only ‘maimed rites’. A modern diamond of brass beneath the church tower and a vaulted roof emblazoned with gilded suns in splendour (placed there to commemorate the Yorkist victory) marks his resting place, and bears the Latin inscription:

While the Battle of Tewkesbury raged, Queen Margaret and Anne Neville had remained with the other ladies in their party at Glupshill Manor, anxiously awaiting news. When a messenger brought them the dreadful tidings of the Lancastrian defeat, the Queen determined on flight, but was so overcome by the realisation of the disaster that had overtaken her and anxiety as to the fate of her son, of whom there was no news as yet, that she fainted and had to be carried out by her ladies to a waiting litter. She and her party then travelled to a house called Payne’s Place in the village of Bushley, where a loyal family was willing to hide them for the night.

After the battle, Somerset and other Lancastrian leaders, including Sir John Langstrother, Sir Humphrey Audley, Sir John Fortescue and Dr John Morton, had sought sanctuary in Tewkesbury Abbey. Notwithstanding this, they were dragged out by the King’s men. Some were killed on the spot, others were left to await judgement, and the rest, including Fortescue and Morton, remained prisoners for a time.

On 6th May Somerset and twelve others were brought before a military tribunal presided over by Gloucester as Constable of England, and condemned to immediate execution as traitors and rebels. That same day, Somerset was beheaded in the market place at Tewkesbury and buried in the abbey there. He was the last direct male descendant of the Beauforts, and on his death, Margaret Beaufort became the senior representative of her house. The other twelve leaders also suffered that day in the same manner, ‘at the King’s will’. Edward pardoned all the common soldiers who had fought against him.

The Battle of Tewkesbury effectively ended Lancastrian resistance for good, and was the last battle of the wars between Lancaster and York. When it ended, Henry VI was a prisoner, his only son was dead, his wife was in hiding, and the last male heir of the Beauforts – whom Henry might conceivably have chosen to succeed him – had perished. No one yet regarded Henry Tudor, a fourteen-year-old fugitive, as the hope of the House of Lancaster, which now lacked a male heir. The Lancastrian heir-general was Alfonso V, King of Portugal, a descendant of John of Gaunt, and no one in England was going to rise in his favour. Even Margaret Beaufort had abandoned the Lancastrian cause and declared her loyalty to Edward IV. ‘In every part of England’, says the
Arrivall
, ‘it appeared to every man
that the said party was extinct and repressed for ever, without any hope of again quickening.’

On 5 May, as the King rode in triumph to Worcester, he had been informed that Queen Margaret could not be found and had probably fled after the battle. In fact, Margaret and Anne Neville had left Payne’s Place and made their way in secret to a fourteenth-century moated and fortified manor house called Birtsmorton Court, a fine building enclosing a courtyard and boasting a handsome hall. The Queen was accommodated in a chamber which still exists, but evidently did not feel it was safe to remain there, for she soon removed herself and her party five miles north-west to Little Malvern Priory in Worcestershire, ‘a poor religious place’ founded in 1171 and situated in woodland beneath Hereford Beacon.

Meanwhile, the King had been receiving reports of rebellions brewing in the north and in Wales, and, having dismissed the soldiers who had fought for him at Tewkesbury, began to recruit a new army. Jasper Tudor had been at Chepstow with Henry Tudor when he learned of the Lancastrian defeat, and was now doing his best to maintain his hold over south Wales. On Edward’s orders, Roger Vaughan of Tretower tried to trap him there, but was unsuccessful, and it was Jasper who managed to capture Vaughan and have him beheaded. Some said that this was in revenge for Vaughan having urged Edward to order the execution of Jasper’s father, Owen Tudor, in 1461. Afterwards, Jasper fled west to Pembroke Castle, where he was besieged by a Yorkist partisan called Morgan Thomas. He was rescued a week later, however, by a loyal supporter and friend, David Thomas.

By 14 May, the King received word that the Earl of Northumberland, now returned to his allegiance, had snuffed out the northern rebellion before it gathered momentum.

King Louis’s worst fears were confirmed on 1 June, when he received credible tidings of Edward’s victory. Charles the Bold, however, was delighted by the news, and hastened to dispatch his envoys to offer his congratulations and remind Edward of the enmity of Louis, urging him to set about re-conquering England’s lost lands in France and assuring him of Burgundy’s assistance in that venture.

For the present, however, the King had more pressing matters to occupy him. On 7 May Queen Margaret and Anne Neville had been discovered by Sir William Stanley and his men at Little Malvern Priory and taken into custody. It was Stanley who informed the Queen, none too gently, of her son’s death. Margaret collapsed on hearing this bitter news, and had to be dragged almost senseless from the priory by Sir William’s soldiers. On the nth, both she and Anne
Neville were brought before the King at Coventry. Margaret was in a state of great distress, calling down curses on Edward’s head and screaming abuse at him, so that for a time he seriously considered ordering her execution. But then he relented: knights did not behave thus to women, and this woman was distracted by grief and the burden of failure. He would be lenient with her. When she had calmed down, he informed her she would be dealt with honourably and with respect, to which she replied, with commendable meekness, that she placed herself ‘at his commandment’. On the 14th Edward left Coventry for London with Margaret of Anjou in his train, having consigned Anne Neville to the custody of her brother-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, who arranged for her to enter his household, where she would come under the care of her elder sister, the Duchess Isabel. Her name does not appear among those of the prisoners who rode with Edward to London.

While these events were taking place, says Croyland, ‘the frenzy of the King’s enemies was in no way quelled, particularly in Kent, and their numbers increased in spite of the fact that King Edward’s double victory seemed to all a clear sign of the justice of his cause. Incited by the few men who remained of those who had been with the Earl of Warwick, as well as by the Calais regulars, sailors and pirates, such men assembled under the command of Thomas, Bastard of Fauconberg.’ Fauconberg was Warwick’s cousin and had managed to retain control of the Earl’s ships. On hearing of Warwick’s death at Barnet, he had landed in Kent and begun to incite rebellion, calling himself ‘captain and leader of our liege lord Henry’s people in Kent’.

Men came flocking to him ‘from the furthest corners of Kent’, ready to march on London. Sir Geoffrey Gate, who had taken asylum in Calais, sent Fauconberg 300 soldiers, while the mayor of Canterbury joined him with 200 citizens. ‘In Essex,’ records the Great Chronicle of London, ‘the faint husbands cast from them their sharp scythes and armed them with their wives’ smocks, cheese cloths and old sheets, and weaponed them with heavy and great clubs and long pitchforks and staves, and so in all haste sped them towards London, and so joined unto the Kentishmen.’ Many, says the
Arrivall
, ‘would right fain have still been at home and not to have run into the danger of such rebellion’.