“The battle had been won with few casualties on both sides, and political and territorial rivals had been removed, but the repercussions for England would be far-reaching.”
By Andrew Boardman
THE WARS between York and Lancaster in the second half of the 15th century are filled with misconceptions and a continually moving cast of king’s nobles and courtiers that make the period fascinating to study. However, the mythology of what we now call the ‘Wars of the Roses’ has been spread far and wide. Because of this, some of its battles have been badly misinterpreted.
For many years the Battle of Bosworth was traditionally regarded as the final encounter of the civil wars purely because some historians found it a convenient place to mark the end of one historical period and denote the beginning of another. This same reasoning also claimed that Bosworth signified the end of Richard III’s ‘tyrannical’ rule and the creation of a ‘new age’ under Henry VII, the first Tudor king. Shakespeare, among other writers, borrowed this symbolism in his history plays, and thus this mythology has featured in popular tradition ever since.
However, today most historians and people with a deep interest in the wars between York and Lancaster accept that military conflict continued into Henry VII’s reign and that the final pitched battle was not fought at Bosworth in 1485 but at Stoke Field two years later. So, if the Battle of Stoke signified the end of the wars, where did York and Lancaster first cross swords?
This question is answered in my book St Albans 1455 (soon to be released in paperback). In it, I prove that the opening fight to gain control of Henry VI from his ‘evil’ councillors was no ‘sort scuffle in the street’ as some eminent historians have suggested. Indeed, the first battle of St Albans (as opposed to the second in 1461) marked the end of one aristocratic quarrel and the beginning of a much greater intermittent crisis that spiralled out of control for over 30 years.
The simple truth is that the king, Henry VI, unlike his father (Henry V, the victor of Agincourt), was no warrior or great administrator. Therefore, he became a puppet of others, and in the end, ordinary people cried out for reform. There was revolution in the air in 1450, and soon after the Hundred Years War ended in failure three years later, Henry VI found himself at the head of a faction-based and unstable government.
Even before the first battle of St Albans, English nobles had taken sides. Private feuding had increased in England over the years, and the twice Lord Protector, Richard Duke of York, and his political rival Edmund Duke of Somerset were regularly compared and vilified at court. Various factions gathered around the two nobles, each waiting for the other to make a mistake. Therefore, the threat of violence, the problems of a weak and mentally unstable king, his forceful queen (Margaret of Anjou), and a royal unwillingness to control the political powder keg of rivalry caused deep mistrust on both sides.
Two crucial battles preceded St Albans in 1455, and contrary to popular opinion, these were not skirmishes. Sides were taken, and local rivalries translated into open violence. In 1453 at Heworth Moor and Stamford Bridge in 1454, the Neville and Percy war of attrition came to blows. Men were killed, and hundreds were indicted when northern nobles began to take the law into their own hands. Prominent figures like the Duke of Exeter and families such as the Percys and Nevilles were at each other’s throats, and we may wonder, because of this, if the ‘Wars of the Roses’ began much earlier than previously thought. The Duke of York only worsened the situation when Henry VI fell victim to mental illness, and England became leaderless. As Lord Protector, York favoured the Nevilles, but when the king recovered, the Percys allied themselves with the Duke of Somerset as royalists, while the Duke of York and the Nevilles gathered their forces, fearful of what crimes might be brought against them.
A council meeting at Leicester threatened to undermine their positions. However, the king was caught napping on 22 May by York and his allies en route at St Albans, and Somerset, the Duke of Buckingham and the Percys waited to see what York might do. They quickly constructed makeshift barriers in the marketplace and blocked the main roads into St Peter’s Street. A good proportion of the nobility had their armed retinues with them. Most were probably confident the Duke of York would never launch an attack on the king, thereby committing treason, but the duke was determined to remove his rival Somerset by a show of strength.
The situation became even more charged when the sand in the hourglass began to run out due to negotiation. Mowbray Herald (York’s emissary) returned from the king with a stern reprimand. Henry proclaimed he ‘would destroy every mother’s son’ if York attacked. He and his allies would be branded traitors, their families attainted for life, and they would be hanged, drawn and quartered for their crimes.
However, York suspected the king was being coerced. Furious that his many declarations of loyalty had not been heeded, he was determined to capture his rival, the Duke of Somerset, no matter what the cost. However, Henry VI’s last threatening message was still ringing in York’s ears, and rather than act faithfully upon the words of a king who might be constrained by false councillors, York decided to send Mowbray Herald one last time into the town to try and avoid bloodshed.
Standing beside the Duke of York that fateful morning in 1455 was his brother-in-law, the ‘prudent’ Earl of Salisbury, and pacing the embankment of St Albans’ protective ditch, was Salisbury’s ambitious young son, the Earl of Warwick, later to become known as the ‘Kingmaker’. Both Neville earls, father and son, had swelled York’s ranks with their extensive retinues culled from those parts of northern England that already saw violence as an everyday fact of life. Their border levies were becoming agitated due to hours of waiting in Key Field, and York could likely see by the look on his brother-in-law’s face that he was also itching to cross swords with his local rivals in the north, the Percys.
At the forefront of Warwick’s contingents, knots of border archers had already braced their powerful yew bows in anticipation of battle, not to mention the fact that Sir Robert Ogle, with his six hundred men of the marches, hoped to prove himself worthy of Warwick’s trust. Add to this the fact that for at least three hours, a terrible sense of foreboding had lingered in York’s army due to the dread of facing their rightful king in combat, and it was clear that the ‘Yorkists’ had to act swiftly or suffer disunity in his ranks.
But what if York failed in his latest effort to remove the Duke of Somerset from the king’s council? What would the commons think of his decision to act forcefully against Henry? How might he explain such treasonable action afterwards if, by chance, the king was injured, or even killed, in an assault on the town? Alternatively, if York’s bid to capture Somerset succeeded, how could he permanently remove his rival from the king’s inner circle once his Neville supporters had disbanded their contingents? In short, what crucial decision might York have to make to release Somerset’s seditious hold over the king?
There was still enough time for York to step back from the abyss, but the argument about who should rule England if King Henry succumbed to another bout of mental illness, was unmistakeably one-sided. Now, the only course of action was for York to extract Somerset by force of arms and thereby cut a new cloth of state with cold Milanese steel. With his 13-year-old son Edward, Earl of March and his Neville kinsmen watching his every move, it was far beyond York’s pride to shrink from a fight. But as Mowbray Herald yet again spurred towards the town carrying York’s protestations of innocence, the duke knew that the political horse had bolted for the last time.
And in the end, reacting to the Duke of Buckingham’s delaying tactics, York advanced his banner and gave the order to attack the town.
Almost immediately, the barricades hindered any progress into the marketplace. There was stiff resistance from the royalists under Lord Clifford until Sir Robert Ogle’s men found a gap in the defences between two inns and pushed them back. Arrows were shot into the confused mass with no regard for the king’s safety. Prominent English nobles were purposely targeted and butchered in the street, including the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford. And as the battle raged, King Henry was bundled into a house for his own safety. An arrow had grazed his neck, and while his courtiers fled or were captured, York submitted to the king, stating that he had acted in his best interests. The battle had been won with few casualties on both sides, and political and territorial rivals had been removed, but the repercussions for England would be far-reaching.
No one could ever have anticipated the long-term effects of the first battle of St Albans that day. Nor could they have prophesied how the bloodletting in the streets would eventually sign the death warrants of a substantial proportion of England’s medieval nobility in later years. The Parliamentary Pardon settled on by Henry VI and the ‘Yorkists’ after the battle stank of a coverup. The dead had sons, the sons had brothers, and often vengeance can be an all-consuming pastime that respects no mercy or time frame. St Albans may not have been a large battle like those that came after it in the civil wars, but from then on, the memory of it prevented successful arbitration between contending sides and intensified the will to combat. It ended the traditional aspects of ransoming prisoners through chivalric mediation, and worse, its legacy caused a genuine fear in succeeding generations that a similar thing could happen all over again.
For a more in-depth view of this critical battle in history, look out for my new updated book St Albans 1455. It may change your mind about the beginning of the ‘Wars of the Roses.’
Andrew (A.W.) Boardman is the author of St Albans 1455: The Anatomy of a Battle as well as Towton 1461: The Anatomy of a Battle, both from the History Press. A historian whose published works include The Medieval Soldier in the Wars of the Roses and The First Battle of St Albans, he has been a consultant on many TV documentary series for the BBC, Channel 4, Sky One and Yesterday Channel. He lives in Yorkshire.
