Gone Medieval - The Wars of the Roses: Dynastic War

Episode Date: May 14, 2022

Part one of this comprehensive trilogy covering the Wars of the Roses left the Yorkist lords attained and in exile. From this point, the 15th century civil wars were transformed into a bitter procession of dynastic clashes between the rival houses of Lancaster and York - the result of which would reforge England's destiny for centuries to come.In part two, Matt Lewis explains how and why feuding nobles came to contest the very crown of England, explores the rise of the House of York and examines the problems it faced by the end of the 1460s as Edward IV fell out with his powerful cousin the Earl of Warwick - whose name echoes through history as the Kingmaker.The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. The Producer was Rob Weinberg. It was edited and sound designed by Aidan Lonergan.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this second episode of Gone Medieval's Wars of the Roses special. I'm Matt Lewis. Last time we left the Yorkist lords in exile after they fled from Ludlow. Henry the 6th response would drastically and permanently alter the face of the problems that had rocked England to this point. Feuds between nobles were about to become the least. of the King's worries. Dynastic Warwick is on its way to England's shores. Salisbury, Warwick and March landed on the south coast of England at Sandwich on the 26th of March 1460, gaining support as they moved to London, where they laid siege to the tower.

Leaving Salisbury in charge of this endeavour, Warwick and March continued north, facing Henry's army at the Battle of Northampton on the 10th of July 1460. The pouring rain caused the guns to fail and Lord Grey of Ruthin defected to the Yorkist side just as the battle began, allowing March through his position and into the Royal Defence's. The Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Beaumont were among the dead targeted by Yorkist propaganda. Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, Northumberland's brother, was also killed and the Duke of Buckingham was perhaps an unintentional casualty. King Henry was taken captain. on the battlefield, seemingly bewildered and taken to London where the tower had fallen to Salisbury.

During the siege, Lord Scales, who held the tower, had used wildfire on the crowds below, an ancient weapon akin to Napalm that burned and couldn't be extinguished by water. Those leaping into the Thames only made the burning worse and set the river aflame. When he eventually surrendered and tried to leave, Lord Scales was murdered by a furious mob. and thrown into the Thames. Despite this victory and seizure of power in July, York didn't return from Ireland until October. On the 10th of October 1460,

another potential start date for the Wars of the Roses proper, York marched the length of Westminster Hall, climbed the dais at the end, and placed his hand on the empty throne, signaling to the gathered Lord spiritual and temporal that he was claiming the crown of England for himself. There was tumbleweed, a literal tumbleweed moment. Absolute silence greeted this momentous step, which I don't think York had taken lightly and which was out of character for him.

I wonder whether Warwick had convinced him of this course in Ireland. Either way, it had backfired spectacularly. York was asked whether he wished to speak to the king, and retorted in angry embarrassment that he knew of no one who shouldn't rather come to him than he go to them. What followed is possibly the most comical moment in parliamentary history. The right to be king of England was placed before Parliament and everyone, one after another, did their best to avoid answering the question of whether Henry or York had the superior right to the throne. It's like the most serious game of Pass the Parcel ever. York claimed his descent through the Mortimer line from the second son of Edward III was better

than Henry's descent through that king's third son, John of Gaunt. Parliament struggled to find any fault in York's case, and when they asked Henry to prepare a defence, the king simply said he couldn't be bothered. If the king wouldn't defend himself, why should anyone else try? Still, there was an unwillingness to depose Henry. Yes, he was incompetent and ineffectual, but he wasn't hated. Besides, the last time York had power,

he tried to responsibly balance the royal finances by unacceptably taking back royal grants from the very men now asked to make him king. I think they were still a bit worried about their own coffers. This is how the act of accord was born. It provided for Henry to rule for the rest of his life, but made York and York's sons the heirs to the throne. York was now 49, Henry was 38, so it meant there was little hope of York becoming king himself. His acceptance of the compromise again hints at his lack of personal ambition in that direction. One person that no one had taken into account was Queen Margaret.

She wasn't willing to accept the disinheriting of her son and Somerset, Northumberland and others knew that there was no place for them in a Yorkist England. Margaret had been forced into Wales and taken ship north. to Scotland. Here she recruited an army but with no money she offered them their pay in booty, whatever they could steal from England when they invaded. With news of an army crossing the border, York took his second son Rutland and went north accompanied by Salisbury in December 1460.

They reached Sandel Castle and when it became clear that the enemy force was much larger, they decided to wait there for reinforcements being raised by March on the Welsh borders. precisely why what happened next happened has been debated for centuries. The clearest explanation I've seen appears in an English chronicle. The writer asserts that Andrew Trollope, the leader of the Calais Garrison, appeared at Sandal Castle and offered his services, apologising for his behaviour at Ludlow. Then Baron Neville arrived. He was a half-brother of Salisbury, but the two sides of the family didn't exactly get on.

He asked for a commission to raise 6,000 men to help York, which was duly given. When Baron Neville returned in short order with those 6,000 men, York either felt the numbers were now in his favour, or that his force was too large to be supported by the castle in deepest winter. On the 30th of December 1460, they sallied out to face the Lancasterians, led by Somerset at the Battle of Wakefield. As soon as they were in the field, Andrew Trollope and Baron Neckes, level turned on them and York's men were crushed. York himself appears to have been killed during the

fighting, his body then posthumously beheaded. Rutland, age 17, was reportedly caught trying to flee by Lord Clifford, who killed Edmund in revenge for his father's death at St Albans. Salisbury was captured but hauled out of his prison by a mob and beheaded. The heads of York, Rutland and Salisbury were spiked on Micklegate Bar, one of the main gates into the city of York, which still stands today, a paper crown fixed to York's head, mocking his royal pretensions. The sons of St Albans had their vengeance, but all they'd done was unleashed the sons of Wakefield. March, the 18-year-old Edward, was now Duke of York, an heir to Henry's throne, legally at least. He had lingered on the Welsh borders to fend off an army heading out of Wales led by Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke,

Henry VI's half-brother. Jasper's brother, Edmund, Earl of Richmond, had died of plague in 1456, in his mid-20s, leaving behind a pregnant 13-year-old wife, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Margaret was a great-great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt in the Beaufort line, and in January 1457 she gave birth to her son, Henry Tudor. Her brother-in-law, Jasper, had cared for them, but was now heading to England to support his half-brother, King Henry. The Battle of Mortimer's Cross took place on the 2nd of February 1461. Before the fighting, a parheelian appeared in the winter sky,

caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals. A parheelian, which is also sometimes called a sundog, makes it look like there are two or sometimes three sons in the sky in a horizontal line on the horizon. Edward's men panicked at what the sign meant. The young man, unfazed, casually reassured them that the three sons represented the Holy Trinity, father, son and Holy Spirit,

who had all turned out on the battlefield with them. Edward was a master of spin and propaganda already, skills he probably learned from his cousin Warwick. Jasper Tudor's army, accompanied by James Butler, Earl of Wilshire, found their way out of Wales blocked by the young Duke of York, spoiling for a fight. The battle was a crushing victory for Edward, with three to four thousand casualties on the Lancasterian side, mostly Welshmen. Jasper and Wiltshire escaped.

Incidentally, James Butler is the subject of one of my favourite quotations from this period. Gregory's Chronicle was kept by a contemporary London merchant. James Butler had previously escaped from the carnage of the First Battle of St Albans. He seems to have had two reputations. He ran away a lot, and he was also very handsome. Gregory grumbled that Butler cared more about his looks than the outcome of battles, damning him with the withering line that he fought mainly with his heels, but he was frightened of losing his beauty.

Is it childish to imagine him running away, shouting, Not the face, not the face! Maybe it is. Jasper's father, Owen Shudor, who had married, I'll say married, I know it's debated, but that's an argument for another day. Owen Shudor who had married Catherine de Valois, the widow of Henry V, making his children the half-siblings to King Henry VI, was also with the army. He managed to get as far as Hereford before he was captured. At 60, Owen had lived a remarkable life, but on the 3rd of February 1461, the day after the battle,

he was led out into Hereford Market Square to be beheaded. He reportedly quipped, that head shall lie on the stock. It was wont to lie on Queen Catherine's lap. Gregory's Chronicle records that a local woman cared for the decapitated head for days after it was placed on the market cross, combing Owen's hair, washing his face and lighting candles around him. Warwick had been raising a force in London and Kent, supplemented by Burgundian mercenaries,

some carrying newfangled handguns that fired lead shot. With the Queen far in the north, he set out slowly to confront her army, possibly waiting for Edward to join him from the West. He reached St Albans when shocking news arrived that Queen Margaret was almost upon them, the Scots contingent of her army making good on her promise that they could pillage their pay as they went.

One butcher from Dunstable took it upon himself to organise resistance to the Scots, but 800 poorly prepared local men were killed. Ashamed at his failure, the butcher hanged himself. When the two sides came face to face outside St Albans on the 17th of February 1461, Warwick might have taken heart that a lot of the Scots had turned round to head home,

either weighed down with booty, bored, or perhaps getting sunburn in the deep south Barmy February. Gregory's Chronicle still gives the Queen around 5,000 men an impressive force for winter campaigning. Her army wore a livery of black and crimson with an ostrich feather badge marking them as the Prince of Wales army. Warwick and his brother John Neville prepared for a fight but were caught unawares by an attack from Andrew Trollope, the Calais garrison leader Warwick had so faithfully brought across the channel. Warwick's army broke and ran with little resistance. The Yorkists fled so quickly that they left King Henry sitting beneath a tree.

Lord Bonneville and Sir Thomas Kiriel, both veterans of the wars in France now in their late 60s, remained to protect the king and were rewarded for their chivalrous behaviour by having their heads cut off. Andrew Trollope was knighted in the field by the seven-year-old Prince of Wales. Trollope had trodden on a caltrop, a twisted tangle of metal spikes meant to impede horses, He told the prince as he was knighted, 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, humble brags. Trollope, though, was reaping the rewards of some well-timed coat turning.

Warwick had seemed unstoppable, but his glittering career was tarnished now. He headed west to meet up with his cousin Edward. Queen Margaret pressed on towards London, but was shocked to find the terrified capital had locked its gates to her. Rather than try to fight her way in, Margaret withdrew again north. Inside the capital, the widow Duchess of York took the difficult decision to send her two youngest children, 11-year-old George and 8-year-old Richard,

into the uncertainty of exile in Burgundy. If there'd been a feeling at Ludlow in 1459 that children were safe from reprisals, that certainty had evaporated. in the blistering politics and warfare of early 1461, and it was about to get worse. Edward and Warwick entered London at the end of February. On the 1st of March, Warwick's brother George Neville, Bishop of Exeter, preached a sermon championing Edward's claim to the Crown. On the 3rd of March, a delegation gathered at Bainard's Castle, the London home

of the House of York, to ask Edward to replace Henry on the throne. On the 4th of March, Edward attended Mass at St Paul's, where he was proclaimed king. He pointedly refused to undergo a coronation though, while his rival still had an army in the field, and prepared to march out north to hunt vengeance for his father and brother. Warwick needed to repair his damaged reputation, as well as avenging his father. As word reached the Lancasterian army that the Yorkists were pushing north, they began to break bridges over the river air in Yorkshire to slow their enemy's progress.

Lord Fitzwater, leading the Yorkist scouts, came to the crossing at Ferry Bridge on the 27th of March and set about repairing it. They were watched by a 500-strong cavalry force known as the flower of Craven, led by Lord Clifford, the man who had killed Rutland. With most of the repairs completed and night falling, Lord Fitzwalter set up camp and turned in for the night. He was woken in the early morning by the thunder of hooves and the crash of cavalry tearing through the camp. Fitzwalter emerged bleary-eyed from his tent, only to receive a blow that proved fatal. His men were slaughtered. A few escaped back towards the main Yorkist army, and Lord Clifford, his work done, crossed back over the bridge and positioned himself to defend the bottleneck.

Warwick arrived shortly afterwards and was reportedly injured when an arrow thumped into his thigh, as his men tried to clear the bridge. When they were forced to return to the main army, there was concern at the setback. To quell fears, Warwick supposedly dismounted and killed his horse, swearing he would fight and live or die beside the rest of the men rather than flee from them.

As the main body of the Yorkist army reached the bridge, Lord Clifford held firm. Eventually, Lord Fokenberg, Salisbury's brother and Warwick's uncle, an experienced military man, led some men, downstream to find another crossing. As they appeared on the northern bank, Lord Clifford ordered the retreat. His men were pursued ruthlessly the need for vengeance burning hot in the chill of the winter's

evening. The flower of Craven was crushed. Lord Clifford was killed by an arrow in the face after he removed his helmet to get some air. The Battle of Ferrybridge had seen the next round of revenge killings begin. Did you know that the earliest condoms were made of animal guts and they were designed to be reused or that beans were once considered to be an aphrodisiac? Join me, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a new podcast from history hit where I, Kate Lister, ask the questions about the stuff we didn't learn in history lessons or sex ed. We'll be bed-hopping around different time periods, from ancient civilizations to the Middle Ages to renounce, to rena. nascent and early modern right up to now. Listen and subscribe to Betwixt the Sheet now,

wherever you get your podcasts. On the next morning, Palm Sunday the 29th of March 1461, it was snowing. The Lancasterian and Yorkist armies faced each other at the Battle of Tauten, widely believed to be the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. Edward fought at the heart of his army. Henry was nowhere to be seen. His forces led by some Somerset, Northumberland, Trollope and others. An archery duel preceded the fighting, but the Lankastrians found that they were firing into the wind. Their arrows fell short and the Yorkists' wind-assisted missiles thudded home. When the Yorkists ran out of ammunition, they simply stepped forward, pulled the Lancastrian shafts out of the ground and shot them back where they'd come from.

Aware that they couldn't endure this for long, the Lankastrians charged. The battle was a close run thing for hours in the freezing fields of Yorkshire. The battle was finally turned by the late arrival of the Duke of Norfolk, who was ill and had got lost. He was fighting for the Yorkists and the reinforcements finally caused the Lancashrians to give up and run. Reports said that so many died that the stream that ran through the site ran red for weeks. Among the dead was the Earl of Northumberland. Although the numbers involved in Tauton have been revised down by modern historians, contemporary accounts claim that there were 100,000 men in the field that day, with several sources putting the number of dead buried in the frozen ground at around 29,000.

If those numbers are too high, it's surely a testament to the overwhelming sense of the scale of the battle, the vast, brutal bloodshed of that day, the white snow stained red with the blood of fellow Englishmen. Jean de Warant recorded the bitter nature of the fighting when he wrote, Father did not spare son nor son his father. Gregory's Chronicle captured the sense of shock and scale when he lamented that many a lady lost her best beloved in that battle. It took a long time for Edward and Warwick to get control of the North.

Edward returned to London for his coronation, which took place at Westminster Abbey on the 28th of June 1461. King Edward IV was the first of the Yorkist dynasty, a 19-year-old athlete, a beast on the battlefield, and a handsome chap to boot. Yeah, I hate him too. The Lancasterian dynasty was gone. England's future was bright, decked in the murray and blue of Yorkist livery. Also, it must have seemed, but this was far from the end.

Edward was briefly reconciled with Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, but the warming didn't last long. Edward tended to favour offering enemies the chance to behave. Only if they threw their second chance back in his face did he tend to be firmer. This decision would come back to haunt him more than once. As king, Edward set about enjoying his rule, while Warwick seemed to do most of the work. In 1464, the Earl was busy finalising a prestigious marriage for Edward that would secure a French alliance when the king dropped a bombshell. It must have gone something like,

What, oh, Sos was her, I forgot to tell you, I'm already married. What am I like, eh? More wine. Edward revealed that he got married in secret to an older widow of a Lancasterian knight who already had two sons. It was hardly the match a country envisioned for their new monarch. But there's reason to believe it was a love match.

Either that, or it was one of a series of such clandestine marriages that Edward used to get women into bed. Perhaps he fell for a love. Elizabeth, perhaps she refused to be cast off like others had been, or maybe Edward just wanted to upset Warwick. He was starting to feel like his cousin was cramping his kingly style too much, and if you're looking for an explanation of Henry VIII's behaviour in the next century with Walsy, then look no further than his granddad Edward. The marriage between Edward VIII and Elizabeth Woodville is often seen as the cause of the rupture between Warwick and Edward. In fact,

the Crollan Chronicle, written by a particularly politically well-informed member of the Yorkist court, tells us that it had much more to do with foreign policy. I think it was also about Edward wanting to take authority for himself and putting Warwick's nose out to do it. Crollan says that Edward began to favour an alliance with Burgundy in opposition to Warwick's desire for a treaty with France. Warwick despised Charles, the future Duke of Burgundy, and so hated Edward's new foreign policy. This, Crollan claims, was the seed of dissent that was sown. For the record, Elizabeth Woodville is often painted as a commoner. She was five years older than Edward. Her husband had been killed fighting for the Lancasterians, and she had two sons. Her father wasn't

noble, though he became Earl Rivers once his daughter married the king. Yet, Elizabeth was no commoner. Her mother was Jocchetta of Luxembourg, the widow of John Duke of Bedford, a son of Henry IV, so a brother to Henry V and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and an uncle to Henry the 6th. Complicated, I know, sorry. Her family were actually of ancient noble blood of the House of Luxembourg. She wasn't the dynastic match a new king might have aimed for, granted, but commoner is just a nice slur to throw at her. It wasn't true. The mid-1460s saw Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, trying his hand at causing trouble in Henry the 6th's name. The old Lancasterian king was still at large, hiding in the houses of allies in the north.

In the spring of 1464, Edward sent John Neville, Lord Montague, Warwick's brother, to escort ambassadors from Scotland to the south. The Scots have been giving aid to the Lancasterians, but now wanted peace with Edward. Somerset, along with Lord Ruse and Lord Hungerford, ambushed Montague at the Battle of Hedley-Maw in Northumberland on the 25th of April 1464. They were crushed with embarrassing ease and fled. On his way back south, Montague found himself confronted by the same forces at the Battle of Hexham, again in Northumberland, on the 15th of May 1464.

Lord Hungerford was killed in the fighting. Somerset and Ruse were captured and executed on the spot. Henry Beaufort's younger brother Edmund became the new Duke of Somerset. In the wake of these victories, Henry VI was caught by a Lancashire knight named Sir James Harrington. Walkworth's Chronicle recorded that he was brought to London on horseback, with his legs bound to the stirrups, and so brought through London to the tower, where he was kept. Peace seemed secure. As with all calm during this period, it would prove a short-lived delusion.

By the end of the 1460s, Warwick was moving into open opposition to Edward. Warwick's grip on government was slipping, and I think he felt poorly treated by Edward after all the help he'd given. Warwick had simply failed to foresee the end of his own indispensability. Warwick managed to draw the King's brother into his plots. George, now Duke of Clarence, and technically still heir to the throne until Edward had a son. He had two daughters, but hey, it's the 15th century, I'm afraid, was perennially, fatally dissatisfied with his lot. In the spring of 1469, the fragile peace that had settled on England was shattered once more. Through May, June and July 1469, there were a series of poorly documented uprisings.

The bottom line was that Warwick may well have been behind at least one of them, if not two. The other was probably the work of the dispossessed Percy faction. Their Northumberland title had been given to John Neville as a reward for his loyalty and service. The final revolt, the one Warwick was almost certainly behind, headed south with up to 20,000 men. Word of the threat reached Edward, and he called for reinforcements from William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, from Wales who had been given Jasper Tudor's title, and Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, from the south-west. On the 9th of July, Edward wrote from Nottingham Castle to Warwick and George, still seeming to believe them loyal. Little did he know that just two days later, on the 11th of July 1469, the pair were in Calais,

Warwick watching as his daughter Isabel married the king's brother George, a union Edward had specifically forbidden. From Calais, they issued a manifesto that demanded reform of Edward's government. It also contained a thinly veiled threat by referring to Edward II, Richard II and Henry the 6th, who had all been deposed. On the 24th of July, the rebel force from the north, which had bypassed Edward, clashed with Pembroke and Devon near Banbury in Oxfordshire, defeating the Earls at the Battle of Edgecoat Moor. Shortly afterwards, Edward was taken into Warwick's custody and Earl Rivers, along with one of his sons, was executed at Warwick's hands. As hard as he tried, Warwick found it impossible to rule in the King's name without the cooperation of the King.

Government relied so completely on the person of the monarch. On the 10th of September, Edward appeared in York, free again. Edward and Warwick entered London, giving the appearance of friendship. The writer of the Cronan Chronicle, probably not alone, saw through it. He wrote, There probably remained on the one side, deeply seated in his mind, the injuries he had received and the contempt which had been shown to majesty. Edward had neither forgotten nor forgiven.

On the other side, Crollin worryingly saw a mind too conscious of a daring deed. Join me next time to see if Edward VIII and the Kingmaker Earl of Warwick stroll off into the sunset to live happily ever after, or whether the wheel of fortune will continue to turn, raising some up only to crush others. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode of Gone Medieval. don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts. It really does help to signposts new listeners on their way to finding us. If you're enjoying this and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then subscribe to History Hits Medieval Monday's newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below and I'll pop into your inbox every Monday with some news and thoughts. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit.