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    Tewkesbury: Eclipse of the House of Lancaster, 1471
    Tewkesbury: Eclipse of the House of Lancaster, 1471
    Tewkesbury: Eclipse of the House of Lancaster, 1471
    Ebook257 pages2 hours

    Tewkesbury: Eclipse of the House of Lancaster, 1471

    By Steven Goodchild

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    About this ebook

    On 4 May 1471 the forces of Lancaster under the Duke of Somerset and those of York under Edward IV clashed at Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire in one of the decisive battles of the Wars of the Roses. Edward's overwhelming victory secured for him the throne of England and led to the near ruin of the Lancastrian cause. Steve Goodchild's gripping account of the fighting, and of the politics and intrigue that led to it, is the first to take fully into account the landscape of the West Country over which the opposing armies marched and the terrain on which they fought.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 14, 2005
    ISBN9781473818897
    Tewkesbury: Eclipse of the House of Lancaster, 1471

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      Book preview

      Tewkesbury - Steven Goodchild

      With the continued expansion of the Battleground series a Battleground Series Club has been formed to benefit the reader. The purpose of the Club is to keep members informed of new titles and to offer many other reader-benefits. Membership is free and by registering an interest you can help us predict print runs and thus assist us in maintaining the quality and prices at their present levels.

      Please call the office 01226 734555, or send your name and address along with a request for more information to:

      Battleground Series Club Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

      47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

      Battleground: Wars of the Roses

      TEWKESBURY

      Eclipse of the House of Lancaster 1471

      STEVEN GOODCHILD

      Pen & Sword

      MILITARY

      To the memory of Mark Iwanczuk, who would have

      written a better book than me.

      First published in Great Britain in 2005 by

      Pen & Sword Military

      an imprint of

      Pen & Sword Books Ltd

      47 Church Street

      Barnsley

      South Yorkshire

      S70 2AS

      Copyright © Steven Goodchild 2005

      ISBN 1-84415-190-5

      The right of Steven Goodchild to be identified as Author of the Work

      has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and

      Patents Act 1988.

      A CIP catalogue record for this book is

      available from the British Library

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

      in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including

      photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission

      from the Publisher in writing.

      Typeset in Century Old Style

      Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI UK

      For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles, please contact

      Pen & Sword Books Limited

      47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

      E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk

      Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

      Graham Turner’s painting of the Battle of Tewkesbury, a detail from which is reproduced on the cover (the complete image can be seen in the centre spread of the colour plates) is available as a fine art print, forming part of a range of prints and cards published from Graham Turner’s historical art. A free colour catalogue is available from Studio 88 Ltd, PO Box 568, Aylesbury, Bucks HP17 8ZX – phone and fax 01296 338504 – or log on to www.studio88.co.uk for details of the full range and Graham’s original paintings.

      Contents

      Introduction

      WAR AND THE YORKIST ASCENDANCY

      1377 TO 1470

      Richard II

      Henry IV

      IN 1377, RICHARD, the son of the Black Prince, inherited the throne of England from his grandfather. At nine years of age, he was crowned King Richard II. He was faced with the aftermath of the Black Death and the social disruption it brought. His confrontation of the peasants’ revolt at Smithfield showed that he had some of the spirit of his grandfather, but vanity was his weakness. Thomas Walsingham describes his court as ‘more devoted to Venus than to Mars, more valiant in the bedroom than the field’. His overthrow and murder by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, who became King Henry IV, was a direct outcome of that weakness, and marked the beginning of the Lancastrian dynasty.

      Henry V

      Victory then defeat in France and the premature death of Henry V, a strong king in the Plantagenet mould, accelerated the spiral into weak government, unrestrained self-interest among the nobility and social breakdown. This escalated into the power struggle which became known as the Wars of the Roses.

      Henry VI

      Henry VI was less than a year old when he became king. He was the first, and only, king to be crowned both in England and in France, though his coronation was to be his only visit to France. His reign was marked by a decline in England’s fortunes, especially in France. There were those among Henry’s close advisors who counselled peace and withdrawal. This view was strongly opposed by those who had made their fortunes through ravaging the French countryside. The position was complicated by the French resurgence, which made disengagement and withdrawal look like defeat and retreat.

      A weak king with unpopular policies will inevitably attract opposition. In Henry’s case the nobility also remembered that his grandfather had usurped Richard II’s throne, which further undermined his authority. His cousin Richard, Duke of York, was closer in line to Edward III, through descent from his second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence. This inheritance made him the natural focus of opposition. Richard was Henry’s presumptive heir, in the absence of a son. He was prepared to tolerate this position, though considerably frustrated that the king was firmly in the hands of the peace party, whom he believed to be misguided and incompetent, and that his own counsel was ignored. This clash of interests eventually led to open warfare.

      Queen Margaret as perceived by a Victorian artist and based upon the Tournai tapestry, Coventry (inset).

      Henry VI’s wife, Margaret of Anjou, had an uncanny ability to cause discontent. Margaret was the daughter of the penniless Duke René of Anjou, and came to England without a dowry. Margaret was fiercely loyal to her friends and bore strong grudges against her enemies, and she was strongly opposed to the Duke of York’s party. Within months of Henry’s marriage to Margaret, the news that he had secretly ceded all English claims to Maine aroused fierce opposition, and demands that heads should roll. The stage was set for the wars.

      As if the situation was not already complicated enough, King Henry suffered from bouts of insanity, a condition he is said to have inherited from his grandfather, the French King Charles VI, through his mother, Catherine of Valois. In August 1453, at the height of a wave of discontent, with the Nevilles and the Percys fighting private battles in the north, he lost his reason. He was to remain in this state for sixteen months. Parliament declared Richard of York Protector of the Realm. At that point such recognition was probably the height of his ambition.

      Two months later, on 13 October, Margaret bore a son, Edward. When Henry recovered his wits, he acknowledged this boy as his heir. At a stroke, York’s hopes of inheritance were shattered, and it may be that from this point the struggle shifted from one for control of the king to one for the crown itself.

      Fighting started in earnest with the first battle of St Albans in 1455. This was not on the scale of the later battles, and the Yorkist party was content with the death there of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, the last of King Henry’s reviled advisors. Henry was captured and forced to accept a government led by the Yorkist party. Richard of York was again appointed Protector. Richard, Earl of Warwick, the son of his closest supporter, the Earl of Salisbury, was appointed Captain of Calais. The strategic importance of Calais was that it was the base for the only standing army the realm possessed, and Warwick, best known to history as the ‘Kingmaker’, was to have a very long and fruitful association with this city.

      Now that King Henry’s most powerful advisors had been removed, the impetus for the Lancastrian struggle came from Queen Margaret, who managed to regain control of the government, but not of Calais, which became the focus for the growing discontent of the Yorkists.

      Henry was recaptured by the Yorkists at the Battle of Northampton in July 1460, and again became a puppet for a Yorkist government. York now made a badly misjudged claim for the throne, which was rejected by an uneasy Parliament. The country was in ferment. Margaret had no difficulty in raising a large army, in opposition to the Yorkist protectorate, and overran large parts of the realm. Battle was fully joined at Wakefield on 30 December, and the Yorkist party were thoroughly defeated. Richard, Duke of York was amongst the slain. The Neville Earl of Salisbury was taken alive and beheaded by the Percys. The heads of these men, with the head of York’s youngest son Edmund, who was also killed in the battle, were displayed above Micklegate Bar in York. A paper crown decorated the Duke of York’s head.

      Edward IV

      For the Yorkists, defeat and the death of their elder statesmen brought the next generation of leaders into the spotlight. It was these men who grasped the moment – and the throne. York’s son Edward assumed

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