Wars of the Roses: Battle of Towton

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Having seized the initiative — or rather having it handed to him — Edward, after being acclaimed by a great gathering in St. John’s Fields orchestrated by Warwick, wasted no time. He dispatched John Mowbry, Duke of Norfolk, to the eastern counties to raise his tenancy and adherents while Warwick went to the Midlands to recruit. On March 11, Fauconberg marched northward with a strong vanguard, followed two days later by Edward.

Leaving King Henry, Queen Margaret and Prince Edward in York, Somerset had been making his dispositions for battle. In addition to the doughty Trollope, he had fiery Clifford, Henry Percy and Randolph Lord Dacre of Gilsland. Perhaps as many as 40,000 Lancastrians were massing on the gentle plateau that swells between the villages of Towton and Saxton, crowding behind the formidable natural barrier of the Aire.

Unwilling to keep them waiting, Edward gathered his divisions and crossed the Trent, although he lacked Norfolk’s eastern contingent, which lagged behind, probably because of the earl’s failing health. Edward stormed across the Don River and on the cold, blustery Friday of March 27 approached Ferrybridge. It was plainly vital to secure a bridgehead across the Aire, and Edward sent out a party commanded by John Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, to secure it. After driving back the Lancastrians, Fitzwalter found the bridge broken up, but his men had replaced the planks by the end of the day.

With Ferrybridge seemingly secured, the Yorkists camped on the north bank that evening, perhaps lulled into a sense of well-being by the lack of enemy activity. That complacency cost Fitzwalter his life, along with that of Warwick’s bastard brother, Sir Richard Jenny of Salisbury, and numerous others, when a 500-man raiding party led by Lord Clifford attacked his headquarters at dawn on the 28th. Chronicler William Gregory placed Warwick in the thick of that action, wounded in the thigh by an arrow as he rallied the survivors, then retreating back across the river. Joining Edward at Pontefract Castle, Warwick delivered a histrionic report of the debacle.

Undismayed, the young king elected to retaliate by sending Warwick back to Ferrybridge at noon, but only as a feint. While Warwick kept Clifford engaged, Fauconberg led a strong party that included the veteran captains Sir Richard Blount and Robert Horne of Kent across the swollen Aire, four miles upstream at Castleford, to fall upon Clifford’s right flank. A sprawling, untidy melee spread northward from the river’s banks as Clifford sought a fighting withdrawal, noticeably unaided by the main Lancastrian force, which could scarcely have been unaware of what was happening. Fauconberg attacked the retreating Lancastrians in Dinting Dale and overwhelmed the survivors. Clifford, it was said, had injudiciously chosen to remove his neckguard, or bevor, and an arrow ended his life. His 7-year-old son, who may have been present, survived to fight at Flodden more than half a century later. John Neville, a knight from the Lancastrian side of that clan, also fell in the skirmish.

Somerset has been censured for not supporting Clifford and for subsequently remaining inert while the Yorkist forces were still vulnerably strung out along the line of march. Edward, in the meantime, had no intention of fighting anymore that day. Capitalizing on Fauconberg’s victory, he led the main body of his army north again, probably crossing at Castleford, rejoining his uncle later in the day.

By the time darkness fell, Edward’s vanguard had moved up as far as Saxton, but the rest still struggled behind. He had left his baggage train at Ferrybridge, so his army spent the night with neither food nor protection. Both armies were to spend an uncomfortable night in the open in freezing wind laced with snow, their pickets probably only half a mile apart.

The ground on which Somerset elected to make his stand, and from which he seemed so unwilling to budge, lies south of York, with the Wharfe River running behind and the Ouse to the east. York itself, capital of the north, could not be surrendered, and to retreat farther would mean crossing the windswept barrier of the north Yorkshire moors — an admission of defeat.

Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Historical Conflicts

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