Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, and his son Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, felt threatened when Henry VI summoned a Great Council in Leicester in May 1455. So York recruited along the Welsh border while the Nevilles gathered men near the Scottish border. They then both marched on London. An alarmed Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, did not have time to alert his supporters and both John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford, and John de Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, would arrive too late to help.
York and the Nevilles intercepted the king’s retinue at St Albans on 22 May and while few men died in the skirmish, the outcome was very significant. Edmund Beaufort, Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, and Thomas Clifford, 8th Baron de Clifford, were killed. Somerset’s son Henry Beaufort was wounded and would survive to become the ‘the hope of the [Lancastrian] party’. But he never forgave York and the Nevilles and would have to face the ‘enmities entailed upon him by his father’s name’. Not everyone conducted themselves so gallantly. James Butler, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, removed his armour, dressed in a monk’s habit and hid in a ditch. He would be accused of fighting ‘mainly with the heels, for he was frightened of losing his beauty’.
York wanted to keep Henry VI alive and rule in his name, so he took the king to London and personally recrowned him in a symbolic ceremony. Henry was then held prisoner while York appointed himself Constable of England and made Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, his Captain of Calais.
The arguments in Devon continued and Thomas Courtenay attacked William Bonville’s supporters in 1455. They occupied Exeter and Thomas Courtenay junior murdered the city recorder, Nicholas Radford, a Bonville supporter. The struggle escalated when Courtenay defeated Bonville at the battle of Clyst Heath on 15 December.
Lord Protector York imprisoned Courtenay in the Tower to resolve the situation but the king released him as soon as he recovered from his madness early in 1456. He also appointed Courtenay the Commissioner of the Peace for Devonshire. But another of Courtenay’s sons, John, renewed the violence by occupying Exeter in April 1456. Thomas Courtenay was ordered to appear before the king but he died en route to London. The Wars of the Roses would lead to the death of three of Courtenay’s sons and the end of the family’s power in Devon.
Edmund and Jasper Tudor were Henry VI’s illegitimate half-brothers and they supported their sibling when the Wars of the Roses began. Edmund was captured by William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, and he died of the plague in Carmarthen Castle in 1457. His 13-year-old widow Margaret Beaufort gave birth to their son two months later in Pembroke Castle. Edmund and Margaret’s child spent his first twelve years in the Herbert household and then went into exile after Herbert was executed for fighting for the Yorkists. He briefly returned to England when Henry VI was restored in 1470 but fled with other Lancastrians to Brittany. He would return to challenge Richard III for the crown in 1485.
Richard, Duke of York, had surrendered the office of Lord Protector when the king recovered in February 1456 and he went north to defend the border against a threatened invasion by James II of Scotland. Both Nevilles, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, remained as councillors in London but Henry VI was now under the control of his queen, Margaret of Anjou.
The king’s supporters regarded Richard of York with suspicion for three reasons. Firstly, he threatened the succession of the young Prince of Wales. Secondly, he was negotiating for the marriage of his eldest son Edward into the Burgundian ruling family. Finally, he was supported by the powerful Nevilles. Henry was desperate to end the conflict between the factions but suspicions and animosities ran deep. He held the Loveday Council on 25 March 1458, hoping to reconcile the feuding barons, but he failed to stamp his authority on the situation and little changed.
The uneasy truce between the Lancastrians and Yorkists came to an end in 1459. A Great Council was held in Coventry in June 1459 but Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, the Nevilles and their Yorkist supporters refused to appear. Instead they assembled their troops and prepared to go to war.
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, took part of his Calais garrison to England while Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, headed north to join Richard Duke of York. Queen Margaret was anxious to stop them meeting and sent her supporters to intercept them. Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, nearly clashed with Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, at Coleshill in Warwickshire. Meanwhile, Thomas Stanley tracked down his father-in-law Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, to Blore Heath in Staffordshire on 23 September. Stanley kept part of his army away from the battle that followed and he was defeated by Neville. The two Richard Nevilles met York after the battle but John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu, had been captured and taken to Chester Castle.
Henry VI wanted to reconcile the factions in October 1458 but Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, was taking no chances and he marched his army south only to be denied entry to London. Percy did attend the Parliament of Devils in October 1459 and he condemned all Yorkists as traitors for killing his father at the battle of St Albans four years earlier. His only consolation was that he did not have to pay relief to the crown because his father had died fighting for the king.
Richard and the Nevilles clashed with King Henry and Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, at the battle of Ludford Bridge in Shropshire on 12 October 1459. But Warwick’s Calais garrison refused to fight the king, the rest of the Yorkists were scattered, and York’s wife and two youngest sons were captured. York escaped to Ireland, taking his second son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, with him, while the Nevilles headed to Calais with York’s eldest son Edward, Earl of March. Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was sent to Calais to seize Warwick but the garrison remained loyal to their captain. Beaufort was forced to occupy nearby Guisnes Castle and he would be defeated at the battle of Newnham Bridge on 23 April 1460.
Henry VI attainted Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and the Nevilles in December 1459, leaving York with three options if he was to avoid arrest and seize power. He could either become Lord Protector again, claim the throne for himself, or disinherit the king so his son could succeed. Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, visited Richard in Ireland in March 1460 to plan their next move. The Nevilles landed at Sandwich on 26 June where they captured Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers. London then opened its gates to the Yorkists on 2 July and Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, besieged the Tower while Warwick and York’s son Edward Plantagenet, Earl of March, marched north in pursuit of the king.
Their armies clashed near Northampton on 10 July and Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, defiantly announced, ‘the Earl of Warwick shall not come to the king’s presence and if he comes he shall die.’ But Edmund Grey, 1st Earl of Kent, turned traitor and ordered his men to lay down arms, allowing the Yorkists to enter the king’s camp. Buckingham and John Talbot, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury, were killed but, more importantly, Henry VI was taken prisoner.
Warwick took the king back to London. York returned to England in September and moved into the royal palace. He then entered Parliament and symbolically placed his hand on the throne to signify he was the kingdom’s ruler but not its king. Thomas Bourchier, the Archbishop of Canterbury, asked York if he wished to see the king but his reply failed to impress anyone: ‘I know of no person in this realm which oweth not to wait on me, rather than I of him.’
An Act of Accord was eventually agreed under which Henry VI would stay on the throne while his son Edward, Prince of Wales, was disinherited. Instead York and his son Edward would succeed Henry. York was appointed Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, to recognise his new role. He was also appointed England’s Lord Protector and he would rule the kingdom with the help of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
Richard of York now held all the trump cards. He had control of the king, his troops held London and he had Parliament’s permission to succeed the king. But the Lancastrians were gathering in the north, so Richard marched north to meet them taking with him his second son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, and Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury.
The Yorkists reached Sandal Castle, near Wakefield in Yorkshire, on 21 December while the Lancastrians left their bases at York and Pontefract to meet them. Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, had captured a large party of Yorkist troops at Worksop, leaving Richard of York short of troops so there was a stand-off. For reasons that are unclear, York left his castle on 30 December; he had either been tricked into deploying or had underestimated the size of the Lancastrian army.
Henry Beaufort, Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, and Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, then defeated the Yorkists. York was killed on the battlefield while Neville was captured and executed. York’s son Edmund was also captured and his expensive armour betrayed his importance. When John Clifford, 9th Baron de Clifford, heard he had been taken prisoner he took his revenge for his father’s death at York’s hands at the First Battle of St Albans. He told Edmund, ‘thy father slew mine and so will I do thee and all thy kin,’ and beheaded him. All three of their heads were displayed on York’s Micklegate. A paper crown was placed on Richard of York’s head, mocking his short time as successor to the throne.
Prince Edward, now the 4th Duke of York, heard about his father’s and brother’s death at Shrewsbury over Christmas. He intercepted and defeated a Lancastrian force at Mortimer’s Cross near Leominster in Herefordshire on 2 February 1461. Jasper Tudor, 1st Earl of Pembroke, and James Butler, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, escaped but Owen Tudor, Jasper’s father and Henry VI’s step-father, was taken prisoner and executed.
Queen Margaret, Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, and Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, marched their Lancastrian army south and engaged the Yorkists at St Albans on 17 February 1461. They defeated Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, William FitzAlan, 16th Earl of Arundel, John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu, John de Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and Henry Bourchier, 1st Earl of Essex. The Yorkists dispersed and Henry VI was freed but London refused to let the Lancastrians enter the city because they had a reputation for pillaging. Instead the mayor let Richard of York’s son Edward Plantagenet and the Yorkists enter the city instead.
Richard of York’s son Edward Plantagenet was proclaimed King Edward IV on 4 March 1461 and he was determined to finish off the Lancastrians. The Yorkists marched north into Lancastrian territory only to suffer a setback when Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, was injured at the battle of Ferrybridge in Yorkshire on 28 March.
The following day around 80,000 men clashed in a brutal battle at Towton. No one had an advantage until a combination of strong wind and snow blinded the Lancastrian archers led by Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland. John Howard then reinforced the Yorkist right flank, turning the tide against the Lancastrians; he was knighted after the battle and would soon be the Duke of Norfolk.
Losses amongst the Lancastrian nobility were high. Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, fled to Scotland and eventually joined Queen Margaret in exile in France. He would be attainted and his estates given to his wife; she then separated from him. Holland’s three illegitimate half-brothers served the Lancastrian cause but only one of the ‘Bastards of Exeter’ would survive the conflict.
Thomas Courtenay, 6th Earl of Devon, and James Butler, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, were captured and beheaded. Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, was killed and his son was imprisoned in the Tower. The Percy’s Earldom of Northumberland was later given to John Neville while the Yorkists marched south to London for Edward IV’s coronation.