Edward himself had found again his ancient restless energy in the day of adversity. He knew that in the last autumn he could have made a good defence if it had not been for Montagu's sudden treachery, and was determined not to consider his cause lost till it had been fairly tried by the arbitrament of the sword. He was in full communication with England, and had learnt that many more beside Clarence were eager to see him land. The adventure would be perilous, for he would have to fight not only, as of old, the Lancastrian party, but the vast masses of the Commons whose trust had always been in the great Earl. But peril seems to have been rather an incentive than a deterrent to Edward, when the reckless mood was on him. He took the aid that Charles of Burgundy promised, though it was given in secret and with a grudging heart. After a final interview with the Duke at Aire, he moved off in February to Flushing, where a few ships had been collected for him in the haven among the marshes of Walcheren. About fifteen hundred English refugees accompanied him, including his brother of Gloucester and Lords Hastings, Say, and Scales. The Duke had hired for him three hundred German hand-gun men, and presented him with fifty thousand florins in gold. With such slender resources the exiled King did not scruple to attempt the reconquest of his kingdom. On March 11th he and his men set sail. They were convoyed across the German Ocean by a fleet of fourteen armed Hanseatic vessels, which the Duke had sent for their protection. Yet the moment that Charles heard they were safely departed, he published, for Warwick's benefit, a proclamation warning any of his subjects against aiding or abetting Edward of York in any enterprise against the realm of England.
However secretly Edward's preparations were concerted, they had not entirely escaped his enemy's notice. Warwick had made dispositions for resisting a landing to the best of his ability. A fleet stationed at Calais, under the Bastard of Fauconbridge, watched the straits and protected the Kentish coast. The Earl himself lay at London to overawe the discontented and guard King Henry. Oxford held command in the Eastern Counties—the most dangerous district, for Norfolk and the Bourchiers were rightly suspected of keeping up communication with Edward. In the North Montagu and the Earl of Northumberland were in charge from Hull to Berwick with divided authority.
As Warwick had expected, the invaders aimed at landing in East Anglia. On March 12th Edward and his fleet lay off Cromer. He sent two knights ashore to rouse the country ere he himself set foot on land. But in a few hours the messengers returned. They bade him hoist sail again, for Oxford was keeping strict watch over all those parts, and Edward's friends were all in prison or bound over to good behaviour. On receiving this disappointing intelligence, Edward determined on one of those bold strokes which were so often his salvation. If the friendly districts were so well watched, it was likely that the counties where Warwick's interest was supreme would be less carefully secured. The King bade his pilot steer north and make for the Humber mouth, though Yorkshire was known to be devoted to the great Earl.
That night a gale from the south swept over the Wash and scattered Edward's ships far and wide. On March 15th it abated, and the vessels came to land at various points on the coast of Holderness. The King and Hastings, with five hundred men, disembarked at Ravenspur—a good omen, for this was the same spot at which Henry of Bolingbroke had commenced his victorious march on London in 1399. The other ships landed their men at neighbouring points on the coast, and by the next morning all Edward's two thousand men were safely concentrated. Their reception by the country-side was most discouraging. The people deserted their villages and drew together in great bands, as if minded to oppose the invaders. Indeed, they only needed leaders to induce them to take the offensive; but no man of mark chanced to be in Holderness. Montagu lay in the West-Riding and Northumberland in the North. A squire named Delamere, and a priest named Westerdale, the only leaders whom the men of Holderness could find, contented themselves with following the King at a distance, and with sending news of his approach to York.
A less resolute adventurer than Edward Plantagenet would probably have taken to his ships again when he found neither help nor sympathy in Yorkshire. But Edward was resolved to play out his game; the sight of the hostile country-side only made him determine to eke out the lion's hide with the fox's skin. Calling to mind the stratagem which Henry of Bolingbroke had practised in that same land seventy-two years ago, he sent messengers everywhere to announce that he came in arms not to dispossess King Henry, but only to claim his ancestral duchy of York. When he passed through towns and villages he bade his men shout for King Henry, and he himself mounted the Lancastrian badge of the ostrich feathers. In these borrowed plumes he came before the walls of York, still unmolested, but without having drawn a man to his banners. Hull, the largest town that he had approached, had resolutely closed its gates against him.
The fate of Edward's enterprise was settled before the gates of York on the morning of March 18th. He found the walls manned by the citizens in arms; but they parleyed instead of firing upon him, and when he declared that he came in peace, aspiring only to his father's dignity and possessions, he himself with sixteen persons only in his train was admitted within the gate. Then upon the cross of the high altar in the Minster he swore "that he never would again take upon himself to be King of England, nor would have done before that time, but for the exciting and stirring of the Earl of Warwick," "and thereto before all the people he cried, 'King Harry! King Harry and Prince Edward!'" Satisfied by these protestations, the men of York admitted the invaders within their walls. Edward, however, only stayed for twelve hours in York, and next morning he marched on Tadcaster.
This day was almost as critical as the last. It was five days since the landing at Ravenspur, and the news had now had time to spread. If Montagu and Northumberland were bent on loyal service to King Henry, they must now be close at hand. But the star of York was in the ascendant. Northumberland remembered at this moment rather his ancient enmity for the Nevilles than his grandfather's loyalty to Lancaster. He gathered troops indeed, but he made no attempt to march south or to intercept the invaders. It is probable that he was actually in treasonable communication with Edward, as the Lancastrian chroniclers declare. Montagu, on the other hand, collected two or three thousand men and threw himself into Pontefract, to guard the Great North Road. But Edward, instead of approaching Pontefract, moved his army on to cross-roads, which enabled him to perform a flank march round his adversary; he slept that evening at Sendal Castle, the spot where his father had spent the night before the disastrous battle of Wakefield. How Montagu came to let Edward get past him is one of the problems whose explanation will never be forthcoming. It may have been that his scouts lost sight of the enemy and missed the line of his flank march. It may equally well have been that Montagu overvalued the King's army, which was really no larger than his own, and would not fight till he should be joined by his colleague Northumberland. Some contemporary writers assert that the Marquis, remembering his old favour with the King, was loath that his hand should be the one to crush his former master. Others say that it was no scruple of ancient loyalty that moved Montagu, but that he had actually determined to desert his brother and join Edward's party. But his later behaviour renders this most unlikely.
Montagu's fatal inaction was the salvation of Edward. At Sendal he received the first encouragement which he had met since his landing. He was there in the midst of the estates of the duchy of York, and a considerable body of men joined him from among his ancestral retainers. Encouraged by this accession, he pushed on rapidly southward, and by marches of some twenty miles a day reached Doncaster on the 21st and Nottingham on the 23rd. On the way recruits began to flock in, and at Nottingham a compact body of six hundred men-at-arms, under Sir James Harrington and Sir William Parr, swelled the Yorkist ranks. Then Edward, for the first time since his landing, paused for a moment to take stock of the position of his friends and his enemies.
Meanwhile the news of his march had run like wild-fire all over England, and in every quarter men were arming for his aid or his destruction. Warwick had hoped at first that Montagu and Northumberland would stay the invader, but when he heard that Edward had slipped past, he saw that he himself must take the field. Accordingly he left London on the 22nd, and rode hastily to Warwick to call out his Midland retainers. The guard of the city and the person of King Henry was left to his brother the Archbishop. Simultaneously Somerset departed to levy troops in the South-West, and Clarence set forth to raise Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Oxford had already taken the field, and on the 22nd lay at Lynn with four thousand men, the force that the not very numerous Lancastrians of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge could put in arms. From thence he directed his march on Newark, hoping to fall on Edward's flank somewhere near Nottingham.
At that very moment the invader had thrown off the mask he had hitherto worn. Finding himself well received and strongly reinforced, he laid aside his pretence of asking only for the duchy of York, and had himself proclaimed as King. But his position was perilous still: Warwick was gathering head in his front; Montagu was following cautiously in his rear; Oxford was about to assail his flank. The enemies must be kept apart at all hazards; so Edward, neglecting the others for the moment, turned fiercely on Oxford. He marched rapidly on Newark with some five or six thousand men. This decision and show of force frightened the Earl, who, though joined by the Duke of Exeter and Lord Bardolph, felt himself too weak to fight. When the vanguard of the Yorkists appeared, he hastily left Newark and fell back on to Stamford in much disorder.