But all was confusion in London. The Archbishop was not a man of war, and no soldier of repute was at his side. The Lancastrian party in the city had never been strong, and the Yorkists were now organising an insurrection. There were more than two thousand of them in the sanctuaries at Westminster and elsewhere, of whom three hundred were knights and squires. All were prepared to rise at the first signal. When news came that Edward had reached St. Albans, the Archbishop mounted King Henry on horseback and rode with him about London, adjuring the citizens to be true to him and arm in the good cause. But the sight of the frail shadow of a king, with bowed back and lack-lustre eyes, passing before them, was not likely to stir the people to enthusiasm. Only six or seven hundred armed men mustered in St. Paul's Churchyard beneath the royal banner.[19]

Such a force was obviously unequal to defending a disaffected city. Next day, when the army of Edward appeared before the walls, Urswick the Recorder of London, and certain aldermen with him, dismissed the guard at Aldersgate and let Edward in, no man withstanding them. The Archbishop of York and King Henry took refuge in the Bishop of London's palace; they were seized and sent to the Tower. George Neville obtained his pardon so easily that many accused him of treason. It seems quite possible that, when he found at the last moment that he could not raise the Londoners, he sent secretly to Edward and asked for pardon, promising to make no resistance.

The capture of London rendered King Edward's position comparatively secure. He had now the base of operations which he had up to this moment lacked, and had established himself in the midst of a population favourable to the Yorkist cause. Next day he received a great accession of strength. Bourchier Earl of Essex, his brother Archbishop Bourchier, Lord Berners, and many other consistent partisans of York, joined him with seven thousand men levied in the Eastern Counties. His army was now so strong that he might face any force which Warwick could bring up, unless the Earl should wait for the levies of the extreme North and West to join him.

On Maundy Thursday London had fallen; on Good Friday the King lay in London; on Saturday afternoon he moved out again with his army greatly strengthened and refreshed, and marched north to meet the pursuing enemy. Warwick, much retarded on his way by the rear-guard which the King had left to detain him and by the necessity of waiting for Somerset's force, had reached Dunstable on the Friday, only to learn in the evening that London was lost and his brother and King Henry captured. He pushed on, however, and swerving from the Watling Street at St. Albans threw himself eastward, with the intention, we cannot doubt, of cutting Edward's communication with the Eastern Midlands, where York was strong, by placing himself across the line of the Ermine Street. On Saturday evening his army encamped on a rising ground near Monken Hadley Church, overlooking the little town of Barnet which lay below him in the hollow. The whole force lay down in order of battle, ranged behind a line of hedges; in front of them was the heathy plateau, four hundred feet above the sea, which slopes down into the plain of Middlesex.

An hour or two after Warwick's footsore troops had taken post for the night, and long after the dusk had fallen, the alarm was raised that the Yorkists were at hand. On hearing of the Earl's approach the King had marched out of London with every man that he could raise. His vanguard beat Warwick's scouts out of the town of Barnet, and chased them back on to the main position. Having found the enemy, Edward pushed on through Barnet, climbed the slope, and ranged his men in the dark facing the hedges behind which the Earl's army lay,

much nearer than he had supposed, for he took not his ground so even in the front as he should have done, if he might better have seen them. And there they kept them still without any manner of noise or language. Both sides had guns and ordinance, but the Earl, meaning to have greatly annoyed the King, shot guns almost all the night. But it fortuned that they always overshot the King's host, and hurt them little or nought, for the King lay much nearer to them than they deemed. But the King suffered no guns to be shot on his side, or else right few, which was of great advantage to him, for thereby the Earl should have found the ground that he lay in, and levelled guns thereat.

So, with the cannon booming all night above them, the two hosts lay down in their armour to spend that miserable Easter even. Next day it was obvious that a decisive battle must occur; for the King, whose interest it was to fight at once, before Warwick could draw in his reinforcements from Kent and from the North and West, had placed himself so close to the Earl that there was no possibility of the Lancastrian host withdrawing without being observed. The morrow would settle, once for all, if the name of Richard Neville or that of Edward Plantagenet was to be all-powerful in England.

FOOTNOTES

[19] The Arrival of King Edward says "only six or seven thousand" in the printed text. This must be a scribe's blunder, being not a small number but a large one; and Waurin, who copies the Arrival verbatim, has "600 or 700."