The pedestal or monument before noticed, erected near the fifth milestone of the turnpike road, to commemorate the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, contains the following inscription:—
THIS PEDESTAL IS ERECTED TO PERPETUATE THE MEMORY
OF AN OBSTINATE BLOODY AND DECISIVE BATTLE, FOUGHT NEAR
THIS SPOT, IN THE CIVIL WARS BETWEEN THE AMBITIOUS HOUSES
OF YORK AND LANCASTER, ON THE 2ND DAY OF FEBRUARY 1460 [80a]
BETWEEN THE FORCES OF EDWARD MORTIMER EARL OF
MARCH (AFTERWARDS EDWARD THE FOURTH) ON THE SIDE OF
YORK, AND THOSE OF HENRY THE SIXTH ON THE SIDE OF
LANCASTER.THE KING’S TROOPS WERE COMMANDED BY JASPER EARL
OF PEMBOKE; EDWARD COMMANDED HIS OWN IN PERSON AND
WAS VICTORIOUS: THE SLAUGHTER WAS GREAT ON BOTH SIDES
FOUR THOUSAND BEING LEFT DEAD ON THE FIELD, AND MANY
WELSH PERSONS OF THE FIRST DISTINCTION WERE TAKEN PRISONERS,
AMONG WHOM WAS OWEN TUDOR (GREAT-GRANDFATHER TO
HENRY THE EIGHTH, AND A DESCENDANT OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS
CADWALLADER) WHO WAS AFTERWARDS BEHEADED AT HEREFORD:
THIS WAS THE DECISIVE BATTLE WHICH FIXED EDWARD THE
FOURTH ON THE THRONE OF ENGLAND, [80b] WHO WAS PROCLAIMED
KING IN LONDON ON THE FIFTH OF MARCH FOLLOWING.ERECTED BY SUBSCRIPTION
IN THE YEAR 1799.
CHAPTER VI.
THE
FIELD OF THE BATTLE
OF
TOWTON. [81a]
Edward.—“Now breathe we, Lords; good fortune bids us pause,
And smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks.
Some troops pursue the bloody-minded Queen;
That led calm Henry, though he were a King,
As doth a sail, fill’d with a fretting gust,
Command an argosy to stem the waves.”Shakespeare’s Henry VI. part 3, act ii. scene 6.
(A Field of Battle, between Towton and Saxton.)
The most sanguinary and important battle that ever took place in the civil wars of England, was that of Towton, in Yorkshire; and from the interest which it has excited, and the historical events which have resulted from it, I have been induced to pay several visits to that memorable field of battle. [81b]
Queen Margaret [82a] and the Lancastrians, exulting in the victory obtained at Wakefield, were encouraged by it to proceed towards London, in hopes of being admitted into the city; but on their arrival at St. Alban’s, they encountered the Earl of Warwick [82b] and an army of Yorkists; and for the second time, within less than six years, a battle was fought there. [82c] It terminated in the defeat of the Yorkists, and was of great importance to the Lancastrians, because they regained the advantage of the use of the name of King Henry VI. [82d] in their proceedings, as the battle delivered him out of the custody of the Yorkists. Margaret’s victory was, however, disgraced by an act of great barbarity: she, or some of the Lancastrian leaders with her sanction, put to death in cold blood, after the battle, Lord Bonvile, [83a] and Sir Thomas Kiriel [83b] of Kent, to whose custody King Henry had been confided before the battle, and notwithstanding they had remained with him on his express assurance of their safety.
Margaret, however, was very far from deriving the advantages which she had hoped for, from the victory. The citizens of London were, for the most part, favourable to the House of York; besides which, they were alarmed at the outrages, rapine, and violence, perpetrated by Margaret’s lawless forces, on their march towards London, and, consequently, its gates were shut against her. Margaret found that she could not obtain admission into the city, and received intelligence that the Earl of Warwick had effected a junction with Edward Earl of March, [83c] at Chipping Norton, near Cotswold, and that they were marching with all the forces that they could collect, upon London; she, therefore, found it expedient to retire with her army, and to proceed to the north of England, in order to raise more forces; and then she hoped to have in the field an army sufficiently strong to crush her antagonists effectually.
Edward entered London triumphant after his victory at Mortimer’s Cross; and having the support of Thomas Bourchier, [83d] Archbishop of Canterbury; George Neville, [83e] Bishop of Exeter, and Lord Chancellor; and other bishops; the Duke of Norfolk; [84a] the Earl of Warwick; Lord Falconberg; [84b] and other noblemen and knights of the Yorkist party, who were then in London; was declared King by acclamation, by a large body of troops and of spectators, in the fields near Clerkenwell, on the 2nd of March, 1461. [84c] On the 3rd he was petitioned by the noblemen and leaders of that party, to assume the kingly office, and rode on the 4th to St. Paul’s, and there made his offering, and then proceeded with a pompous procession to Westminster Hall, and took his seat upon the throne, with the sceptre in his hand, and was recognised as King, somewhat in the form of a coronation. From thence he went with a similar procession to Westminster Abbey, under a canopy, and, having made another offering there, he received the homage of the noblemen there present, and was afterwards, in the usual form, proclaimed King of England, in Westminster, by the title of Edward IV., and the next day was proclaimed in the same manner, in the city of London. The 4th of March was the day on which Henry VI. was subsequently declared by Parliament to have been deposed, and the reign of Edward IV. to have commenced. [85a] Edward’s great object now was to seek and encounter the Lancastrian army; he had nothing to gain by delay, but everything to hope from a victory, which he knew would remove the advantage which Henry VI. had, from his being in possession of the crown, and having been for so many years recognised by the nation as King of England. On the 7th of March the Earl of Warwick, and a large portion of the army of the Yorkists, quitted London, and commenced their march towards the North. On the 12th, Edward and the remainder of the army also left London, and proceeded with little rest, until they reached Pontefract.
The Lancastrian army had assembled at York, and on the approach of the Yorkists, quitted the city, and marched through Tadcaster to Towton, and there prepared for the approach of their enemies; whilst King Henry VI., Queen Margaret, and Edward [85b] the young Prince of Wales, remained at York, awaiting the result of the impending battle, which was to decide whether Henry was to continue to be the sovereign of England, or to become a poor exile and a homeless fugitive.
It was with feelings of the most intense hatred, that the forces of the two parties approached each other; the deaths of not a few of the members of their respective families, and of many friends in battle, and of others on the scaffold, the forfeitures and confiscations by the act of attainder of the Parliament held at Coventry, and the bitterness of party strife, gave to the conflict a degree of inveteracy and fury, perhaps never equalled in any civil dissensions in England; and it cannot excite wonder, that in the dreadful battle which ensued, no quarter was given or expected.