Fatal Colours: Towton, 1461 - England's Most Brutal Battle by Goodwin George

Author:Goodwin, George [Goodwin, George]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: British & Irish history: c 1000 to c 1500
ISBN: 9780297860723
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

In the Midlands, potential recruitment was more balanced. Certainly, the Queen had established herself in the late 1450s as a major power in the region. She had then been able to command in the name of the King and the royal prerogative;but the latter, with the passive Henry lodged in the Tower of London, was officially with Warwick.

With the Queen’s army closing in, Warwick urgently set about arraying troops drawn from the towns and the counties of the South East, chiefly those around London. There had also been some recruitment in the prosperous areas of East Anglia, but here, as the Paston Letters show, the picture was more mixed.22 As for much-needed finance, the Yorkists were able to call upon London’s Common Council, which ‘in defence of the realm’ was willing to advance four times as much as they had to York only a short time before.

By 12 January, Margaret’s army had reached Beverley, which they immediately pillaged. This was a different type of force to those that had fought the battles of 1455 and 1459–60, partly because the distance it had to travel from starting point to objective was so much further; partly because provisioning during winter was much more difficult; and partly because any connection that the common soldiers might have had with the local people they encountered lessened with every additional mile they moved south. Thus was created a swathe of despoliation up to thirty miles wide, as alien-looking and harsh-sounding men with incomprehensible accents demanded food and ale. Sometimes money was proffered. On other occasions, when towns and estates were targeted that were thought to be pro-Yorkist, then it most certainly was not.

And with the troops came anarchy. As one fearful chronicler from Crowland Abbey described, ‘paupers and beggars flocked forth … in infinite numbers … and universally devoted themselves to spoil and rapine, without regard of place or person’. It was a fear accentuated by a sense of personal risk:

For really we were in straits, when word came to us that this army, so execrable and so abominable, had approached to within six miles of our boundaries. But blessed be God, who did not give us for a prey unto their teeth! For, after the adjoining counties had been given up to dreadful pillage and spoil … that we may here confess the praises of God, in that at the time of His mercy, He regarded the prayers of the contrite, and in His clemency determined to save us from the yoke of this calamity.23

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