POLITICAL HISTORY 



troops from Craven made a sudden attack on Ferrybridge early in the morning of Saturday, 

 28 March, killing Fitz Walter and capturing the position. The Yorkists having crossed the Aire at 

 Castleford, Clifford fell back to avoid being cut off, but was surrounded, and killed by an arrow 

 through the throat. Edward's army advanced to Saxton and drew up on the ridge facing the 

 Lancastrian lines at Towton across Towton Dale. On the morning of 29 March, Palm Sunday, 

 a driving snowstorm blew from the south into the faces of the Lancastrians, so that their arrows 

 fell short, while those of the Yorkists, who had advanced under Lord Fauconberg, wrought great 

 execution. The advantage of position thus lay with the Yorkists while numbers were on the side 

 of the Lancastrians, and the fight was desperate and closely contested ; but at last, after some eight 

 or nine hours' fighting, the Lancastrians gave way and fell back towards the bridge over the Cock 

 Stream. The blocking of their retreat by their own numbers threw the columns into disorder, 

 panic soon followed, and the little river was filled with the fugitives, over whose bodies their 

 companions pressed in flight towards York. No quarter had been given on either side, and the 

 slaughter was terrific and appalling, even if the contemporary estimates of over 30,000 dead are 

 considered to be exaggerated. The number of noble families who lost one or more members on 

 Towton Field was very great, and the blow to the Lancastrian party was for the time almost 

 annihilating. Lord Dacre fell, shot, according to tradition, by a boy hidden in an elder tree as he 

 raised the visor of his helm to take a draught of wine ; the Earl of Northumberland reached York 

 only to die of his wounds. The Earl of Devon, the only man of rank taken prisoner during 

 the battle, was beheaded, and his head, with the heads of Lord Kyme and Sir William Hill, 

 replaced those of the Duke of York, the Earl of Salisbury, and their companions upon the 

 battlements of York. The Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, seeing that the day was lost, fled to 

 York and carried Henry and Margaret to Scotland ; so that when Edward entered York, where he 

 was received by the corporation in procession, on the Monday, he found his royal rival flown. ^^ 



Edward kept Easter at York, and remained in the city till the middle of May,^* when he 

 returned to London to prepare for his coronation. Next year, in November 1462, he again passed 

 through the city on his way to Durham,^' and in December 1463 he made a truce with the Scots 

 at York." In 1464 the Lancastrians were active in the north and captured Skipton Castle, but 

 were defeated by Lord Montagu at Hexham, some of the prisoners being afterwards executed at 

 Middleham and others at York,^' whither King Edward came shortly after his secret marriage to 

 Elizabeth Wydville. This marriage resulted in a quarrel between the king and the powerful Earl of 

 Warwick, by whose contrivance rebellion was stirred up in Yorkshire. The first outbreak was 

 nominally associated with the ancient hospital of St. Leonard at York ; this, the greatest of the 

 English hospitals, had from time immemorial drawn much of its large revenues from the collection 

 of certain thraves of corn throughout the county. It was now complained that the proceeds of 

 this widespread tax on agriculture were devoted not to the relief of sickness and poverty, but to the 

 enriching of such royal favourites as could secure the mastership. This and other abuses roused 

 the commons of the East Riding, and under Robert Hildyard, who called himself ' Robin of 

 Holderness,' they advanced to the gates of York. John Nevill, Marquess of Montagu, who had 

 been made Earl of Northumberland in 1 464, was in command of the city and favoured his brother, 

 the Earl of Warwick ; but as one of the demands of the rebels was that the earldom of Northumber- 

 land should be restored to the Percies, he sided with the king for the time being, attacking and 

 dispersing their undisciplined forces with little trouble.-'* Following close on this came another 

 rising under Sir John Conyers, who seems to have assumed the name of ' Robin of Redesdale,' Sir 

 Hugh Fitz Hugh, Sir Hugh Nevill, and Sir John Sutton.^' The rebels, with the support of the 

 archbishop and the Earl of Warwick, marched south and gained a victory at Edgecote near Banbury, 

 as a result of which King Edward was captured and sent a prisoner to Warwick's castle of 

 Middleham early in August 1469.^" The earl, however, soon found it politic to release the king, 

 who went to London. Early in 1470 Lord Scrope raised a rebellion in Richmondshire, and 

 Edward advanced against him, reaching Doncaster on 18 March. The rebels at once lost heart, 

 and on 22 March Scrope, Conyers, and Hildyard and other insurgent leaders came in and made terms 

 with Edward at York.^^ At the same time the king deprived Lord Montagu of the earldom of 

 Northumberland and restored it to Henry Percy. Later in the year unrest once more called the 

 king to York. While he was there, in September, a Lancastrian force, under Queen Margaret 

 and the Earl of Warwick, landed in the south, and while Edward was at Doncaster, in October, 

 the Marquess of Montagu, who was at Pontefract with some six thousand men, suddenly declared 



" Leadman, Battles Fought in Yorkshire, 94-1 1 1, and the authorities there quoted. 



" Cal. Pat. 14.61-7, pp. 13, 14. ■' Ramsay, York and Lancaster, i, 293. 



'* Three Fifteenth Cent. Chrons. (Camden Soc), 176. " Ibid. 178-9. 



'° Polydore Vergil, Hist. Angl. (Camden Soc), 121-z. 



" Ramsay, York and Lancaster, 338. '"' Polydore Vergil, op. cit. 124. 



" Waurin, Croniques (Rolls Ser.), vi, 601. 



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