Goodchild, Steven/Sarkar, Dilip The Battle of Tewkesbury, 4 May 1471

A Right Evil Place

In the great medieval battle of Tewkesbury on Saturday, 4 May 1471, the House of Lancaster was finally defeated in a series of bloody conflicts now known as the Wars of the Roses. After the Lancastrians were defeated at the Battle of Towton in 1461, King Henry VI was imprisoned. His queen, Margaret of Anjou, and his son, Edward of Westminster, fled to France and went into exile. For the time being, the throne of the Yorkist King Edward IV was secure. However, the king's cousin was the powerful Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. The two became estranged when Edward secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of a common knight, thereby thwarting Warwick's efforts to establish diplomatic ties with France. Warwick and Edward's brother George, Duke of Clarence, were accused of treason and fled to France. Warwick's only hope was to restore Henry VI to the throne, so he formed an unholy alliance with his former arch-enemy Margaret. Warwick returned to England, raised an army, forced Edward into exile in Flanders, and restored Henry VI. However, Edward received help from the Duke of Burgundy, returned to England, and met Warwick at the Battle of Barnet on 14 April 1471. Thick fog made for a confusing battle, in which Warwick was killed. On the same day, Margaret and Prince Edward landed at Weymouth to march north and join forces with other Lancastrian troops. Two days later, when King Edward learned of Margaret's presence, he prepared his army. Margaret had to cross the Severn, but the gates of Gloucester were closed, so the Lancastrians, who outnumbered the Yorkists by several hundred, had to march on to the next bridge at Upton. Just over halfway there, after a lightning-fast march, King Edward caught up with Margaret's army at Tewkesbury, a place criss-crossed by streams and rivers; no wonder, then, that a chronicle later described Tewkesbury as a truly wretched place. At the decisive moment of the ensuing battle, Edward sent his 200 lancers into battle. This broke the Lancastrians' resistance, and the survivors fled. Prince Edward was among the fallen. Having lost her son and the last hope of the Lancastrians, Margaret was a broken woman. Possibly captured near Malvern, Edward rode triumphantly through London on 21 May 1471, with Margaret, the defeated she-wolf of the Lancastrians, at his side for all to see. That night, King Henry died in the Tower of London, most likely murdered by the Yorkists. In this book, Steven Goodchild and Dilip Sarkar not only reveal the story of the events at Tewkesbury in May 1471, but also take the reader on an insightful tour of the battlefield as it looks today.