The Battle of Towton and Saxton, 29th March (Palm Sunday) 1461

"To our trusty and welbeloved knight, Sir William Plumpton,
By the King. R.H.
Trusty and webeloved, we greete you well, and for as much as we have very knowledg that our great trator, the late Earle of March, hath made great assemblies of riotouse and mischeously disposed people, and to stir and provoke them to draw unto him, he hath cried in his proclamations havok upon all our trew liege people and subjects, thaire wives, children, and goods, and is now coming towards us, we therefore pray you and also straitely charge you that anon upon sight herof, ye, with all such people as ye may make defensible arrayed, come to us in all hast possible, wheresoever we shall bee within this our Realme, for to resist the malitious entent and purpose of our said trator, and faile not herof as ye love the seurity of our person, the weale of yourselfe, and of all our trew and faithfull subjects.
Geven under our signet at our Cyty of York, the thirteenth day of March."

Plumpton Correspondence; Letter 1; Printed for the Camden Society, 1839

The above letter was sent to Sir William Plumpton of Plumpton Quire, near Spofforth in the county of York by his then king, Henry VIth. His son, William Plumpton Esq., who was related to Lord Clifford by marriage, answered his king's call to arms and, as was his noble relation, slain upon the blood soaked fields of Towton and Saxton in late March 1461.

I have commenced here with the ancient name of England's bloodiest battle, but as with so many things, it has been reduced for the sake of historical convenience to become known more familiarly as the Battle of Towton. For such a pivotal event in English history, remarkably little hard fact is known. What little knowledge there is has come down to us by means of a number of chronicles, most of which are very sparse in descriptive narrative. I intend to borrow heavily herein from the antiquarian work of Richard Brooke, whose original paper was read before meetings of the Society of Antiquaries of London on the 11th and 18th January 1849, which was later corrected and amended by him for publication in his book "Visits to Battlefields in England of the Fifteenth Century"; published in London in 1857 by John Russell Smith. Brooke appears to have delved deep into archives and chronicles, and quotes frequently from them, including in his sources various private, state and royal papers, and rolls; and the chronicles of Hall, Hollinshed, Leland, Speed, Stow, Dugdale, John Habington, the Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle, Fabyan, Grafton, and others.
Current archaeology has recently opened up new windows on the battle and its immediate aftermath, but generally there has been little added to the accounts; although much seems to have accrued by way of myth and legend, and it has to be said, hypothesis. Here I will attempt to stay with the chroniclers as far as possible, while interposing newer or diverse material such as the above Plumpton letter, and archaeological evidence. While it is necessary to provide some sort of historical background to the events at and around Towton in 1461, it is also necessary to include in the main narrative as part of the battle, those events immediately before, in the days prior to the battle as they are fundamental to the outcome. This then will be the story of just before, during, and immediately after the Battle of Towton and Saxton Fields.

Many will be familiar with the events leading up to the time in question, England was at war with its self, or more accurately, the English nobility was at war with them selves. The so-called Wars of the Roses (a name not conjured up until centuries later by Sir Walter Scott) were, in their simplest terms, conflicts between two branches of the royal line. It is easiest to call them the houses of York and Lancaster, not to be confused with either county shire of those names. The wars spanned in all, 35 years, during of which there were fought as many battles as there were years. It was during those battles that ancient family scores could be settled, causing new outbursts of hatred and fury. It all began with king Edward III. He had seven sons, but it was the descendants of three of them, Lionel Duke of Clarence 2nd surviving son; John Duke of Lancaster 3rd surviving son; and Edmund Duke of York 4th surviving son; which were to change the course of history. Edward III was succeeded by his eldest son the ill fated Richard II, who was deposed by Henry IV, who was the son of the Duke of Lancaster. There was therefore a 'Lancastrian' king of England, as was his son the victor of Agincourt Henry V and his son Henry VI. As the young Henry grew, he was but one year old at the time of his father's death, at about 16 years of age, he began to try to assume personal control of his realm. As he grew older however, he became more pious, and, it is said, a kindly man, who was easily taken advantage of. A continuation of poorly selected advisors and councillors culminated in 1450 when Edmund Beaufort 2nd duke of Somerset became principal councillor. Somerset had for the last few years prior, been deeply involved losing every important town and province in France won by the much-lamented Henry V, and by August 1450, all of Normandy had been lost, with some remnants of Gascony only, remaining. A further 12 months saw even that gone, and only the port of Calais remaining under the English crown. The country was brimming with disaffected soldiery and nobility, and the resulting poverty of some of the fighting classes led to a renewed stirring of 'Livery and Maintenance', the by then illegal loyalties of lesser nobles and their tenants to their more powerful neighbours. The country was starting to polarise. In 1445, Henry married Margaret of Anjou, a French noblewoman of keen ambition and impeccable heritage. She greatly favoured the inept Somerset and his Beaufort family over more reliable men. One such was Richard Duke of York who was descended from Edward III by Lionel Duke of Clarence his 2nd son. York was not popular with the queen, he had a direct bloodline to Edward III, which was at least as good as her husband's, and some said, better. So rather than keep York onside, he was marginalised with the Lieutenancy of Ireland. However, civil unrest in England, which resulted in the revolt of Jack Cade and the men from Kent, fired York to action. What with all English influence in France gone, and the threat of civil disorder, the country appeared to be descending into a pit of chaos. York had however been excluded from the royal council, and had no means of asserting any of his considerable power for the country or king's benefit. The animosity between York and Somerset was palpable. Both had huge wealth and power, and as the antagonism grew, so did the certainty of civil war. By 1453, matters had come to a head, the king was disabled with mental illness which lasted for 15 months, Somerset had been impeached, and was locked up in the Tower of London, and the queen, who had been childless for 8 years, was then heavily pregnant. Parliament needed a regent to take control, and with the prevailing circumstances, they decided to appoint York as Protector and Defender of the Realm. By the end of 1454, the king had recovered his mental faculties, and immediately set about undoing everything that York had done, including restoring Somerset to full power and authority. The Duke of York retired in indignation to his castle and estates at Wakefield and Sandal in Yorkshire. In the middle of May 1455, York had gathered to his cause sufficient numbers of nobles and men to attempt to resolve things by force of arms, and at the head of 3,000 men, began the march south, towards war.

There were, in those times, several extremely strong, wealthy, and powerful families, headed in each case by a liege lord, the Mowbray Duke of Norfolk; The Neville (spellings vary between Nevil, Nevill and Neville) Earl of Warwick, who was related to a huge family of noblemen; the Percy Earl of Northumberland; and many others who could call to themselves several thousands of their own retainers, for the most part well equipped and trained in the military arts. There was a new weapon available too, gunpowder. In an assortment of variously sized guns, these were very much in their infancy, but they were present on several of the fields of battle, which were to follow. Men at arms dressed for battle in suits of armour, not the lumbering and massive armours used in tilts and jousting, but light-weight, very manoeuvrable armours that usually weighed little more than 60 pounds, which, distributed evenly around the body, was of little impedance to the wearer. Archers were the machine-gunners of their time, practice was a legal requirement, and the English longbow, made from yew, was, in capable hands, able to fire off as many as 15 arrows per minute. The arrows had an assortment of tips for different types of enemy; the favoured one against armoured men at arms was the bodkin, a long narrow iron tip, able to penetrate most concurrent armours. The bows were about six feet long with a draw weight of up to 90 lbs or more, and an almost flat trajectory range of more than 220 yards, further, but less effective if elevated. Weapons other than long range guns and the longbows were hand held, in the cases of the gentry and nobles, it was a matter of personal preference, the ubiquitous swords were large and heavy hacking weapons, often used two handed, maces, axes, and battle hammers were just as popular for close quarters fighting. General infantry, those retainers who were the mass of any army before or since, the farmers and their lads, had to settle for pole weapons, large blades on long sticks, from bill-hooks to halberds, glaves to pole axes, they were essentially adapted farming tools. Anything, with either a hook, spike, or a blade could be used as a weapon of war. Almost all had some sort of short stabbing weapon such as daggers, with which, even the lowliest farm lad could, by means of stabbing through a wrenched open visor, finish off a wounded and grounded nobleman wearing the most sophisticated and expensive armour. So far, no mention of horses! They were the preserve of nobles and the better off gentry, especially bred destiers, war horses capable of taking the weight of a fully armoured man and his weapons, with the strength to gallop into a charge if required, and then to fight using front hooves, crushing down upon any poor soul in their way. Only stallions were used as warhorses as they had the necessary bloody-mindedness and aggression needed. This was also of the zenith of heraldry, that art-form developed over the previous 350 years for identifying individuals clad from head to toe in metal. There remains some debate as to the use of heraldic tabards at the time of the 'Wars of the Roses'. It is tempting to imagine hundreds, or thousands of brightly caparisoned steel men, each with their own heraldic device emblazoned on their fronts. If such was the case, then such a site before the bloodletting must have been nothing short of wondrous. However, it seems that the use of heraldic tabards, as depicted in some contemporaneous manuscripts and monuments might be over fanciful. For certain was the use of heraldry on banners, standards, and flags, each commander having at least one standard bearer, oft-times supplemented with banners of various saints, and the Trinity. It is known by most that the development of heraldry had become necessary as a means of identification on the field of battle. As families became intertwined by marriage over the centuries, personal devices became enhanced with those from other families, usually by means of quartering the field of the 'shield'. So complex did some of these become over time, that their use was totally impractical. In this context, there is within this article, a number of heraldic representations for the people involved at the Battle of Towton (click blue highlighted names). It is easy to say that the Neville family for example, used: gules, a saltire argent (red with a white or silver diagonal cross). However, there were several branches of the Neville family, each differenced from the primary coat of arms by a particular device, called in the vernacular, marks of cadence. These, in conjunction with various quarterings provided heralds with the means to identify an individual person from any others of his family.

It is necessary prior to the main narrative to provide a brief chronology of events after the above described proceedings, this will perforce, be kept as brief as possible.