Battle of Tewkesbury

"The King full manly set forth even upon them, entered and won the dyke, and hedge, upon them, into the close, and,
with great violence put them up towards the hill, and so also, the king's vanguard in the rule of the Duke of Gloucester."
Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV

The Battle of Tewkesbury was fought on the 4th of May 1471 on The Gastons, a field that lies just south of Tewkesbury.
Yorkist forces under Edward IV, and the Lancastians under the Duke of Somerset collided just twenty days following the Yorkist victory at Barnet.  Somerset's army were protected by low lanes, dikes and heavy undergrowth, which the Arrivell states as being 

"strongly in a marvellously strong ground pight, full difficult to be assailed’ ​​

The battle saw Edward and Hasting at the rear, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester leading the vanguard. Sir John Wenlock inactivity on the battlefield was the focal point for Gloucester's men who made their attack, but it was cause for concern for Somerset. Following a ‘mistake’ by Wenlock, many of Lancastrians men lost their lives fleeing across a field called Bloody Meadow. Wenlock died that day, wearing his Lancastrian coat, allegedly slain by Beaufort for holding back his men. Somerset is said to have accused him of treason and killed him there and then. Among those who who died that day was John Courtenay, it was his brother’s head that Edward had impaled on a spike in place of his father and brother’s after Towton in 1461. Edward Beaufort was executed two days later.

Battle of Tewkesbury by Graham Turner http://www.studio88.co.uk/index.html

The most notable death at Tewksbury was Edward, Prince of Wales, Henry VI’s son and heir.  Shakespeare, as you might image, makes much of the manner of the boy’s death, having Edward, slapping the eighteen year old with his gauntleted
hand before Gloucester and Clarence both stab him to death, another story that has passed down to us through time is that
he was found and beheaded, allegedly by the Duke of Clarence.  What most probably happened was that the boy lost his life during the battle. What of Margaret of Anjou, the thorn in the side of the Yorkist?  Following her capture, she spent a number
of years of her captivity in the charge of a Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, a kindred spirit, another woman who ruthlessly
pursued the interest of her son. ​

The execution of the Duke of Somerset.

Edward was once again in possession of the crown of England, the Lancastrians were defeated, there was a new royal heir, Clarence was onside once more, Richard had married Warwick's second daughter Anne and the vast Beauchamp/Neville inheritance was now part of his families estates. For Edward, this would be the last time he would deal with 
Lancastrian forces, he was dead by the time they reappeared, but in the meantime Jasper Tudor had whisked the teenage Henry Tudor over to Brittany, the Earl of Oxford who had beaten Hastings forces at Barnet was hiding among the Scots.

​Between them, these three men would see the end of the mighty Plantagenet dynasty and replace it with the name of Tudor.