Category: Execution Of Nobles

The Second Battle of St Albans

17/2/2017

17th February 1461

With his father and brother's deaths at Wakefield avenged, Edward, Earl of March's forces made their way to join the forces of Richard Neville in an attempt to prevent Margaret of Anjou claiming back her husband and London itself.

With hindsight, Warwick should not have taken Henry VI along with him on his march northwards, he should have left him in London guarded by William Bonville and Thomas Kyriell, the two men who were responsible for him at St Alban’s, but he didn’t. The reason for this, it has been suggested, was that Warwick was overly confident, and considered himself invincible, perhaps he even thought that the meeting between his forces and that of Margaret's was a forgone conclusion, a win for the Yorkist.

Warwick was hoping to block Margaret’s way along the northern route to St Albans, but this backfired and her troops approached by the north west route. The clash of York and Lancaster took place on the 17th of February 1461, at St Albans, but this time, unlike the previous battle, the result was not a victory for York but a Lancastrian victory. By the end of the day and dusk had settled, Richard Neville’s Yorkist force had been defeated, the king was lost and both Bonville and Kyriell had lost their heads in what Cornish antiquarian, A L Rowse, calls the blooding of Edward of Lancaster, the Prince of Wales.

Groby Old Hall, home of Sir John Grey, at Groby, Leicestershire

Including Bonville and Kyriell, lying among those who perished at St Albans was Robert Poynings and John Grey of Groby in Leicestershire. It was John's son Richard who would be executed at Pontefract in 1483, and his widow, Elizabeth, would make an adventurous marriage that would bring this family more wealth and power than they ever dreamed of, but it will also bring the Yorkist dynasty to its knees.

0 Comments

Battle of Tewkesbury

4/5/2016

0 Comments

The Battle of Tewkesbury was fought on the 4th of May 1471, just twenty days following the Yorkist victory at Barnet on a field known as 'The Gaston' that lies south of Tewkesbury itself.

The Lancastrian forces were protected by low lanes, dikes and heavy undergrowth, which the Arrivell it states as being

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

The battle saw Edward IV and William 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 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 and his sixteen year old brother John were executed two days later.

The Battle of Tewkesbury, depicted in a Ghent manuscript

The most notable death at Tewkesbury 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.

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 family's 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.

0 Comments

1478: The Trial and Execution of George Duke of Clarence.

16/4/2016

0 Comments

The 18th of February 1478 saw the death of George, Duke of Clarence, brother to both Edward IV and Richard III.

George was one of the sons of Richard, Duke of York and Cecily Neville, he has been described as misunderstood and ambitious, Shakespeare calls him

'False, Fleeting, Perjur'd Clarence."

Whatever he was, his death was the result a number of bad decisions that were to be his undoing, they are included in a long list of facts that give us some insight into George's life. There isn't much written about Clarence as a person at all, so a couple of decent *biographies are needed to give us a balanced look at Clarence's life. Because there are nothing other than facts, Clarence's character is hard to define.

In some ways, I do feel sorry for him, and I have often wondered if we could apply the modern term 'middle child syndrome' to help understand his personality. Maybe it was his position within his family that made him the man he was, looking at the personality traits of a modern 'middle child' surprisingly Clarence fits the 'profile' on a number of points.

1. Middle children are not particularly interested in family hierarchy or ranking:

Clarence could not have cared less that his brother was king, he would undermine him given an opportunity, he had joined in all the careless talk, calling into question the legitimacy of the king's birth. His later actions convinced Edward that he was looking to take the throne out from under him.

2. Middle children are more interested in taking advice from others outside the main family group:

Clarence was reliant on his cousin Richard Neville rather than Edward or Richard. He took Neville's 'advice' on more than one occasion, joining him in supporting a northern rebellion and went along with the idea to restore King Henry VI to the throne of England, realising too late that listening to Neville was not a good idea after all.

3. Middle children are risk-takers and are more rebellious than their siblings:

Clarence certainly ticks both of these boxes. By rebelling with Neville, Clarence risked everything and lost. He lost his position as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and by organising yet another rebellion, because of the loss of his Warwick lands to Richard, he caused a major rift that was ultimately the last nail in his coffin.

4. Middle children don't like conflict:

This is one category that Clarence doesn't fit into.

Of course, Clarence wasn't a middle child at all, he was number six of seven so you could argue that this hypothesis doesn't make any sense at all, but it does if you look at it from the point of view that he was eventually slap bang in the middle of three boys. His older brother Edmund had died at the Battle of Wakefield aged just seventeen, I wonder if he had lived, he would have shown the same personality traits as Clarence, or would Clarence have been a different person altogether?

Supposition this maybe, but whatever the cause Clarence turned out to be a weak self-centred man, and in the end, it was greed and jealousy that cost him his life.

So, what was going on within the royal family, the royal court and the country as a whole that caused a brother of two kings of England to be arrested and charged with the crime of treason? It seems that there was reason enough for Clarence to be incarcerated in the Tower of London and charged. There can be no doubt that George was in trouble.

The Crowland Chronicles suggest that the ill feeling had been brewing between the brothers for some time and in a superstitious age, Edward may have been concerned with the prophecy that someone whose name began with the letter G would take his kingdom from him. Most certainly Edward was building up some sort of list of information to be used against his brother, and this prophecy added weight to his theory that George had his eye on his throne. But what about Richard, a future king of England. Was he whispering in the king's ear about Clarence as some historians suggest?

Naturally, Shakespeare has Richard playing his part in Clarence's downfall but surprisingly the 'expert' on the subject of Richard III, Sir Thomas More, is doubtful of Richards's guilt even Shakespeare's 'biggest fan' the nineteenth-century historian James Gairdner, doesn't think he was guilty either, he writes

" he (Richard) was lukewarm in his opposition and should be considered guiltless of his brothers death"

But according to Professor Michael Hicks, George's conviction was a

" Precondition for Gloucester's accession in 1483"

So George was accused of rebellion, slander and allegiances with the 'enemy' and the date set for the trial was probably around 20th January. The king was said to have attended stating that his brother was

'guilty of unnatural, loathly treasons'

The act regarding these charges is still in existence. Within the Crowland Chronicle it is written

"no one spoke against the duke but the king, and no one answered but the duke"

Towards the end of the trial, in a desperate attempt at a chance of coming out of this affair with his life, Clarence offers to prove his innocence in personal combat, but in the end, a guilty verdict was read out by the Duke of Buckingham and George, Duke of Clarence, had to wait just under a month for his execution.

There is no evidence of how Clarence met his end, but the barrel of wine story persists as these things do.

As proof that drowning was the manner of George's death the painting below has been cited. Clarence's daughter Margaret Pole wears a tiny barrel charm on a bracelet which is taken to represent her father's death! Of course, this is the usual case of fabricating the evidence to fit the crime. Not only did this one tiny detail added weight to the vat of wine theory but it meant that this portrait has been wrongly attributed.

This art work was painted in 1535, the sitter unknown.

Clarence's execution took place in private, and it is commonly thought that he went to a death of his own choosing, probably beheading. But those who believe that the remains (a body with the head intact) that lies at Tewkesbury Abbey is George Duke of Clarence would disagree.

Death of Clarence - Illustration by Alice Povey

So, who do I think was responsible for Clarence's death?

Probably Edward. Maybe Richard. But ultimately it was George himself. He was his own worst enemy.

*John Ashdown Hills biography on the Duke of Clarence is available here
http://www.johnashdownhill.com/the-third-plantagenet-george-duke-of-clarence/

0 Comments

The Second Battle of St Albans

Battle of Tewkesbury

1478: The Trial and Execution of George Duke of Clarence.

Categories

Archives

﻿The Second Battle of St Albans

Battle of Tewkesbury

1478: The Trial and Execution of George Duke of Clarence.

Categories

Archives

The Second Battle of St Albans