Battle of Towton

While the Yorkists were advancing to the charge, there happened a great fall of snow, which, driving full in the faces of their enemies, blinded them.

Continuing Wars of the Roses,
our selection from History of England From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 by David Hume published in 1762. The selection is presented in fourteen easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Wars of the Roses.

Time: 1455-1485
Place: England

In this manner ended the reign of Henry VI, a monarch who while in his cradle had been proclaimed king both of France and England, and who began his life with the most splendid prospects that any prince in Europe had ever enjoyed.

Young Edward, now in his twentieth year, was bold, active, and enterprising. The very commencement of his reign gave symptoms of his sanguinary disposition. The scaffold, as well as the field, incessantly streamed with the noblest blood of England. Queen Margaret had prudently retired northward among her own partisans, and she was able in a few days to assemble an army sixty thousand strong in Yorkshire. The King and the Earl of Warwick hastened, with an army of forty thousand men, to check her progress; and when they reached Pomfret they dispatched a body of troops, under the command of Lord Fitzwalter, to secure the passage of Ferrybridge over the river Are, which lay between them and the enemy. Fitzwalter took possession of the post assigned him, but was not able to maintain it against Lord Clifford, who attacked him with superior numbers. The Yorkists were chased back with great slaughter, and Lord Fitzwalter himself was slain in the action.

The Earl of Warwick, dreading the consequences of this disaster, at a time when a decisive action was every hour expected, immediately ordered his horse to be brought him, which he stabbed before the whole army, and, kissing the hilt of his sword, swore that he was determined to share the fate of the meanest soldier. A proclamation was at the same time issued, giving to everyone full liberty to retire, but menacing the severest punishment to those who should discover any symptoms of cowardice in the ensuing battle. Lord Falconberg was sent to recover the post which had been lost. He passed the river some miles above Ferrybridge, and, falling unexpectedly on Lord Clifford, revenged the former disaster by the defeat of the party and the death of their leader.

The hostile armies met at Towton, and a fierce and bloody battle ensued. While the Yorkists were advancing to the charge, there happened a great fall of snow, which, driving full in the faces of their enemies, blinded them; and this advantage was improved by a stratagem of Lord Falconberg’s. That nobleman ordered some infantry to advance before the line, and, after having sent a volley of flight arrows (as they were called) amid the enemy, immediately to retire. The Lancastrians, imagining that they were gotten within reach of the opposite army, discharged all their arrows, which thus fell short of the Yorkists. After the quivers of the enemy were emptied, Edward advanced his line and did execution with impunity on the dismayed Lancastrians. The bow, however, was soon laid aside, and the sword decided the combat, which ended in a total victory on the side of the Yorkists. Edward issued orders to give no quarter. The routed army was pursued to Tadcaster with great bloodshed and confusion, and above thirty-six thousand men are computed to have fallen in the battle and pursuit. Henry and Margaret had remained at York during the action; but, learning the defeat of their army, they fled into Scotland.

Scotland had never exerted itself to take advantage either of the wars which England carried on with France or of the civil commotions between the contending families. James I avoided all hostilities with foreign nations. After the murder of that excellent Prince, the minority of his son and successor, James II, and the distractions incident to it, retained the Scots in the same state of neutrality. But when the quarrel commenced between the houses of York and Lancaster, and became absolutely incurable but by the total extinction of one party, James, who had now risen to man’s estate, was tempted to seize the opportunity, and he endeavored to recover those places which the English had formerly conquered from his ancestors. He laid siege to the castle of Roxburghe in 1460, and had provided himself with a small train of artillery for that enterprise; but his cannon was so ill-framed that one of them burst as he was firing it, and put an end to his life in the flower of his age.

His son and successor, James III, was also a minor on his accession; the usual distractions ensued in the government: the Queen Dowager, Anne of Gueldres, aspired to the regency; the family of Douglas opposed her pretensions; and Queen Margaret, when she fled into Scotland, found there a people little less divided by faction than those by whom she had been expelled. Though she pleaded the connections between the royal family of Scotland and the house of Lancaster, she could engage the Scottish council to go no further than to express their good wishes in her favor; but on her offer to deliver to them immediately the important fortress of Berwick, and to contract her son in marriage with a sister of King James, she found a better reception; and the Scots promised the assistance of their arms to reinstate her family upon the throne. But Edward did not pursue the fugitive King and Queen into their retreat; he returned to London, where a parliament was summoned for settling the government.

On the meeting of this assembly, Edward found the good effects of his vigorous measure in assuming the crown, as well as of his victory at Touton, by which he had secured it. The parliament no longer hesitated between the two families, or proposed any of those ambiguous decisions which could only serve to perpetuate and to inflame the animosities of party. They recognized the title of Edward, by hereditary descent, through the family of Mortimer, and declared that he was king by right, from the death of his father, who had also the same lawful title; and that he was in possession of the crown from the day that he assumed the government, tendered to him by the acclamations of the people. They reinstated the King in all the possessions which had belonged to the crown at the pretended deposition of Richard II.

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