The Importance of the Battle of Edgecote

From 1461 until 1469, it seemed that the violence of the Wars of the Roses was over. Edward's monarchy had brought an end to all of those clashes between Lancaster and York. But neither house was actually doing the ruling.

The Earl of Warwick, with his all encompassing influence over the king, was pulling the actual strings. For all intents and purposes (particularly in the earliest years), Richard Neville was the king. Except in matters of love.

Edward IV thwarted his mentor by secretly marrying Elizabeth Woodville. This proved embarrassing to Warwick, as he'd already arranged a marriage between his king and a French princess.

Moreover, it turned out to be dangerous to Warwick's ambitions, as the Woodvilles began to fill every available position of power in the realm. They were not Warwick's people. He could not buy them off and they were usurping his place as the king's right hand man.

These niggles turned to actual insult, when Edward refused permission for his brother to marry Warwick's eldest daughter.

By now, Warwick had had enough. He was willing to support the brother - George, Duke of Clarence - over his prodigy Edward IV; and he was quite able to raise the country in war to demand yet another change of monarchy.

This was the political landscape in which the Battle of Edgecote could occur.

Meanwhile, Edward IV was on a royal tour of England. He had reached the central region and was heading north. He had no idea that his mentor and brother had turned so completely against him.

However, he had heard rumors that the wedding was being planned against his express wishes.

Perhaps a little hypocritically, considering Edward's own love match, he had a diplomatic marriage in mind for Clarence. It's intriguing to ponder about whether Edward was also trying to erode Warwick's influence. A marriage between the Earl's eldest daughter and the King's brother was an ambition too far.

Edward responded to the rumors by sending letters to his brother, Warwick and George Neville, Archbishop of York. The latter was the cleric who officiated at the wedding. Edward warned them all, in the nicest of fond tones, to please return home. He wanted a little chat.

He was too late. The wedding had already happened, and the protagonists were already in England. The letters crossed them on the English Channel.

Edward IV realized that none of this could have happened, nor been so big, if Warwick wasn't involved. He knew his mentor's mind and tactics. He'd been taught by him, and fought alongside him throughout the Wars of the Roses.

Edward stopped dead near Nottingham and evaluated his options. He didn't know who he could trust in the North, East and South, so he turned West. He sent the Earls of Devon and Pembroke to raise the Celts.

The swiftness of their flight to Devon and Wales, then their return at the helm of thousands of men, is the stuff of legends.

Unfortunately, the legend quickly soured into something quite, quite terrible.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For the moment it's enough to know that Edward IV was still riding hard to meet up with his armies from the west; and that the Earl of Warwick, with Clarence alongside him, had already marched several miles past them.

It was the army of Robin of Redesdale which first spotted the Welshmen under the Earl of Pembroke. During the night of July 25th, they camped just out of sight, ready to form in the morning for the attack.

Both sides had reinforcements which could have come. But, as the dawn rose on July 26th 1469, it was fundamentally a force headed by Robin of Redesdale, and just the Earl of Pembroke's Welshmen and men from the Marches, who stood face to face at Edgecote.

In many ways, this was a highly disproportionate battle. Those insurgents fighting under the banner of Robin of Redesdale were largely inexperienced, while those traveling from Wales with Pembroke were professional spears-men.

The problem lay in that last word. The Welsh had a reputation throughout Europe for their prowess on the battlefield, but only in archery. The formidable Welsh archers were mostly ten miles away in the camp of the Earl of Devon.

Nevertheless, for much of the battle it seemed that the Welsh would win on behalf of Edward IV. Especially when the man hailed as Robin of Redesdale was overwhelmed and killed. He turned out to be Sir James Conyers, son of one of Warwick's men in York.

However, just when Pembroke's forces were about to finish the day, the distinctive war-cry of the Earl of Warwick was heard in the distance. The Welsh reformed in a defensive position. The rebels surged forward, morale high and convinced that the famous and ferocious Warwick was coming.

He wasn't. It was a mere vanguard of a small troop, made up largely of Warwick's household. Had the Welsh ignored their cry, they would have won the day. Had they not returned to their defensive position, they would have won. Had the rebels hung on to check precisely who was coming, the Welsh would have won. Had the Earl of Devon caught up with his archers, the Welsh would have won.

In the event, the uncertainty meant that the Welsh were trapped in their defenses, with no archers to stem the tide of rebels approaching.  Between 2,000 and 5,000 Celts were killed within an hour. None fled, they fought to the bitter death.

And then the Earl of Devon arrived. But seeing the carnage, he immediately sounded the retreat. Thousands of men from Gloucester, Wiltshire and Devon, plus the Welsh archers, fled south and west for home.

It also seemed that England wasn't ready for a third living king. Parliament would not give its consent to a coronation of the erstwhile King George.

They can hardly be blamed for this. The wounds from the War of the Roses were hardly healed, when another man's ambition had started it all again. Moreover, there were currently two monarchs - both crowned under God - as prisoners in the realm.  Henry VI was in the Tower of London and Edward IV was in Warwick Castle.

Allowing another man his coronation would not only make a mockery of the sanctity of kingship, but it would inevitably lead to more battles.

Warwick found himself suddenly very isolated politically. Nor could he find much sympathy amongst the monarchies abroad. The crowned heads of Europe saw Britain in disarray and an unwelcome precedent being set for their own positions.

First Warwick moved Edward to Middleham Castle, North Yorkshire, where the population could be trusted to support the rebellion. Then he merely gave up and fled the country, while giving orders for the release of the king.

Warwick might have won at the Battle of Edgecote, but he couldn't win it all.

The fourth major party to wish that the Battle of Edgecote would simply remove itself from our historical landscape is HS2.

This modern day, government backed consortium has released plans for a high speed railway in England. The proposed route will cut straight through the site of the Battle of Edgecote. It will disturb the mass grave of up to 5,000 Welshmen.

There is naturally a 21st century ploy to downplay the importance of Edgecote. Supporters of the route state that it was fundamentally a low-key skirmish. Edward IV was triumphant in the end, and his reign went on as if the battle had never happened.

But that is a very short-sighted view of the results of the Battle of Edgecote. Two major consequences changed everything.

1. Clarence's part in the rebellion led directly to his attainder. This meant that he and his heirs were knocked out of the royal succession. Had this not happened, then it would have been Edward of Warwick who succeeded Edward V (one of the Princes in the Tower), not Richard III.
2. Wales did not recover quickly from the massacre of practically an entire generation of South Welsh men. It turned Celtic public opinion firmly against the York monarchy. It had been a York king who called them to the carnage, then didn't turn up to lead them personally. Sixteen years later, Rhys ap Tomas was able to ride through South Wales and raise a massive army on behalf of Henry Tudor. It was the sons, brothers, uncles, nephews and the occasional father of the Edgecote dead who marched onto Bosworth Moor. They were there to avenge their loss, and without them Henry Tudor could not have won.

In short, it can very firmly be argued that Edgecote led directly to a Tudor dynasty on the throne of Britain.  No-one can state that wasn't important in British history!