The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry by Christopher Wilkins Read Free Book Online Page B

‘berated’ for their ‘upstart insolence’. It was the recent attainder which really rankled; the Yorkists had been, in absentia, convicted of treason by the King’s Council, of which Rivers was a member. Not only was the mighty Earl furious at the attainder but was also deeply insulted at being found guilty of piracy by a royal investigator. To rub salt in the wound, that investigator had been Lord Rivers.13
    In the huge Gothic hall at Calais in the flickering torch light, Warwick contemptuously reminded Rivers that he had been ‘made by marriage and also made a Lord’ and ‘it was not his part to have such language of Lords’.14 History does not relate whether the Woodvilles stood in silence or answered back; they might well have made some pithy remarks about Yorkists getting above their station and Warwick’s title coming from his wife.
    Somehow the Woodvilles escaped from Calais and were back in England when, on 26 June, the Earls of March and Warwick returned in vengeance with 2,000 men. The King and court retreated north, leaving Thomas, Lord Scales, ‘a man of violent passion’ who also happened to be Edward of March’s godfather, in command of the Tower and keeping an eye on Yorkist-leaning Londoners.
    Scales had fought in every campaign against the French15 and was a firm establishment man with no sympathy for Yorkists, or for Londoners, all of whom he regarded as treacherous. They were besieging him! Believing the rebels would be speedily dealt with and with relief imminent, he unwisely bombarded the City. ‘They that were within the Tower cast wild fire [medieval napalm] into the city and shot in small guns, and burned and hurt men and women and children in the street. And they of London laid great bombards [cannons] on the further side of the Thames against the Tower and crashed the walls in divers places.’ 16
    But Scales had miscalculated. The King did not come to the rescue because the royal army had been soundly defeated at Northampton, rations had run out and he was obliged to surrender on 19 July. The Yorkist earls let the choleric baron slip away upriver towards sanctuary but his luck ran out when he was recognized by the boatmen. They killed him and left his body – covered in stab wounds – in the churchyard of St Mary Overy.
    His heiress was his only surviving child, Elizabeth, whom Anthony Woodville married six days after the killing (her mother and Anthony’s mother were friends). There had been a son, Thomas, but he was killed in single combat at the age of 15, so Elizabeth inherited wide estates and Middleton, a grand moated manor near King’s Lynn.17 Today’s visitor can still see the gatehouse, a four-storeyed symmetrical tower topped with corner turrets, rising proudly from the still waters of the moat.
    The fighting went on, with battles at Wakefield, Mortimer’s Cross and, again, at St Albans.18 Duke Richard of York had been killed early in the increasingly bitter campaign that culminated in the dreadful dawn-to-dusk battle of Towton on Palm Sunday (29 March 1461). The Lancastrians were drawn up in a good defensive position but on a very exposed ridge facing south and looking straight into a blizzard. Anthony was in the vanguard with his father who was commanding 6,000 Welshmen.
    The battle started with an archery exchange in which the Yorkists had the advantage of a strong wind. The Lancastrians were forced to advance from their position; Jean de Warin described Rivers and Somerset initiating a twobattle (or division) attack on the Yorkist line. They advanced steadily, cheering and shouting ‘King Henry’. The armies clashed together. It seems Rivers’s ‘battle’ won through and, thinking they were part of a successful advance, chased the Yorkists they had been fighting for several miles. In the blizzard no one could really see what was happening and those who remained battered away at each other. The Lancastrians were doing well until the arrival of fresh Yorkist