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CHAPTER 12: SALISBURY, EXETER & WAKEFIELD ALONG WITH SOME BATTLEFIELDS
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By the time we booked into our hotel in the delightful Hampshire town of Fordingbridge for our 11th Telegraph Weekend, we had decided our two families would take separate holidays in the summer for the first time in years. Our children were growing up and their interests were starting to diverge, although the following year we did holiday together again for the very last time. Not that the previous summer's French trip to a cottage just outside of Fontainebleau hadn't been a success - it had. We loved going to France: this was our third sortie there. We'd from a few problems with Madame who owned the cottage and lived in the big house next to it. She wouldn't let us play on the hard surfaced tennis courts next to the cottage although no-one else ever used them, forcing us to use a field where we all got bitten to death by flies which caused our limbs to swell up in great lumps. She also charged us extra for one of the children's sheets which she claimed had been irrecoverably damaged when, because we'd brought a non-allergenic sheet, the sheet had never been slept on. But apart from that and the minor collision A and H had in the their car, all went swimmingly well. A few years later, Sue and I took our two sons and their girlfriends to stay near Auxerre and on the return journey from a day trip to Paris, the exhaust on Sue's car fell apart. We limped home the final few kilometers, passing a garage that Sue set off for the following morning. With her A level French and a smattering of technical language she'd learnt over breakfast, she managed to communicate with the owner who could only offer a temporary fix for the tuyau d'échappement. He reassured her that it would get us to Calais and so she left him with it. When she sold her car seven years later, the temporary fix was still going strong. He only charged a pittance which may be why, when we returned to the holiday home a few years later, the garage had become a pizza take away.
Fordingbridge was a good base to explore both the New Forest and the city of Salisbury with its fine cathedral. The New Forest was familiar ground and we enjoyed revisiting the bustling town of Lymington with its picturesque harbour and yacht haven. Sue and I had been to Salisbury once before with my old landlady from my student days in Southampton. She was a wonderful lady, a committed socialist, a very good cook and the person responsible for getting me interested in watching football. We were taking her and her neighbour to visit one of her ex-lodgers who lived in Malborough and we called at Salisbury on the way. I believe the excuse, "I've already been round the cathedral," was the excuse used by Sue to head off to the shops dragging a not so reluctant H with her and leaving us two experienced cathedral aficionados to wander around at our leisure. Constructed from Purbeck marble that is neither marble nor from the Isle of Purbeck - it's crystalline limestone quarried at Corfe Castle - it is a fine example of Early English architecture' begun in 1220 and taking 38 years to complete and unlike most other cathedrals, there has been very little change to that original building. It replaced an earlier cathedral that lay several miles away in the deserted settlement of Old Sarum which we were to visit later in the day.
The story goes that when Richard Poore, the bishop at the time' decided to build a new cathedral, he shot an arrow in the air, vowing to construct the new building where the arrow fell. One version of the story has the arrow hitting a deer that ran on for a few miles, injured, before expiring where the current cathedral is now. The reality has more to do with the availability of land alongside the River Avon. The water meadows weren't the most sensible place to construct a massive building: it is estimated that the 6,500 tonne central tower rests on a mere four feet of gravel foundations. Today the tower holds four bells that are so heavy that they cannot be rung in the traditional way, and are hung dead (fixed in place) and hit with a hammer. Up until the late 18th century, the cathedral was unique in having a separate bell tower apart from the cathedral but this was removed after being damaged by rioters. The spire achieved the honour of becoming England's tallest in the 16th century due to taller spires succumbing to the twin disasters of toppling over or being blown down in storms. Salisbury's spire may have gone the same way when it was discovered it was leaning with the tip 29 inches out. The architect of St Paul's Sir Christopher Wren was asked to take a look and he inserted metal rods that have fixed its position ever since.
Inside the cathedral was the familiar assortment of tombs and memorials along with one unexpected discovery, an ancient clock dated 1326 and considered to be Europe's oldest working clock. We missed out again on seeing the Magna Carta because although Salisbury had the best preserved of the four 1215 copies, it was not on public view then - it is now. Three tombs caught my interest, all having Royal connections. One belonged to William Longspree, the illegitimate son of Henry II: it was he who brought the Magna Carta to Salisbury after his half-brother King John had been forced to sign it. The other two belonged to husband and wife, Sir Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, and Katherine, sister to Lady Jane Grey. Katherine's effigy is slightly elevated, signifying her higher status as the sister of a queen, albeit one who only reigned for nine days.
After lunch in the city, we drove the short distance to Old Sarum. I remembered the name from my school history lessons - something to do with the reform of Parliament. Actually the site is full of interesting history, having originally been an Iron Age hill fort with massive banks. When the Romans arrived, they built a garrison and the settlement that grew up around it was called Sorviodunum. The Saxons may have lived there, the Normans certainly did, constructing a castle inside the old fort. The first cathedral was finished in 1292 but, a mere five days after it was consecrated, it burnt to the ground. A replacement cathedral was completed about a hundred years later but tensions began to surface between the monks in the cathedral and the soldiers in the castle. It was this ongoing dispute that persuaded Bishop Richard to search for a new site (or pick up his bow and arrow if you prefer that narrative). With the new Salisbury developing by the banks of the Avon and the old cathedral dissolved, all that remained was a small village. In 1322, Edward II ordered the castle to be demolished and by the 17th century there were no residents left. Despite this, Old Sarum was still entitled to elect two members of Parliament. The local landowner would nominate tenants from elsewhere on their estates to be the designated voters in any election. Election Day was a farce, with only two candidates ever put forward, and both being elected unopposed. Old Sarum gained a reputation as the worst kind of Rotten Boroughs, a Pocket Borough, where parliamentary influence was in the hands of the landowner. The 1832 Reform Act put an end to these proceedings when Old Sarum became part of a much larger constituency. For many years, the landowners were the Pitt family with seven family members across four generations elected at one time or another as Member of Parliament for Old Sarum, including two prime ministers - William Pitt the Elder and his son William Pitt the Younger.
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Whilst 2002 saw us holidaying separately in the summer, we did get away for a short break together, staying in a holiday park near the seaside town of Sidmouth on the south coast. The park had a swimming pool which we frequented and a bingo hall that we didn't. Due to unexpected circumstances, H didn't travel down with us and joined the party on day two, meeting us on the green sward that surrounds Exeter Cathedral. Exeter is an old Roman town: the cathedral is built on the site of an old Roman fort. I had visited many times as my parents had friends who lived in Exmouth. We would come down for extended stays, enjoying Exmouth's traditional seaside charms, sometimes taking their boat over the Exe estuary to the extensive sands of Dawlish Warren and occasionally popping upstream to the City of Exeter. In Anglo Saxon times, the counties of Devon and Cornwall had their own bishops. The Bishop of Cornwall was based in the town of St Germans whilst the Devon see was centred on Crediton. At some point these two dioceses were combined and in 1050, the cathedra was moved to Exeter. There was already a monastery on the site so the bishop just moved in and it wasn't until 60 years later that they decided to erect a new building. All that remains of that structure are the two towers. Rebuilding began again in 1258 but it was another 122 years before it was finally finished and consecrated. Its design was very different from the other cathedrals we had visited. Instead of a nave, a choir and two transepts meeting in a central crossover making a cross shape, Exeter has no central point. The nave and choir are of equal length and the ceiling continues from one to the other, creating the longest stretch of gothic stone vaulting in the world. There is no central tower: the bases of two side towers form very short transepts to the north and south of the nave and choir.
There was much to see inside. The martyrs' pulpit appeared to be made from wood but was actually carved from sandstone to a design by George Gilbert Scott. Three panels depict St Alban, executed by the Romans; St Boniface, born in nearby Crediton, murdered in Friesland in modern day Germany; and Bishop John Coleridge Patteson, ordained at Exeter, missionary to the Pacific islands of Melanesia, becoming their first bishop and learning twenty of their languages before he too was murdered in the Solomon Islands. On a brighter note, running along both sides of the nave are the Exeter rondells, a series of embroidered cushions that were seen by volunteers over many hours. They tell the story of the cathedral, referencing other historical events and featuring Kings, Queens and Bishops of Exeter. They are actually longer than that most celebrated of tapestries, the one at Bayeux. The bishop's cathedra, made from Devon oak, was a fine piece of work, dating back to the 14th century and considered one of Europe's finest examples of wood carving. It was put into storage during World War II which was just as well because a bomb exploded nearby and would have destroyed it otherwise. On one of the walls was also an astronomical clock from the 15th century which shows the workings of the universe as people understood it at the time. The earth is at the centre of the clock and on the two hands are the moon and the sun which were thought to rotate around the earth. The moon hand marks the phases of the moon, whilst the sun hand indicates the hours. At a later date, an additional dial was added to show the minutes.
The diocese of Exeter covers the county of Devon and in the south west corner lies the city of Plymouth with its strong seafaring history. It was on the open ground overlooking the sea, Plymouth Hoe, that Sir Francis Drake allegedly played a games of bowls in 1588, before popping off to sort out the Spanish Armada and, in 1620, this was the last port of call for the Pilgrim Fathers before they set off across the Atlantic to establish Plymouth Colony, the second English settlement in the United States. Stories of these and other nautical adventures must have filled the head of the young Robert Falcon Scott, born in 1868 into a prosperous brewing family who lived in what is now a suburb of Plymouth. Scott became a naval officer and on hearing that an expedition was being organised to explore Antartica, he put himself forward and was appointed leader. He organised two expeditions: the first, the 'Discovery' expedition of 1901 - 04, greatly enhanced the understanding of the continent with Scott and fellow explorers Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson making a journey further south than anyone had ever been before to a point 530 miles from the pole. Dog sleighs were used to transport the explorers and their supplies across the hostile terrain, the dogs also serving as a mobile source of food. One of the sleigh flags was presented to Exeter Cathedral by Scott's sister in 1920, eight years after his second expedition, 'Terra Nova' had ended in tragedy. Not only had he been beaten to the South Pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen by five weeks, but a missed rendezvous on the return journey resulted in Scott and four companions perishing 150 miles from their base camp. The flag was originally hung up but was now displayed in a glass case in order to preserve it.
On emerging out onto the cathedral green, it was hard to imagine the whole cathedral precinct was once surrounded by a defensive wall complete with gatehouses. Several other cathedrals had similar defences in medieval times, physical barriers that separated the secular town or city authorities from the jurisdiction of the bishop. Exeter's defences were built as a direct result of an incident that happened in 1283. Whilst the spiritual leader of a diocese was its bishop, the cathedral was run by the dean and chapter and when the bishop and Dean did not see eye to eye, trouble inevitably followed. Such a case arose at Exeter between the bishop Peter Quinil and the dean John Pycot. Whilst Bishop Quinil was off being enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral, Pycot got a minority of the chapter to elect him Dean. When the bishop returned, he challenged the decision and a feud between the two developed. Both appealed to the archbishop to support their relative positions with Pycot even travelling to Rome to petition the pope. In his absence, Bishop Quinil promoted one of the vicars choral from Wells Cathedral, Walter Lechlade, to the post of precentor, the person who led the singing during services. Another role of the precentor was to be lead the chapter in the absence of the dean. When Pycot returned, he was angered by the bishop's appointment and, with the help of Exeter's mayor, Alured de la Porta, they plotted to remove Lechlade. One night, as the precentor made his way to one of the cathedral services, he was set upon and murdered. The bishop knew who was behind the attack and eventually the King, Edward I, was persuaded to visit Exeter for Christmas and preside over the trial. The mayor, being a civilian was hanged whilst Pycot, being a man of God, claimed benefit of the clergy, whereby he was handed over to the religious authorities and after six months of canonical purgation, he was released from his job. Because of the involvement of the laity in this murder, the walls were erected to protect the cathedral and those who lived and worked there and to separate church and civil authorities.
We spent the rest of the day exploring Exeter, wandering around the city centre and then making our way to the quayside where we could enjoy watching all the activity taking place on the river. On the next day of our short break the weather was not conducive to venturing too far. Although it wasn't raining, a storm was brewing and the wind strengthened throughout the day. What better time to head down the Sidmouth seafront for a blustery walk - so that's what we did. At one point there was a narrow walkway across a stretch of water with metal rails either side to hold onto. We wanted to get to the other side of the water and so embarked upon a perilous journey to reach our destination. By now the wind was whipping up the surf and the air was filled with clumps of bubbles. It did feel invigorating, to stand facing the wind and sea, to be physically moved by the heavier gusts and to feel the spray as it swept across our faces. We actually stood in the middle of the walkway for several minutes to experience the full effects of nature at its rawest. It was only later, in the warmth and comfort of our apartment, that we realised how utterly stupid and reckless we'd all been. Swept up by the majesty of the foaming sea and roaring wind, we’d failed to appreciate the potential for things to go wrong. Lesson learnt.
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Nowadays whilst driving along the M1, the spire of Wakefield Cathedral, the tallest in Yorkshire, tells us that we are nearly at Leeds where our eldest son and family live. We then start ticking off the junctions: 39 where you can glimpse the hill on which Sandal Castle stood; 40 and then 41 where Sue has unhappy memories. Returning on her own one night and finding the motorway closed for repairs, she stopped outside The Bay Horse public house and asked directions. Twenty minutes later, she was back at The Bay Horse thoroughly frustrated. She rang me at home, described where she was and I issued her with instructions. Off she set and twenty minutes later my phone rang a second time. “I’m back at The Bay Horse again,” came the despairing voice on the other end. It transpired that her car had been facing away from Wakefield whereas I’d assumed she was facing the city.
Our cathedral visit was also on the way to Leeds where A and I were off on our annual Christmas Shopping trip again. By now A had given up all pretence of attempting to buy anything. The cathedral had been designated as such in 1888 and the building, much altered, restored and rebuilt prior to this, continued to be changed resulting in quite a mix of architectural styles. Much of the work done in Victorian times was the work of that ubiquitous architect George Gilbert Scott, this time aided by his son John Oldrid Scott. There were a number of features inside that we had seen before - mouse man furniture and green man carvings. The misericords had an unusual depiction of a pelican , symbolising charity, and a medieval acrobat baring his bottom, although blushes were spared by the strategic positioning of a leaf. It was a fine building but lacked anything particularly spectacular to mark it out. Like we found at Derby, the bridge chapel over the nearby River Calder had fallen under the jurisdiction of the cathedral and like at Derby, A and I completely ignored it as we headed off for the delights of Leeds.
I did get to see the chantry chapel on a later visit to Wakefield with Sue, but I was disappointed to find it closed on the day. George Gilbert Scott had been instrumental in restoring the chapel but he'd made rather a poor choice of building material, choosing a type of stone that erodes very quickly which has necessitated four major repairs during the 20th century. One of these resulted in a new west end fronting the bridge, whilst everything else we could see was Victorian Gilbert Scott. The chapel was initially built by the townsfolk of Wakefield as part of a new stone bridge in the 14th century but it closed for worship under the Tudors. It continued to be used for the next two hundred years, having a variety of functions such as a newsroom and a cheesecake shop. It was re-licensed for worship in 1848. I have to admit to discovering the chapel by accident because, along with visiting the excellent Barbara Hepworth Gallery, a short walk upstream, the bridge was the focus of my visit because it was here that the 17 year old Edmund, Earl of Rutland and second son of Edward IV, is believe to have been murdered by Lord Clifford in the aftermath of the Battle of Wakefield, in revenge for Clifford's father's death at the First Battle of St Albans. This brings me to a fairly recent collection that I have almost completed - the battlegrounds of the Wars of the Roses.
Allow me to indulge in a little medieval history pertaining to the Wars of the Roses, something that has become a little bit of an obsession since I took on the part time job of guide at Bosworth Battlefield, the scene of Henry Tudor's victory over Richard III. The 32 year long civil war is a fairly complex series of events caused essentially by the weak kingship of the last of the Lancastrian kings Henry VI. He was unable to carry out the two main functions of a medieval King: to protect the country and its overseas possessions and to keep the next layer of society, the fifty or so nobles, in order. He also suffered from mental health problems which presented his cousin, Richard, Duke of York, the opportunity to rule for the year Henry went into a catatonic state, being unable to speak or recognise people. On Henry's recovery, a power struggle developed between Henry's queen, Margaret of Anjou, and the Duke of York which eventually spiller into a street battle in 1455 in St Albans. I had visited St Albans twice to gain access to the cathedral and once to search for its Eleanor Cross site. I was back again a year ago looking for evidence of this first encounter and also a second Battle of St Albans. There was a very good museum on one side of the market place which gave a graphic description of the first battle. I then went out to explore the market place and Hollywell Hill, the road that descends down the hill to the river below, both of which were located exactly where they had been over 500 years earlier.
I stood in the busy market place, trying to put out of my mind the steady stream of cars and buses ploughing their way up and down one side of it. Instead I tried to imagine Henry VI, surrounded by those nobles supporting him, probably fairly relaxed as barricades had been erected by the Lancastrians all along one side of the old road to the river to hold up any Yorkist attack. He and his supporters certainly weren't expecting them to break through quite as easily as Richard, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, did because, as the Lancastrian leaders were still putting their armour on they were met with a hail of arrows from the Yorkists advancing up Hollywell Hill. Poor old Henry was hit by an arrow and had to be taken to an inn to begin recuperating. He was then moved into the cathedral overnight. The Lancastrians lost and Lord Clifford's father was killed. Six years later, after Richard, Duke of York, was killed at Wakefield, his greatest supporter, Warwick the Kingmaker, raised an army in the south and found himself under attack in St Albans. This time the Lancastrians won the day, forcing the Yorkists to fight as they retreated northwards before Warwick gave up the fight and went off to join the new Duke of York, Richard's eldest son Edward. I followed the course of the battle on foot for about a mile and then returned in order to drive to the village where battle was finally lost.
From there I drove the relatively short distance to Barnet where, ten years later, another battle took place. By now Edward, Duke of York had become King Edward IV. Warwick had fallen out with him, captured him at one point and tried to rule instead of him, been forgiven, tried to put Edward's brother George, Duke of Clarence on the throne, failed, and had finally thrown in his lot with the Lancastrians, bringing Henry VI back to the throne and forcing Edward into exile. Kingmaker was an apt soubriquet for this man who yearned after power. When Edward returned from exile, a confrontation was inevitable and the two sides met north of Barnet. I found a monument by a busy road junction that marked the location of the Lancastrian forces and then wandered through a meadow' slightly incongruous amidst the hustle and bustle of commuterland. The problem with visiting battlefields as opposed to cathedrals or castles, is that there is absolutely nothing to see. Often, historians aren't quite sure if they've got them in the right place. For three hundred years, they placed the events at Bosworth on the side of Ambion Hill near to the visitors centre, only to discover in the new millennium that it took place three miles to the west, the discovery of cannon shot confirming what local historians had long suspected. Visiting the battlefield of Edgecote Moor (1469) which happened during the time Warwick was attempting to place George, Duke of Clarence, on the throne, it was even more confusing. Accounts written after the battle give a very clear picture of the position of the two sides' armies except that it makes no sense at all from a geographical perspective. I meandered along country lanes and partially open footpaths where fighting may or may not have occurred.
Barnet was easier to interpret, especially as the story of the battle was fairly well recorded and featured a case of mistaken identity. Both armies consisted of three blocks or battles as they were rather confusingly named. The right hand block of the Lancastrians fought the left hand block of the Yorkist and vice versa with the central blocks fighting each other. Beginning your battle in early morning fog probably wasn't ideal but the Lancastrian right, under the Earl of Oxford, did a pretty decent job of beating their Yorkist counterparts and ended up chasing them off into Barnet where they indulged in a bit of pillaging. Realising the battle was not yet won, Oxford rounded up as many of his celebrating troops as he could and they returned to the fray. During their excursions in Barnet, the two remaining forces had pivoted so that when Oxford's troops arrived back at the fighting, there was a Lancastrian contingent where they expected the Yorkists to be. Mistaking the emblems on their clothing as the king's sun badge, the returning forces believed they were confronting Yorkists and attacked their own side. The surprised Lancastrians being attacked now assumed Oxford's men had changed sides and cries of 'traitors' filled the air. That was the trigger to the Lancastrian soldiers to decide it was time for plan B and they abandoned the fight and fled. Having walked through the various positions and manoeuvres as best I could with maps and guide books in hand, I too retreated to pick up Sue in St Albans and head for home having added three battlefields to my collection in one day.
The idea to collect battlefields came as Sue and I felt the need for a coffee as we were travelling down the M5 in Gloucestershire. I'd recently started working at Bosworth and had spent six months reading books relating to the battle, the Wars of the Roses and the discovery of the actual battlefield with a bit of Princes in the Tower and finding Richard III's body thrown in. The sign to Tewksbury not only promised hot drinks on a bitterly cold day, but also a chance to see where the decisive battle that followed Barnet took place. Warwick had been killed at Barnet and now Edward IV wanted to rid himself of the Lancastrian forces that still challenged him under the command of Queen Margaret of Anjou. She was desperately trying to get to Wales to join up with reinforcements but the city of Gloucester refused to let her cross the River Severn, forcing her upstream to Tewkesbury. Here Edward caught up with her exhausted and dispirited army and they ran riot in the fields alongside the river. Many Lancastrians took shelter in Tewksbury Abbey, a building far grander than many of the cathedrals we had visited. Sue and I took a turn around the abbey which contain the tombs of George, Duke of Clarence and those friends and advisors to Edward II, the Despensers. Sue then went off to find a coffee shop whilst I ventured out over the frozen fields to explore what was left of the battlefield that hadn't been covered with housing estates. I then joined her in the town, pausing to imagine the scene as Edward IV, intending to end all Lancastrian resistance to his rule, had the nobles dragged out of the abbey's sanctuary and executed in the main street.
When I informed my fellow guides of my quest to visit all the battlefields, following my return from Tewksbury, I was quizzed as to what counted as a battlefield and what didn't. I certainly wasn't going to row a boat out into the busy English Channel to visit the Battle of Sandwich which took place at sea. The Battle of Mansfield, which was probably no more than a skirmish in the town, was also off the list as nobody has a clue where it took place. I plotted the remaining sites I had yet to visit and worked out a strategy as to how to collect them. Two of them, Mortimer's Cross and Ludford Field, were close to Ludlow, the castle there having been a Yorkist stronghold. Sue and I went for the day, pulling in Croft Castle, a National Trust property where I discovered the tomb of Sir Richard Croft, who had fought for York at Mortimer's Cross but later became treasurer of Henry VII's household. Northampton was another day trip that I undertook on my own, the battlefield being in the grounds of Delapré Abbey where I had previously found one of the Eleanor Crosses. At this battle the Lancastrian guns met with a slight problem as they took aim at the advancing Yorkists: a sudden burst of rain dampened the gunpowder fuses and the guns refused to fire. That, and one of the Lancastrian commanders letting the Yorkists pass through his troops unopposed swung the day for the Yorkists.
A short caravan holiday in North Shropshire - motto: Where laidback people come to slow down - found us near the second encounter of the Wars of the Roses, Bloor Heath. Here, we walked a very poorly used footpath along the Yorkist positions, emerging scratched and stung on the road where we'd parked. Then whilst Sue read her book, I set off to find a monument to Lord Audley, a Lancastrian leader killed in the battle. Several minutes later, after risking life and limb on a ridiculously busy stretch of the A53, I returned to the car having seen precisely nothing. The next opportunity to visit a battlefield came during a week's family holiday near Bamburgh in Northumberland. The three castles along that stretch of coast - Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh and Alnwick - are all pretty impressive structures and changed hands with confusing regularity after Edward IV had taken the throne. This was the troublesome north where the Lancastrians were now fighting a rearguard action. That, and the threat of the Scots joining them, led to the Yorkists sending an escort to collect a Scottish delegation who were to meet with Parliament in York. On the way, the escort was attacked at Hedgeley Moor, a short drive from our holiday home. Opposite a large wood processing plant was a small layby with a sign indicating the location of the battlefield. A further interpretation board was sited in an enclosed area with information about the layout of troops and the course of the battle.
This was in marked contrast to Losecoat Field just off the A1 near Rutland Water. Here, there was absolutely nothing to indicate the fields and copses had ever seen anything more exciting than a passing tractor. It was fought along the course of the Great North Road, King Edward IV heading north to sort out a rebellion in Lincolnshire which Warwick the Kingmaker and the king's brother The Duke of Clarence were behind. Any hopes of them keeping their involvement quiet were destroyed as the Lancastrian force advanced shouting, "A Warwick, a Clarence." Their leader, Sir Robert Welles, then witnessed the execution of his father, carried out by the king in full view of the rebels. That, and a single barrage of gunfire, seemed to unnerve the rebels who turned and fled. With Hexham still to visit, I have added one further battlefield to the collection, that of the nastiest battle ever fought on English soil - the Battle of Towton. As the battlefield is just a few miles from my son's home in north Leeds, I took the opportunity of a visit there to pop out for a couple of hours to explore the landscape where, according to one estimate, 28,000 perished, more than on the first day of the Somme. Once again, a layby with an information board indicated the location of the fighting. The battle took place after Mortimer's Cross and St Albans 2 in 1461with Edward marching north to confront Henry VI and Queen Margaret. The Lancastrians had found a good defensive position with a fast flowing stream covering their rear and right flanks. There had already been a preliminary encounter at Ferrybridge which may or may not have been part of the twelve hours recorded length of the battle. The weather was hostile with a strong wind and a snowstorm raging as the two sides squared up to each other. The Yorkists fired a round of arrows which, with the wind behind them, landed amongst the Lancastrians. They immediately returned fire but their arrows held up in the wind and fell short. The Yorkists then collected up the Lancastrian arrows and duly fired them back at them. This prompted the Lancastrians to engage in the hand to hand fighting earlier than they'd planned. They may well have won the battle had not a relief Yorkist force arrived later in the day. Now, with the battle lost, the Lancastrians attempted to flee but there escape route was over the raging stream that had previously protected them. With Edward giving the order to take no prisoners, it was carnage. I took a footpath that led to the slight escarpment over the stream. It all looked so innocently peaceful, no clues at all to the horrors of that fateful day.
So, back to Wakefield where Sue and I stood on the bridge, drove past a monument to Richard Duke of York, and explored the motte and bailey of Sandal Castle, Richard's stronghold which he inexplicably left to confront a much larger Lancastrian force. We were able to walk around the ruins of what once was a formidable fortress before partaking of some refreshments in a small café that featured displays on the battle around its walls. The mnemonic for remembering the colours of the rainbow - Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain - most likely arose from this encounter in which Richard was probably betrayed into thinking some of the Lancastrian support was on his side. The upshot was that his head and that of his son Edmund ended up on spikes above the Micklegate gateway in York and greeted his other son Edward as he entered victorious after Towton, a grisly reminder of the violent times endured by medieval nobility.
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