The Battle of Wakefield

Today is the 564th anniversary of the Battle of Wakefield in 1460. The Lancastrian victory resulted in the death of Richard Duke of York, who had in October of that year been recognised by the Act of Accord as heir to the throne. This most certainly did not accord with the views of the Lancastrian grouping who had not been in the Parliament which agreed it, and their reaction was to remove York, his second son the Earl of Rutland, and his nephew Sir Thomas Neville on the battlefield. The following day the Duke’s bother-in-law, and father of Sir Thomas, was beheaded at nearby Pontefract by a group of Lancastrians. What we know as the Wars of the Roses was intensifying and becoming more vicious.

The political background to the events of that December day in Wakefield can be seen in Dr Simon Payling’s post on The History of Parliament blog at The brief triumph of Richard, duke of York: the Parliamentary Accord of 31 October 1460

This includes a reproduction of one of the two known surviving images of Richard Duke of York in the Hall of Trinity College at Cambridge 

This fragment is in a chapel in Cirencester Parish Church

Image: Wakefield Historical Society

Fourteen years ago I posted on this day about the battle in The Battle of Wakefield 1460

In that article I point out my particular connection with the events of that winter afternoon in that I, like not a few other twentieth century people, was born at a maternity hospital situated on part of the onetime battlefield. 

The Duke of York had spent Christmas at Sandal Castle with the other prominent casualties of the battle together with an army he was leading north to deal with Lancastrian opposition to his new position. They had been attacked in a skirmish near Worksop but there appears to have been a truce of some kind with the Lancastrian forces based at Pontefract. Befor the festive season was over the Lancastrians moved against the Yorkist headquarters at Sandal. Even allowing for chroniclers exaggerated estimates most of York’s troops must have been outside the relatively small compact castle overlooking the curve in the river Calder and the town of Wakefield on the opposite bank. The need to ensure supplies for them may have been the reason York was drawn out of the castle to find himself in a Lancastrian trap 

The blog and website A Nevill Feast offered some thoughts about the battle in 2013 at Wakefield and murder at Pontefract

The blog of the The History of Parliament has another useful article by Dr Payling which draws upon the biographies researched by the project on fifteenth century MPs. This can be seen at Richard, duke of York’s last Christmas: the Battle of Wakefield, 30 Dec. 1460

I would however query the points he makes in his last paragraph, which seem to me to suggest an unconscious bias towards the Yorkists because they emerged victorious a few months later. As he says in his other article to which I have linked the Lancastrian leadership would never accept the Act of Accord passed by a Parliament in which they were not present. The relative capabilities of York and Salisbury, Edward of March and Warwick the Kingmaker are open to discussion, and the deaths of political opponents in or after battles a grim reality of the age. Somerset, Northumberland and Clifford would no doubt have seen their fathers’ deaths at the First Battle of St Albans in 1455 as a murderous ambush, and similarly the nobles killed at the battle of Northampton the previous summer. In consequence they were now responding in kind. Nor is it clear that York - as per Shakespeare - was taken alive.

The very damaged remains of the effigy of Richard Neville Earl of Salisbury from Bisham Priory, where he was reburied in 1462-3, now in Burghfield Church in Berkshire

Image: The History Jar 

The effigy is discussed in fascinating detail by Pauline Routh in an article available from The Ricardian website of the Richard III Society

Wikipedia has an illustrated biography of the Earl of Salisbury at Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury

Despite much modern building resulting from the expansion of Wakefield, new roads or realignments of their fifteenth century position and the addition of the railway it is still relatively easy to envisage the scene as it would have been in 1460. Sandal Castle has been re-excavated and is open to the public, and within easy walking distance is the nineteenth century replacement of the destroyed monument to where the Duke of York was said to have been killed. A little further to the north is the medieval bridge over the Calder with its famous chantry chapel. Near here is where the Earl of Rutland was slain, and the original facade has been restored and can be seen in a park to the south of the battlefield area.

There is a useful discussion of the topography of the battlefield at Battle of Wakefield – Waterton's Walton

Other places associated with the aftermath of the battle such as Pontefract Castle and Micklegate Bar in York can also be visited. In the church at Fotheringhay is the replacement tomb created at the suggestion of Queen Elizabeth I for great great grandfather the Duke of York. I wrote about the 1476 reburial there by the seemingly victorious Yorkists of York and Rutland in The reburial of Richard Duke of York in 1476

The memorial to the Duke of York as rebuilt in 1897 on Manygates Lane, Wakefield 

Image: Historic England