The Battle of Towton remembered

I usually post something on this day to mark the anniversary of the battle of Towton in 1461. On this 564th anniversary I realised that over the years I have written a considerable amount on this blog about Towton, and think that rather than spending time copying and pasting links to all these pieces I have written it is easier to suggest that if you want to look at them, readers should go to the search facility, at the bottom of the side bar and simply type in “Towton”, and be taken to a varied set of articles.

Next year is  not only the 565th anniversary, which trips off the tongue more easily, but it will actually fall on Palm Sunday. Maybe someone will organise more to commemorate the events of that bloody and terrible day for that reason alone. It will be the fortieth anniversary of the first of the Anglican rite Requiem Masses I organised in Saxton Church, where the churchyard contains the bones of many of the slain. 

In those intervening years, we have learned considerably more about the battle, notably with the excavation of the burial pit at Towton  Hall, and the comprehensive scientific study of the remains of the victims. It now looks as if the profile.of the chapel commissioned by King Richard III in 1484 has been identified, embedded in the later buildings of Towton Hall. A further significant discovery were the remains of handguns used by some of the troops at the battle. Whether these were English, or perhaps Burgundians fighting with the Yorkists or French on the Lancastrian side, is not clear. 

In one of my previous posts, I speculate on how far reaching the significance of the battle is. For those who were there, it was clearly very significant indeed. For many it was their last day of life. For the victorious Yorkists it inaugurated almost a quarter of a century.of often tenuous power, for the Lancastrians the horror of defeat, exile, and, for many, subsequent violent deaths. it certainly did not resolve the political problems of the realm and in many ways could be seen as exacerbating them. Without the battle of Towton, there would not have been the subsequent battles of Tewkesbury and Bosworth, and probably a very different political history for the country right down to the present day. Would there have been the English reformation, the Union of the Crowns, the Civil War? We cannot know but what happened on the field of Towton changed, one way or another, the course of British history. 

I usually end these posts on this day by asking readers to join me in praying for the repose of the souls of all those who fought and those who died at Towton in 1461.