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of their cause, was among them. His son had predeceased him, and he was succeeded as second duke of Buckingham by his grandson, seven-year-old Henry Stafford. John, Viscount Beaumont, Constable of England, former steward to the Queen and one of her loyalest supporters, had also been killed, along with the Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Egremont, who had been cut down by Warwick’s Kentishmen outside the King’s tent. Many Lancastrian casualties had drowned in the River Nene near Sandyford Mill. The dead were buried in nearby Delapré Abbey, which still stands, although much of its fabric dates from later periods. Yorkist losses were light. Today, little remains of the battlefield site, which is occupied by the Avon Cosmetics Company.

As the battle ended, Henry Mountfort, a Yorkist archer, captured the King and confined him to his tent. When it was clear that the day was theirs, Warwick, March and Fauconberg found him there alone, ‘as a man born and predestinate to trouble, misery and calamity’. The three lords fell on their knees and craved the King’s forgiveness for having taken up arms against him, emphasising that their only motive had been the desire to establish stable and just government, and assuring him of their continuing loyalty. Then March, who had not as yet sworn fealty to his sovereign, knelt and did him homage. For all their subservience, however, the Yorkist lords now had the King in their custody. Later that day they conducted him in procession to Delapré Abbey and thence to Northampton. Meanwhile, Wiltshire and many other prominent Lancastrians had gone into hiding.

Queen Margaret had spent anxious days at Eccleshall Castle, awaiting news. When it came, it could not have been worse: the battle lost, many of her supporters dead or fled, and the King in the hands of the Yorkists, who would now control not only the sovereign but the government and the administrative departments of state. However, with the Queen and her son still at large, the Yorkists would have no scope for complacency.

Some Lancastrian prisoners taken in the battle, including the Lords Hungerford and Lovell, gave their captors the slip and rode to join the Queen, but others, including Lord de la Warre and the Earl of Kendal, transferred their loyalties to the Yorkists. Margaret decided it would be prudent to leave Eccleshall, and fled with her son and a few attendants through Cheshire to Wales. Near Malpas Castle, one of her servants, John Cleger, robbed her of her treasure and jewellery, and even threatened to kill her and the Prince, at which some of her retinue deserted her. However, as Cleger was rifling through her baggage, the Queen and her son managed to escape with the help of her remaining attendants and a courageous fourteen-year-old boy, John Coombe of Annesbury, with whom she and the Prince rode pillion to Jasper Tudor at Harlech Castle. Here she met with a warm welcome and was presented with many gifts. Her brother-in-law ‘greatly comforted’ her, ‘for she had need thereof’, though he was aware that he would not be able to shelter her for long.

Jasper was in control of York’s castle of Denbigh, and he suggested that the Queen move there. ‘Gregory’ says she left Harlech by stealth ‘for she durst abide in no place but in private’ because ‘counterfeit tokens were sent unto her, as though they had come from her most dread lord the King, but it was not of his sending, but forged things, for they that brought the tokens were of the King’s house, and bade her beware that she gave no credence thereto, for the lords would fain had her unto London, for they knew well that all the workings that were done grew by her, for she was more wittier than the King’.

Giving out that she had gone to France to raise troops, Margaret went to Denbigh, where she was soon joined by Exeter and other prominent Lancastrians. On their advice, she now wrote to Somerset, Devon and other adherents, asking them to raise an army in the north and wait upon her at Hull. On 9 August, along with other royalist constables of Yorkist castles in Wales, Pembroke was ordered