The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [161]
After Mortimer’s Cross, Wiltshire joined up with Pembroke and, heavily disguised, they went into hiding, Pembroke vowing ‘with the might of Our Lord and the assistance of our kinsmen and friends, within short time to avenge the defeat’. He was mercifully unaware that this was the beginning of an exile that would last for a quarter of a century. Three weeks after the battle he was at his port of Tenby, where he could count upon the loyalty of the townsfolk, and on 25 February he wrote to at least two of his Welsh allies, trying to bolster their confidence in the Lancastrian cause and urging them to seek revenge on his behalf for the defeat at Mortimer’s Cross and the execution of his father. He then fled abroad, leaving young Henry Tudor in hiding at Pembroke Castle, where the Yorkists later discovered him – by 1468 he was living under house arrest as the ward of Sir William Herbert at Raglan Castle. As for Pembroke, for the next two decades and more he would be a fugitive, moving between France, Scotland, Wales and northern England, ever constant in the cause of Lancaster, even in the face of total defeat.
While awaiting the Queen’s arrival from the north, the Lancastrian army remained at Hull, where the civic council provided its men with food, since fresh victuals were unobtainable by boat from East Anglia thanks to Yorkist patrols off the coast of King’s Lynn. On 12 January, Lord Neville’s troops, growing restive, surged into Beverley and inflicted savage brutalities upon the citizens, a foretaste of what the south could expect.
By the 20th Margaret and her force had joined up with the main army at York where, on that day, a large gathering of Lancastrian nobles confirmed the agreement between Margaret of Anjou and Mary of Gueldres for the surrender of Berwick and the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and pledged themselves to persuade Henry VI to agree to it. News of this concord had been conveyed to the King of France, Scotland’s ally, who was greatly pleased, and ordered that all the harbours of Normandy should be open to the Queen and her friends, should they have need of them. Margaret, believing that Charles would come to her aid himself, if need be, was now ready to march south, not stopping to consider how the English would view a queen who encouraged England’s ancient enemy to invade her shores.
On that same day the Lancastrian army, under the command of Somerset and Northumberland, set off towards London, marching via Grantham, Stamford, Peterborough, Huntingdon, Royston and St Albans. Once they had crossed the Trent, the northern soldiers began robbing, raping, torturing, burning and looting at will, ‘laying waste all the towns and villages that stood along their way’, according to Benet. They sacked abbeys and priories, burned whole villages, barns, and even manor houses, after carrying off their treasures, and stole cattle and provisions. Because of the hardships of campaigning in winter it is likely that many were basically foraging for food, but their seizure of it meant near-starvation for country communities, especially as winter supplies were running low by that time of year.
Many people fled south from the wrath of the northerners, carrying with them dreadful tales of atrocities. The Croyland chronicler recorded the terror of the monks of his abbey and their neighbours in the nearby villages, who brought