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By Root 1299 0

and the leaders were careful throughout to avoid any attack on the King himself, skirting Nottingham on their way. Edward was slow to react to this new threat, and wasted much valuable time in summoning Warwick from Calais to assist him and then, when Warwick failed to obey, waiting for Herbert of Pembroke to arrive. Herbert was bringing with him 43,000 Welshmen, and in the west Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, had mustered 7000 archers. In the meantime, the King had ordered the Wydvilles to seek refuge in castles in East Anglia and Wales, but Rivers and his son Sir John Wydville, who had been lodging in Herbert’s castle at Chepstow, joined Edward on his march north to intercept the rebels. In Yorkshire, Northumberland forced Redesdale’s men to disperse, but they merely crossed the border into Lancashire and regrouped.

From Calais, on 12 July, Warwick issued a manifesto proclaiming that he and Archbishop Neville had been urged by the King’s true subjects to save his Grace from the ‘deceivable and covetous rule and guiding of certain seditious persons’. He then went on to list all-too-familiar grievances, such as ‘lack of governance’, ‘great impositions and inordinate charges’ and the corruption of justice. He promised the people that he would petition the King to remove his evil counsellors, the Wydvilles and Pembroke, cut taxation, and pay heed in future to the true lords of his blood – in other words, Warwick and Clarence. If the King did not meet these demands, he would deserve the same fate as Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI – deposition. The manifesto ended with a plea for armed support from all true subjects of the King and a promise that Warwick would be in Canterbury in three days. Already, his agents were in Kent enlisting men.

On 16 July, later than planned, Warwick and Archbishop Neville returned to England unopposed and received a heartening welcome in Kent. At Canterbury crowds of armed men flocked to join them, and the common people hailed Warwick as their deliverer. On the 18th he left Canterbury and marched on London at the head of a now substantial army; two days later the Lord Mayor permitted him to march through the city on his way north, in the belief that the Earl was taking reinforcements to the King. Crowds cheered him as he went.

Pembroke, meanwhile, was hastening to join the King with his Welsh reinforcements, having joined up with Devon and his force. But on the evening of the 24th, when they came to Banbury, the two earls quarrelled over who should have the best lodgings at the inn. Pembroke, as the senior commander, insisted that he should occupy them, but Devon, who had arrived first, protested that they had earlier agreed to take lodgings on a first come, first served basis. Pembroke peremptorily ordered Devon out of the rooms, and Devon, put out because he had just seduced the innkeeper’s daughter, marched off in a rage with all his men.

The next morning, Pembroke rode back to where his army was encamped by Edgecote Hill, six miles north-east of Banbury. The camp was on the western bank of a tributary of the River Cherwell, in the valley of Danes Moor. The next day, long before he had expected to do so, Pembroke sighted Robin of Redesdale’s northern army, which caught him unprepared for battle. Even though Devon and his archers had now rejoined him, his army was still considerably smaller than that of the rebels, who were drawn up in battle order on Blackbird Hill, to the north-east of Danes Moor.

The Battle of Edgecote began at dawn on 26 July 1469, when both sides advanced to a crossing place on the river and tried to take it, Pembroke going ahead with a troop of horsemen and defending himself manfully against a savage northern onslaught. Despite the odds, he managed to secure the crossing and hold on to it, while the northern army withdrew to await reinforcements from Warwick. While they were waiting, they regrouped into battle order. Pembroke, meanwhile, had been joined by Sir William Parr and Sir Geoffrey Gate with fresh troops, but was still outnumbered.

Then there appeared