The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [216]
The rebels – and the Nevilles – had scored a resounding victory. Pembroke was taken prisoner along with his brother, the craven Devon fled into Somerset, and Rivers and Sir John Wydville went into hiding, knowing that Warwick would try to hunt them down.
After the battle, the Herbert brothers were brought before Warwick and Clarence at their headquarters at Northampton, where Warwick had no compunction in condemning them as traitors and ordering their executions. There was no legal justification for his action, since neither Herbert nor his confederates had committed treason against their lawful sovereign, nor were they guilty of any crime. Nevertheless, both were beheaded on 27 July. Herbert’s wife had once promised him that if anything should happen to him she would take a vow of perpetual widowed chastity. Before he was led out to die, he wrote her a last letter: ‘Pray for me, and take the said order that ye promised me, as ye had in my life my heart and love.’
People were shocked at Herbert’s execution: he had been one of the chief mainstays of Edward IV’s throne. His death meant that the earldom of Pembroke was once more vacant and that Jasper Tudor would almost certainly try to reclaim it. It also meant that nothing now stood between Warwick and his ambitions in Wales.
The loss of his powerful guardian left young Henry Tudor without a protector, but the widowed Countess of Pembroke took him to live with her at Weobley in Herefordshire. His mother, Margaret Beaufort, tried at this time to regain custody of him, but without success.
After Edgecote, Conyers and his northerners returned home; there is no record of Conyers receiving any reward for the sterling service he had done Warwick, yet he remained loyal to the Earl. On 17 August, the fugitive Earl of Devon was captured by the common people of Somerset at Bridgewater, where, says Hall, he was ‘cut shorter by the head’.
Meanwhile, on the 29th the King had decided it was unsafe to remain at Nottingham waiting for Pembroke, and had ridden south. At the village of Olney, near Coventry, he learned of the Earl’s crushing defeat at Edgecote, news which prompted many of the nobles with him to desert, leaving him isolated and vulnerable. He now had no choice but to dismiss those lords who were still in attendance, and leave himself at the mercy of his enemies. Only Gloucester and Hastings remained with him.
Archbishop Neville soon found out that the King was at Olney ‘and that all the men he had raised had fled from him, so, on the advice of the Earl of Warwick, he went with a few horsemen’ to seize him. At midnight, the King was awoken by the sound of many horses’ hooves and men shouting outside his window. Looking out, he saw in the street below a troop of soldiers wearing Warwick’s livery. Then there was a sharp knock on the door. The King’s attendants opened it to reveal Archbishop Neville, fully armed, standing in the antechamber. The Archbishop offered a courteous greeting to the King and bade him dress at once. Edward refused, saying he was tired and had not had sufficient rest. But