The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [238]
On 19 March, Oxford, then at Bury St Edmunds, received ‘credible tidings’ of Edward’s invasion, and issued an urgent summons to the men of the region to array themselves and attend him. Warwick responded to the news of Edward’s coming with a summons to all loyal Englishmen to take up arms, but some Lancastrian nobles – notably Shrewsbury, Stanley, Somerset, Exeter and Pembroke – disobeyed it, preferring to await Queen Margaret’s arrival. Nevertheless, Warwick managed to raise a sizeable army: the Arrivall claimed that, ‘where he could not raise the people with goodwill, he straitly charged them to come forth on pain of death’. Parliament granted the Prince of Wales the power to array men for the defence of the realm, and commissions were sent out in his name, threatening those who did not comply with the penalties meted out to traitors.
That Warwick was now a desperate man is evident from a postscript he appended in his own hand to a letter he sent to Sir Henry Vernon, the only surviving one of many that he dispatched at this time to his friends and supporters: ‘Henry, I pray you, fail not now, as ever I may do for you.’ Vernon, like many others, paid no heed to the summons: he received several from both Warwick and Clarence and ignored them all.
Warwick marched north, leaving Archbishop Neville responsible for the safe-keeping of King Henry and the capital. Clarence was already active in Bristol and Wells, recruiting men, and soon had a force of 4000 soldiers. Montague as yet lacked sufficient numbers to attack Edward’s force in the north.
When the King arrived before York, the city magistrates at first refused him entry. But he again requested admission, saying he was a simple duke, come only to claim the duchy of York, his rightful inheritance. The city fathers would not argue with that, and reasoned that admitting a duke did not constitute an act of treason. They were further convinced of Edward’s good intentions when, says Warkworth, ‘afore all the people, he cried, “À King Harry! À King Harry!” ’, and stuck an ostrich feather, the badge of the Prince of Wales, in his hat. On 18 March he was allowed to ride into York with a few companions, leaving his army encamped outside the city walls. Within the city, he swore a solemn oath before the citizens that he had no intention of reclaiming the throne.
Edward waited now to see if Northumberland would join him, but the Earl ‘sat still’ on his northern estates with a strong force of retainers, who would not fight for the King but heeded their master’s injunction to let him pass unmolested. Edward also learned that Montague was waiting for him at Pontefract, but of military movements further south he as yet knew nothing.
While Edward was in York, Warwick and his army had marched on Coventry to join up with Oxford and Clarence. Oxford was already bringing 4000 men of East Anglia up the Fosse Way towards Newark, and Clarence was marching his army north from the south-west. The combined strength of Edward’s enemies was a formidable challenge to his military abilities, but he was more than equal to it. He left York on 19 March and moved to Tadcaster. The next day, he suddenly swung west, to avoid Pontefract, and began recruiting men in his former lordships of Sandal and Wakefield. Montague, surprisingly, made no move to block Edward’s progress after he had given him the slip.
From Wakefield, Edward marched via Doncaster to Nottingham,