The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [252]
While these events were taking place, says Croyland, ‘the frenzy of the King’s enemies was in no way quelled, particularly in Kent, and their numbers increased in spite of the fact that King Edward’s double victory seemed to all a clear sign of the justice of his cause. Incited by the few men who remained of those who had been with the Earl of Warwick, as well as by the Calais regulars, sailors and pirates, such men assembled under the command of Thomas, Bastard of Fauconberg.’ Fauconberg was Warwick’s cousin and had managed to retain control of the Earl’s ships. On hearing of Warwick’s death at Barnet, he had landed in Kent and begun to incite rebellion, calling himself ‘captain and leader of our liege lord Henry’s people in Kent’.
Men came flocking to him ‘from the furthest corners of Kent’, ready to march on London. Sir Geoffrey Gate, who had taken asylum in Calais, sent Fauconberg 300 soldiers, while the mayor of Canterbury joined him with 200 citizens. ‘In Essex,’ records the Great Chronicle of London, ‘the faint husbands cast from them their sharp scythes and armed them with their wives’ smocks, cheese cloths and old sheets, and weaponed them with heavy and great clubs and long pitchforks and staves, and so in all haste sped them towards London, and so joined unto the Kentishmen.’ Many, says the Arrivall, ‘would right fain have still been at home and not to have run into the danger of such rebellion’.
The rebels travelled to the capital by road and by boat along the Thames, ‘surveying all the ways in and out of London, to discover what forces would be necessary and how they might enter to pillage that most wealthy of cities’. On 8 May, Fauconberg, from his base at Sittingbourne, demanded that the Lord Mayor of London open the city gates to him, but the Londoners had already learned of the King’s victory at Tewkesbury and were not going to be bullied. When Edward IV heard of Fauconberg’s rising, he sent commissions of array out to many shires and within days ‘there came to him men to the number of 30,000’, according to Warkworth.
On the 13th, the Bastard appeared before London on the Surrey shore of the Thames and announced his intention of taking the city and freeing Henry VI from the Tower. But God, says Croyland, ‘gave stout hearts to the people of London that they might stand firm in the battle’. The Lord Mayor and aldermen refused him entry, saying they were holding the capital for King Edward. Fauconberg then marched his men to Kingston and crossed the Thames there, intending to lead an assault on Westminster, but when he received reports that the King’s army would soon be at his back, he retreated to Southwark, near to where his ships were moored. He then lined his guns up along the shore and fired upon the Tower, where Queen Elizabeth and her children were in residence and ‘all likely to stand in the greatest jeopardy that ever there was’. Elizabeth’s brother, Lord Rivers, was in command of the Tower, and ably defended the city against its attackers, ordering an intense bombardment of Fauconberg’s position by the cannon on the Tower walls and beating off the rebel assault.
The following day, Fauconberg made a futile attempt to fire London Bridge, but was driven back by cannonfire. Meanwhile, 3000 of his men had burst into the city through St Katherine’s Docks and were rampaging through the streets, firing guns and arrows indiscriminately, pillaging, and setting fire to Aldgate and Bishopsgate. At that point the Earl of Essex arrived to reinforce the city levies and sent them against the rebels, just as Rivers was sallying forth from the Tower with 4500 men. Fierce fighting ensued, and many of Fauconberg’s men were killed. Gradually the rebels were forced back to the banks of the Thames, and from there they were pursued to their