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Fatal Colours—PKY—234X153mm FATALCPR01 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 1 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 FATAL COLOURS Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 2 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 3 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 FATAL COLOURS the battle of towton 1461 George Goodwin Weidenfeld & Nicolson london Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 4 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson 13579108642 Text © George Goodwin 2011 Maps © David Hoxley 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher. The right of George Goodwin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. hb isbn-13 978 0 297 86071 6 Typset by Input Data Services Ltd, Bridgwater Somerset Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, Kent The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, The Orion Publishing Group Ltd Orion House 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane London wc2h 9ea An Hachette UK Company www.orionbooks.co.uk Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 5 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 For Frances, Cecily and Arthur Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 6 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 7 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 contents vii contents List of Illustrations ix Introduction by David Starkey xi Dramatis Personae: England, 1422–1450 xxv England, Spring 1460 xxvii Prologue 1 1 A Step Too Far 3 2 A Great Man’s Legacy – Minority 9 3 An Absence of Kingship – Majority 25 4 An Absent-Minded King 45 5 A Question of Honour 60 6 A Queen Transformed 81 7 ‘A Warwick’ 98 8 The Sun in Splendour 114 9 A Country at War – North vs South 135 10 Towton – Palm Sunday 1461 157 In Memoriam 189 Dramatis Personae: After Towton 195 Wound Man 199 Family Trees 200 Notes 204 Select Bibliography 227 Selected Places to Visit and Related Organisations 235 Acknowledgements 239 Index 243 Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 8 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 9 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 list of illustrations ix list of illustrations Charles VI, King of France (Bibliothe`que Nationale de France) Henry V, King of England (National Portrait Gallery) Christine de Pisan in her study (British Library) Queen Catherine and the birth of Henry VI, 1421 (Topfoto) Nine-year-old Henry VI with St Catherine and the Madonna and Child (British Library) The tomb of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and tutor to Henry VI (R. J. L. Smith of Much Wenlock) John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France (British Library) Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Bibliothe`que de la Ville) Jan van Eyck painting, controversially identified as Cardinal Beaufort (Kuntshistorisches Museum, Vienna) Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, with sons (Bibliothe`que Nationale de France) Joan Neville (ne´e Beaufort), Countess of Westmorland, with daughters (Bibliothe`que Nationale de France) Eton College (M.G.H. Mowbray) King’s College chapel, Cambridge Defeat and massacre of the English at Formigny, 1450 (Bibliothe`que Nationale de France) The siege of Caen, 1450 (Bibliothe`que Nationale de France) Duke of York in stained glass (Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge) Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou (British Library) Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan (Brera, Milan) Pope Pius II (Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence) Micklegate Bar, York (Nick Robinson) Henry VI (National Portrait Gallery) Edward IV (National Portrait Gallery) Replica of a knight with hand-and-a-half sword and rondel dagger (Royal Armouries Museum) Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:37 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 10 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 x fatal colours Maces (Royal Armouries Museum) A poleaxe (Royal Armouries Museum) Edge of the escarpment at Towton (Roger Keech © rkproductions) The ‘funnel’ slope down to Cock Beck at Towton (John Anderson © rkproductions) The Battlefield at Towton (Roger Keech © rkproductions) Towton battle victims, excavated in 2005 (© Tim Sutherland) Edward IV and Jean de Waurin (British Library) Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:37 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 11 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR02 introduction xi introduction David Starkey This is a book about a battle. But it is also a book about kingship – or rather, as the King in question was Henry VI, its very present absence. To be short the prince is the life, the head and the authority of all things that be done in the realm of England. And to no prince is done more honour and reverence than to the King and Queen of England; no man speaketh to the prince nor serveth at table but in adoration and kneeling; all persons of the realm be bareheaded before him; insomuch as in the chamber of presence where the cloth of estate is set, no man dare walk, yea though the prince be not there, no man dare tarry there but 1 bareheaded. Sir Thomas Smith wrote these words of his own sovereign, that most kingly of queens, Elizabeth I. But they apply equally to all her predecessors, including that least kingly of kings, Henry VI. His court, contrary to what most historians have supposed, was mag- nificent. The rituals of his chapel royal were held up for emulation in Portugal. His badge was worn with pride in Italy. And at home, for almost forty years, he was treated with all the solemn, quasi- religious respect and ceremony that Smith describes.2 Thus it is kneeling and bareheaded that the Lords and Commons appear before their young master in the illuminated foundation charter of King’s College, Cambridge, the second of Henry VI’s two great works of piety – just as they did in real life.3 Now contemporaries were not fools and most of them were as well able to gauge Henry VI’s inadequacies as we are. But they were able to discount them because of a difference between their thought patterns and ours. Nowadays we distinguish between the office (abstract) and the incumbent (person). They thought instead of two Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:37 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 12 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR02 xii fatal colours different royal persons or kings: there was the actual King (the rex nunc or ‘King for the time being’, as the records of the Exchequer, the principal department of finance, put it with wonderful coolness) and there was the permanent King. The latter never died, as the herald’s cry at a royal death made clear: ‘the King is dead; long live the King!’ And he embodied the essence of kingship. But he was absorbed in whoever was rex nunc. Moreover, this other King was not only eternal, he was also ubiquitous. The actual King, like other human beings, could only be in one place at a time. He was at Westminster. Or Woodstock. Or Windsor. Or even – God forbid – in prison. But his alter ego had no such limitations. He could, at one and the same time, be in every law court and every county. His person travelled with his seal and his most potent symbol – as Smith makes clear – was an empty throne. In short, this King was a royal god. And, like God himself, he was self-created. For these emanations of royal power were the creation of a long line of earlier kings. They went back to the Conquest and beyond. And the best of what they built survived. The French have a word for it: acquis. That is, a power which is accumulated and added to and hardly ever diminished. Such was the nature of English government.4 Oldest, most important and the foundation of everything else was the unity of England. This was the achievement of the Anglo-Saxon kings of Wessex: Aethelstan, the great Alfred’s grandson, who was the first king to rule over all England, and Edgar, whose ‘imperial’ consecration at Bath some fifty years later in 973 set a precedent of magnificence and liturgical coherence whose effects were still felt six centuries later in the two coronations of Henry VI. This hard-won unity was built on natural advantages. England was comparatively small; as the larger part of an island it had clear natural frontiers and its stock was relatively homogenous. But royal initiative was more important still. The key was the characteristic unit of local government: the shire (in Anglo-Saxon) or county (in French). These were established first in Wessex and then spread, with the power of Wessex, over the whole country. The shire had a Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:37 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 13 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR02 introduction xiii double face: it was both an area of royal administration, headed by a powerful royal official, the ealdorman, and a unit of local self- government.Butwhatitwas notwasjustasimportant.Theealdorman, who became known as the earl under the Danish occupation of Canute, might be the predominant landowner in the shire.
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