Vortex of Violence – South Wales and the Beginning of the Wars of the Roses

In his seminal work ‘The End of the House of Lancaster’ Professor R. L. Storey places the beginning of the Wars of the Roses firmly in the period July/August 1453 and attributes its origins to the rising tensions between the Neville and Percy families in Yorkshire during that summer. This ignores a far more violent feud between two altogether more powerful cousins, both closely related to the Nevilles, which had raged in south Wales over the issue of regional supremacy during the previous fifteen months.

The noble rivalry in the north came to a head with an attempt by Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, to intercept a Neville wedding party on its way back to Sheriff Hutton from Tattersall castle in Lincolnshire. The Nevilles, led by the Earl of Salisbury and his two sons, Thomas and John, were taking the road north from York when they were confronted at Heworth Moor by Egremont’s affinity, numbering some 5,000 men. Egremont, the youngest son of Thomas, Earl of Northumberland, seems to have been a particularly rash and troublesome man and although he had little hope of inheriting the family estates, he had been a conspicuous and destabilizing presence in the politics of the north since 1450. There had been several encounters between Egremont and the younger Nevilles since the spring and he had been recruiting a following in and around the city of York since May.

When the Neville party hoved into view on Heworth Moor, Egremont tried to get his ragtag group of followers into some sort of order to intercept the Nevilles and bring to a head the simmering tensions of the previous months. However, despite its size, Egremont’s retinue was not made up of battle-hardened reivers from the border with Scotland but, apart from a few knights of the Percy retinue, mainly comprised ‘members of the crafts – tailors, weavers and the like’ – largely the unemployed artisans of York. As the two forces squared up there was a great deal of posturing; insults were traded, and a few brawls may have broken out but in the end the Nevilles reached home ‘without bloodshed’ and only one man claimed compensation for the injuries he had sustained. This celebrated encounter was not, as a London chronicler would state in retrospect ‘ the beginning of sorrows’ but rather a byproduct of an altogether more brutal series of encounters which had already blighted south Wales for over a year, and which would have far more baleful national consequences.

That conflict had its roots in the defeat and expulsion of the final English garrisons in Normandy in May 1450. After the battle of Formigny all of Henry V’s conquests had been lost, and the benefits of the great victory of Agincourt had proven to be ephemeral. The man blamed by many for this national humiliation – the commander who led the remnants of England’s Norman garrisons to refuge in Calais, was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and cousin of King Henry VI.  Somerset, now defending Calais, was fortunate not to be in England at this time as exasperation with the ineffectual government of the king along with the searing humiliation of defeat had led to a serious upsurge of violence known to history as ‘Jack Cade’s Rebellion’ in July and August 1450 during which the idea of an alternative king had been uttered for the first time. At its height, the rebellion had engulfed the southeast of the kingdom and seen the brutal beheading of the king’s former chief minister, the Duke of Suffolk and the murder of Bishop Moleyns of Chichester by a mob of unpaid soldiers and sailors. The government had suppressed the revolt with difficulty and had eventually managed to restore order to the southeastern counties.

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, later known as Warwick the Kingmaker. (Public Domain)

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Top image: Medieval knight wearing armor, ready to fight in battle.           Source: Gorodenkoff / Adobe Stock

By Stephen David