Battle of Hedgeley Moor | |||||||
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Part of the Wars of the Roses | |||||||
Plan of the battle of Hedgeley Moor (Battles and Battlefields in England, 1896) | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
House of York | House of Lancaster | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Baron Montagu | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
6,000 | 5,000 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Unknown | Unknown |
The Battle of Hedgeley Moor, 25 April 1464, took place during the Wars of the Roses. It was fought at Hedgeley Moor, north of the villages of Glanton and Powburn in Northumberland, between a Yorkist army led by John Neville, Lord Montagu and a Lancastrian army led by Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. The battle ended in a Yorkist victory.
At the beginning of 1464, after setbacks in 1463, the Lancastrians were hoping that the Welsh Marches and the West Country would rise in their support. The Yorkists wanted to remove the threat of Scottish invasion, by reaching an agreement with the Scots. The English parliament was due to meet at York on 5 May to discuss terms with a party from Scotland, but a burst of Lancastrian activity in Northumberland and North Yorkshire meant that it would be difficult for the Scottish party to travel safely to York. Lord Montagu was therefore sent north with a small force to escort them to York.
The Duke of Somerset tried to ambush Montagu near Newcastle but the latter was able to evade this attempt. He continued his journey northwards, gathering troops as he went. When Montagu reached Hedgeley Moor he had an army of five or six thousand men. There he met a Lancastrian army of five thousand men commanded by Somerset. The Lancastrian army also included Lords Ros and Hungerford and Sir Ralph Percy.
The battle began with the normal exchange of archery between the two armies. Montagu (John Neville), then advanced across the 1,500 yards of moorland, only to be forced to halt and readjust his lines when the Lancastrian left flank, under Lords Ros and Hungerford (some 2,000 men), faltered, broke, and scattered.
The whole Lancastrian force gave way when the Yorkists clashed with their line. Pushed back by weight of numbers all but a few of the remaining Lancastrians fled the field. Sir Ralph Percy stayed with his household retainers and made a brave last stand. However, deserted by the rest of the army, including all the other commanders, he was soon slain. As he died he is said to have uttered the enigmatic words: ‘I have saved the bird in my bosom’.
The defeat and dispersal of the Lancastrian forces made it possible for the Scottish negotiators to be safely escorted to York, where a peaceful solution between Edward IV's Yorkists and the Scots was successfully negotiated. With regard to the Lancastrians, this battle was shortly followed by the decisive Battle of Hexham, on 15 May 1464.
A square sandstone pillar stands near the site of the battle, and is known as ‘Percy’s Cross’. It can be found on the east side of the A697, a couple of miles north of the village of Powburn. The road at this point is following the line of the Roman road known as the Devil's Causeway.
There are two ballads commemorating the battle, The Battle of Hedgley Moor by Frederick Sheldon, and The Legend of Percy's Cross by James Service. [1]
Year 1464 (MCDLXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.
Edward IV was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions between 1455 and 1487.
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, 6th Earl of Salisbury, known as Warwick the Kingmaker, was an English nobleman, administrator, landowner of the House of Neville fortune and military commander. The eldest son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, he became Earl of Warwick through marriage, and was the wealthiest and most powerful English peer of his age, with political connections that went beyond the country's borders. One of the leaders in the Wars of the Roses, originally on the Yorkist side but later switching to the Lancastrian side, he was instrumental in the deposition of two kings, which led to his epithet of "Kingmaker".
The Battle of Barnet was a decisive engagement in the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic conflict of 15th-century England. The military action, along with the subsequent Battle of Tewkesbury, secured the throne for Edward IV.
The Battle of Wakefield took place in Sandal Magna near Wakefield in northern England, on 30 December 1460. It was a major battle of the Wars of the Roses. The opposing forces were an army led by nobles loyal to the captive King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster and his Queen Margaret of Anjou on one side, and the army of Richard, Duke of York, the rival claimant to the throne, on the other.
Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury KG PC was an English nobleman and magnate based in northern England who became a key supporter of the House of York during the early years of the Wars of the Roses. He was the father of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, the "Kingmaker".
John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu was a major magnate of fifteenth-century England. He was a younger son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, and the younger brother of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the "Kingmaker".
The Battle of Hexham, 15 May 1464, marked the end of significant Lancastrian resistance in the north of England during the early part of the reign of Edward IV.
Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset was an important Lancastrian military commander during the English Wars of the Roses. He is sometimes numbered the 2nd Duke of Somerset, because the title was re-created for his father after his uncle died. He also held the subsidiary titles of 5th Earl of Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Dorset and 2nd Earl of Dorset.
The title of Earl of Northumberland has been created several times in the Peerage of England and of Great Britain, succeeding the title Earl of Northumbria. Its most famous holders are the House of Percy, who were the most powerful noble family in Northern England for much of the Middle Ages. The heirs of the Percys, via a female line, were ultimately made Duke of Northumberland in 1766, and continue to hold the earldom as a subsidiary title.
Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, was an English magnate.
Thomas Ros or Roos, 9th Baron Ros of Helmsley was a follower of the House of Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses.
Sir Ralph Percy was an English nobleman of the House of Percy, a knight, a Governor of Bamburgh Castle and a supporter of the Lancastrian faction in the Wars of the Roses. Percy was the son of Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland and Lady Eleanor Neville, and the grandson of Sir Henry "Hotspur" Percy.
John Clifford, 9th Baron Clifford, 9th Lord of Skipton was a Lancastrian military leader during the Wars of the Roses in England. The Clifford family was one of the most prominent families among the northern English nobility of the fifteenth century, and by the marriages of his sisters, John Clifford had links to some very important families of the time, including the earls of Devon. He was orphaned at twenty years of age when his father was slain by partisans of the House of York at the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of St Albans in 1455. It was probably as a result of his father's death there that Clifford became one of the strongest supporters of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, who ended up as effective leader of the Lancastrian faction.
Events from the 1460s in England.
Hedgeley Hall is a privately owned late 18th-century country house situated near Powburn, Northumberland, 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Alnwick. It is a Grade II listed building.
The First Battle of St Albans took place on 22 May, 1455, at St Albans, 22 miles (35 km) north of London, and traditionally marks the beginning of the Wars of the Roses in England. Richard, Duke of York, and his allies, the Neville Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, defeated a royal army commanded by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Unusually, the battle was contested in the town of St Albans itself, with the bulk of the fighting taking place in the streets and a tavern being used as a redoubt. Somerset was killed in the battle, and King Henry VI captured, clearing the way for a subsequent parliament to appoint Richard of York Lord Protector.
The Second Battle of St Albans was fought on 17 February 1461 during the Wars of the Roses in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England.
The Loveday of 1458 was a ritualistic reconciliation between warring factions of the English nobility that took place at St Paul's Cathedral on 25 March 1458. Following the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455, it was the culmination of lengthy negotiations initiated by King Henry VI to resolve the lords' rivalries. English politics had become increasingly factional during his reign, and was exacerbated in 1453 when he became catatonic. This effectively left the government leaderless, and eventually the King's cousin, and at the time heir to the throne, Richard, Duke of York, was appointed Protector during the King's illness. Alongside York were his allies from the politically and militarily powerful Neville family, led by Richard, Earl of Salisbury, and his eldest son, Richard, Earl of Warwick. When the King returned to health a year later, the protectorship ended but partisanship within the government did not.
The siege of the Tower of London was an episode of the Wars of the Roses, in which adherents of the rival Plantagenet houses of Lancaster and York were pitted against each other. In June 1460, several Yorkist nobles, who had unsuccessfully rebelled against King Henry VI the year before and had fled to Calais, invaded the south east of England at Sandwich. They enjoyed widespread support through popular discontent with the ruling court among the populace of Kent and the merchants of London, and were greeted by enthusiastic crowds when they entered London on 2 July.