In the late spring of 1467, two medieval knights participated in a joust that became the most famous confrontation of its kind in the fifteenth century.
Queen Elizabeth’s brother, Anthony, Lord Scales (later Earl Rivers) and Anthony, the Bastard of Burgundy, the son of Philip the Good, were both champions of the lists in their own right, and they met on Thursday 11 June at West Smithfield in London to try and kill each other.
For three days, they fought out the epitome of chivalrous expectation in an age that had almost forgotten what it meant to be chivalrous due to the effects of intermittent civil war.
The lists at Smithfield had been specially smoothed and prepared for the tournament. Pavilions and grandstands had been custom-built to house the dignitaries, including King Edward IV, while spectators jostled for the best vantage points to witness the important event.
After the Lord Mayor and his procession had taken their places in the arena, the two champions entered the lists with their entourages and did reverence to King Edward before going off to arm themselves. Lord Scales equipped himself in his lavish pavilion while the Bastard of Burgundy preferred to arm in the open. And when all was ready, the trumpets sounded, and the two knights, mounted on their best horses, charged towards each other down the ninety-yard long lists, lances couched.
The Tudor chronicler Edward Hall passed down to us his version of what happened next:
On the first day they ran together certain courses with sharp spears, and so departed with equal honour.
And the next day they entered the field, the Bastard sitting on a bay courser, being somewhat dim of sight, and the Lord Scales having a grey courser on whose schaffron was a long and sharp spike of steel. And the Lord Scales’ horse, by chance or by custom, thrust his spike into the nostrils of the horse of the Bastard, so that, for very pain, it mounted so high, that it fell on one side with his master.
And the Lord Scales rode round about him, with his sword shaking in his hand, till the king commanded the marshal to help up the Bastard. And when he was remounted, he made a countenance as if to assail his adversary. But the king, either favouring his brother’s honour then gotten, or mistrusting the shame which might come to the Bastard if he were again foiled, caused the heralds to cry a lostel, and every man depart.
The morrow after this , the two noblemen came into the field on foot, with two poleaxes, and there fought valiantly like two courageous champions. But at last, the point of the Lord Scales’ axe happened to enter the sight of the helm of the Bastard, and by pure force he might have plucked him to his knees, when the king suddenly cast down his warder, and the marshals severed them.
The Bastard, not content with this, and being very desirous to be avenged, trusting on his cunning at the poleaxe, required the king, of justice, that he might perform his enterprise. The Lord Scales refused it not, and the king said he would ask counsel.
And so he called to him the constable and marshal, with the officers of arms. And after long consultation had passed, and laws of arms rehearsed, it was declared to the Bastard, for a sentence definitive, that if he would prosecute further this attempted challenge, he must, by the law of arms, be delivered to his adversary in the same case, and like condition, as he was before. That is to say, the point of the Lord Scales’ axe to be fixed in the sight of his helm, as deep as it was when they were severed.
However, the Bastard, upon hearing this judgement, doubted much the sequel, if he should so proceed again. Wherefore he was content to relinquish his challenge and retire.
It was lucky the Bastard didn’t lose his life, it seems. However, the duel is perhaps more impressive for its political outcome rather than its chivalric splendour.
In this instance, Edward IV cleverly managed to avert unnecessary friction with his ally Burgundy. In other words, we may see the above contest as being a politically controlled fight, in contrast to the unrestricted butchery of the Wars of the Roses battlefield, which was, of course, the complete opposite.
Although sometimes dangerous and bloody for the aristocracy, such fashionable tournaments provided the training ground for actual warfare, and thus the joust was an important ‘sport’. Chivalry was seen as an integral part of the overall structure governing medieval life, and its workings, therefore, contests were seen as purely ‘gladiatorial’ - at least in the above example anyway.
However, the total opposite applied when this ‘training’ was transferred to the battlefield. And this is especially interesting during the Wars of the Roses, when the codes and rules of chivalry were being eroded by the effects of intermittent blood feuding and civil war.
Obviously, the limiting rules derived from chivalry that governed all aspects of warfare had been in place long before the Wars of the Roses began. And it was commonplace in battles for important people and other notable individuals to be given mercy when captured in exchange for ransom. Anyone who could provide good compensation would be spared. And this aspect of warfare is confirmed in many contemporary chronicles where the ‘limiting rules’ of chivalry favoured clemency, the good treatment of prisoners, the granting of safe-conducts through war zones, the recognising of immunities from combat, and the limiting of battles to a specific time and place.
Thus the chivalric code in war can be seen as the forerunner of international law whereby its rules and ideas could be transposed into the political realities of the time using the mediation of various orders of chivalry and recognised heralds.
However, the reality of the above was far removed from reality because there was an inherent contradiction present in the workings of chivalry which, in effect, diluted its meaning. This meant that, on the one hand, chivalry justified war and violence, but on the other, it limited and contradicted why the knight existed.
But did these limits deter the knight?
In the words of one contemporary, absolutely not:
The shedding of his own, or others’ blood cannot dismay or frighten him, and death seems a small penalty to pay in order to gain honour and great renown.
In fact, one would be mistaken for thinking chivalry even existed.
Today the word ‘chivalry’ conjures up for most people a world of knights in shining armour participating in jousts with ladies swooning as their champions gained honour or fell victim in the lists. Amid the heraldic pomp and splendour of the time, it was a pleasant pastime for some - despite the obvious dangers to others.
The extension of this pastime was, of course, actual warfare. Following a code of honour to defend the church, the weak and the oppressed, and at the same time offering the enemy professional respect in battle, the knight in this Arthurian dual guise was the essence of medieval society.
However, in my opinion, ‘chivalry’ is an abstraction and was so, according to many knights who wrote of their experiences in the fifteenth century. Although we can explain what is meant by the word knight – the supposed possessor of chivalric qualities – the actual ideology and practice of chivalry is not so easily pinned down. In short, medieval chivalry is fraught with inconsistencies and contradictions that, in my opinion, fail to add up.
Sir John Hawkwood, the English mercenary knight of the White Company in the service of the Condottiero in Italy, was well aware of what chivalry meant to him in the 1300s. At the gates of Montecchio in Italy, he was met by two friars who wished him peace.
‘May the Lord take away your alms,’ he replied. ‘Do you not know I live by war and that peace would be my undoing?’
Hawkwood was convinced that for him, chivalry meant the route whereby he might overcome his foes, destroy property, and glorify himself on the battlefield – ambitions he realised in abundance during his military career.
In this instance, ‘true’ chivalry is therefore non-existent, and Hawkwood uses it as a smokescreen to enable him and his contemporaries to commit violence, murder, and even war crimes. In isolated instances, chivalry could also be seen as a downright sham if we believe the exploits of Sir John Harleston, sitting with a group of English knights drinking from silver chalices that they had just looted from a nearby church.
However, in more positive terms, the knight errant was an individual who could, when required, equip himself with weapons and armour, mount on a suitable horse, and fight as a heavy cavalryman in a medieval army. Dubbed a knight either by his king or his immediate superior for his services in battle, he was usually, though not always, of noble or aristocratic birth since only wealthy families could accept the high financial expenditure required to be recognised for such a distinction in the first place.
Ceremonies of knighthood on the battlefield abound during the Wars of the Roses: Edward IV personally knighted John, Lord Cobham, ‘in the field of gastum [Gaston] besides Tewkesbury’ after the battle there in 1471; the Earl of Northumberland knighted William Gascoigne and others at the battle of Wakefield in 1460; Andrew Trollope was knighted at the second battle of St Albans in 1461, and so forth. However, chivalry – the knight's code and the cultural world he inhabited- are less easily described so positively.
Chivalry was a code that regarded war as the hereditary profession of knights, but in the fifteenth-century major changes were at work in Europe, affecting the knight’s role as a heavy cavalryman. The high casualty rates among French knights at battles such as Agincourt, Crécy and Poitiers proved dramatically that massed archers, properly placed, could completely destroy knightly prowess in the field. Later in the fifteenth century, the knight’s role was diminished still further by the development of field artillery, and in the sixteenth century, the knight ceased to exist in his traditional medieval guise.
Given that the traditional codes of chivalry were already on the wane during the Hundred Years War, it is therefore important to question how its role changed in the Wars of the Roses. How did it apply to the knights as the only permanently ‘trained soldiers’ in the armies? Did such knights still give quarter to their enemies, and if so, were enemy prisoners ransomed off in the same way as before? Or did the bitter family feuding, treason, and the effects of civil war prevent such acts of mercy or even prisoners?
Other questions also arise concerning chivalry, especially with regard to the effects and developments of tactics and weaponry. For instance, the power of the longbow dictated the decision by English (and French) knights to fight their battles on foot. But did fighting dismounted alongside men of a lower class and status affect a knight’s attitude to chivalry? Did the knight think he was demeaning himself, and more importantly, degrading his code of honour because of this? And what did the knight hope to achieve on the battlefield in the absence of ransom? Indeed, how did he justify his actions afterwards if no code of honour existed to fulfil his ambitions?
These are just a few questions that need to be addressed in any assessment of the Wars of the Roses and chivalry. Chiefly because English knights were commanders of men, and therefore they had a direct influence on how battles were fought in the front line. Knights were the officers of their own personal contingents of recruited men-at-arms and tenants. And they were looked up to for guidance, example, and in many cases, survival on the battlefield by the men they led.
Dr G. Bernard suggested that medieval warfare was not an aberration; war was the supreme expression of the social purposes for which the military aristocracy existed. Warfare in the Wars of the Roses was an extremely personal matter, and the stakes were high, especially among the nobility and the gentry who were directly involved in the conflict and generally suffered most because of it.
Battlefield protection had become a fine art by the end of the fifteenth century, and the increased protection afforded by the best suits of armour in Europe convinced the knightly classes that honour and advancement through feats of arms in battle was a risk worth taking. This statement is substantiated by the large investments made by knights and men-at-arms in the latest weapons, armour and horses (usually more than one) needed to wage war successfully. The results of this investment in armoured protection meant that the knight was in some ways divorced from the harsh realities of war by a kind of psychological barrier (his armour), at least until he began to suffer from dehydration and exhaustion, the real problems for knights, of any age or fitness, on the battlefield.
Casualties were extremely high among the knightly classes during the Wars of the Roses, especially compared to other English medieval campaigns, but why was this so when chivalry was in effect created as a buffer to aristocratic slaughter? It seems that in the Wars of the Roses, there was a reluctance on both sides to capture knights and ransom them, as might have been expected in the Hundred Years War for example. Even kings and princes were killed without hesitation at battles such as Wakefield, Tewkesbury and Bosworth. It was literally a free for all, and anyone was vulnerable.
Similarly, many prominent nobles were executed instead of being offered quarter and ransom as the laws of chivalry had previously dictated. Families repeatedly lost loved ones in feuds that were perpetuated for generations and were settled in battles that were sometimes specifically sought out by individuals for the express purpose of revenge. Therefore, we may conclude that during the most intense periods of the Wars of the Roses, factional opposition rendered the codes of chivalry, and the merciful aspects of quarter, almost obsolete on the English battlefield.
To prove this theory further, and also to offer some explanations as to why casualties were so high among the aristocracy in the wars, we must briefly look at the nature of the conflict as a civil war from 1459 onwards; although even before this date, the daggers had been drawn between the factions at the battle of St Albans in 1455. Indeed, the bloodthirsty execution of specifically targeted nobles at St Albans had created a tide of ‘unchivalrous’ behaviour that would persist for the wars and culminate in the ‘legal’ execution of political opponents both on and off the battlefield.
And this merciless behaviour became more and more commonplace as the wars progressed and battles became more bloody. Even among the relatively few casualties inflicted at St Albans in 1455, prominent nobles such as the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford were killed during or after the battle by ambitious Yorkist lords aiming at political supremacy and local dominance. The Yorkists’ disregard for the codes of chivalry in favour of political necessity and family feuding at St Albans effectively set the trend for all future generations to follow.
All the nobles slain at St Albans had sons intent on avenging their fathers’ deaths and restoring their family honour, using what we may describe as a distorted or ‘bastard’ image of chivalry to fulfil their private aims. In the end, the sons of the St Albans dead succeeded in killing the Duke of York – the perpetrator of their fathers’ deaths – at the battle of Wakefield five years later. And here, young Lord John Clifford took this revenge to its extreme by murdering one of the Duke of York’s sons in the rout after the battle.
Further retribution was levelled at the Earl of Salisbury, who had also been present at St Albans in 1455 and was, therefore, an accomplice to what happened there. Salisbury was denied ransom by the Lancastrians and was dragged out of Pontefract Castle by a mob and beheaded like a common criminal. Even before the battle took place, the talk had been of the Lancastrians breaking a chivalrous truce to fulfil their unchivalrous aims. Therefore threats to the code of chivalry, both on and off the battlefield, were already present early in the wars.
Even before the battle of Wakefield, the threatening aspects of attainder placed on the Yorkist lords after Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge in 1459 had brought about renewed conflict and new grievances, chiefly because of the dynastic issue. This new phase of the Wars of the Roses finally came to fruition after the battle of Northampton in 1460 when Richard, Duke of York, staked his claim to Henry VI’s throne at Westminster and died because of it. In view of this, Edward of March’s victory at Mortimers Cross in February 1461 was immediately followed up by similar executions of Lancastrian captives at Hereford, notably Owen Tudor, in revenge for the deaths of Edward’s father and brother at Wakefield.
At the second battle of St Albans, which took place during the same month, family feuding was once again an underlying issue. Lord Bonville was executed soon after the battle because of his strained relationship with the Courtneys of Devon. A few weeks later, at the battle of Towton, the blood feuding, exacerbated by the dynastic issue, reached a terrible climax which resulted in the deaths of Lord Clifford, Lord Neville, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Dacre, Lord Welles, and many others; the Earl of Devon was executed the next day, and another forty-two other knights were put to death after the battle in similar reprisals.
After Towton, Yorkist aggression resulted in the systematic execution of further prominent individuals who had previously evaded capture in the wars. The Earl of Wiltshire was apprehended and beheaded at Cockermouth, and Sir Ralph Percy was singled out and killed at Hedgeley Moor. The Duke of Somerset, Lord Roos and other refugees from Towton were also executed after being captured at the battle of Hexham in 1464 – but this was only the beginning of the cull. In April 1471, at the battle of Barnet, Marquis Montagu was killed in action, and his elder brother, the Earl of Warwick, was cut down while attempting to escape from the field.
Another Beaufort, the third Duke of Somerset, was executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, and even the Prince of Wales himself fell victim to a Yorkist blade during the bloodthirsty rout from the battlefield.
Shortly after Tewkesbury, some Lancastrian fugitives were unchivalrously dragged out of the sanctuary in the nearby abbey on Edward’s orders and were put to death, proving that even fear of the church was bypassed in favour of blood feuding and political execution.
Even the private family feuding, which was such a common feature of the period, led to individual knights and nobles being singled out and murdered, as occurred at Nibley Green in 1470. A year later, strained dynastic insecurity meant that King Henry VI himself was put to death in the Tower of London, although cleverly covered up.
So, where on earth was the code of chivalry amid all this cold-blooded killing?
Were some deaths the result of legitimate treasonable actions against the crown during this period, and therefore not subject to the knightly code of honour? This may be true. But it still does not explain why mercy was never given or even contemplated through the workings of ransom. If chivalry still existed in the Wars of the Roses, surely it would have been documented? Or was it that chivalry existed in some form, but it was distorted to fit the aims of the few?
Perhaps the answer should be sought in the knights’ perception of chivalry when they dismounted to fight on foot and in the weapons ranged against them on the battlefield? These factors may have prevented the knights from fulfilling their knightly and traditionally chivalrous acts of mercy in battle. Not to mention the fact that unmounted knights could not easily escape. Maybe the answer lies in the knights’ perception of civil war, the resulting breakdown of law and order in the country, or the influence of ‘bastard feudalism’ over chivalry where money and loyalty was the knight’s prime modus operandi?
Geoffery le Baker tells us that English men-at-arms, imitating the Scots, fought on foot for the first time at Halidon Hill in 1333. Therefore, there are another two main factors to consider regarding chivalry - one of which was forced upon the knights, chiefly due to the use of the humble longbow.
First, by dismounting and tethering their horses in the rear, the knights were demonstrating their own willingness to face a common danger, and second, that they presented a much smaller target to the enemy bowmen ranged in their thousands against them. Even kings were aware of what devastation could be caused by massed archery against cavalry. And this point is highlighted in various chronicles, although some cavalry still came to grief at Blore Heath in 1459 when several attacks were mown down as a result.
Philippe de Commines’ commenting on this typically English manner of dismounting to fight on foot speaks volumes of how the various classes were being levelled on the battlefield. He says that during a conversation with Edward IV, the king stated ‘modestly’ that he had won nine important battles, all of which were fought on foot, which if nothing else proves that it was common practice during the Wars of the Roses for all knights to fight dismounted in the same manner as their king, and in the midst of their own contingents, surrounded by the protection of their household men.
This decision to fight dismounted is the main reason why so many nobles and gentry came to grief in hand to hand fighting, although a good deal of protection was afforded by field armour. However, many more, knights including the Earl of Warwick at the battle of Barnet, were caught while attempting to retrieve their mounts from behind the lines. In most cases, nobles were captured and sometimes executed for treason later, but the knights were definitely at greater risk on the battlefield because of their heavy equipment. They were often caught and slain as they tried to flee, especially by victorious common soldiers in search of plunder.
The demise of chivalry in such routs is dramatically echoed in Edward IV’s less than chivalrous cry after he had won a battle to ‘save the common soldiers, and put the nobles to the sword, by which means none, or very few escaped’. By leaving their beloved mounts tethered in the rear of their battle line, this act signalled the demise of chivalry as we would traditionally accept it today, even though it lived on in the minds of some who saw its true virtues, even when fighting on foot. The theory of chivalry was also preserved by those who wrote about it in various military thesis, and in attempting to resurrect chivalry in some form, writers such as Viscount Beaumont and Christine de Pisan blatantly illustrated the fact that chivalry was already on the decline in England during the second half of the fifteenth century. It had to be – or why would they write about a proposed revival?
However, the advent of artillery on the battlefield completely destroyed both the knights’ and literary philosophers’ ideas of chivalry. Sadly, the mounted knight was no longer the master of ‘shock tactics’ against infantry. And indeed, in the Wars of the Roses, the footmen played a more dominant role in winning battles.
If we add to this the apparent absence of a knight’s willingness to ransom his opponents because of the effects of family feuding and civil war, then it is even more astonishing to find that Edward IV held out a glimmer of mercy and forgiveness to his mortal enemy the Duke of Somerset in 1464, only to be betrayed by his unchivalrous trust as the wars progressed.
In this instance, however, the fine line between the political and the chivalrous must be stressed. Indeed, such individual motives must be analysed alongside many other contributing factors. For instance, the treachery shown by individuals and sometimes whole contingents of men was an ongoing concern in the Wars of the Roses; and this gives us further reason to accept the demise of chivalry during the conflict. How could chivalry possibly exist on the battlefield when acts of mercy, avoidance of combat, or capture of individuals for ransom could be seen as a treasonable act?
Noble acts of fealty to a king, such as Andrew Trollope’s action towards Henry VI at Ludford Bridge in 1459, left individuals marked for life by rebels and subject to death warrants. The whole episode of Lord Grey’s treachery at the battle of Northampton was probably linked to a political pact with the opposing side or possibly a breach of indenture. Treachery could also be ‘accidental’, as at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, therefore what price chivalry in such an unstable environment?
However, knights who found themselves on the opposing side and guilty of treason, such as Somerset, Trollope and Grey, could still hold their chivalrous honour in great regard. It was a considerable insult to have it stripped away from them before they faced the headman’s axe. And after the spirited and stubborn Lancastrian defence of Bamburgh Castle in 1464, Sir Ralph Grey found himself at the mercy of King Edward IV, who thoroughly disgraced him before punishment:
The king hath ordained that thou [Grey] should have thy spurs stricken off by the hard heels with the hand of the master cook. The king hath also ordained that thou may see the King of Arms and heralds and thine own proper coat of arms, that which they should tear off thy body, and so thou should as well be degraded of thy worship noblesse and arms, as of the order of knighthood, and also here is another coat of thine arms reversed, the which thou should wear of thy body going unto death ward, for that belongeth after the law.
After these ritualised actions, Sir Ralph Grey was put to death. His name was disgraced for eternity, and his property was stripped away from him. The fact that Grey’s honour was taken from him in such a manner before his execution clearly shows that a distorted form of chivalry did exist in the Wars of the Roses but was regarded more as an ideal than a practical mode of behaviour in battle. Chivalry was, nevertheless, in its darker aspect, an excuse to kill and commit cold-blooded murder and, in the Wars of the Roses at least, it offered a chance to execute political opponents ritualistically; therefore, it represents a completely different concept to that generally attributed to the image of the perfect knight of medieval legend.
Orders of medieval chivalry, such as the Order of the Bath, the Order of the Garter, and in Burgundy the Order of the Golden Fleece, dignified and solemnised the general cover-up to the kind of slaughter, pillage and destruction that could, and did, occur in warfare. Formalised with oaths, vows, vigils and exchanges of heraldic tokens between princes and kings, the hereditary right to kill was maintained in glory and honour as an example of how the knight should behave and thereby achieve great personal renown. This was the whole raison d’être of the knights, and because of it, the knights were trained for war on a grand scale in the lists and at tournaments. The importance placed on this mock combat helps modern historians to understand the aims and ambitions of the well-trained and well-armoured knight and man-at-arms, but the aberration of chivalry still exists.
And we may take the mockery as a justification for violence one step further if we consider that this knightly behaviour was not only levelled against enemies but also allies.
For example, French knights at the battle of Crécy in 1346 mercilessly rode down the survivors of their own ineffective crossbowmen soon after their Genoese allies had succumbed to an English arrow storm. Chivalry here dictated that the flamboyant mounted aristocrats in the French army should prevail and so-called cowardice be avenged, even though the French knights were doomed to a similar fate against the longbow. Similarly, in 1465 at the battle of Montl’héry, Philippe de Commines, who was an eyewitness, described an incident when mounted knights in the Count of Charolois’ Burgundian army rode down their own archers to get at the enemy.
Innocent men, women and children were butchered in sieges and during ruthless chevauchées by English knights and their soldiers in the Hundred Years War, and in some parts of France, vast tracts of land were laid waste on numerous occasions in the name of glory, honour and chivalry. Starvation and death resulted among the French peasantry at the expense of their aristocrats’ quest for ‘noble feats of arms.’ Therefore English shires during the Wars of the Roses were lucky to escape comparable devastation from the knights and their followers, and instead, many English farmers may have consoled themselves with the fact that the aristocracy was content to kill only their counterparts to carve out a name for themselves on the battlefield and not the common man.
Michael Hicks points out that the dangers of the chivalric code actually helped produce this retrograde effect in warfare whereby plunder and looting became a direct product of a knight’s career. In this respect, the knight could even become a mercenary in his own land if he wished, and thus an enemy to his own people. Hicks claims that by the mid-fifteenth century ‘much that had been typical of chivalry, if not the core of the chivalrous mode of life itself began very gradually to lose its significance.’ This can clearly be seen in the numbers of casualties inflicted upon the aristocracy during the Wars of the Roses, who were generally not shown, nor did they expect, any mercy on the battlefield. Such indiscriminate slaughter among the aristocracy, the result of blood feuds, civil war, and factionalism, was bound to help the gradual demise of chivalry in England quicker than anywhere else. Therefore it seems that the knight’s disregard for his opposite number on the battlefield proves that no code of chivalry was followed, or even existed, in the Wars of the Roses. We may also say that ‘true’ chivalry was destroyed in England at the first battle of St Albans in 1455, and a new version (bastard chivalry) was unconsciously introduced in its place to allow the political and indiscriminate slaughter on the battlefield to continue.