Lord Clifford - man or hit man?
Did Edward Hall invent his blackened reputation?
The Wars of the Roses reached a high watermark in 1460-61. Still, one man’s black reputation stands proud of the milieu when the Lancastrian army ambushed York’s army below Sandal Castle in late December 1460.
While attempting to escape the Duke of York’s defeat at what became known as the battle of Wakefield, many fugitives fled to the town, including Yorkʼs seventeen-year-old son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland. He crossed Wakefield Bridge in panic with the Lancastrians in hot pursuit, and it is said Lord Clifford of Skipton killed him in cold blood in the presence of his tutor (or chaplain) Robert Aspall.
But what is the truth behind Lord Clifford’s actions at Wakefield, and who witnessed his dark deeds that later inspired writers and historians to wallow in the blood-supping antics of this undeserving northern lord?
It is said that Lord Clifford, whose father Thomas had been similarly ‘murdered’ by the Duke of York at the battle of St Albans in 1455, sought revenge on all the duke’s family thereafter. In short, he had sworn oaths to hunt them down one by one, and Wakefield was a golden opportunity to exact his revenge, according to Hall’s Chronicle of 1548. However, Lord Clifford was pictured by Hall and Shakespeare as some sort of serial psychopathic killer and Rutland as a small boy stabbed to death as he pleaded for mercy. Therefore, the Clifford name has been inadvertently blackened in history and drama ever since.
Apart from Rutland’s death, Edward Hall also holds Lord Clifford responsible for killing the Duke of York at Wakefield, placing a paper crown on his decapitated head and delivering it to Queen Margaret (who was then in Scotland). But again, we only have Hall’s word to support this mutilation and mockery. The silence of other contemporary accounts is striking. Therefore, yet again, are we dealing with a Tudor smear campaign - this time on Lord Clifford - which has painted him blacker than black?
The contemporary chronicler William Gregory described the Earl of Rutland as ʻone of the best-disposed lords in this landʼ (meaning he was of age to bear arms). Therefore, Rutland’s judicial ‘murder’ by Clifford, in the presence of his tutor, which was probably Rutland’s tutor in arms (or henchman), sheds a different light on the whole episode. Clearly, Rutland’s death was a tragedy, but was his ‘murder’ any different from other executions and judicial killings committed by leading nobles in the Wars of the Roses? And if not, why was Lord Clifford singled out and labelled ‘Butcher Clifford’ or ‘Black-faced Clifford’ by many later writers after the event, including Shakespeare? In short, did they all copy from Hall?
John Clifford, 9th Lord Clifford of Skipton (1435-1461), was a dedicated landowner and Lancastrian soldier who had a large following of trained border fighters known as the Flower of Craven. His reputation was fearsome locally but no different from many other northern lords in England during the Wars of the Roses. His family was linked to many important houses in the fifteenth century. He was undoubtedly active against the Neville family of Middleham as a retainer of the Earl of Northumberland. Lord Clifford joined the factional polarization against York and the Nevilles when civil war erupted in 1455-59. And when his father was killed along with Percy of Northumberland and the Duke of Somerset at St Albans the same year, he was naturally shocked. Clifford was aged twenty at the time, and thereafter he fought for Henry VI and Queen Margaret at every opportunity against the Yorkists to secure his hollow crown. Wakefield was a watershed in the Wars of the Roses. Later, when the Yorkists under Edward IV marched north to face the Lancastrians at the battle of Towton in March 1461, Clifford was sent out with the Flower of Craven to harass the Yorkist advance on Ferrybridge.
If we suppose that the skirmish and the much larger battle of Ferrybridge took place on 28 March, logistics and the chronicles allow us to paint a picture of the various movements of both armies before Towton on the 29th. Namely, the Yorkist attacks on Ferrybridge, Lord Fauconberg's flank march via Castleford three miles away and a simultaneous retreat by Clifford followed by the Yorkist vaward back up the Towton road before nightfall. However, neither Lord Clifford nor his much-depleted contingent ever reached the main Lancastrian camp on the 28th, as Fauconberg’s mounted contingent of archers, always at their heels, cut them off and destroyed them, almost to a man, about two miles short of their objective.
Hall’s Chronicle is the only one with information on this episode, and, to make matters worse, contemporaries were predictably either indecisive about the location of Lord Cliffordʼs death or included his name among the long lists of Lancastrian casualties the following day after the bloody battle of Towton. But the Flower of Cravenʼs near annihilation is more important than might be at first assumed, as now the Lancastrians were deprived of one of their most valued leaders. Hall gives brief details of Butcher Clifford’s last moments when he and his men:
Met with some that they looked not for and were trapped before they were aware. For the Lord Clifford, either from heat or pain, put off his gorget [armoured neck protection], and was suddenly hit by an arrow, as some say without a head, and was stricken in the throat, and incontinent rendered up his spirit. And the Earl of Westmorlandʼs brother and all his company were slain, at a place called Dintingdale, not far from Towton.
Dintingdale is a shallow valley that crosses the Ferrybridge to Tadcaster road below the high plateau where the massive Lancastrian army was encamped. However, Clifford was not offered any help whatsoever from his Lancastrian friends on the plateau. Therefore we may wonder about their unity of aim, not to mention Edward Hall’s dubious story. It is hard to believe that Lancastrian scouts would not have been deployed to warn the Duke of Somerset’s army of a Yorkist approach, but where were they when a valuable Lancastrian commander like Clifford was being ambushed and killed at Dintingdale, only two miles away from Towton?
Various reasons could account for this baffling event, such as a surprise attack in the dark on Clifford by the Yorkist mounted archers, who were well up the road from Ferrybridge. Visibility may have been impaired, and we know that the weather was bitterly cold, with snow dictating the battle the next day. So, could the Lancastrians view Dintingdale from their camp at Towton?
Today, a walk south on the battlefield offers no sight of the valley in question until the triangulation point is reached beside the hawthorn tree at 168 feet. If the Lancastrians were encamped in and around Towton on the 28 March, rather than on the plateau, Halls Chronicle might hold the truth about Clifford’s last moments when he and his men ‘met with some that they looked not for and were trapped before they were aware.’ However, Hall may also have been relating an untruth in that he did not actually know where Clifford was killed and that he made the story up.
Alternatively, the Lancastrians may not have seen the Dintingdale skirmish at all. Or knowing of Cliffordʼs predicament, they wisely decided not to sally out into what might have been the whole oncoming Yorkist army, thereby quitting the high ground for the sake of a few hundred men. Scourers may have reported to Somerset and Northumberland that Clifford was dead, or they may have attempted to help their comrade in vain. But whatever the scenario, through history’s half-light, it is apparent that Somerset and his advisers kept their ground, and another member of the Clifford family joined the mounting death toll of the Wars of the Roses somewhere on the road from Ferrybridge.
But now the important point.
Lord Clifford was not portrayed any differently from others of his class in most contemporary chronicles of the period, as opposed to later Tudor histories and dramas (including Shakespeare). His actions before Towton failed to move contemporaries to blacken his name. A glance at the man’s life and character cannot fail to make apparent the appropriateness of the various derogatory sobriquets he was given later, and we may wonder at his state of mind when faced with the shock of his father’s death at St Albans in 1455. Chroniclers say he never hesitated when committing any act, however cruel if it assisted in carrying out his plans. We are told a sanguinary fierceness and barbarity marked him out from other nobles, and this was derived from his murder of the ‘under-age’ Earl of Rutland after the battle of Wakefield.
But how true is all this?
The simple fact is that Edward Hall, in his history, is chiefly responsible for Clifford’s character assassination, and later writers followed his example with stories of their own (similar to Richard III’s treatment by Tudor chroniclers). Therefore, it is perhaps worth pausing for a moment to dwell on Hall’s motives, given that his grandfather Sir David had been slain at the battle of Wakefield along with the Duke of York.
Writing in the Tudor period, it seems that several aspects of Clifford’s life caught Hall’s attention, and we may wonder why there was such a need to dramatise events that had become so commonplace on Wars of the Roses battlefields? After all, Hall says his grandfather warned the Duke of York not to sally out of Sandal Castle in 1460 and died later in combat following York’s rashness. So what better story to relate than a child murder to rubbish the Lancastrian victory at Wakefield and elevate his ancestor’s cautionary tale?
Hall’s Chronicle relates that when Lord Clifford caught up with Rutland near Wakefield, the young earl:
Knelt on his knees imploring mercy and desiring grace, both with holding up his hands and making dolorous countenance, for his speech had gone with fear. But the Lord Clifford marked him and said, ‘by God’s blood, thy father slew mine, and so will I do thee and all thy kin,’ and with that he stuck the earl to the heart with his dagger and bade his chaplain bear the earl’s mother and brother word what he had done and said. Yet this cruel Clifford and deadly blood-supper not content with this homicide, or child-killing, came to the place where the dead corpse of the Duke of York lay, and caused his head to be stricken off, and set on it a crown of paper, and so fixed it to a pole, and presented it to the queen.
The scene has all the hallmarks of drama, not only on Clifford’s part but also on Hall’s, who may have embellished the story of Rutland’s death in memory of his dead grandfather. Therefore, we may wonder if the way Rutland was killed accurately represents what happened. Given that later writers and dramatists also related this event verbatim and that contemporaries of the battle of Wakefield are silent about the details of Rutland and York’s death, it is, therefore, highly likely there is at least one alternative scenario.
Aside from Shakespeare, who copied from Hall and Holinshed, the simple fact appears to be that Clifford, inflamed with revenge, was in the right place at the right time. Clifford did not kill the Duke of York personally or Rutland, according to most sources. But he was certainly no different from other nobles who had suffered family bereavement in the wars regarding temperament and revenge killing. Chivalry may have been Clifford’s watchword while he was alive, but the accepted form of granting mercy and exacting ransom from prisoners was well and truly dead in England by this time. So, did Hall take full advantage of this, thereby blackening the Clifford name?
After Towton, Lord Clifford’s body was allegedly tumbled into a mass grave, but this must have been a much later event considering that Lord Fauconberg’s advance guard soon occupied the area, and graves were probably the last thing on their minds. However, it is hardly surprising that Clifford’s last resting place is unknown, as even his son Henry was supposedly tarnished, according to Hall, by his father’s ‘blood-supping’ reputation in his early years:
Thus end had he [Clifford], which slew the young earl of Rutland, kneeling on his knees; whose young son Henry Clifford was brought up with a shepherd, in poor habit and dissimulate behaviour ever in fear to publish his lineage or degree.
As discussed, there is no contemporary evidence for Henry’s closeted existence, only Hall. As for Rutland, he was seventeen when he died at Wakefield and was of fighting age. Indeed, we can be sure many men who fought in the Wars of the Roses were young, including Rutland’s elder brother Edward IV, aged nineteen at Towton, who knew that war was a dangerous pastime. Given that all these men had been brought up with violence, we may be shocked by their behaviour today. Still, we know from most sources that lords relished battle following purist codes of chivalry or more basic instincts of aristocratic greed, revenge or ambition. Therefore, Clifford was no different from his contemporaries. In fact, Edward IV was a lot worse and more merciless when it came to executions.
But where we may ask, is Edward’s character assassination?
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By chance this weekend I came across a very old book called the History of Craven. Very large tome. It talked about the death of Clifford at Dittingdale but also mentioned that the Craven records of the time did not mention anyone else from their roll call to have been killed in that fight. The author of this highly detailed book based on local documents seems to have considered this significant so presumably had grounds to do so (rather than finding an answer in the unlikelihood of any detailed roll call or similar).