Who won the Battle of Towton?
The Yorkists won. On Palm Sunday, 29 March 1461, the eighteen-year-old Edward IV beat Henry VI's army under the Duke of Somerset in a snowstorm near Tadcaster. The Lancastrians broke and were cut down at the Cock Beck. Heralds counted 28,000 dead; modern historians think fewer died, but Towton secured Edward's crown.1
Towton is the battle every British reader has half heard of: the snow, the arrows falling short, the river choked with bodies, the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. Most of that picture is real, but almost every piece of it comes from a particular source with its own reasons, and the most famous number, 28,000 dead, is one that modern historians do not accept at face value. This article follows the battle from the Lancastrian and the Yorkist side, sets out what each source says, and ends with the men themselves, found in a mass grave at Towton Hall in 1996. For the war as a whole, see our guide to the Wars of the Roses.2
Why was the Battle of Towton fought?
By the spring of 1461 England had two kings. In October 1460 Parliament had settled the quarrel between Henry VI and Richard, Duke of York, with the Act of Accord: Henry would keep the crown for life, but York and his heirs would succeed him. That disinherited Henry's son, Prince Edward, and his mother, Queen Margaret of Anjou, would not accept it.3
The Lancastrian answer came from the north. On 30 December 1460 York was killed at Wakefield, and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, with him. York's eldest son Edward, Earl of March, beat a Lancastrian army at Mortimer's Cross in February, but on 17 February Margaret's army defeated the Earl of Warwick at the second battle of St Albans and freed King Henry.4
The Lancastrians did not take London. Their army fell back to York, while Edward and Warwick entered the capital, and on 4 March 1461 Edward was proclaimed king. As the Battlefields Trust puts it, England now had two kings, and only a battle could settle which one would keep the crown. In mid-March Edward marched north with a large army.5
The Lancastrian side: why Somerset chose to fight at Towton
It is easy to tell Towton as the story of Edward's triumph, because the Yorkists won and wrote most of the early accounts. Seen from the other side, the Lancastrian decision to stand and fight made sense. Their cause was the anointed king, Henry VI, and the inheritance of his son, which the Act of Accord had taken away. Their army, now led by Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and the Earl of Northumberland, had beaten the Yorkists twice in seven weeks, at Wakefield and St Albans.6
They also fought on home ground. George Goodwin, in the Towton Battlefield Society's account, notes that the Lancastrians were stronger in the north, while the Yorkists recruited more easily in the south, the west and Wales; Ramsay in 1892 called the result the overthrow of a northern army by a southern one. The southern chroniclers wrote of the “northmen” as plunderers, and the Yorkist chancellor George Neville accused Henry's army of pillaging the country on its way north. To the men in Somerset's ranks, the Yorkists were the rebels marching on their country.7
Their position was well chosen. Historic England places the main Lancastrian army on the plateau south-west of Towton, between the deep valley of the Cock Beck on its west and rough, wooded ground east of the road to York. Ramsay, who placed the Lancastrian line somewhat further south, judged their ground the obvious place to stop an enemy coming up from Ferrybridge: the Yorkists would have to attack uphill. A force had been sent forward to hold the crossing of the River Aire at Ferrybridge, and the bridge itself had been broken.8
What the Lancastrians could not choose was the weather, and they could not be sure of their numbers. Historic England writes that the Lancastrians had the larger army, as Hall's chronicle claimed; the Battlefields Trust argues that, despite the pro-Yorkist chroniclers, they were probably the smaller one. Ramsay noted that Henry had far more great lords with him than Edward did, but that Margaret's army may have been worn down by its long, undisciplined march to St Albans and back.9
Ferrybridge and Dintingdale: the fighting before the battle
The first blood was shed on 28 March, the eve of Palm Sunday, at the crossing of the Aire. A Lancastrian force under John, Lord Clifford, held the broken bridge at Ferrybridge. The Yorkist Lord Fitzwalter was killed in the fighting there, and Gregory's chronicle and the Battlefields Trust both record that Warwick was wounded. Hall tells it the other way round: in his version Fitzwalter held the passage for Edward and was killed when Clifford's horsemen surprised him.10
The crossing was won by a flank march. Lord Fauconberg, Warwick's uncle and the commander of Edward's vanguard, forded the Aire upstream at Castleford, and Clifford, outflanked, fell back north. He was caught and killed at Dintingdale, a mile or so short of the main Lancastrian army. Edward Hall's chronicle, written in the next century, says an arrow struck Clifford in the throat after he had taken off his gorget, and adds the caution “as some say”.11
Even the timing is argued over. These fights are traditionally dated to Saturday 28 March, but Historic England notes that the archaeologist Tim Sutherland has argued they happened early on the Sunday and flowed into the main battle, and the Battlefields Trust says the fighting at Ferrybridge went on until dawn. The Trust goes further: the name Towton is barely mentioned in sources before 1471, and the fights at Ferrybridge and near Sherburn-in-Elmet may have been bigger than later accounts allowed.12
How the Battle of Towton was fought: arrows in the snow
On Palm Sunday morning the Yorkists came up from the south, past the village of Saxton, and faced the Lancastrians across Towton Dale, a shallow valley cutting the plateau. Snow was falling. Hearne's Fragment, an early sixteenth-century chronicle, says “all the season it snowed”, and the Croyland chronicler describes snow covering the whole surface of the ground.13
The famous tactical story belongs to Hall. In his account a squall of snow blew into the faces of King Henry's men. Fauconberg had his archers loose a single volley and then stand still; the Lancastrian archers, unable to judge the distance, shot back until their arrows were nearly spent, and they fell some forty tailor's yards short. The Yorkists then advanced, shot their own arrows, and picked up the enemy's to shoot back. Historic England and EBSCO both accept the core of it: the wind favored the Yorkists, and the Lancastrian arrows fell short, forcing the Lancastrians to advance.14
The Lancastrian vanguard under Northumberland and Sir Andrew Trollope came forward, and the two armies met hand to hand. Hall says the fighting lasted ten hours in doubtful victory; George Neville wrote, nine days after the battle, that it began at sunrise and went on into the night. Ramsay describes the Yorkists fighting their way up the slopes with swords, axes and lead mallets once the arrows were gone. A Milanese envoy heard that Henry's side at first seemed to be winning until “the wind changed”, and Edward and Warwick won.15
What turned the battle was a fresh army. Hearne's Fragment says the Duke of Norfolk came in about noon “with a fresh band of good men of war” to the aid of King Edward, and Historic England writes that Norfolk's arrival tipped the scales. Hall, on the other hand, says Norfolk had fallen sick; Ramsay noted the contradiction and suggested that Norfolk's men may have come up under Sir John Howard. Ramsay himself credited Edward: the rapid concentration, the prompt advance and the attack that broke the Lancastrian center were, he wrote, characteristic of Edward's generalship.16
The rout at the Cock Beck
When the Lancastrian line broke, its men ran north toward Tadcaster and York, and the Cock Beck lay across their path. Hall calls it a little brook, not very broad but very deep, in which a great number drowned, so that men said the living crossed on the bodies of the dead. George Neville wrote that many of the fleeing enemy drowned in the river near Tadcaster because they had broken the bridge themselves.17
No quarter was given. Hall says Edward had proclaimed that no prisoner should be taken, and Historic England notes the tradition that orders were given to give no quarter, with more nobles than usual killed rather than held for ransom. Gregory's chronicle counts forty-two knights who were killed after the battle, and Ramsay reads this as knights taken alive only to be put to death in cold blood. The Croyland chronicler has the victors cutting down the fugitives like sheep for ten miles, as far as York.18
The Lancastrian dead included the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Clifford, Lord Neville, Lord Dacre, Lord Welles and Sir Andrew Trollope. King Henry, Queen Margaret, their son and the Duke of Somerset escaped to Scotland. Edward entered York the next day, 30 March.19
How many died at Towton? The 28,000 and its rivals
The figure everyone quotes is old. On 4 April 1461 William Paston passed on the news from King Edward's own letter to his mother: on the Lancastrian side about 20,000 had died, gentlemen and commons. A list pinned to the same letter gives “xxviij.ml.”, 28,000, “nomberd by Harralds”. George Neville, Bishop of Exeter and Edward's chancellor, wrote on 7 April that, from persons worthy of confidence, some 28,000 had perished on both sides, and a Milanese envoy repeated 28,000, all counted by heralds.20
The chroniclers then went higher. Hearne's Fragment gives 33,000 slain on both sides, Gregory's chronicle 35,000 commoners, and the Croyland chronicler, on the word of those who buried the bodies, 38,000 besides the drowned. Hall, writing in the next century, gives 36,776 over three days of fighting and pursuit. Historic England adds that the heralds' 28,000 may have included the dead of Ferrybridge and Dintingdale.21
Modern historians are more cautious. The Battlefields Trust calls the chronicle claims improbable, and David Grummitt of the Open University calls the often cited 75,000 combatants and 28,000 dead unlikely: the real numbers were much smaller. James Clark of the University of Exeter writes that the latest estimate has about 40,000 men on the field and casualties closer to 10,000. EBSCO's summary gives contemporary claims of 9,000 to 28,000, probably exaggerated. Sir James Ramsay went furthest in 1892, rejecting all estimates of 20,000 to 60,000 men a side.22
Not every modern writer cuts the figures so far. George Goodwin, writing for the Towton Battlefield Society, thinks it most likely that up to 75,000 fought and as many as 28,000 died in the battle and the massacres that followed. So is Towton the bloodiest battle on English soil? Historic England calls it reputed to have been the largest and bloodiest battle fought in England, and Grummitt says it is usually credited with that title. On any of these estimates the death toll was exceptional for a medieval English battle; what cannot be proved is the exact number.23
What the Towton mass grave revealed
In August 1996 builders at Towton Hall, on the northern edge of the battlefield, disturbed a mass grave. At the request of North Yorkshire County Council, a team from the University of Bradford and the West Yorkshire Archaeology Service excavated it. Historic England calls it the first battlefield mass grave to have been subjected to controlled archaeological excavation.24
The counts depend on what is being counted. Bradford's archaeologists recovered the mostly complete remains of 43 individuals from a pit six meters by two and only 50 centimeters deep; Mark Rose's review of the excavation report speaks of the bones of at least 39; Sutherland gives approximately 50; Historic England's register gives at least 60 individuals for the grave, with nine more skeletons found nearby between 2002 and 2005.25
The injuries are the evidence. Tim Sutherland, one of the excavators, summarizes the analysis: all the individuals were men who had suffered extensive trauma from swords, knives, bills and war hammers. The Bradford team concluded that they were casualties of an extremely violent encounter. The report, Blood Red Roses, edited by Veronica Fiorato, Anthea Boylston and Christopher Knüsel, was published by Oxbow, with a second edition in 2007.26
Towton Hall was not the only burial. Historic England records a mass grave of disarticulated bones in Towton Dale, at the heart of the battlefield, where Ramsay already noted traces of grave pits in 1892. Historic England also notes that in 1483 Richard III ordered the dead to be moved from mass graves into consecrated ground at the chapel at Towton and the church at Saxton. Grummitt writes that both Edward IV and Richard III planned chapels to commemorate the dead.27
Who won the Battle of Towton, and why did it matter?
The Yorkists won outright. Edward IV, eighteen years old, had beaten the main Lancastrian army in the field; he was crowned at Westminster on 28 June 1461. Historic England calls Towton the battle that secured Edward's position on the throne, and Ramsay credited the victory to Edward's own generalship.28
It did not end the war. The Battlefields Trust stresses that the Lancastrian cause was far from extinguished: Henry, Margaret and their son had all escaped. Somerset escaped, changed sides and changed back, and was captured and executed after the battle of Hexham in 1464; and the house of York would lose and regain the crown before Henry Tudor ended it at Bosworth in 1485. Edward's own second war ended at Tewkesbury in 1471.29
Towton's reputation grew after the event. The Battlefields Trust suggests that it became more important after 1471, because it was a victory won by Edward himself, at a time when Warwick, who had played a leading part at Ferrybridge, had turned traitor. The name it carried also changed: in the years after 1461 it was most often called Palm Sunday Field, as Grummitt notes, and only settled as Towton later. For where it sits among Britain's battles, see our list of the greatest battles in British history.30
Where was the Battle of Towton fought?
The battle was fought on a plateau between the villages of Towton and Saxton. Sutherland places Towton about four kilometers south of Tadcaster and 18 kilometers, a dozen or so miles, south-west of York. Edward IV's act of attainder of 1461 places it in a field called Saxtonfield and Towtonfield, as Sutherland notes. Historic England registered the battlefield in 1995 and describes the modern open farmland as little changed from 1461 now that many hedgerows have gone.31
Visitors can walk it. A trail with interpretation panels, laid out by the Towton Battlefield Society, starts from the parking area by the memorial cross on the Lancastrian side, and the Society also runs guided walks. That medieval cross, known as Lord Dacre's Cross although Historic England finds no known link with Dacre, was re-erected as a battlefield memorial around 1930; Lord Dacre's tomb is in Saxton churchyard.32
