Rout of Ludford Bridge, 1459: the night the Yorkists ran

The Wars of the Roses began with a Yorkist victory at St Albans in 1455, but by 1459 the court of Henry VI and Queen Margaret was ready to strike back. John Rickard, at HistoryOfWar.org, describes how a Great Council summoned to Coventry in June 1459 left out the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick and charged them with treason instead.²

The Yorkist lords went home to recruit. Salisbury raised men in the north, York gathered his forces at Ludlow on the Welsh border, and Warwick crossed from Calais with part of its garrison, led by Andrew Trollope.³

Blore Heath and the march to Ludlow

Salisbury fought his way through at Blore Heath on 23 September 1459 and joined York at Ludlow, where the Richard III Society notes that Warwick too arrived with his contingent of experienced soldiers. Even united, the Yorkists were badly outnumbered. Rickard counts at least eighteen peers with the king and only six in York's army: York, his sons Edward, Earl of March, and Edmund, Earl of Rutland, the two Nevilles and Lord Clinton.⁴

The Yorkists moved south to Worcester, where on 10 October, the Society records, York, Salisbury and Warwick swore loyalty to the king while condemning the evil councillors around him. Henry answered with a pardon for all who came over to him within six days, excluding Salisbury. As the royal army closed in, the Yorkists fell back by way of Tewkesbury to Ludlow.⁵

A fortified bridge

Ludlow stands in a bend of the River Teme, and its main bridge leads south to Ludford. There, on the far bank, the Yorkists dug a ditch and fortified it with artillery. Rickard notes that the guns, mounted on carts, formed their front line, with the river and the bridge behind them.⁶

The royal army came up from the south, through Ledbury and Leominster, late on 12 October. That night the Yorkist guns fired toward it, though Rickard doubts that firing in the dark did much harm. York knew that the presence of the king in person was unsettling his men, and he tried to persuade them that Henry was dead. The ruse failed.⁷

Trollope changes sides

That night Trollope and the Calais men went over to the king and accepted the pardon. They claimed, Rickard writes, that they had not expected to fight the king in person. He finds the excuse rather unconvincing; it is perhaps more likely that the royal presence made them think twice, and that the pardon appealed to men who had nothing to do with the death of Lord Audley at Blore Heath.⁸

Their loss doomed the Yorkist cause. The leaders announced that they would retire to Ludlow Castle for the night, and there they decided to flee, abandoning their men. York and his younger son Edmund went north and then to Ireland. Salisbury, Warwick and the young Earl of March went south, found a ship in Devon and made for Calais.⁹

The Richard III Society notes that York left his duchess and two younger sons to the mercy of the king. The next morning the leaderless army dissolved; Lord Grey of Ruthin and Walter Devereux submitted to Henry, and the victorious Lancastrians sacked Ludlow. In November a parliament at Coventry attainted the rebels.¹⁰

A short respite

The collapse at Ludford seemed to end the Yorkist threat to Henry VI. Rickard calls it a humiliating defeat that appeared to finish any hope of a Yorkist victory. Yet the respite was short. York was safe in Ireland, where he built a following, and the others were secure in Calais.¹¹

By the summer of 1460 they were ready again. In the nine months between the Yorkist landings in Kent in June 1460 and the Battle of Towton in March 1461, Rickard counts five major battles. By the end of them York was dead and his son Edward, the Earl of March who had fled from Ludlow, had begun his reign as Edward IV.¹²