4 May, coming to Tewkesbury, arranged his army for battle. They first opened fire on the enemy with ordnance and a shower of arrows, till the Duke of Somerset unwisely carried his men out of their more secure position and brought them by certain bypaths on to a hill in front of Edward's van. Here; while engaging the king's forces in front, they were suddenly attacked in flank by a detachment of two hundred spears told off by Edward before the battle to guard against a possible ambush in a wood. Thus Somerset's men were thrown into confusion, and very soon the rest of the Lancastrian forces were broken and put to flight.
The Prince of Wales had been put in nominal command of the 'middle ward' of this army, but he acted under the advice of two experienced officers. Sir John Longstruther, prior of the knights of St. John, and Lord Wenlock. When Somerset first moved from his position he seems to have reckoned on being followed by Lord Wenlock in an attack on Edward's van. But Wenlock stood still and simply looked on, till Somerset returning called him traitor and dashed his brains out with a battle-axe. Sir John Longstruther fled and took refuge in the abbey, and the Prince of Wales, flying towards the town, appealed for protection to his brother-in-law Clarence. In what may be called an official account of Edward IV's recovery of his kingdom, it is said that the prince was slain in the field; but a more detailed account written in the next generation says that he was taken prisoner by a knight named Sir Richard Croftes, who delivered him up to King Edward on the faith of a proclamation issued after the battle, that whoever brought him to the king alive or dead should have an annuity of 100l., and that the prince's life should be saved. Yet the promise was shamefully violated, if not by the king himself, at least by those about him; for when the young man was brought before him Edward first inquired of him 'how he durst so presumptuously enter his realm with banner displayed?' The prince replied, 'To recover my fathers kingdom,' and Edward, we are told, 'with his hand thrust him from him, or, as some say, struck him with his gauntlet,' on which the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, the Marquis of Dorset, and Lord Hastings, who stood by, at once assassinated him. It seems to have been regarded as a favour that the king allowed him honourable burial.
Thus fell Edward, prince of Wales, who is described as 'a goodly feminine and a well-featured young gentleman,' in the eighteenth year of his age. His intended bride, Anne Nevill, whom the writers of that day call his wife, was taken prisoner after the battle, and a little later became the wife of Richard, duke of Gloucester [see Anne, queen of Richard III].
[An English Chronicle, ed. Davies (Camd. Soc.); Paston Letters; Wil. Wyrcester, Annales; Collections of a London Citizen (Camd. Soc.); Three Fifteenth-century Chronicles (Camd. Soc.); Burnett's Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. vii. (Scotch Record Publications); Anchiennes Cronicques d'Engleterre par Jehan de Wavrin (Dupont's edit.); Registrum J. Whethamstede, ed. Riley (Rolls Series); Leland's Collectanea, ii. 498–9; Hearne's Fragment (after Sprott), 304; Hist. Croyland. Contin. in Fulman's Scriptores, i. 533, 550, 553, 555; Ellis's Letters, 2nd ser. i. 132–5; Clermont's Fortescue, i. 22–31; Fabyan's Chronicle; Hall's Chronicle; Polydore Vergil.]
EDWARD, Earl of Warwick (1475–1499), was the eldest son of George, duke of
Clarence, brother of Edward IV, by his wife Isabel, daughter of Richard Nevill, earl of Warwick, 'the kingmaker.' The first two
children of that marriage were both daughters, of whom the eldest was born at sea in the spring of 1470 (when Lord Wenlock, commanding at Calais, would not allow his parents to land), but died an infant and was buried at Calais. The second was Margaret, born at Castle Farley, near Bath, in August 1473, who was afterwards Countess of Salisbury
and fell a victim to Henry VIII's tyranny. This Edward, the first son, was born at Warwick Castle on 21 Feb. 1475. The last child,
another son, named Richard, was born in 1476 and died on 1 Jan. 1477, not a quarter of a year old. He and his mother, who died shortly
before him, were said to have been poisoned, for which some of the household servants of the duke and duchess were tried and put to
death (Third Report of the Dep-Keeper of Public Records, app. ii. 214).
As the Duke of Clarence was put to death on 18 Feb. 1478, when this Edward was barely three years old, he was left from that tender age without either father or mother, and his nearest relation, after his sister Margaret, was his aunt, Anne, duchess of Gloucester, afterwards queen by the usurpation of Richard III. How much care she bestowed upon him does not appear. The first thing we hear about him, however, is that when only eight years old King Richard knighted him along with his own son at York in 1483. Next year the usurper, having lost his only son, thought of making him his heir, but on further consideration shut him up in close confinement in Sheriff Hutton Castle, and nominated John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, to succeed to the throne. In 1486, after the
