Percy-Neville Clash at Stamford Bridge 1454
History & Significance
The Percy–Neville feud was a series of skirmishes, raids, and vandalism between two prominent northern English families, the House of Percy and the House of Neville, and their followers, that helped provoke the Wars of the Roses. The original reason for the long dispute is unknown, and the first outbreaks of violence were in the 1450s, prior to the Wars of the Roses. The antagonists would later meet in battle several times during the feud.
Yorkshire's three ridings were divided among the crown (as Duke of Lancaster), the Percy family, Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury. King Henry VI and the Duke of York do not seem to have visited Yorkshire very often, which Ralph Griffiths suggests meant that any tension would be solely between Percy and Neville. Since the city of York was the most important, the capital city of the north, it 'provided a focus for their rivalries'. It is not, he said, a coincidence that 'the two virtual battles between Percy and Neville in 1453 and 1454 were fought close to the city's walls'. He also suggests that Percy tenants may have been as anti-Neville as their lords, since their estates were contiguous, this could have encouraged rivalry and bred antagonism. As A. J. Pollard has pointed out, Neville retained some of his knights from 'deep in Percy country, particularly southern Northumberland'.
Griffiths has suggested that by the mid-15th century, relations between Percy and Neville were 'poisoned by jealousy and resentment'. He has pointed out that Salisbury probably did not expect — and not receive — the assistance of the Raby branch of his family (by his father's first wife, Margaret de Stafford), which he puts down to the previous feud between the two branches of the family, over the division of Westmorland's will. Robin Storey has also pointed out how Northumberland seems to have been receiving less royal favour than Salisbury. He points out that when trouble came, it was to be the earls' sons, not the lords, that would start it. The degree to which the two earls were assisting and encouraging the feud behind the scenes has also been questioned. Griffiths has said that Thomas and John were Salisbury's direct representatives in it.
Various immediate causes have been ascribed to causing the outbreak of violence in 1454. Professor Griffiths has suggested that Lord Cromwell's manor of Wressle, Yorkshire, was seized by the Percys following the joining of the Cromwell and Neville families in marriage in 1453 (see below), and that Cromwell viewed the Nevilles as allies against the Percys. Likewise, Warwick's feud with Somerset in south Glamorgan may have driven him into an alliance with the Duke of York against him. Griffiths also suggests that the single most important event to precipitate the feud was the marriage of Salisbury's second son, Thomas Neville to Maud Stanhope, the widow of Robert, Lord Willoughby. Not only, says Griffiths, was any further aggrandisement for Salisbury's family anathema to the Percys, but the new Cromwell connection gave the Nevilles access to the ex-Percy manors of Wressle and Burwell, two-thirds of which had each been granted to Cromwell for life in February 1438, together with the reversion of the remainder. This grant was then converted into one in fee simple two years later, further reducing the likelihood of the Percys reclaiming it. Griffiths has calculated Burwell to have been worth an income of c. £38 10s 6d per annum in 1456. These manors had been forfeited in 1403 by the first earl of Northumberland after the failure of the Percy Rebellion against Henry IV, and Cromwell's holding them in fee-simple meant they were available to him to grant away to whomever he liked.
The ground they fought on
The site of Percy-Neville Clash at Stamford Bridge 1454 lies on Triassic Rocks (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Triassic. The rock here is sandstone and conglomerate, interbedded.
The confrontation was fought at the same river crossing over the Derwent where, 388 years earlier in 1066, Harold Godwinson had destroyed the invading Norwegian army of Harald Hardrada. What had once been the scene of a battle for the English crown was now the setting for a running feud between two northern noble houses, a reminder of how far the reach of the Percy-Neville quarrel had spread across the old landscape of Yorkshire.
- Not reliably recorded. The engagement was described as short; one account speaks of hundreds killed, but no dependable total survives.
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- Battle of Stamford Bridge, 1454 · History of War