Second Battle of St Albans
Who Fought
History & Significance
The Second Battle of St Albans was fought on 17 February 1461 during the Wars of the Roses in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England (the First Battle of St Albans had been fought in 1455).
The army of the Yorkist faction, under the Earl of Warwick, attempted to bar the road to London north of the town. The rival Lancastrian army used a wide outflanking manoeuvre to take Warwick by surprise, cut him off from London and drive his army from the field. The victors also released the feeble King Henry VI, who had been Warwick's prisoner, from his captivity, but they ultimately failed to take advantage of their victory.
The Wars of the Roses were fought between the supporters of two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty: the House of Lancaster, represented by the mentally-unstable King Henry VI, and those of the rival House of York. Richard of York quarrelled with several of Henry's court during the late 1440s and the early 1450s. He was respected as a soldier and administrator and was believed by his own supporters to have a better claim to the throne than Henry. York and his friends rebelled in 1455. At the First Battle of St Albans, York gained a victory but that did not resolve the causes of the conflict. After attempts at reconciliation, fighting resumed in 1459. At the Battle of Northampton in 1460, Richard of York's nephew, the Earl of Warwick, defeated a Lancastrian army and captured King Henry, who had taken no part.
York returned to London from exile in Ireland and attempted to claim the throne but his supporters were not prepared to go so far. Instead, an agreement was reached, the Act of Accord by which York or his heirs were to become king after Henry's death. That agreement disinherited Henry's young son, Edward of Westminster. Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, refused to accept the Act of Accord and took Edward to Scotland to gain support there. York's rivals and enemies raised an army in the north of England. York and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury (Warwick's father), led an army to the north late in 1460 to counter these threats but they underestimated the Lancastrians. At the Battle of Wakefield, the Yorkist army was destroyed; York, Salisbury, and York's second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, were killed or executed after the battle.
The victorious Lancastrian army began advancing south towards London. It was led by comparatively young nobles such as the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford, whose fathers had been killed by York and Warwick at the First Battle of St Albans. The army contained substantial contingents from the West Country and the Scottish Borders and largely subsisted on plunder as they marched south.
The ground they fought on
The site of Second Battle of St Albans lies on Lambeth Group, bedrock that formed in the Paleocene. The rock here is clay, silt, sand and gravel.
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- Second Battle of St Albans · Wikidata
- Second_Battle_of_St_Albans · Wikipedia