On 15 January 1460, Yorkist forces carried out a raid on Sandwich in Kent and captured the royal fleet lying there. The action took place during the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic struggle between the Lancastrian supporters of King Henry VI and the Yorkist faction seeking to press its claim to the English crown. Control of a fleet at Sandwich was of considerable strategic value, since the port served as one of the principal points of embarkation and arrival between England and the Continent. The capture of the royal fleet at this early stage of the year was a notable Yorkist coup that preceded the broader campaign of 1460. Later, on 26 June of the same year, Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and Edward, Earl of March, landed at Sandwich with an army and marched on London, a sequence of events in which control of the sea crossing was plainly significant. By July, London had opened its gates to the Yorkists without resistance, and on 10 July King Henry VI was captured at the Battle of Northampton.
The raid on Sandwich on 15 January 1460 was a swift, purposeful strike rather than a pitched battle. The Yorkists seized the royal fleet moored in the harbour, depriving the Lancastrian crown of its naval capacity at a moment when the struggle for the throne was intensifying. Within months, the same port at Sandwich would serve as the landing point for the Yorkist army that marched on London and ultimately took King Henry VI prisoner, suggesting that the January raid had materially cleared the way for everything that followed.
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