Comments on: The brief triumph of Richard, duke of York: the Parliamentary Accord of 31 October 1460

By: A New Dawn? The accession of Edward IV on 4 March 1461 - The History of Parliament

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 10:58:56 +0000

[…] that by re-joining his wife and son at the battle of St. Albans on 17 February Henry VI had broken the accord sanctioned by the Lords and Commons in the previous autumn (which had settled the crown on Henry VI […]

By: Turning back the clock: the Readeption Parliament of Henry VI, 1470-71 - The History of Parliament

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 10:37:46 +0000

[…] and the succession of his son, the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, would have been re-affirmed, and the decisions of 1460 and 1461 that called this into question disavowed. The same, or a separate act would have ensured […]

By: ‘No deed of shame so foul’: the treachery of Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and the battle of Northampton, 10 July 1460 - The History of Parliament

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:08:22 +0000

[…] Whatever prompted Grey, his treachery was a significant factor in the Yorkist victory. Most of the chronicle accounts, one of which claims the fight lasted only half an hour, are specific on this point. Wheathampstead gives the most circumstantial account: ‘as the attacking squadrons came to the ditch before the royalist rampart … Lord Grey with his men met them and, seizing them by the hand, hauled them into the embattled field’. The Welsh historian, Howell Thomas Evans (d.1950), did not hold back in his condemnation of Grey’s action: in the ‘sordid annals of even these sterile wars there is no deed of shame so foul’. Its consequences were certainly immense. It may be that the outnumbered Lancastrians would have lost the battle in any event, but they would have not done so in such a sudden fashion. Since, due to Grey’s ‘deed of shame’, the Yorkists were able to overwhelm their defensive position, they were able to kill whom they would, and they took full advantage. Buckingham, according to one account, ‘stondyng stylle at hys tente’, fell on the field, as did his three leading captains, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, John, Viscount Beaumont, and Grey’s brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, Lord Egremond. The Yorkists were also able to capture the King, who, although in himself a mere cipher, was an important prize. Historical counterfactuals are generally more indulgent than informative, but it is interesting to reflect on what would have happened had the Lancastrians retained the King. On 30 July the Yorkists, with the King in their possession, summoned the Parliament in which the duke of York, newly returned from Ireland, was to make his claim to the throne. One wonders what would have been the status of this assembly had the King not been present to attend its opening, and whether it would have had the political and legal authority to pass the Act of Accord by which the Lancastrian line was disinherited. […]

By: Parliament and the removal of a political leader: a fifteenth-century example - The History of Parliament

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:15:50 +0000

[…] several chroniclers recorded that it prompted popular opposition to the King’s advisers. After Richard, duke of York, assumed the role of the leading opponent of the government and court in the following decade, he […]

By: Richard, duke of York’s last Christmas: the Battle of Wakefield, 30 Dec. 1460 - The History of Parliament

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 09:24:19 +0000

[…] gave them control of the hapless King; and, by the Act of Accord made in the October Parliament, the duke of York was adopted as heir to the throne. Yet their position remained insecure. Powerful Lancastrian lords, headed by Queen Margaret, […]

By: A New Dawn? The accession of Edward IV on 4 March 1461 – The History of Parliament

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:01:44 +0000

By: An empty victory: Queen Margaret and the second battle of St. Albans 17 Feb. 1461 – The History of Parliament

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 00:01:10 +0000

[…] to meet this threat. The parliamentary session (the second of the assembly that had passed the Act of Accord in the previous October), which had convened on 28 January, was prorogued after only a few days, […]

By: Richard, duke of York’s last Christmas: the Battle of Wakefield, 30 Dec. 1460 – The History of Parliament

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:17 +0000

By: Turning back the clock: the Readeption Parliament of Henry VI, 1470-71 – The History of Parliament

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 00:01:40 +0000