Towton 1461: Fauconberg's Wind-Borne Arrows and the Cock Beck Rout

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On Palm Sunday 1461, between 50,000 and 65,000 men, roughly 2 percent of England's population, met in a blizzard on a plateau between Saxton and Towton in North Yorkshire. The crisis began with the mental illness of the Lancastrian king Henry VI. In 1460 Richard, Duke of York, captured Henry, and the Act of Accord let Henry reign for life while disinheriting his son. Queen Margaret of Anjou raised an army in Scotland and the north, killed York and his second son at Wakefield, and spiked their heads on the gates of York. York's 18-year-old heir Edward IV won at Mortimer's Cross, was proclaimed king in London, and marched north offering amnesty to commoners but not to Lancastrian nobles facing attainder.

After Lord Clifford's stand at Ferrybridge ended with an arrow in his throat, the Duke of Somerset anchored the Lancastrians behind Towton Dale with marshes and the flooded Cock Beck on his flank. A south wind drove snow into Lancastrian faces. Edward fought on the front line, held through a flank attack from Castle Hill Wood, and was saved when the delayed Duke of Norfolk struck the Lancastrian left. The fleeing Lancastrians were cut down in Bloody Meadow and at the Cock Beck, with modern estimates of 2,800 to 9,000 dead.

• Lord Fauconberg had his archers loose one high volley on the tailwind and step back, so Lancastrian return fire fell short and was gathered and shot back.
• Nearly three quarters of English peers fought, at least 19 for Lancaster and eight for York.
• Chroniclers said the pursuing Yorkists crossed the Cock Beck on bridges of bodies.
• A 1996 mass grave held more than 50 men aged mostly 24 to 30, including Towton 25 with a skull split across the face, and a 2010 survey found early handgun fragments.
• Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3 stages a son who killed his father and a father who killed his son, and Tysoe villagers long cut a Red Horse into a hillside to recall Warwick killing his horse.