April 21st 1471: The Prince of Wales

Sir John Daunt of Owlpen

(The Street Banners of Tewkesbury)

Written by an officer of Edward’s army, the ‘Arrivall’ is vague about the movements of the Lancastrians, who seem to have taken a slow and tortuous route north. No real details of stopping places have come down to us, or even when they left the comfort of the city. Not even from other sources.

Letters to potential supporters were sent under the seal of Prince Edward, King Henry’s heir, who was now the rallying point for the Lancastrian cause. The Coventry Leet Book notes receipt of a letter, which was written in Chard, while on the way to Exeter. Another was sent to the Daunt family of Ownpen Manor, in Gloucestershire. A scrap survives:

…. att our landinge wee have knowledge that Edward Earle of March the Kings greate rebell our Enemy approcheth him in Armes towards the Kinges highnes whiche Edward wee purpose with Gods grace to encounter in all haste possible.

It was sufficient to mobilise Sir John Daunt, who joined the Lancastrian army as it passed. The city of Coventry acted somewhat differently.

Prince Edward was seventeen years old and by any measure he’d had an unusual upbringing. When he was in exile in France, aged thirteen, the Duke of Milan’s ambassador wrote ‘This boy, though still only thirteen years of age, talks of nothing but cutting off heads and making war’. When he was only seven, after the Battle of Wakefield, two Yorkist knights, William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville, (of Powderham Castle, Exeter) and Sir Thomas Kyriell, were captured. The day after the battle, Margaret asked young Edward what to do with them. Edward said that that their heads should be cut off and his indulgent mother gave the order. Even then, this shocked the nation and was looked upon as a war crime. He probably saw this new adventure to conquer England as his destiny, and certainly an improvement on a quiet, penniless, life in a small French chateau.