March 29th 1471: Confrontation at the City Walls
Edward followed Warwick to Coventry. Murray Kendall says “Suddenly the fields outside the town were filled with the steel ranks of the Yorkist host. The chance of crushing the invaders had gone glimmering; the King’s Lieutenant of the Realm found himself bottled up in a few acres of streets and houses. A Yorkist herald appeared at the gate to deliver a formal challenge to combat. Despite having a superiority in numbers, Warwick was not ready for this. He must have been watching anxiously to the north and south for the reinforcements he was expecting. His advantage had now slipped away”.
The ‘Arrivall’ describes the events:
And so, better accompanied than he [Edward] had bene at any time before, he departed from Leicester, and came before the town of Coventry, the xxix. day of Marche. And when he understood the said Earl within the town [was] closed, and with him great people, to the number of vj or vij M men, the King desired him to come out, with all his people, into the field, to determine his quarrel in plain field, which the same Earl refused to do at that time, and so he did iij days after-ensuing continually.
Edward, also, had to take stock of his position. He couldn’t afford a long siege. Not only was there the possibility of attack by the Lancastrian forces roaming the countryside but there was also a big problem in provisioning his army at the end of the winter, when food stocks were at their lowest. He must also have been aware of the imminent arrival of Queen Margaret and the rising in the west country which that would bring. Maybe what kept him outside Coventry, penning Warwick up, was uncertainty about what brother George might be intending to do.