Battle of Barnet, Hertfordshire, defeat of Warwick and his brother Montagu, who both fell in the battle. Richard is said to have been in command of the vanguard.
Read more about a possible different location for the battle here.
Tags: Barnet, Battles, Edward IV, Hertfordshire, Richard III
Death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, aged 56. He was the youngest son of Henry IV, brother of Henry V and Lord Protector to his young nephew Henry VI, who was only nine months when he succeeded his father. Humphrey is buried at St Albans Cathedral.
(Photograph of the Chantry of Humphrey of Gloucester in St Albans Cathedral © Dorothea Preis)
St Michael’s Bridge and ford (© D Preis)
The second Battle of St Albans was fought on 17 February 1461 between the Lancastrian forces under Margaret of Anjou (Henry VI’s queen) and the Yorkist forces under Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (‘The Kingmaker”). It was won by the Lancastrian forces. Henry VI was reunited with his wife and son. The Yorkists, however, won the Battle of Towton on 29 March 1461 and with it the crown for Edwrad IV.
The photo shows St Michael’s Bridge and ford. Part of the Lancastrian forces led by Sir Andrew Trollope entered St Albans via this ford. The present bridge was only built in 1765, but it is considered to be the oldest still existing bridge in Hertfordshire.
The second Battle of St Albans was fought over a larger area than the first Battle of St Albans on 22 May 1455, which was concentrated on the streets in the town centre.
The website St Albans & Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society has a map showing the area covered by both battles.
A short description of the various battles of the Wars of the Roses can be found on the website of the Richard III Society.
Dorothea Preis
Tags: Hertfordshire, St Albans, Wars of the Roses, Yorkists
Birth of Henry 
Plantagenet at Hatfield on 10 February 1441. He was the eldest son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. He died as a baby.
At the time of his birth, his parents had already two daughters, Joan (1438), who had also died in infancy, and Anne (10 August 1439). Their next son, Edward, was born on 28 April 1442. He was to accede the throne as Edward IV on 4 March 1461.
Unfortunately it is not sure whether he was born at Hatfield in Hertfordshire or Hatfield Chase in Yorkshire. Hatfield in Hertfordshire belonged to the Bishops of Ely, which is why it also called Bishops Hatfield. Their manor might have offered suitable accommodation on the way to London. The Great North Road connecting London and York ran through Hatfield.
Hatfield Chase was a royal hunting ground and one of the Duke of York’s family residences. [1] There are several sources linking Henry to this Hatfield. [2]
1. Michael K Jones, Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle. Tempus, 2003, p.81
2. For instance: Jones, ibid.
S Whaley, The History and Antiquities of Thorne, with Some Account of the Drainage of Hatfield Chase (1829). p.24
Hatfield Town Council, ‘Parish History‘
You can find a list of the children of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville here.
Dorothea Preis
Tags: Hertfordshire, House of York
Berkhamsted Castle
Our next General Meeting will be held on Saturday, 13 April 2019, at 2 pm at the Sydney Mechanics Institute, Level 1, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney.
Our featured speaker will be our own long-serving executive committee member Dorothea, who will take us on a visit to Richard III’s mum, Cecily, at her long-time residence of Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire. She will tell us about the town and the castle, starting from its pre-conquest origins to the present day. The castle was very significant in the development of the town. Along the way, you will meet some of its colourful residents.
Please join us for this most interesting sounding program!
You might also like to watch a YouTube video with an Animated Tour of Berkhamsted Castle here.
Tags: Berkhamsted, Cecily Neville, Hertfordshire, NSW Branch
People who know me, will have realised that I have a particular interest in St Albans and anything connected to the town or the saint.. After I had previously looked at the goings-on at the Abbey and its cells, I am planning to turn my attention to the civilian population in the middle ages. As the civilian population would have been very much at the receiving end of the two battles fought in their midst, irrespective of who won that battle, I recently read two books dealing with these battles. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Hertfordshire, St Albans
This continues my quest to discover a Ricardian or Yorkist connection to places in Hertfordshire. Hatfield was fairly high on my agenda as I spent a year as a foreign language assistant teaching German at two schools, one of which was in Hatfield, in 1980/81.
After arriving on a Saturday evening in late August 1980, our first visit the next day was to Hatfield House. As the first thing you see is the latest building on the site, this story will be going chronologically backwards. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Church, Family, Hertfordshire, Yorkshire
Last week my husband attended a conference in Hobart in Tasmania. So I went along for some sightseeing. Visiting St David’s Cathedral I admired the beautiful stained glass windows. One of them showed St Alban, which after my recent work on St Albans in Hertfordshire was like meeting an old friend.
Saint Alban was the first martyr of Britain (executed in c. 304). His story has often been told, among others by the Venerable Bede.[1] According to this, Alban was a Romano-British citizen of Verulanium, who gave shelter to a Christian priest, called Amphibalus, during a persecution of Christians. He was so impressed by what this man had to say that Alban converted to Christianity. When Roman soldiers came to search his house for the priest, he pretended to be him and was arrested. During the trial he stood firm to his new faith and was beheaded.[2] However, en route to his execution he performed several miracles like stopping the water of the river to flow and causing a spring of water on the hill, where he was beheaded (hence the street name ‘Holywell Hill’). His original executioner converted to Christianity on the spot and the man who eventually did the deed was punished by blindness. Unfortunately all this did not help Amphibalus, who along with some others was a few days later stoned to death.[3]
At the time we were there, the Australian Shakespeare Festival was taking place in Hobart. Unfortunately we did not have time to visit any of the vents, but William was looking down on us from a great height all over the city, which was like running into another old friend.
Notes:
1. “St Alban”, Catholic Encyclopedia – New Advent. (accessed 23 May 2010)
2. “The Story of St Alban”, The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban. (accessed 24 May 2010)
3. “St Alban”, New Advent
Tags: Hertfordshire, Shakespeare, St Albans
When considering which could be my next Ricardian Place in Hertfordshire, the recent 555th anniversary of the First Battle of St Albans (22 May 1455) offered the obvious answer. During our life in England St Albans was a popular haunt for us, for shopping, eating out or just soaking up the atmosphere. I also happened to have a number of private students there – hello to Tony and Jacky, should you read this.
There have been settlements in the St Albans area for a long time. The first that we know of was by the Celtic Catuvellauni tribe, who called it ‘Verlamion’. During the Roman period it became ‘Verulanium’, the second largest town in England after Londinium, situated on Watling Street heading north.[1] Most of the remains of the Roman town are today covered by Verulanium Park, but some parts have been excavated and can be visited. For instance the Hypocaust (including an in situ mosaic); the Roman Theatre of Verulamium; and the remains of the Roman city walls and London gate.[2] Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Battles, Church, Hertfordshire, St Albans, Wars of the Roses, Yorkists
Before migrating to Australia, we lived for 5 years in Welwyn Garden City, where I had spent a memorable year as a German assistant in 1980/81. Welwyn Garden City is in Hertfordshire, so I started wondering what Ricardian or Yorkist connections I could discover in that county and these will be discussed over time.
But I would like to start with Welwyn Garden City itself. On a purely personal level the town is of great Ricardian relevance: In autumn 1980 I bought in what was then the Welwyn Department Store (now part of the John Lewis Partnership) my copy of Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, so you could say that was where my obsession with this king and the period began. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Contemporaries, Hertfordshire
