Battle of Wakefield

Battle of Wakefield
Part of the Wars of the Roses
Date 30 December 1460 Location Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England Result Decisive Lancastrian victory
Belligerents
House of Lancaster	House of York
Commanders and leaders
Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland John, Lord Clifford Andrew Trollope	Richard, Duke of York  † Edmund, Earl of Rutland  † Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury  †
Strength
possibly up to 18,000	"a few hundred" to 9,000
Casualties and losses
perhaps 200	700 – 2,500

The Battle of Wakefield took place in Sandal Magna near Wakefield, in West Yorkshire in Northern England, on 30 December 1460. It was a major battle of the Wars of the Roses. The opposing forces were an army led by nobles loyal to the captive King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster, his Queen Margaret of Anjou and their seven-year-old son Edward, Prince of Wales on one side, and the army of Richard, Duke of York, the rival claimant to the throne, on the other.

For several years before the battle, the Duke of York had become increasingly opposed to the weak King Henry's court. After King Henry became his prisoner for the second time, he laid claim to the throne, but lacked sufficient support. Instead, he accepted the title of Protector, and a promise that he or his heirs would succeed Henry. Margaret of Anjou and several prominent nobles were irreconcilably opposed to this accord, and massed their armies in the north. Richard of York marched north to deal with them, but found he was outnumbered.

Although he occupied Sandal Castle, York sortied from the castle on 30 December. His reasons for doing so have been variously ascribed to deception by the Lancastrian armies, or treachery by some nobles and Lancastrian officers who York thought were his allies, or simple rashness or miscalculation by York. The Duke of York was killed and his army was destroyed, many of the prominent Yorkist leaders and their family members died in the battle or were captured and executed.

King Henry VI ascended the throne when he was only nine months old. He grew up to be an ineffective king, and prone to spells of mental illness. There were increasingly bitter divisions among the officials and councillors who governed in Henry's name, mainly over the conduct of the Hundred Years' War with France. By the early 1450s, the most important rivalry was that between Richard of York and Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. York had been Lieutenant in France for several years and resented being supplanted in that office by Somerset, who had then failed to defend Normandy against French armies.

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