Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from English Towns in the Wars of the Roses
While, therefore, a prudent self-interest led many of the towns to pursue a temporizing policy during the dynastic struggles of the fifteenth century, such a policy would seem not entirely without justification. In the absence of any col lective organization on the part of the boroughs, every town was forced to adopt whatever makeshifts the exigencies of the moment might demand. It was well for the future of trade and of industry that the towns as a rule were governed by motives of self-interest. It could hardly be expected that a borough should have maintained a struggle single-handed when a change of fortune had brought about the momentary down fall or lasting ruin of the cause it had espoused. Rather they bowed their heads to the storm and accepted a condition of affairs they were powerless to avert.
But the records show that the towns were far less generally actuated by purely local and selfish motives, that some of the burghers were far more consistently loyal to Lancaster or York, and that the losses incurred by them on account of this loyalty were far greater than has been assumed by modern writers. The fact that in a number of places there were throughout the struggle rival Lancastrian and Yorkist factions would seem to indicate that their course of action was not dictated solely by policy. But aside from this, evidence, scanty though it be, is not lacking to show that many of the towns, including some of the most important ones in the realm, were keenly interested in the outcome of the struggle, while not a few examples can be cited of unswerving loyalty and devotion to the party of their choice. In fact indications are not lacking to show that as the struggle progressed, the commonalty were drawn more and more into the contest, being every day made more and more parties in the cause. The very fact that a chronicler would make the grossly exaggerated statement that of the commons were slain at Towton besides men of name lends colour to the belief that the number of commoners who fell on that field must have been unduly large. That a number of towns sent contingents to the field of Towton has been recordedin a well-known contemporary song.8 In this same connec tion another exaggerated statement of the chroniclers may be noted. When Edward IV was hurrying north in 1462, after the capture of Bamborough and Alnwick by Margaret, we are told by an ardent Yorkist that he was joined by troops from every town,9 a statement in which we see re?ected the belief on the part of the writer that a number of towns were send ing, partly from compulsion, partly also of their own free will, troops to the support of the Yorkist cause.
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