The tensions between Richard Duke of York and the court party, led by Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and Queen Margaret, came to a head in early 1455.  York feared for his life when he heard that a Council had been summoned in Leicester in late May, to which he was not invited.  He decided to negotiate from a position of strength and took an army of around 3,000 supporters from the North Country to intercept the royal entourage before it reached Leicester.  His main supporters were the Neville family (the Earl of Salisbury and his son the Earl of Warwick – ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’).

The two forces met at St Albans* early in the morning of 22 May 1455.  The royal party – the Lancastrians – arrived first from Watford and occupied the town* centre.  York’s forces – the Yorkists – arrived a few hours later from Hatfield and occupied a large open space – Keyfield, now a car park – on the eastern side of the town.  There then followed several hours of desultory negotiations after which Henry VI by one account lost his temper and dismissed York’s heralds.  

When news of this dismissal reached York at about 10am he ordered an attack on the town. The Lancastrians easily defended the bars of the narrow lanes on the east side of the town. Seeing this, the Earl of Warwick ordered his men to assault the rampart between the lanes.  They managed to cross these defences and broke through the gardens and houses behind into the town centre. The Lancastrians who were still putting on their armour in the town were shot by Warwick’s archers whilst those defending the east side of the town, learning of this breakthrough, fell back pursued by their attackers. In the general melee that followed Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford, who had all been defending the east side of the town, were killed and the Lancastrians defeated.  

Henry VI, who had been injured by an arrow, was taken for safety into a tanner’s workshop to have his wound dressed. This building was almost certainly on the site of today’s Mallinson House on St Peter’s Street (from correlating information from now lost inscriptions in St Peter’s Church with the still surviving will of its owner).  Henry was soon escorted by York to the abbey where was lodged in the royal apartments*.  

York ordered the bodies of the slain Lancastrians to remain where they fell until the Abbot asked him to be allowed to gather them up and give them a proper Christian burial.  Around 40 of the more important Lancastrians were interred under the floor of the Abbey’s Lady Chapel (and moved in the 1870s to the north churchyard), while more were interred in a mass grave on the northern side of St Peter’s churchyard. There were also four tombs inside the church.  All the memorials from the time were progressively lost through iconoclasm in the Reformation and then structural repair work over the centuries in the church and the Abbey/Cathedral.

The whole battlefield was, and still is, in an urban setting with the same streets - and some of the same buildings - still in evidence.  There is no authenticated archaeology and there are no authenticated artefacts from the battle, but there are many local legends about supposed finds.

*St Albans did not become a city and a diocese until the late 1860s so in 1455 it was still a town and with an Abbey (now the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban).  Until 1879 it was spelled “St Alban’s” (as in Shakespeare’s plays).