⚔ Battlefields of Britain

Siege of the Tower of London 1460

Siege of the Tower of London: York victory over Lancaster
Image: Sodacan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Marker: recorded battle location (no official boundary).

Key facts

Date (year)1460Wikidata P585 point in time
Century15th centuryderived
PeriodWars of the Roses & late medievalderived
CountryEnglandderived

About the battle

The siege of the Tower of London was an episode of the Wars of the Roses, in which adherents of the rival Plantagenet houses of Lancaster and York were pitted against each other. In June 1460, several Yorkist nobles, who had unsuccessfully rebelled against King Henry VI the year before and had fled to Calais, invaded the south east of England at Sandwich. They enjoyed widespread support through popular discontent with the ruling court among the populace of Kent and the merchants of London, and were greeted by enthusiastic crowds when they entered London on 2 July.

The Lancastrian garrison of the Tower of London, commanded by Lord Scales, opened fire indiscriminately into the surrounding streets with cannon and wildfire, causing many deaths and injuries. While most of the Yorkist army marched north into the Midlands to engage the King's Lancastrian army, 2000 men were left under the Earl of Salisbury to besiege the Tower. They were aided by many of the city's aldermen and armed militia, who used bombards secured from a royal depot to demolish part of the Tower's curtain wall, and blockaded the Tower to prevent supplies reaching the garrison.

On 10 July, the Yorkists won the Battle of Northampton and captured King Henry, who they treated respectfully for the time being. On 19 July, the garrison of the Tower were starved into surrender.

Visiting the battlefield

Location

  • Recorded location (Wikidata; may be approximate): 51.5081, -0.0761

Battlefields are often on private farmland: please keep to public rights of way and respect landowners.

Directions (Google Maps) OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of the Tower of London (1460) (revision 1370787677), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations removed. No text added.

Battle location from Wikidata (CC0).

Nearby battlefields

Browse more: battles in London · battles in England · Wars of the Roses & late medieval · 15th century battles

Further reading