In 1470 the heirs of the 5th Baron Berkeley (Thomas Talbot and William Berkeley) fought on Nibley Green (on the edges of Nibley House Farm), for the considerable inheritance of Berkeley Castle.
It had been Talbot's challenge, with the rule that they could only fight with soldiers created from their own tenants (Tweedledee and Tweedledum are coming strongly to mind), but Berkeley cheated by immediately employing a great many expert archers from the Forest of Dean. He, not surprisingly, won, and proceeded to sack Talbot's manor in Wotton-under-edge.

An important town and castle on the Anglo-Scottish border, Berwick served as a base for Lancastrian and Scottish raids into northern England in the 1460s, and remained a complicating factor in Anglo-Scottish relations throughout the WARS OF THE ROSES. After the capture of HENRYVI at the Battle of NORTHAMPTON in July 1460, Queen MARGARET OF ANJOU and her son Prince EDWARD OF LANCASTER fled into SCOTLAND, where they were honorably received by the regency government of young JAMES III. In January 1461, after negotiations with Queen MARY OF GUELDRES, mother of the Scottish king and leader of his regency council, Margaret agreed to surrender Berwick to the Scots in return for Scottish military assistance against the Yorkists. The agreement was to be sealed by a marriage between the Prince of Wales and Mary, the sister of James III. Although the Yorkist victory at the Battle of TOWTON in March 1461 won the throne for EDWARD IV, the north of England remained loyal to Henry VI, and Edward was unable to prevent the Lancastrian surrender of Berwick to the Scots on 25 April 1461.

The loss of Berwick infuriated Edward IV, but he could do little about it beyond using Margaret's surrender of an English town as a PROPAGANDA weapon against the Lancastrians. Prince Edward's marriage to the Scottish princess never occurred, but a Scottish-held Berwick became an ideal staging point for repeated Lancastrian and Scottish military efforts, which kept northern England unsettled for most of the 1460s. Although the Lancastrian threat to the region ended with Edward IV's restoration in 1471, continued Scottish possession of Berwick irritated the Yorkist government, and Anglo-Scottish relations remained poor.

Having unsuccessfully besieged Berwick since the previous year, Edward IV concluded the Treaty of Fotheringhay with Alexander, duke of Albany, estranged brother of James III, in June 1482. In return for the surrender of Berwick and certain other concessions, Edward IV agreed to support Albany's claim to his brother's throne. In fulfillment of the treaty, Richard, duke of Gloucester, led a large army northward in July. The town of Berwick capitulated immediately, but the castle held out. Gloucester then invaded Scotland, where the political opposition to James III prevented any real resistance and allowed the duke to enter Edinburgh on 1 August. With no help coming from the Scottish king, the Berwick garrison surrendered the castle to Gloucester on 24 August 1482. After twenty-one years in Scottish hands, Berwick was once again an English town.

Further Reading: Haigh, Philip A., The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1995); Macdougall, Norman, James III: A Political Study (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1982); Nicholson, Ranald, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, vol. 2 of The Edinburgh History of Scotland (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974); Ross, Charles, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

Harbingers were a special corps of men who rode before an army on the march and arranged for the billeting, or lodging, of the troops.

Harbingers generally came under the command of the army's marshal, the officer responsible for keeping the troops well fed and supplied. Because the WARS OF THE ROSES were civil wars, harbingers usually had to maintain friendly relations with the local people on whom troops were billeted while also providing suitable accommodations for the men. Uncomfortable sleeping quarters could damage army morale, and quarrels over who got choice billets could destroy an army's cohesion and seriously divide its leadership. The Yorkists lost the Battle of EDGECOTE in 1469 largely because EDWARD IV's commanders, William HERBERT, earl of Pembroke, and Humphrey STAFFORD, earl of Devon, argued over lodging the night before. When Devon led most of the ARCHERS to distant billets, Pembroke had mainly footmen when he was confronted next day by the ROBIN OF REDESDALE insurgents.

Harbingers could also act as foragers and information gatherers, since they often made first contact with the enemy force by clashing with its harbingers. Because encountering opposing harbingers could reveal a foe's location and direction, commanders sometimes ordered their own harbingers to ride away from the army's line of march, thereby deceiving the enemy as to the army's position and the commander's intentions. Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, used this tactic during his coup attempt in 1470, as did Edmund BEAUFORT, duke of Somerset, the Lancastrian commander during the western campaign in 1471. In an effort to reach the Severn fords before Edward IV, Somerset sent harbingers southeast from Bristol when the army moved north. Although Edward eventually caught and defeated his enemies at the Battle of TEWKESBURY, the ploy almost delayed the king sufficiently to allow MARGARET OF ANJOU's army to reach WALES.

Further Reading: Boardman, Andrew W., The Medieval Soldier in the Wars of the Roses (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1998); Gillingham, John, The Wars of the Roses (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).

St Martins, North Nibley church near the site of battle of Nibley Green 20th March 1470, one of the lesser battles of the Wars of the Roses It was a private war between the Lord Lisle of Wotton and Lord Berkeley of Berkeley Castle over the Berkeley inheritance. (see Thomas Lord Berkeley brass at Wotton Under Edge) William Lord Berkeley built the south aisle as thanks for his victory.

Many of the bodies of the fallen were buried in Nibley Churchyard. The church itself, St.Martin's, dates from an earlier 12th century chapel which in turn was probably built on a pagan site. Inside, the Green Man, a pagan figure, is carved on one of the columns. Next to the Church is Nibley House which dates from the 17th century and was the home of John Smyth, the wealthy steward for the Berkeley Estates.

Fought on 20 March 1470 near the Gloucestershire village of the same name, the Battle of Nibley Green was the culmination of an inheritance dispute between Thomas Talbot, Viscount Lisle (1451-1470), and William Berkeley, Lord Berkeley (1426-1492). Occurring while EDWARD IV was on campaign in the north against the rebel forces of Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, and George PLANTAGENET, duke of Clarence, the battle is a prime example of the local disorder that was common in mid-fifteenth-century England during periods of weak or distracted royal government.

William Berkeley was the son and heir of James, Lord Berkeley, but his possession of the Berkeley title and estates was disputed by Margaret, countess of Shrewsbury. The countess was the granddaughter and coheiress of Thomas, Lord Berkeley, whose estates had passed, not without challenge, to his nephew James, and then, on James's death in 1463, to William, who was thus Lord Thomas's great nephew. In pursuit of her claims, the countess had arrested and imprisoned Lord William's mother, Isabel Berkeley, when she had attempted to appeal on her husband's behalf to the COUNCIL of HENRY VI in 1452. Lady Berkeley died while still in confinement in Gloucester in September 1452. On the death of Countess Margaret in June 1468, her claim was taken up by her eighteen-year-old grandson, Lord Lisle. When Warwick's attempts to control the Crown revived political instability in 1469-1470, the Berkeley-Talbot feud, like such other long running disputes as the Harrington-Stanley feud in Lancashire and the Harcourt-Stafford feud in the Midlands, turned violent during the ensuing period of royal weakness. As in the worst days of Henry VI, aggrieved nobles took up arms to settle their differences. The encounter at Nibley Green arose from a challenge, apparently issued by Berkeley, to settle the matter by combat. With the time and place arranged by the Berkeley and Talbot heralds (i.e., each magnate's official messenger and officer of arms), the battle occurred only eight days after Edward IV defeated Warwick's rebels at the Battle of LOSECOTE FIELD. A bloody fight that was remembered in Gloucestershire well into the seventeenth century, the Battle of Nibley Green resulted in the deaths of Lisle and some 150 others (probably more than died at the Battle of ST. ALBANS in 1455), and in the sack of Lisle's manor at Wotton.

Because his support was deemed vital for the house of YORK, Berkeley apparently suffered little or no punishment for his involvement in the fray. He was made a viscount by Edward IV in 1481 and created earl of Nottingham by RICHARD III in 1483. Berkeley was also favored by the house of TUDOR; HENRY VII named him Earl Marshal of England in 1486 and created him marquis of Berkeley in 1489. He died at Westminster in February 1492.

Further Reading: Goodman, Anthony, The Wars of the Roses (New York: Dorset Press, 1981); Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).