Talk:Battle of Towton

message: Bloodier than the Battle of Watling Street?
I changed the Lancastrian commander 'Lord Clifford' to 'the Duke of Somerset'.
Actually Lord Clifford commanded the small Lancastrian force at the Battle of Ferrybridge, where he died, killed by an arrow.
Ralphspikyhair  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ralphspikyhair (talk • contribs) 17:31, 31 October 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lord Clifford 

message: I have removed the reference to Palm Sunday because the 29th of March 1461 was a Friday. In 1461 Good Friday was on April 5th, counting back would put March 29th on a Friday and Palm Sunday on the 31st. You can use this program Easter Sunday calculator to find the date of Good Friday in 1461. Also, the calendar of 1461 could be generated with special programs (this one was done with MATLAB):
                   Mar 1461
     S     M    Tu     W    Th     F     S
     0     0     0     0     0     1     2
     3     4     5     6     7     8     9
    10    11    12    13    14    15    16
    17    18    19    20    21    22    23
    24    25    26    27    28    29    30
    31     0     0     0     0     0     0
                    Apr 1461
     S     M    Tu      W    Th     F     S
     0     1     2      3     4     5     6
     7     8     9     10    11    12    13
    14    15    16     17    18    19    20
    21    22    23     24    25    26    27
    28    29    30     0     0     0     0
Of course it could be that the battle was fought on Palm Sunday, so the mistake is in the date, but since the remark about Palm Sunday is in parenthesis I removed it instead of changing the date. 
On the other hand this calculator:
http://www.albion.edu/english/calendar/easter.htm 
puts Easter on April 5th, making March 29th Palm Sunday!! I will check MATLAB once again.
--130.161.31.83 13:58, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I was recently trying to track down all I could about the Battle of the Standard and one Google hit was on a serious academic paper about how battles got named.  It was chiefly memorable for the explanation that Losecoat Field was nothing to do with the losers discarding their livery but more because that already was the name of the field (hloscot = pigsty or some such).  However as I recall it also discussed Towton having had the alternative name of PalmSundayField, which never really caught on.--Rjccumbria (talk) 20:34, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Battle date 

message: The current introductory section doesn't do a good job of summarizing.  What should be added to the introduction is a summary of the results/significance of the battle (besides a lot of people getting killed).  I'm declining to be bold here because I'm not sure of my ground in framing such a summary.  My stab at it would be along these lines: "The battle was a decisive victory for the Yorkists.  The Lancastrian army suffered heavy losses and ceased to exist as an effective fighting force.  Most of the surviving Lancastrian leaders acquiesced to Edward's coronation later in the year."  I offer that suggestion mostly to illustrate the level of generality that I think is appropriate for the introductory section, not because I'm confident that what I've written is accurate. JamesMLane t c 21:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introductory section 

message: I took a crack at rewriting the Ferrybridge battle and some of the marching up north from London.  There's more to be done for this article than I have time, but I hope this will give help a bit of help.  Some basic sourcing is necessary. Mtsmallwood (talk) 00:03, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: As well as Lord Dacre, the Earl of Northumberland, earlier cited as a Lancastrian commander, was also killed, so I've altered the statement that all the Lancastrian senior nobles got away. Lord Dacre's death is commemorated in a local rhyme and he is buried in Towton Churchyard, allegedly still on his horse; whether this latter stuff merits inclusion I don't know!
Summitscribbler 12:53, 4th March 2008  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.99.165.210 (talk) 12:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Prominent deaths

message: In one or two weeks, I will rewrite the article to try for Featured Article.  The new article's structure is as such:
* Background
*: Matters of the Wars of the Roses that lead up to this battle
* Force compositions
*: The soldiers and the commanders
* Deployment
*: A bit about the sources on this battle; the topography and deployment of forces
* Fighting
*: Ze battle itself
* Aftermath
*: The rout and what happens after
* Literature
*: Shakespeare and Geoffrey Hall; no trivial stuff
* Legacy
*: What remains on the battlefield; memories and traditions
I will be adding contemporary images that are definitely "free" as well.  Sources used will mostly be academic books.  The aim is to achieve Featured Article by the end of February such that we can nominate and get this to be the Today's featured article for 29 March 2011 (550th anniversary) or 17 April 2011 (the 550th Palm Sunday since the battle).  Jappalang (talk) 03:34, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: ; as noted above, I have implemented a rewrite according to the above.  Note that some recent stuff have been excluded.  The fate of Dacre's brother would be more pertinent in his own or in Dacre's article (else we are going to have to justify why every other noble dead in this battle is not mentioned).  The handgun claim is primarily excluded because it lacks the higher quality reliable sources appropriate for FAs (the target level for the rewrite).  The finding has not been reviewed by other historians/archaeologists nor sourced to by an academic publication;  even the Economist has hedged the story by stating the claim is Sutherland's belief.  Regardless, contemporary sources have pointed out the use of handguns before this battle (St Albans come to mind).  External links have been pruned in accordance with WP:EL and looking towards FAC (what is not used should not be there).  Jappalang (talk) 17:21, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite for [[WP:FAC|FAC]] 

message: I didn't want to screw up the fine work being done on preparing this article for FAC, so I'll just note it here if its needed that the Economist recently had an article on the skeletons found in burial pits from this battle.  The article doesn't appear to be on their website.  It is:
*The Economist, "Nasty, brutish and not that short," 18 December 2010, pp. 110-112. Cla68 (talk) 12:37, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The article was formerly referred to before my revision.  I left it out because it did not provide substantially new information that cannot be found in other sources.  In the rewrite, the discovery of the mass grave and analysis of the bones are mentioned in the start of Force Compositions and Aftermath (greater detail on them would be undue and more appropriate for an article on battlefield archaeology).  Initially, I was going to mention that handguns were found ("Centuries after the battle, various relics that have been found in the area include ..." was meant to do this), but as pointed out above ("even the Economist has hedged the story by stating the claim is Sutherland's belief"), I excluded the news because the discovery had not yet been vetted or reviewed by other academics.  There is likely going to be more newspaper articles about the event as the battle's 550th anniversary approaches, and I believe we should be selective over what to include (i.e. preference of reviewed or accepted academic sources)  Jappalang (talk) 22:45, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Economist'' article

message: I don't wish to carp, considering the considerable work done in extending this article, but is not the leader rather long and POV as well as unreferenced?  "Henry was weak in character and mentally unsound." even if true, this should be referenced, and put in the background section.  I think the leader should be about the battle (who, what, when) with little interpretation.Chemical Engineer (talk) 22:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I think your wording should be clarified to "lede" or "lead" (WP:LEDE); I initially thought the issue was over a section about leaders.  Per WP:LEDE, citations are not generally needed for the section except for quotes and particularly contentious issues.  "Henry was weak in character and mentally unsound" is the accepted consensus in the reliable sources used; it is fact (the sources referred are cited in the article's body) and is not contentious.  About the length, WP:LEDE already stated the lede should be a summary of the body, including the Background.  The Wars of the Roses have quite a complicated history for its battles (several are not fought just because two forces just happened to be in the vicinity or that the land is a prized area); the Battle of Towton was the culmination of events and readers would be much clearer with a knowledge of the circumstances that lead to the encounter.  Jappalang (talk) 00:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Leader 

message: Presumably the words "Polydore Vergil, chronicler for Henry VI of England" are not quite what was intended? - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 12:41, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ack, yes, there is a missing "I"!  Thank you for spotting that.  It is now corrected.  Jappalang (talk) 22:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor error 

message: I altered several passages where I thought that the prose was repetitive and I removed a few eccentric turns of phrase and mad commas. I hope that this had made the prose consistent but feel free to alter it as desired.Keith-264 (talk) 11:18, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I have put back certain adjectives (high vantage, substantial bounties, previously upheld) as their removal changed the context of the sentences (conveyance of height, value, temporal).  I have also corrected certain commas (parenthetical, serial, and "Never use only one comma between a subject and its verb").  "Disputes over the crown" and "disputes over the country's state of leadership" carry different meanings to me; the first is between the contenders for the throne, the second is the public's (lords and commoners) view over who was in charge.  The use of "expropriated" seems inappropriate to me as the word means to take from private ownership for public purposes, which is totally opposite to what the Inclosure Acts did.  Jappalang (talk) 08:01, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amendments 

message: How could the Yorkist bowmen "pluck out" the short-fallen arrows fired at them by the Lancastrians without getting into range? This seems to be rather impossible. 213.61.58.164 (talk) 09:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outranged[[Special:Contributions/213.61.58.164|213.61.58.164]] ([[User talk:213.61.58.164|talk]]) 09:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC) 

message: I felt as though the sentence sounded like the author of the article actually sat on a chair watching the battle in the 15th Century.  I took the information from a general description from Wolff's book.  However, I don't know how to do the citations like you have here, since I despise it as a reader and an editor, mainly because you have to click twice to get to actual online link.  I don't know why people like this type of citation, but I don't care, and you all probably don't care about my opinion on it either.  But it does feel like the method of citations from the 1940's.  Of course, I stick with science articles where we rarely cite books (although it does happen for certain types of articles), and stick with journals.  Nevertheless, if someone could fix my citation to fit with the rest of the article, I'll be most appreciative.  Thanks.  SkepticalRaptor (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrote a couple of sentences about Henry VI 

message: The word casualties in this article needs to be defined (and then used only in accordance with that definition) and/or replaced with less ambiguous words. Casualties can mean the total of dead and wounded and missing and captured; it also can mean only "dead" and "wounded"; and it can mean just "dead". The infobox at the top left of the article even has the redundant(?) "Casualties and losses": what are losses (dead? captured? missing? deserters? wounded?)? We need specificity and clarity (and, lacking the knowledge, I'm not the one to introduce those things). — President Lethe (talk) 17:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualties 

message: The article states that A newsletter circulated a week after the battle reported that 28,000 died on the battlefield. I wonder what a medieval newsletter looked like. How many copies were written? Did they all have the same content and how reliable were they? I suspect you need a different word for newsletter or there is some other mistake. Norvo (talk) 22:59, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newletter? Eh? 

message: The link to the Towton Battlefield report was broken. English Heritage removed it from it's site. The report is now house at Historic England's website.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.145.6.145 (talk) 02:09, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updated Online Resources. 

message: There is a strong argument that the unusually large casualty figures and long duration apparently reported by some chroniclers is in fact a result of combining the three separate but linked battles at Ferrybridge, Dintingdale and Towton. See Sutherland's 2009 article from the Journal of Conflict Archaeology reproduced by the TBS here Svejk74 (talk) 14:47, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Doubt over casualty figures and duration

message: The article says: "In 1483 Richard III, younger brother of Edward IV, started to build a chapel to commemorate the battle. Richard died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and the building was never completed. It eventually fell into disrepair and collapsed. The ruins of the structure were evident five centuries later." - This seems contradictory to the findings of a 2013 study, which uncovered the remains of Richard's chapel to be part of the still standing Towton Hall. There never have been ruins of the chapel, because the chapel never fell out of use. Renerpho (talk) 23:42, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Richard III's chapel