First Battle of St. Albans.—­On May 23rd, 1455, the forces of King Henry VI. assembled in the neighbourhood of St. Peter’s Street, and were attacked by those of the Duke of York and Warwick the Kingmaker.  Advancing from the fields E. of the town, Warwick’s men appear to have approached from Key Fields and Sopwell Lane, and, finally, having fought their way into Holywell Hill, to have united with those of the Duke of York, who had forced the town barriers farther N. The battle was desperately contested; the bowmen, as usual in those times, playing a conspicuous part; Henry VI. was wounded in the neck, Humphrey Earl of Stafford in the right hand, Lord Sudley and the Duke of Buckingham in the face—­all with arrows.  The wounded king took refuge in the cottage of a tanner; here he was made prisoner and conducted by the Duke of York to the Abbey.  The town was at the mercy of the Yorkist soldiers during the latter part of the day; many houses were looted and the Abbey was probably spared only because the royal prisoner had been conducted thither.  Several illustrious persons slain in this battle were buried in the Lady-chapel:  (1) Henry Percy, second Earl of Northumberland; (2) Edmund Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset; (3) John, Lord Clifford.  Sir Robert Vere, Sir William Chamberlain, Sir Richard Fortescue, Kts., and many squires and other gentlemen also perished.

Second Battle of St. Albans.—­On Shrove Tuesday, 17th February, 1461, Queen Margaret defeated the Earl of Warwick, who retreated with considerable loss, the battle being mostly fought out on Bernard’s Heath, N. from St. Peter’s Church.  This engagement also was stubbornly fought out.  According to Stow and Hollinshead, the Lancastrians were thwarted in their efforts to pass through the town from S. to N., being repulsed by arrows in the Market Place, and eventually reached Bernard’s Heath by a circuitous route from the W. If this is so, visitors who ramble down the High Street, turn right into Katherine Lane, coming out of Wellclose Street near St. Peter’s Church, will probably tread in the footsteps of the troops of Margaret.  After the fight had been decided the victorious Lancastrians poured back into the town, which was again plundered, and the Abbey also partially stripped.  This was during the second abbacy of John Wheathampsted, and Stow records that the day after the battle Queen Margaret, and the King (Henry VI.) were led by the abbot and monks to the High Altar of the Abbey, where they returned thanks for the victory.

ST. MARGARET’S, on the river Lea, has a small church with several unimportant memorials.  It was probably formed from one aisle of an older edifice.

St. Margaret’s is also the name of a few cottages a little N.W. from Great Gaddesden, near the site of the Benedictine convent of Muresley, the refectory of which was almost intact early last century.