Battle of Barnet - Post-battle

Post-battle

The battle lasted from two to three hours, and was over by the time the fog lifted in the early morning. As usual in most battles of the time, the routed army suffered the most casualties; fleeing men were cut down from behind. Contemporary sources give various casualty figures; the Great Chronicle of London reports 1,500 dead, whereas The Warkworth's Chronicle states 4,000. Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed, both 16th century chroniclers, say that at least 10,000 men died in the battle. The Yorkists suffered half as many casualties as the Lancastrians. Royle favours the recorded approximate figures of 500 Yorkists and 1,000 Lancastrians dead.

The bodies of the two Neville brothers were brought back to London. They did not suffer the customary fate accorded to traitors—quartering and display at the city gates. Edward exhibited the brothers' naked corpses in St. Paul's Cathedral for three days to quell any rumours that they had survived, before allowing them to be laid to rest in the family vault at Bisham Abbey.

Although he had defeated the Neville brothers, Edward had little time to rest; Margaret landed at Weymouth on the day of the battle. Feigning a march to London, she was augmenting her army with recruits from Wales and the Welsh Marches. The Lancastrian queen was disheartened by news of Warwick's demise, but Somerset suggested that they were better off without the earl. Despite the defeat at Barnet, Lancastrians who fled from the battle looked to the queen to restore their house to the throne. Alerted by his spies to the Lancastrians' true route, Edward intercepted and defeated them at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Gloucester, Clarence, and Hastings again fought to defend the Yorkist crown.

Exeter had been stripped of his armour and left for dead on the battlefield at Barnet, but he was alive—though gravely injured. His followers found him and took him to Westminster Abbey. On his recovery, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for four years before submitting to Edward's rule. Exeter never participated in the later battles of the Wars of the Roses. Edward sent him on a Yorkist expedition to France in 1475, and the duke was reported to have fallen overboard and drowned without any witnesses.

After withdrawing from the battle, Oxford fled to France and participated in piracy of English ships, continuing his campaign against Yorkist reign. He was eventually captured in 1473 after conquering St Michael's Mount, an island off the south-west coast of England. Twelve years later, Oxford escaped from prison and joined Henry Tudor's fight against the Yorkists, commanding the Lancastrian army at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.