Lord Clifford was only in his twenty-sixth year. His father was slain at the first battle of St. Albans, and he had naturally joined the same cause with enthusiasm. But, as has already been pointed out, the story of his having assassinated a defenceless little boy on Wakefield Bridge is a fiction. There is no reason to believe that Clifford was such a base caitiff. He was evidently an active and enterprising leader. It is the tradition of the family that he was buried, with a heap of undistinguished dead, on the battlefield. Sir John Nevill, a younger brother of the second Earl of Westmoreland, and father of the third Earl, was probably buried within Saxton Church.[3] The loss of these two gallant and influential young leaders, whose scattered fugitives brought in the news on that Friday night, must have cast a gloom over the Lancastrian army. King Edward now resolved to advance with his whole force and attack the enemy where he was encamped. He believed that the main body could not have been very far distant when Lord Clifford was detached to make the attack at Ferrybridge. The van division of the Yorkist army, led by Lord Fauconberg and Sir Walter Blount, was already across the river Aire, and orders were given to them to march northwards by Sherburn and Saxton. The King himself, {30} with the Earl of Warwick, was to follow at the head of the main body. The Duke of Norfolk should have led the van, but he was taken ill, and it was arranged that he should remain behind at Pomfret, with Sir John Wenlock and Sir John Dynham, and follow next day with the rear division and any reinforcements that might have arrived.[4] During March 28, the Eve of Palm Sunday, the Yorkist army was marching northwards in two divisions. It must have been late in the afternoon when the division of Lord Fauconberg passed through Sherburn-in-Elmet, a long street with the old Norman church on an isolated hill to the westward. Two miles more brought him to Saxton late in the evening. Saxton was a small village, with the manor house of the Hungates, and a very old church of Norman times. Thence a steep ascent leads northward to the battlefield. To the east is the high road from York to Pomfret, passing over elevated ground. To the west is a ravine with sides sloping down to the valley of the Cock. The latter brook is seen winding through the {31} green valley, with roads on either side. Northwards there was high undulating ground, and the hamlet of Towton is two miles north of Saxton.