Battle of Barnet Obelisk

Here was fought the Famous Battle Between Edward the 4th and the Earl of Warwick April the 14th ANNO 1471 in which the Earl was Defeated And Slain.

Thus read the inscription on the eighteenth-century obelisk erected to commemorate the Battle of Barnet. The Wars of the Roses, known as the Cousins’ War to contemporaries, was paused by this terrible clash for 14 years. The Yorkist Edward IV was restored to the throne and the treacherous Earl of Warwick, the ‘kingmaker’, was dispatched into eternity. Contemporary folk saw here the hand of God:

Man proposes, oftimes in veyn,

But God disposes, the boke telleth pleyn.

Today, north Barnet seemed to be a quiet, prosperous area, a part of Hertfordshire resisting London’s outward sprawl. To think that the government of England was determined on this site over 500 years ago is quite sobering. It makes us grateful that today we have elections, fought not between rival kingly claimants and their bands of armed thugs, but grinning politicians with manifestos and spending plans. Human government is appointed by God and though it is often incompetent or engages in overreach, we should be grateful that as one gives way to another, there is seldom violence and hostility. We have much to be thankful for, even while we await the fierce and ferocious return of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the kings' King and the lords' Lord, to reclaim this fallen and rebellious world.