Which son of Richard of York was killed at the Battle of Wakefield?

Richard of York’s son who was killed at the Battle of Wakefield was Edmund, Earl of Rutland. Edmund was the second surviving son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the younger brother of the future King Edward IV.

Edmund was born in Rouen in 1443, while his father was serving as the English lieutenant in France. He became Earl of Rutland while still a boy and joined the Yorkist cause during the Wars of the Roses. On 30 December 1460, he fought alongside his father near Wakefield as Lancastrian forces defeated the Yorkist army.

The exact circumstances of Edmund’s death are uncertain. Later accounts said that he was captured or overtaken while trying to escape and was killed by John Clifford, possibly in revenge for Clifford’s father’s death at the First Battle of St Albans. Shakespeare later dramatized this story, but contemporary evidence does not firmly establish all those details.

Edmund was seventeen when he died. His body was initially buried at Pontefract and later moved to the York family mausoleum at Fotheringhay in 1476.