Warwick the Kingmaker (10 page)

That is not to say that it actually was unexceptional. The elder sisters had been accustomed for thirty years to the notion that they would inherit equally in default of male heirs both before and after Henry’s birth. This was to be their position from 1449 to 1466–7, when they were obliged to settle for very much less.38 They claimed throughout to be daughters and coheirs of Earl Richard Beauchamp: a case that could have prevailed had Duke Henry never taken seisin. It could have been supported orally, though not mentioned in their surviving patents, that almost all the Beauchamp lands had been entailed in tail male by earls Thomas I (d. 1369) and II (d. 1401) with remainder to their right heirs, which all four daughters could claim to be. At this period, whenever there were several coheiresses and sufficient income to support the title after partition of the lands, the senior could commonly expect to secure that title and the principal seat. Hence the hope of Margaret’s husband Shrewsbury in his will of 1452 ‘that any tyme hereafter Y may atteyne to the name and lordeship of Warewik as
right
wolle
’.39 This was their position as early as 5 July 1449, only a fortnight after Richard’s recognition as earl, when the three elder sisters petitioned for a licence authorizing all four of them to enter the Beauchamp lands in England and Wales entailed on them as daughters and coheirs general of Earl Richard Beauchamp. Specifically excluded was property held in fee simple, of which there was little if any; property inherited from Duke Henry, most notably the Channel Isles; and estates settled jointly on Richard and Isabel, many of which were actually subject to earlier entails.40 This licence could thus have given the new earl and countess of Warwick a larger share than their sisters, though ironically Warwick itself and other lands they assigned to themselves in their fine would not have been reserved for them. It could have initiated a process whereby the lands were allo-cated according to the titles derived from earlier title deeds; this did not actually happen. It seems the Beauchamp sisters were no better informed than Richard and Anne. Whilst their licence purported to represent all four sisters, clearly it was initiated solely on Anne’s half-sisters’ behalf: a feature that was to recur repeatedly over the next few years.

Apart from the Despenser and Beauchamp estates, there was a third element to be considered: Abergavenny and Mereworth. An esquire of the body Thomas Danyell was appointed steward, receiver, constable and master forester of Abergavenny on 6 June 1449.41 From the start the new earl of Warwick included the style
dominus de Bergavenny
among his titles.42 Alleging earlier entries to Abergavenny on the death of Joan Lady Bergavenny in 1435 and after the deaths of previous lords in 1439 and 1446, on each occasion to be put out again by force or by inquisitions, Edward Lord Bergavenny petitioned once again for a licence to enter the lordship, which he secured on 14 July 1449. Mereworth followed in 1454.43 As one would expect, Bergavenny also sought to maximize his son’s share of the Despenser inheritance. He never secured the wardship of his own son George or custody of his Despenser purparty.

What the grants to the Beauchamp coheirs and Bergavenny demonstrate is their easy access to royal favour even when abroad. At court they were formidable opponents for the new earl of Warwick. Their patents, which actually preceded the formal creation of Warwick as earl, were incompatible with it. Whereas Warwick’s was warranted by the king himself, theirs were under the privy seal: which may or may not be significant. All three demonstrate yet again the weakness of Henry VI’s government: his incapacity to reach a decision, to stick to it, and to avoid making contradictory grants. Henry was to continue issuing them for several years yet. That these were quarrels within the family, amongst rivals related several times over in each case, did not mean that ‘there do not seem to have been any serious repercussions’.44 The disputes were to be pursued at court and in the provinces, by influence on the king and by force in the localities. In this battle, our Richard had four crucial advantages: his initial recognition as earl; his rivals’ continued absence abroad; divisions among his rivals; and his control of the localities. In the longer term they scarcely sufficed against the dominance of Somerset at court after 1450.

Warwick’s strategy was not purely defensive, but offensive. The inquisitions
post mortem
on Anne Beauchamp were a vital element. Several writs had been issued on 4 June and the very first inquisition was held at Hereford on 20 September 1449. The jurors reported that the infant Anne held in fee simple by inheritance from Duke Henry and his father the lordships of Abergavenny, Pains Castle in Elvell, Ewyas Lacy and other properties and that Warwick’s wife Anne was sole sister and heiress of Duke Henry. It was a crucial verdict in several different ways. It accepted the principle that Warwick’s countess was the sole Beauchamp heiress – a significant change from the Trinity term fine. Warwick had now rejected the original compromise, perhaps because of the opposition of the Beauchamp coheirs, and was seeking the whole inheritance to their total exclusion. It applied the same principle without any further comment to the Despenser lordship of Ewyas Lacy in defiance of the partition with George Neville anticipated in the grant of custody to the Earl of Worcester. Finally, and more parochially, it rejected Bergavenny’s claim to Abergavenny, which itself had been recognized only on 14 July.45 The jurors thus found for Richard and Anne on each issue and against her Beauchamp sisters, George Neville’s Despenser claim, and Bergavenny’s claim to Abergavenny. It is likely that the jury was overawed. The new earl of Warwick was at Abergavenny the previous day (19 September 1449) in company with Sir Humphrey Stafford of Grafton and doubtless other important Beauchamp retainers.46 He was there, we may be confident, not just to revisit the place where he was married, but also to reinforce his hold on the disputed lordship. Bergavenny had been ousted on his last visit, in 1436. On this occasion also, absent in Normandy, he was in no position to resist. But he did not give up.

The Hereford inquisition was delivered to chancery only on 12 October,47 but Warwick – who had been there – already knew the verdict. With such a satisfactory ruling behind him, we may suppose that it was he who initiated the issue of further writs on 6 October 1449. For some shires there are no inquisitions extant, probably because none were held. Where returns do survive, all the result of inquests between March and December 1450, they all without exception found Anne to be sole heir of the Beauchamp lands as sole sister of her brother Henry: as at Hereford, they rejected the claims of her elder Beauchamp sisters. The juries made no distinction between Beauchamp lands formerly entailed on the male line, in tail general, or in fee simple. Whatever their influence even
in absentia
at court which had secured them the licence to enter, the three Beauchamp sisters were unable to prevail against Warwick at provincial inquests.

However, highly significantly and in contrast to the Herefordshire verdict, all these juries also found Anne to be merely coheir with her cousin George Neville to the Despenser properties.48 This is very surprising since the justification was the entail of 1290 resulting from the resettlement by Earl Gilbert de Clare on the issue of himself and his wife, in tail general. With the demise of the male line in 1446, was not the title of Beauchamp and Despenser lines identical? Should not Richard’s wife Anne have succeeded as whole sister of Duke Henry everywhere? No wonder that several historians have been mystified why the principle of the exclusion of the half-blood was found to be inapplicable to the Despenser lands. This conclusion differed from the Herefordshire verdict and was obviously very much to Warwick’s disadvantage. Why should Warwick reject the Beauchamp claims and concede the Despenser ones? How could he simultaneously in a succession of inquests get his way over one set of lands and not over another? The explanation lies not in legal titles, which were indeed identical, but in the effective use of influence to modify the verdicts early in 1450 by the agents of Lord Bergavenny, who was the obvious beneficiary.

Apparently Warwick spent much of the autumn in Glamorgan and Christmas at Warwick, proceeding after 1 January 1450 to Westminster for the parliamentary session that opened on the 22nd.49 With the coheirs embroiled in the loss of Normandy, he was without rivals at court and in parliament and was able to use 1450 to consolidate his hold on all the inheritances. Given the disasters in France, this was inevitably a stormy session of recriminations, retribution and retrenchment. Attacks on the government focused on William Duke of Suffolk himself, its front man, who was impeached and destroyed. On 17 March Warwick was among the forty-six peers present in the chamber over the cloister at Westminster Abbey at which the king exonerated the duke and nevertheless exiled him for five years to France.50 It was whilst leaving by sea that Suffolk was intercepted and executed. On 2 March Warwick had surrendered his 1449 patent of creation as earl of Warwick – to the ancient, immemorial, earldom of the Beauchamps and Beaumonts – for recognition instead as earl of Warwick, as Duke Henry had been after 1444. Now he was premier earl in England; he took precedence after dukes and marquises over all other earls in parliament and elsewhere; he could wear a distinguishing circlet on all public occasions; and his heir if he had one – and he still had no issue – would take precedence over sons of all other earls. We may presume that Warwick wanted this enhanced dignity and exercised it. The reversion in default of issue was granted to the Countess Margaret even though it derived from her half-brother and not her father.51 From this grant we may also deduce that Warwick saw himself as heir to his wife’s brother Henry Duke of Warwick. We should expect him to seek the latter’s title of duke, lands and offices whenever opportunity offered.

Following the king’s verdict on Suffolk on 17 March, Warwick’s father Salisbury went to France. Warwick himself proceeded to Warwick (21 March) and perhaps to Cardiff, the headquarters of his marcher lordship of Glamorgan. Thereafter he proceeded to the parliament at Leicester, which opened on 29 April, arriving on 5 May with an entourage of 400 men ‘and moo’ including some sent by the Midland baron William Lord Ferrers of Chartley, whose attendance ‘did me right thonkful seruice and Right grete worship’. This may have been with a view to service abroad, perhaps with his father, perhaps at Calais.52 This time he was not accompanied by Stafford of Grafton, who arrived separately after attacking Warwick’s future estates steward Sir Robert Harcourt on 10 May at Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire in pursuance of their private blood feud. It was at this session that the Commons forced on the king an act of resumption, designed both to provide resources for the French war and to punish those favourites and courtiers who were seen as feathering their nests at the king’s and the public’s expense. All royal grants since 1422 were to be resumed. The effects were greatly reduced by provisos of exemption, some general and some particular. Thus Warwick’s title as earl – and his father’s as earl of Salisbury – were protected by a general proviso covering titles of honour. More specifically, Warwick was allowed another proviso covering lands granted to Duke Henry. These comprised the Channel Isles, the forest of Feckenham, and several reversions yet to fall in. Tutbury was not included. Salisbury retained his rights in Richmondshire and Cumbria. Their main estates were exempt anyway, since they were held of inheritance rather than royal grant. Those who were absent, such as Somerset and Shrewsbury, lost more heavily.

The Leicester parliament adjourned on 6 June amidst alarming rumours of the impending Kentish rebellion of Jack Cade, which the earl transmitted to Ferrers on Monday 8 June from Warwick. The king, he reported:

hath desired and charged me to be with hymm at Saynt Albones on Saturday next comyng [13 June] accompaigned with suche a feliship as that I may...[to ensure that] we schal be of power to withstand ther malice and evil wil. Wherefor I pray you with al my hert with suche personnes as ye nowe arrays and secure ye wel send to me at Warrewyk ther to be on Wednesday [10 June] at nyght next commyng as semblable wyse wol and shal do to you suche tyme ye desire me for your worship...53

As Ferrers died next day, his men may not have been despatched, but the earl presumably followed his own timetable and accompanied the king thereafter. It was his retainer Stafford who pressed Cade too closely and was defeated and killed at Tonbridge. Finding the rebels too strong and his own forces too unreliable, the king withdrew on 25 June, first to Berkhamsted (Herts.) and then to Kenilworth (Warw.), probably with Warwick in attendance. Cade was captured on 10 July and died on the 12th. The Countess of Warwick was at Coventry in July. Warwick himself was at Warwick on 1 August, at Cardiff later in the month, and returned to Warwick by 1 October.54 Presumably, therefore, he missed the celebrated meeting in late September or early October of the Duke of York with the king at Westminster.

As we have seen, Warwick had secured a favourable inquisition in Herefordshire on 20 September 1449. Someone, however, was dissatisfied and made representations directly to the king: this someone, we may deduce from the results, was Bergavenny. Accordingly Henry VI ordered a new inquisition for Herefordshire by signet letter dated at Eltham Palace in Kent on 26 September 1449, only a week after the previous one. Nothing happened: the writs issued on 6 October did not include Herefordshire.55 Presumably the warrant was intercepted before a writ could be issued. It was probably in consequence, therefore, that stronger action was taken. On 3 March new inquisitions were ordered to be taken by special commissioners. This was a procedure highly favourable to the applicant, who named the commissioners: in the Herefordshire case those who acted were Henry Griffith and Thomas FitzHarry esquire, neither of whom were among those feed from Abergavenny in 1447–8. Their return of 15 April 1450 confirmed Anne as sole heiress of the Beauchamp lordships, but differed in two other vital particulars from its predecessors.