Warwick the Kingmaker (26 page)

Having failed to secure the destruction of Thorpe and Joseph at the previous session, the Yorkist lords introduced two further bills to similar effect. Their fees and annuities were indeed resumed. First among the articles presented to the first session and passed to a committee was ‘to establish an ordinate and substantial for the king’s honourable household’. Hence a new appropriation of revenues to it and hence also the draconian act of resumption. Despite heavy taxation, Henry VI was ‘indetted in such outrageous somez, as be not easy to be paid’ and yet had an unimpressive household to the diminishing of his worship and prosperity. A further act of resumption was the answer. This owed much to financial considerations, but it also served political purposes. Even as introduced in July, before it was sharpened by the Commons, the bill was draconian. It sought not only to remove many fees and annuities of courtiers – at last the effective action that York had wanted for so long! – but to curb the royal family as well. The bill vesting the Prince of Wales with his estates restricted his income to that appropriate to a child, the rest being assigned to the royal household. The bill placed a ceiling on the income of the queen. It resumed the lands still in trust for the performance of the wills of Henry IV and Henry V, the endowments of King Henry’s two colleges of Eton and King’s, and, particularly vindictive, the lands of the king’s two Tudor half-brothers. Any provisos were to be approved by the Commons themselves.73

As with the trial of Somerset, York had once again gone too far for the Lords, who objected strongly to the bill of resumption. King Henry had recovered by 9 February, when the third session of parliament opened. York and Warwick appeared with 300 men, ‘all jakked and in brigantiens’, but for which, it was rumoured, the duke would have been dismissed. The connection between him and the resumption was clear. ‘The resumpsion, men truste, shall forthe, and my Lordes of Yorkes first power of protectorship stande, and elles not, &c.’ No other magnate had attended the opening.74 If York had ever enjoyed general support, he had lost it. He pressed for the resumption and, too fearful to stop it, the Lords appealed to the king as the sole authority superior to the duke and able to prevent it. That was on 25 February, when the king formally entered parliament and took back his authority in exact accordance with the terms of York’s appointment.75 He rejected the oversight of the Commons over provisos, allowed provisos to the duchy of Lancaster trusts, the queen, his brothers and many other individuals. It was probably also he who rejected a second act imprisoning and fining Thorpe and Joseph and a variety of Commons measures resuming grants of franchises and wardships and taking action against oppressive royal officers.

NOTES

1.
PL
ii. 298.

2. J. F. Baldwin,
The King’s Council in the Middle Ages
(1913), 197n.

3. Anstis, i. 151–2;
Benet’s Chron.
211.

4. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, 899; Griffiths,
King & Country
, 341–2.

5.
RP
v. 249.

6.
RP
v. 240.

7. Johnson,
York
, 133–4.

8.
RP
v. 242.

9. Anstis, i. 151–2.

10.
RP
v. 242–3.

11.
RP
v. 449–50.

12. Griffiths,
King & Country
, 317–19.

13. Virgoe, ‘Composition’, 151.

14. Griffiths,
King & Country
, 319.

15. Ibid. 315. These may have always been intended, but unable to attend the meeting of 2 April, ibid. 315.

16.
CPR 1452–61
, 171.

17. Virgoe, ‘Composition’, 151, 159.

18. Anstis, i. 151–2.

19. Johnson,
York
, 143n.

20. Wolffe,
Henry VI
, 281–5.

21.
CPR 1452–61
, 208.

22. He wrote to Nanfan as lord on 11 February 1455, BL Royal MS 17 B xlvii, f. 165v. No grant seems to exist.

23. Storey, ‘Wardens’, 605–6; Johnson,
York
, 145.

24. Johnson,
York
, 135.

25.
CPR 1452–61
, 663, 666–70, 672–7, 680–3.

26. Castor, ‘Walter Blount’, 22–3.

27. Griffiths,
Henry VI
, 721; Johnson,
York
, 91–2, 143–4, 152–3;
PL
ii. 290–2. Norfolk’s absences on some days does not
necessarily
mean he was absent on those when his appeal was heard.

28. Castor, ‘Walter Blount’, 31.

29. This interprets KB 9/149/4/27, which is discussed in Storey,
Lancaster
, 124–32; Griffiths,
King & Country
, 344–6; T. B. Pugh, ‘Richard Duke of York and the Rebellion of Henry, Duke of Exeter in May 1454’,
HR
lxiii (1990), 248–62; Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, 900–2.

30. C. Rawcliffe, ‘Richard, Duke of York, the King’s “Obeisant” Liegeman: A New Source for the Protectorates of 1454 and 1455’,
HR
lx (1987), 238–9, as corrected by Pugh, ‘Exeter’s Rebellion’, 256; cf. also Griffiths,
Henry VI
, 765n (125).

31. Griffiths,
King & Country
, 342.

32. Griffiths,
King & Country
, 350;
Henry VI
, 738; Storey,
Lancaster
, 146–7; KB 9/11 & 12; see also
York City Chamberlain’s Account Rolls
, ed. R. B. Dobson (Surtees Soc. cxlii, 1980), 94–5.

33. KB 9/149/1/27;
Paston L & P
ii. 100; Pollard,
North-Eastern England
, 260.

34.
POPC
vi. 233.

35. Griffiths,
King & Country
, 353–4.

36. Griffiths,
Henry VI
, 739–40;
Foedera
, v. i. 61–2;
Benet’s Chron.
212–13.

37.
Foedera
v.i. 61–2.

38. Storey,
Lancaster
, 159–61; Wolffe,
Henry VI
, 286; Griffiths,
Henry VI
, 239–41; Johnson,
York
, 153–5. Unless otherwise stated the rest of this section is based on C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans, 1455’,
England, France & Burgundy in
the 15th Century
(1983), 1–72.

39.
PL
iii. 32.

40. BL Royal MS 17Bxlvii, f. 165v; Chatwin, ‘Documents of St Mary’s Church, Warwick’, 4–5; Worcs. CRO 989/11 m. 1.

41.
PL
iii. 30.

42. I intend to discuss this and what follows at greater length elsewhere.

43.
PL
iii. 29.

44.
Benet’s Chron.
213; see also Whetehamstede, i. 167; T. Gascoigne,
Loci e Libro
Veritatum
, ed. J. E. T. Rogers (Oxford, 1891), 203–4.

45. In 1459 the Yorkists later claimed such mortality to be ‘casual’ or accidental and not their fault.

46.
PL
iii. 24.

47. The next six paras are based on Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans’, 1–72.

48.
PL
iii. 25–9.

49.
Vale’s Bk.
190–3;
PL
iii. 25–30.

50.
RP
v. 280–3.

51.
RP
v. 329.

52.
RP
v. 279–80, 283–4.

53. Johnson,
York
, 165–6.

54.
RP
v. 335.

55.
RP
v. 279–8.

56.
PL
ii. 32;
Letters of Queen Margaret of Anjou
, ed. C. Munro (Camden Soc., lxxxvi, 1863).

57.
RP
v. 278, 282–3.

58. Griffiths,
Henry VI
, 747;
PL
iii. 33.

59.
RP
v. 279; J. S. Roskell, ‘The Problem of the Attendance of Lords at Medieval Parliaments’,
Parliament and Politics in Late Medieval England
(3 vols, 1981–3), i. II. 194.

60.
PL
iii. 44.

61. Ibid.

62.
Paston L & P
ii. 116; G. L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais: An Aspect of the Struggle between Lancaster and York’,
EHR
lxxv (1960), 41, 44, 46;
RP
v. 309, 341.

63. R. Somerville,
History of the Duchy of Lancaster
, i (1953), 648.

64.
RP
v. 309.

65. Ibid.

66. Virgoe, ‘Composition’, 153.

67. Worcs. RO 989/111 m. 1; E 28/86/22;
RP
v. 278–80, 282–3;
Rous Roll
, no. 62;
POPC
vi. 257; E 28/86/34.

68. Johnson,
York
, 171.

69.
Paston L & P
ii. 127.

70.
RP
v. 287;
POPC
vi. 267, 272, 274–5, 278, 285; E 28/86/8–10, 12–13, 16, 18, 23–4, 26–9; B. P. Wolffe,
The Royal Demesne in English History
(1973), 139.

71.
RP
v. 290.

72.
RP
v. 284–7.

73.
RP
v. 300–20. This is discussed in Wolffe,
Henry VI
, 297–8.

75.
RP
v. 321.

6.1 TOWARDS RECONCILIATION

York’s Second Protectorate collapsed. It had required pressure from the Commons to impose it even on those lords willing to attend parliament and his exercise of power thereafter had been partisan and unacceptable. Rejection by the Lords exposed the Yorkists as a faction and denied their claim to political consensus. They were never to recover it. They were no longer needed. There was no Somerset to upset the political equilibrium. Somerset’s death indeed removed most of the disruptive issues of the early 1450s: the York–Somerset feud, the pursuit of traitors, and recriminations about the loss of Lancastrian France. International pressures had diminished. England lacked the financial and military resources for reconquest. The threat of a French invasion had receded. The case for reform had been much reduced by changes in personnel and an effective act of resumption. The most acrimonious feuds, between the Percies and Nevilles, over the Warwick inheritance and Ampthill, had been decisively settled. Moreover the resumption of royal rule was much less abrupt and complete. Henry VI was willing to forgive the battle of St Albans at which he himself had been wounded. He retained York’s services, no longer as protector, but as chief councillor. He made no immediate change to his ministers. Each Yorkist magnate received small favours from him. He even continued and completed the complex negotiations to quell mutiny in Calais, to defray the enormous arrears in the garrison’s wages, to provide for their payment in future, and to admit Warwick as captain. Warwick was free to take up office from April 1456.1

Warwick attended council on 2 March 1456, but by 5 May he was at Warwick, where he apparently remained until the opening of another great council at Westminster on 7 June attended by York, Salisbury and only one other lay peer. Warwick was there on 3 and 8 July.2 Thereafter he could have visited Calais.3 The aggressive posture of James II brought York to Sandal Castle (Yorks.), whence on 26 July he wrote defiantly to the Scottish king, apparently as Henry’s representative.4 Most probably Salisbury as warden of the West March also went northwards. There was nothing suspicious about their departures. Each was attending to his official duties.

Unfortunately this apparent return to normality and to consensus politics was not to last. It was not the fault of the Yorkists. They did not repeat their coup at St Albans. Henry’s actions created no legitimate grievances and aroused no fears to justify another pre-emptive strike. Instead he treated the Yorkists as trusted and favoured members of the political nation and even the ruling regime. That this happy situation ceased and that tensions returned was not their fault.

The transformation is usually dated to the king’s removal from Westminster to the Midlands in mid-August 1456, a move that became semi-permanent and was accompanied by a reversion to partisan politics. Most modern historians have followed contemporary chroniclers, all Yorkists, in blaming the change on Queen Margaret of Anjou. Now a mature and strong-minded woman, Margaret fomented division. Inevitably she had at heart the interests not just of her husband the king, but also those of their infant son Prince Edward. Her prime objective of protecting and continuing the family dynasty was naturally shared by the royal household and courtiers. After Henry first went mad, in 1454, she had sought the regency for herself, unavailingly. Twice since then the protectorate had been bestowed on York, who had tried to eliminate, curb and dispossess those most committed to her cause, and had not stopped at using force. Not surprisingly Margaret regarded the duke askance. She wanted to limit his influence and identified in his actions malign intentions that perhaps did not exist. ‘That the fundamental intention of Margaret...was the outright destruction of those who had engaged in treasonable activity by accroaching the royal power’, observes Dr Gross, ‘there is, of course, no doubt.’5