Warwick the Kingmaker (36 page)

Though separated geographically, there were now four Yorkist lords: York himself, ‘manly and mygtfulle’ and ‘of gret substaunce’, who ‘rideth and rulethe withe ryalle reputation’; the prudent Salisbury, royal, wise and undefeated; Warwick, the renowned warrior; and March, the ‘Rose’ of Rouen, fresh, prudent and ‘manly-hede’, ‘trewe in euery tryall’, and ‘comyn of blode ryall’.4 Now aged seventeen, March features in Yorkist poetry and manifestos alike.

Warwick travelled to the coast and took ship. His embarkation could have been from South Wales,5 but was probably not. What lord of Glamorgan in South Wales could need to borrow the 220 nobles (£76.66) to buy a small ship (a balinger)? More probably he embarked in North Devon, the home country of his companion John Dynham, who allegedly put up the money. Later Edward IV was to refund £84 to Dynham’s mother Joan for her costs.6 They hired a crew, apparently a master and three seamen, pretending to embark for Bristol, and then revealed that they were sailing westwards. To this the crew disconcertingly responded that they did not know the way which, in Waurin’s words, much abashed Salisbury and the others! As keeper of the seas Warwick had some relevant experience, albeit as an admiral with master mariners to handle his vessels, so now he took command, swearing by God and St George that he would carry them all to a port of safety. Ireland was accessible, but Warwick took them instead to Guernsey, one of his former possessions which he may well have previously visited and where the governor was Nanfan, his trusted retainer. Nanfan’s garrison of 130 archers was probably on Jersey. The fugitives stayed there ‘to refresh themselves’ and await favourable winds, before proceeding up the Channel eastwards to Calais, which they entered on 2 November 1459 by a postern gate: presumably in case the town was already in Lancastrian hands. There they were well-received by Fauconberg and by the Countess Anne, who had heard of their flight and feared the worst. At once the fugitives gave thanks for their deliverance at the shrine of Notre Dame de St Pierre by Calais (Newnham Bridge), returning to disappoint the herald announcing Somerset’s impending takeover as captain.7

No battle occurred at Ludford on 13 October. The Yorkist army was leader-less. The Lancastrians pillaged Ludlow. No doubt some of the deserted Yorkists fled. If some were hanged,8 they were few, for we know nothing of them. Traitors uncovered later were indeed tried and executed. Most of the rebels submitted, were pardoned and fined.9 Since very few formal patents of pardon were issued and no list of payments survives, we cannot know the composition of the Yorkist army. A handful of more serious offenders like Devereux were pardoned their lives, but forfeited their property and were scheduled for attainder at the forthcoming parliament. For those who would not make their peace, the penalties of treason inevitably followed; their property was treated as forfeit even ahead of parliament.

For unrepentant traitors the government’s model was Oldhall’s attainder of 1453. Attainder was a development of the doctrine of treason applied to earlier traitors. When Warwick’s great-grandfather John Earl of Salisbury and his countess’s grandfather Thomas Lord Despenser died as rebels in 1400, they had forfeited only those lands that they held in fee simple and in trust; those entailed on their heirs were protected and subsequently many such heirs were restored to the remainder also. Now treason was presented as so horrible and shameful that the blood of traitors was corrupted –
attainted
– so that not only were their lands forfeit, but they could not be inherited by their heirs even if entailed on them. The parliament that met at Coventry on 20 November 1459 attainted York, Warwick’s parents, himself and his younger brothers, William Stanley, two younger sons of Viscount Bourchier, and twelve others.10

The act honoured any claims existing before the attainder, so that the rebels’ rivals could take advantage of the situation. Thus Lawrence Bothe Bishop of Durham seized Warwick’s lordship of Barnard Castle, which his predecessors had claimed since 1293, and legitimized his action with a proviso to the act of attainder.11 Similarly the Beauchamp half-sisters reasserted their rights. They secured parliamentary approval for an inquisition for Worcestershire of 1446 missing from chancery. On 8 May 1460 the Countess Margaret and the Duchess Eleanor secured the custody of Warwick’s quarter share of the Beauchamp inheritance: their grant implies it had indeed been divided in four and that they had a quarter each. On 26 May Eleanor was also granted the keeping of Salwarpe and Droitwich which, by implication, were not subject to such division.12

Far from being the Parliament of Devils, as the Yorkists were to dub it, the proscription of the Yorkists was limited and the result of ‘mature deliberation’ by the Lords.13 There is no factual account of the debate, but two fragmentary surviving tracts indicate that even now the decision to punish rather than pardon was not automatic and that parliament vacillated between Justice and Mercy. The so-called
Somnium Vigilantis
is an anti-Yorkist dialogue. The Yorkists were ‘lordis of tyme passed’, reputed as traitors, and victims of ‘pretens forysfactures’ even before our text begins with a Lancastrian peroration urging rigorous punishment in the interests of ‘universalle quyet’, ‘youre syngulere welth’ and ‘the generall consolacion of alle this contre’. The formal verdict was yet to be pronounced and sentence declared. By the time of the second tract the Yorkists were condemned, presumably in earlier sections on the prosecution and defence case. What is preserved in Whetehamstede’s
Register
in elaborate literary Latin, perhaps translated and adorned by the abbot himself, is the replication of Justice and the mediation of Mercy, who, unhistorically, wins.14 A replication contains no substantial data.15

This latter treatise presents the Yorkists, again unhistorically, as contrite and repentant, whereas the
Somnium
reveals them to be defiant and arguing on lines consistent both with Warwick’s reported speech at Worcester and their later utterances. In the
Somnium
the spokesman of the Yorkists was unapologetic and justified their insurrection by their good motives and the poor governance that still required reform. He urged unity against foreign enemies for which Yorkist services are essential. Moreover they could not be destroyed, ‘consyderynge thar powere and that thay have frendis in this lande and shall have who so ever says nay’. They will be driven to desperation if condemned. This is rather more than a muted threat! Like the act of attainder itself, the winning Lancastrian case presents the Yorkists as incorrigible, three times rebels and ‘of a pure malice and longtyme precogitat wykednes’. The time for mercy was past. The Yorkists’ claim to pursuit of the common good is dismissed: as subverting the office of the king; dishonest – if successful, ‘Trow ye thay will have procured the commone welth?’; and far outweighed by the mortality at Blore Heath and by the ‘extorcions...injuries and oppression’ for which they were responsible. ‘Who made hem juges?’ They have broken their oaths so often that they cannot be trusted and if pardoned will merely offend again, to the jeopardy of all. If they can be kept out, keep them out. Probably they exaggerate their power. The French umpire found strongly against them: he urged the enriching of the king’s supporters, that all unite against the Yorkists, who threaten all, and that spreaders of rumours be put to death.

It is interesting that there was debate about what appears an open and shut case. The decision to attaint was made in full awareness that the Yorkists were untamed, capable of continued resistance and even retaliation, and that any who opposed them were at risk. Moreover the Yorkists still had ‘lordis of lyke disposicion’ and ‘frendis’ who had not rebelled. Among those who swore allegiance to the king were many of their kinsfolk: the three brothers Bourchier, the archbishop, viscount, and Lord Berners; Bishop Grey; Salisbury’s brother Bergavenny and brother-in-law Buckingham, his son Bishop Neville, his nephews Norfolk, Northumberland and Egremont, cousins, retainers, and supporters. If efforts to save two Bourchiers were unsuccessful, by later standards there were not many forfeitures. Many others almost as guilty could have been added: thus John Otter, Warwick usher of the exchequer, and Master Richard Fisher, the earl’s secretary, were candidates for attainder, but were reprieved. King Henry refused his assent to the attainder of Grey of Powys and Devereux, attached a proviso to the main act that allowed him to forgive those attainted at will, and rejected a separate bill against Lord Stanley.16 Some rebels had already been forgiven. Others were soon to recover their property.

The possessions of the attainted were forfeited and passed to the king. Royal patents and private grants by those attainted to people in the rebel armies were resumed and though less easily identifiable were again supposedly at the king’s disposal.17 Notoriously over-generous, Henry was expected to disperse these estates in lavish grants to his favourites – the French umpire of the
Somnium
even urged it – but actually he did not. No grants of land were made, though offices held by the Yorkist lords and offices on their estates were indeed redistributed to those whom the king trusted, though not in most cases at once. The estates were kept in hand and on 12/14 December were arranged in receiverships, whose accounts were subsequently enrolled on the foreign accounts of the exchequer. Anticipating the enlarged Yorkist crown estate, Henry VI’s ministers – specifically the maligned Lord Treasurer Wiltshire, perhaps on advice of Chief Justice Fortescue? – planned to keep such lands in hand to enhance the king’s revenues. Payments were assigned from them.18 Whatever the designs of royal favourites, they did not secure shares of these forfeitures. The Yorkists were wrong to claim in 1459 that their enemies sought their destruction to secure their lands and in 1460 that this was the motive behind the 1459 act of attainder.19 Even untrue, it made good propaganda.

Henry had created no vested interests to be dispossessed or to demand compensation if those attainted were restored. He was open to offers. Had Warwick and the other Yorkist lords been truly contrite and submitted, they too could have been forgiven. It is not true, as some historians have supposed, that the Yorkist lords could only secure their restoration by another coup.20 They sought so much more than mere restoration.

Initially the regime did not know where the Yorkists had gone or where it should locate its forces to guard against new insurrections. Its authority was not immediately accepted. In February and March 1460 York’s castle of Denbigh and lordships of Usk and Caerleon and Warwick’s lordships of Glamorgan and Abergavenny were still recalcitrant.21 In time all resistance was quelled. Although Henry could now draw on forfeitures for resources, it took time to accrue revenues, and the costs of measures against the Yorkists proved beyond his immediate means. It was nevertheless a disastrous error to allow the Yorkist lords three weeks’ grace to reach Calais.

It was Warwick at Calais who took the lead in Yorkist operations over the next nine months. Initially he was far from secure. Trollope’s desertion had exposed the fundamental loyalty to Henry VI of at least some of the garrison, many of whom had also served under previous captains and lieutenants. All were surly at being virtually unpaid since Warwick took office in 1456. The Staple depended on good relations with England and its neighbours and was potentially seriously affected by the English ban on trade with Calais proclaimed by the Coventry parliament.22 When Henry Duke of Somerset approached with a substantial force early in November 1459, he was fired on from Calais itself and from Rysbank tower, and hence failed to gain admittance. At Trollope’s suggestion he landed instead at Wissault (Scales Cliff) and was admitted to the castle of Guines on the promise of payment of the garrison: he had 200 marks (£133.33) with him. Apparently he also secured Hammes. Although impeded by the immediate loss of Roos and Audley, troops, ships and munitions to the enemy, Somerset skirmished or ‘bykerd togidres sondry tymes’ with the garrison of Calais itself, many of whom, at this juncture, deserted to him. Warwick was obliged to provide armed escorts for traders and suppliers. Somerset’s efforts culminated in a full-scale assault on 23 April, which was repulsed at Newnham Bridge.23

To recapture Calais, Somerset really needed supplies, reinforcements and command of the sea. These issues were tackled by three patents of 10/11 December 1459. William Scot was commissioned to raise ships crewed with 200 men-at-arms specifically to protect English fishermen and the town of Winchelsea. Buckingham as warden of the Cinque Ports was directed to secure against capture Warwick’s former ships, still lying at anchor at Sandwich, at the time of ‘le Sprynge’ tides. Rivers and others were ordered to take the muster of the soldiers who were to take the sea with Sir Gervase Clifton, still nominally treasurer of Calais.24

Warwick quickly sought diplomatic recognition, both to protect Calais against foreign attack and to win international support for his restoration. The English truce with Burgundy expired in November and on the 26th Henry appointed eleven ambassadors (among them Sir John Marny captain of Hammes, Osbert Mountford, and William Overy) to negotiate an extension. They were too late. Warwick had already reached an understanding with Philip. Discussions were held with the marshal of Burgundy at Gravelines in November and with Charolais marshal-at-arms, who was at Calais from 5 November to 5 December. A three-month truce was concluded between the duke and the Yorkists.25 Warwick also wooed the papal legate Francesco Coppini, Bishop of Terni, convinced him of the injustice done to the Yorkist earls and the righteousness of their cause, and persuaded him to intervene on their behalf.26 At Bruges it was also believed that the Yorkists were colluding with the Scots against Henry VI.27

Warwick was not content to be defensive. When Somerset’s ships fell into his hands, he personally interrogated the crews, identified those formerly of the garrison who had deserted him at Ludford, and executed them.28 Presumably it was also he who persuaded Audley to change sides: amazingly, since it had been his father who had been killed at Blore Heath. The Calais garrison were discouraged from disloyalty towards him. Warwick launched raids across Burgundian territory into France in search of supplies and other plunder. He resumed his attacks on French, Castilian and Genoese shipping and continued to grant (sell?) safe conducts to foreigners. Booty from the raids and piracy and munitions intended for Somerset helped compensate for the lack of official supplies from England. On 16 March the Yorkists captured a shipment of pay for the garrison of Guines. Unofficial supplies were apparently forthcoming, as parliament’s ban on English trade could not be made effective and was even infringed by the crown.29 It had alienated the staplers, who were even more adversely affected by the government’s declaration of a monopoly on the wool trade in May, and it aligned them definitely with Warwick. Allegedly they advanced him £18,000:30 presumably including £3,580 that we know he ‘chevisshed’ (borrowed at interest).31 Such loans financed his expedition to Ireland and probably also his invasion of England. The staplers were an influential group of London merchants. Once ashore and again short of money, the Yorkists were able to borrow from the City corporation, livery companies and citizens.