Warwick the Kingmaker (39 page)

The new regime was not in control of the provinces and depended for its authority on possession of the king, which offered none of the guarantees needed against reprisals. In 1455 York’s tenure as protector had been secured by parliamentary authority, which allegedly Warwick had also claimed for his captaincy of Calais. It had not sufficed. King Henry had relieved York of office in parliament in 1456 exactly as ordained in his terms of appointment. Parliamentary authority for York as protector was surely the least that was sought on 20 July, when parliament was summoned. Perhaps something even more permanent was envisaged. Three preliminaries were essential. First of all, the king’s authority and approval were required, which was assured by his opening of parliament in person in his full regalia. Secondly, the Yorkist lords had to be released from the sentence of the previous parliament. This was done in an act stating the acts of the Coventry parliament to have been ‘synysterly and importunely laboured...[by] dyvers seditious and evil disposed persones’ with designs on the victims’ property and approved by an improperly elected house of Commons. Friar Brackley reported that the Yorkists intended to wreak revenge on the authors of the act of attainder against them.78 Thirdly, a change in government needed to be shown to be necessary. This was apparently the work of Lord Chancellor Neville, whose opening sermon recited the bad government and losses in France of the previous regime and promised remedies. His text from Joel II.16, ‘Gather the people, sanctify the congregation’, has been interpreted as presaging resistance to Queen Margaret’s northern army.79 Actually she was not there yet.80 It points rather to a display of unity and a commitment to the liberties of the church. The Yorkist
Verses on the Battle of Northampton
looked forward to the restoration of unity. If Warwick intended to reconcile himself with those opposed to him, as Friar Brackley feared,81 it would have been a statesmanlike act. That matters did not proceed exactly as planned was because York had his own agenda.

That Warwick left the
Julian
of Fowey in Ireland in May to transport York to the mainland may indicate that the duke was expected to cross to England soon. He did not. Yorkist verses of late July looked forward to the return of ‘the mayster of this game’, Richard Duke of York. On 9 August royal letters to Pembroke in Wales ordered York to be received as ‘our approved and true liegeman and noo traitor, our true subget and noo rebell, our right feithful frend and noon ennemye’. Commissions issued by the London government to him on 22 and 26 August wrongly presumed his availability for service in Yorkshire.82 It was not until 8/9 September that he landed at the Wirral, having bypassed North Wales, where royal servants had sought to impede his progress in 1449–50 and where Queen Margaret’s supporters were poised to do the same. Once ashore, the duke took over a month to reach London, perhaps fulfilling various errands from the government on his way. His slow and stately progress is reminiscent of that of 1450, when he was concerned to show himself and to win support. From Chester (13 September) he passed via Shrewsbury – obviously before 28 September! – to Ludlow, Hereford and Gloucester, where he was on 2 October, and thence to Abingdon, Barnet, and eventually Westminster, where he arrived on 10 October.83 He was late once again: again by design.

When he landed, with just a few men, York was conspicuously wearing the York family livery of silver and blue and the badge of the falcon and fetterlock that was so potent in the marches of Wales. He had his sword borne before before him point uppermost to the sound of trumpet fanfares. Latterly he was accompanied by a banner bearing the royal arms unquartered with those of others and without the label that distinguished a cadet line. Almost immediately after his landing he had ceased to use the regnal year in dating documents. Several indentures of retainer dated at Gloucester on 2 October promised him the loyalty of those retained without the customary reservation of overriding allegiance to the king.84 Increasingly York interpreted his royal blood as arising not through his paternal York line, but through his maternal Mortimer ancestors from Lionel Duke of Clarence, a son of Edward III senior to John of Gaunt, the ancestor of the Lancastrian kings. He considered himself entitled to the throne and perceived in the Yorkist victory the opportunity for him to make his claims good. It was a logical next step that had been anticipated by some observers in July and August and, if Waurin is to be believed, had been urged by his Welsh retainers.85 On Friday 10 October he arrived at Westminster with a powerful retinue of 800 ‘horses and men harnessed’: was he trying to overawe parliament, as he had in 1450, 1454 and 1456? Entering the House of Lords, his sword borne point uppermost, he laid his hand upon the throne to claim the crown and turned his face towards the people.

And ther under the cloth of estate stondyng, he gave them knowliche that he purposed nat to ley daune his swerde but to challenge his right...and purposed that no man shuld haue denye[d] the croune fro his hed.86

This was the signal for the assembled peers to acclaim him as king. They did not. After an awkward pause, the primate asked him whether he wished to see the king, to which the duke responded that the king should rather wish to see him. He lodged himself in the king’s chambers, Henry VI himself removing elsewhere in the palace under guards appointed by York. If Waurin is correct, York had hoped to be crowned on the Monday following, St Edward’s Day, when the king would normally have appeared crowned; a ‘great multitude of pepill drew thedir’ to see who did wear the crown, but no king appeared. York found that he had to win over the Lords. A formal submission of his case was submitted to the Lords on Thursday 16 October, which outlined the duke’s descent through his mother Anne Mortimer from Lionel Duke of Clarence and its superiority to that of the Lancastrian kings. His claim was based entirely on hereditary right. Whilst the Lords were reluctant to take any such action, they agreed that York’s claim like any other petition deserved consideration. As at other critical moments, they were anxious to shrug off responsibility for such a momentous decision: on to the king himself, who failed to stamp out speculation with his authority, which, by implication, he could have done. Instead Henry rather feebly asked them to find objections to York’s title. And on to the judges and then the royal law officers, who all stated that the matter at issue was beyond their learning.

Reluctantly therefore the Lords debated the subject themselves on Wednesday 22 October: each was to speak freely without fear of penalties. They came up with five objections: the oaths of allegiance that they had sworn to Henry VI as king; the acts of parliament that had settled the crown on the Lancastrian line; the descent of the crown by entail; York’s use of the arms of York rather than Clarence; and Henry IV’s claim that he was king by inheritance not by conquest. York responded that he was king by divine law and that this superseded any oaths by himself or the Lords; that he had borne the arms of York (rather than Clarence) for reasons well known to everyone; and that the other objections all arose from deficiencies in Henry IV’s title and were superseded by his own hereditary claims. No public response was made by the Lords. Naturally they were sympathetic to claims based on the practice of primogeniture, which allowed inheritance through females and by which they held their own titles and estates: all Warwick’s current estates and hereditary expectations, except his Neville patrimony, were derived through the female line. They were not convinced by York’s specious arguments that they could set aside their oaths to the king, which all had so recently renewed, whether at the Coventry parliament of the previous year or before convocation in July. They were not willing to set aside an adult king, the third of his dynasty, who had reigned over them for thirty-eight years and was definitely not willing to stand aside. Abbot Whetehamstede, who was present, testifies to the dismay of the lords.87

Not many peers attended the crucial discussions. The most active opponents of the regime, such as the dukes of Somerset and Exeter, had not responded to their summonses; others failed to attend at all or absented themselves from the crucial sessions.88 Their absences cast doubt on the authority and validity of any decisions. Probably most of those present were spiritual peers; archbishops, bishops, abbots and priors, who carried little political clout. They were reluctant as a group to consent to York’s demands. Lord Chancellor Neville guided their deliberations, but there is little evidence that he directed them either in York’s favour or against.

What happened in parliament, however, may have mattered least. It was there that decisions were formally registered that were reached elsewhere. Waurin’s account is more informal and personal. It emphasizes that York had not only to combat the reluctance of the Lords, but the active hostility of the Yorkist earls. Salisbury was offended by the king’s eviction and protested to Warwick. Since Archbishop Bourchier was frightened of York’s retainers, it was Warwick himself in company with his brother Thomas who took barge to the palace of Westminster and told the duke to his face that the deposition of the king was unacceptable to both Lords and people. There was a furious row, in which Rutland took his father’s side and March temporized. Pope Pius II also reports that Warwick opposed York’s claim.89 Warwick knew how important assurances of loyalty had been for the Yorkist victory. The Yorkist lords at Calais had repeatedly given assurances of loyalty for themselves and York: to Coppini; in their manifestos; at the London convocation; to the king himself at Northampton; and at St Paul’s. The verses issued after Northampton had proclaimed that they had never considered not being loyal and culminated in an appeal to the Trinity on behalf of both the king and the peace of the realm.90 It was not possible to draw back without appearing to perjure themselves, even if York himself, as Abbot Whetehamstede mistakenly supposed, had papal absolution from his oath.91 There were too many, such as the Church, the Bourchiers, and the people, who would be alienated by the deposition of the king. Those whom York had sought to retain by indentures without reserving allegiance to King Henry had declined to seal their contracts. Whetehamstede records popular anger at the duke’s presumption. Representations may have been made to Warwick by the corporation of London and others.92

Waurin then tells a complex story of embassies and negotiations that commences at least one week early and most probably belongs after the public exchange reached impasse. Other sources record that many of the peers and perhaps others too undertook the substantive discussions at Blackfriars, where Warwick was residing. This was surely after York had formalized his claim. It was Warwick who took the lead in the discussions. On 21 October Margaret Paston wrote of a ‘gret talkyng in this contre of the desyr of my lorde of York. The pepylle report full worchepfully of my lord of Warwyk.’93

After a fortnight of discussion, it was Warwick again who devised a compromise that was acceptable to all. ‘Wherein my lorde of Warwik’, observed someone at the time, ‘be ha[ve]d him soo that [h]is fame is lik to be of great memory.’94 The
Act of Accord
of 31 October mirrored and was perhaps modelled on the treaty of Troyes of 1420. Henry VI remained on the throne. Although the Lords concluded that York’s hereditary claim could not be defeated, he had to abandon his immediate hopes of the crown. The immediate issue settled, Henry abandoned his son and recognized York and his issue to be his heirs. Meantime York was to be protector for life. He was assigned 10,000 marks (£6,666.66) for life, March 4,000 marks (£2,666.66) and Rutland 1,000 marks (£666.66) from the principality of Wales, duchy of Cornwall and county of Chester. Not much retrenchment there. As a sign of concord, King Henry wore his crown in procession to a solemn service at St Paul’s. Among the peers in his company, Warwick bore the sword in front and March the train behind. At the ensuing banquet, Warwick’s younger brother Sir John Neville was appointed chamberlain of the royal household.

So much effort was devoted to the dynastic issue that the parliamentary session achieved little else. The acts of the Coventry parliament were revoked, but no new attainders, if intended, or reforms were introduced or passed. The customs were appropriated to the repayment of the government’s debts to the merchant staplers. It was York’s task to secure submission from Henry VI’s consort, son and other peers to the new regime. Warwick’s duty, once again, was the keeping of the seas, to which he was reappointed on 17 December.95 And in return for their services to the duke, his Neville allies had once again added to their offices wherever they had interests.

7.3 THE IDEOLOGY OF REFORM

The year from Ludford to York’s Third Protectorate witnessed one of the most remarkable recoveries of political fortunes. The fugitives of Ludford had been exposed not only as traitors but as cowards, who had shamefully deserted their followers and left them to their fate. York had even abandoned his duchess and younger children to his enemies. It should have been difficult indeed, one might suppose, for the Yorkist lords to redeem their honour and retrieve the trust of their deserted retainers. Nine months later, in a remarkable reversal, they were in political control, and a year later York was protector for a third time.

Once victorious, as we have seen, the Yorkists reproduced the successful precedent of 1455, but neither the St Albans nor the Ludford campaigns was the model for Warwick’s successful invasion. The Yorkists received more military support from other lesser peers than on previous occasions, but they made little use of their own bastard feudal retinues. The principal estates, concentrations of retainers, and hence the centres of power of Warwick, Salisbury, Fauconberg and March were far away from their Kentish bridgehead – in the West Midlands, the North, Wales and East Anglia – and initially at least they were scarcely tapped. Command of the sea enabled the Yorkists to land anywhere along the long coastline from the south-west to Henry IV’s own point of disembarkation on the Humber. They chose instead – surely
Warwick
chose instead? – to land in Kent, where none of them were significant landholders, though Warwick had commercial and maritime contacts as captain of Calais and keeper of the seas. Whilst York had tried unsuccessfully to raise revolt in Kent in 1452, it was Warwick who knew the current mood. He had marched unopposed through Kent and London only the previous autumn. What they launched was a popular rebellion. It was their capacity to mobilize public opinion that made their victory possible.