Warwick the Kingmaker (47 page)

The third set of remarkable ceremonies relates to the wedding of Warwick’s eldest daughter Isabel to the king’s brother, once heir apparent and still heir male, George Duke of Clarence. It was preceded by the commissioning of Warwick’s ‘great ship’, the
Trinity
. So remarkable was this that John Stone included it in his chronicle. It happened at Sandwich on 12 June 1469, Trinity Sunday. A service of blessing ‘with the greatest solemnity’ held on board was conducted by Archbishop Neville in the presence of Warwick himself, Clarence, Bishop Kemp of London, Lord Wenlock, Sir Walter Wrottesley and Sir John Guildford. Mass was sung by a choir including the prior, three monks, and boys of Canterbury cathedral priory. The ensuing banquet lasted from the second to the fifth hour.30 Regrettably there is no narrative of the wedding, surely no less magnificent, at Calais castle on 11 July 1469. We know that it was conducted by the archbishop in the presence of the Earl and Countess of Warwick, the earls of Shrewsbury and Oxford, five knights of the Garter presumably including Wenlock, Harcourt and Duras, ‘and many other lordes and ladies and wurshipfull knightes, well accompanied with wise and discreet esquires, in right greate numbyr, to the laude presinge of God, and to the honoure and wurship of the world’. Such attendance is all the more surprising given that the king opposed the match and was conspicuously absent. The need to ensure that its validity could not be impugned perhaps explains the addition of this memorandum to Clarence’s new household book.31 Unfortunately there was to be no baptism of the earl’s first grandson, Clarence’s son, who less than a year later was born and buried at sea off Calais, and the earl was to miss both the weddings of his second daughter Anne to royal princes.

Earthly glories, of course, are always sure to fade. Mortality lies just around the corner. Even Warwick needed to think of the future, of his line and of his soul. Hence on 14 June 1463 he was licensed to enfeoff lands worth £1,000 a year for the performance of his will and the payment of his debts; immediately after his victory in the North gave him time to arrange his affairs.32 We lack the insight that a will or foundation deeds might have given to his piety. We have encountered his oaths by the saints, the conventional dedication of his ships to saints and the quite unconventional blessing of the
Trinity
, and his reverence for St George. He secured the usual papal dispensations for a portable altar and plenary remission of sins in the hour of death in 1467–9.33 He continued to do his duty by his predecessors, his wife’s parents Earl Richard Beauchamp and the Countess Isabel Despenser. It was only in 1462 that Warwick secured the licence to appropriate Goldcliff Priory in Wales to Isabel’s chantry in Tewkesbury Abbey.34 Work on the Beauchamp Chapel and at Guyscliff continued. Again, it was Warwick who on 1 June 1463, a fortnight before the enfeoffment to the use of his will, secured licences to alienate property worth £8 to Tewkesbury for a chantry, £13 6
s
. 8
d
. to Elmeley College for an additional priest, and £40 to Warwick College for another chantry for the soul of Earl Richard Beauchamp. The total fine paid was £75 7
s
. Evidently settling accounts on earth was much on his mind. However, it was only in 1469 that the three manors of Baginton, Wolverton (Warw.) and Preston Capes (Northants) were conveyed in fulfilment of the licence to the Beauchamp Chapel. The consecration itself was deferred until 1475.35 Though he was a co-founder of the college of St William at York in 1461, he may have been more of a figurehead.36 More significant surely, because more personal, was the licence of 18 June 1465 to appropriate 10 marks-worth of land a year to ‘Therle of Warrewyks Chaunterie’ of one chaplain celebrating at St Mary’s altar ‘according to his ordinance’ in his wife’s church of Olney in Buckinghamshire for the souls of themselves and the king. Regrettably we lack the ordinance. And, as we have seen, he allegedly intended an almshouse of noble poverty for superannuated retainers attached to Guyscliff and burial in the Beauchamp Chapel.37 Whatever Warwick promised, it was not fulfilled. Actually he was buried at Bisham.

The glories were due to fade also for rather more prosaic reasons. The union of the Beauchamp, Despenser, Salisbury and Neville inheritances was destined to be ephemeral for Warwick (and, indeed, all his brothers) failed to maintain their line. Daughters they produced in plenty, but no sons. Warwick’s second and last daughter Anne was born in 1456 and it was surely apparent soon after that there was to be no son. His death without issue was a contingency to be seriously considered on 14 June 1463. At that point, however, he surely expected the Beauchamp, Despenser and Salisbury lands to descend in the female line, to be divided between his two daughters and their issue. The Neville patrimony was entailed in the male line: on Warwick’s death, it would pass to his brother John, with remainder if he had no son to Latimer’s son Henry: was not he being groomed as prospective heir at Bisham? In 1463 John had no son. How important Warwick regarded the birth of George Neville, Montagu’s son, on 22 February 1465 is shown by the splendid match he arranged for him to the Exeter heiress and his disappointment when the bride went elsewhere in 1466!38 What Warwick’s reflections on these points were are suggested by the titles by which he held his grants of forfeited estates. Those bestowed in 1462 were held in fee simple: they could descend to his daughters, but they could also be alienated, for the good of his soul, to his brother or another. Those received in 1465 were to himself and the heirs of his body and would thus pass to his daughters.39 Perhaps this indicates that a prospective son-in-law was already interested in northern properties so complementary as Barnard Castle to Richmond, Helmsley and Spofforth which Clarence already held?

Probably Warwick would have liked to be a duke. He liked being premier earl. His pride in his lineage, love of ceremony and heraldry are all well attested. The title of duke was the only honour of Duke Henry that he had failed to attain. In retrospect his absence from Edward’s coronation, where the king’s brothers were created dukes and two others were made earls, was a mistake. Warwick was ambitious. Their lineage, their wealth, and the scale of the inheritance they carried with them made his heirs worthy of the highest rank. Nothing less than a duke would do. Even for his bastard daughter Margaret Neville, Warwick was prepared to provide a portion of £200, the manor of Halle (Norf.) and property in Richmondshire for her marriage to Richard, son of Sir John Huddleston of Millom, on 12 June 1464.40 He matched his niece Alice FitzHugh to Francis Lord Lovell. For his last unmarried sister Margaret he secured John de Vere, son and brother of traitors, whom he probably helped to recover his family earldom of Oxford. Warwick’s eldest legitimate daughter Isabel was old enough for Oxford or Lovell, but he bestowed their hands elsewhere, because he was looking higher for her. Was it with a view to a match with Henry Stafford Duke of Buckingham that Warwick sought the custody of Hay, Huntington, Brecon and Newport, so complementary to his own and his daughters’ marcher lordships? Why else should the wedding of the young duke to Katherine Wydeville in 1465 be to his ‘great secret displeasure’ whereas the simultaneous marriage of his nephew Maltravers to another Wydeville was not?41 Why was he so upset at the overturning of the somewhat premature match of his infant nephew George to Anne heiress of the Duke of Exeter in 1466? Why indeed did Warwick defer Isabel’s espousals for several years after the king forbade the banns for her and his brother of Clarence? Did he also consider Clarence’s brother Gloucester for his other daughter Anne? There were partners enough of appropriate rank and indeed some heirs and heiresses of modest fortune that did not take his fancy. If Warwick’s vast accumulation of estates was to be divided, he wanted for his heirs even higher rank and perhaps no less in fortune. Such aspirations came to conflict with those of a king for whom his brother’s hand was a diplomatic pawn and who had his own ideas of degree. Just as Edward apparently thought his sisters-in-law deserved nothing less than an earl and endowed his brothers at four times the minimum for a duke, so he made dukes only of his three sons and his intended son-in-law. This was the king, remember, whose sumptuary law of 1483 set the royal family above mere dukes. From this clash of stations emerged Warwick content with nothing less for his daughters than the crown itself.

8.2 THE PACIFICATION OF THE NORTH

The Nevilles earned their rewards by continuous and strenuous service. Though Towton was the bloodiest battle of the Wars of the Roses and witnessed the highest mortality among the commanders on the losing side, it was not decisive. It reinforced Edward’s hold on the Midlands and the South, but left the North and Wales unsubdued. Almost the whole Lancastrian royal family survived. So did many other noblemen and gentry who did not accept their cause to be irre-trievably lost. Henry VI, Queen Margaret, Prince Edward, Somerset, Exeter, Roos and Hungerford escaped. Now that they had been ousted, they received that active support from the Scots and French that had been denied to them hitherto. However libellous had been the earlier charges of the Yorkists of treasonable alliances with the ancient enemy of France, from 1461, to Margaret at least, the Scots and French were the lesser foes. Scottish support was bought by her surrender of Berwick to the Scots as early as 25 April 1461; almost equally early the Channel Isles were granted to the Frenchman Pierre de Brezé; and French support was bought on 23 June 1462 at Chinon with the promise of Calais should it fall into her hands. With international backing, the Lancastrians were a formidable threat to the periphery of the realm, where long borders were exposed to attack by land and sea. International recognition of the new regime was slow in coming. The French threatened Warwick’s town of Calais, where Hammes still held out, and the seas of which he was keeper. They captured Mont Orgueil and the six westernmost parishes of Jersey of which he claimed to be lord; they had to be left in control until 1468.42 Repeatedly they brought reinforcements by sea to revive Lancastrian resistance in Wales, where Warwick’s countess held marcher lordships, and in the North, where his Neville patrimony lay. Warwick was the obvious man to take the lead in every sector, starting, logically, with the North; it was not his plan to stay there. That was what happened. It took him three years to pacify the North; three years that distracted him from priorities elsewhere.

During the 1450s the Nevilles of Middleham had dominated the North and had prevailed over the Percies, the principal other northern house. The Nevilles’ own defeat in 1459 deprived their connection of its natural leaders and left their own lands and retainers exposed to their enemies. This did not change after Northampton and York’s recognition as heir to the throne, for the North fell into Margaret’s sphere of influence. Most of the northern nobility joined the Lancastrians: a meeting of the queen’s council in January 1461 was attended by the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, Clifford, Dacre, FitzHugh, Greystoke, Neville, Roos and Scrope.43 In 1447 Greystoke had been formally retained by Salisbury.44 FitzHugh was Warwick’s near-neighbour, retainer and brother-in-law, the husband of his sister Alice. That neither fought for King Henry at Towton and that both were received into Edward’s allegiance could not immediately allay doubts about their fidelity and reliability. Warwick succeeded Salisbury in the North. The simultaneous death of his next brother Thomas, already his lieutenant in the West March, elevated the third brother John Lord Montagu to that status. Warwick and Montagu needed to recover their estates, to rebuild their connection, and win back their retainers’ confidence. They had also to supplant their Lancastrian rivals. Though so many northern peers had been slain – Northumberland, Egremont, Clifford, Dacre and Westmorland’s heir Neville – there still remained ample Percies, Cliffords, Dacres and Nevilles of Brancepeth and plenty of aggrieved retainers to carry on fighting. Roos was an irreconcilable Lancastrian. The loyalties of Bishop Bothe of Durham and the Earl of Westmorland were suspect. The Neville brothers faced an uphill and frustrating task in repressing the Scottish, French and Lancastrian incursions that repeatedly assailed the East March, the former domain of their rivals the Percies, whose allegiance to the English crown could not be relied upon.

Warwick succeeded to all his father’s estates except for Sheriff Hutton and the handful of other properties held in trust for his mother.45 To his wife’s castle of Barnard, which the king confirmed to him despite Bothe’s claims,46 he now added Middleham and Penrith. Formerly joint officer with his father, he was now sole warden of the West Marches, sole chief forester North of the Trent, and sole chief steward of the North Parts of the duchy of Lancaster. He also succeeded to his father’s custody of Snape and the other Latimer lands47 and could draw also on his uncle William’s Yorkshire barony of Fauconberg. He added a large share of the forfeited estates of the Percies and Cliffords both in Cumbria, where they had been the principal landholders, and north-west Yorkshire. The castles of Brougham in Cumberland and Topcliffe in Yorkshire in 1462 and that of Cockermouth in 1465 reinforced his holdings where they were weakest and strengthened them where they were strong. Moreover from 15 December 1461, if not earlier, he was also steward of Blackburn and master forester of Bowland (Lancs.), steward, constable and master forester of the honours of Pontefract and Knaresborough, steward and master forester of Pickering, most of which Lancaster offices had formerly been held by his father.48

Warwick succeeded to more than his father’s power in the North, for Salisbury’s resources and authority had always been balanced by those of the Percies. Initially his authority was latent rather than real. Many of his father’s most trusted friends and allies had temporized with and perhaps even collaborated with the Lancastrians. They had not suffered significant casualties. As a Neville and a northerner, Warwick already knew his father’s principal allies and was content to rely on them. To his uncle William and his brother John, he added Sir Robert Ogle of Bothal (Northumb.) and Sir Thomas Lumley, who were both elevated to the peerage; Ogle, the bailiff and lieutenant of Tynedale, was appointed warden of the East March, whereas Warwick was warden in the west.49 Warwick’s marriage of his bastard daughter Margaret to Richard Huddleston of Millom, son and heir of Sir John,50 not only provided for her, but bound another trusted retainer more closely to himself. The earl continued the annuities granted by his father payable from the lordship of Middleham and doubtless other un-documented lordships too. Whilst the level of annuities that he was paying there in 1465–6 was markedly less than the Percys’ and comparable to his father’s in the 1450s,51 he was probably paying more in total from a substantially larger estate. He was recruiting new retainers from the start and feeing them from Middleham and elsewhere. Others were appointed deputies to the earl in one of his many offices: this was true for example of Sir Thomas Gargrave in 1463 and Henry Sotehill in 1465 as steward of Pontefract and Walter Calverley as constable of Pontefract and Pickering in 1464.52 No less than seven indentures of retainer were contracted in 1461–2, all apparently with an eye to defence of the borders: he was deliberately recruiting men who would not otherwise be in his service. Sir John Trafford was a Lancashireman. Another five were men of the West March, who were more naturally attached to the Cliffords, Dacres and Percies, and were thus formally detached from their former allegiance and bound to himself. Another, John Faucon gunner, was an expert in the ordnance required at Carlisle. Most of these indentured retainers were feed from Penrith or Warwick’s lands in Westmorland. It was from Penrith that Thomas Hutton of Hutton John was to draw the 5-mark fee he was granted on 20 August.53