Warwick the Kingmaker (55 page)

First of all, there was a tendency to read Warwick’s opposition on foreign policy and alienation as the basis for rebellion, treason, deposition. This was so even in 1464, when Louis stated to the Milanese ambassador that, in the event of a break between Warwick and Edward, he would back Warwick.51 Louis’s willingness to contemplate several alternative policies simultaneously meant that Warwick was encouraged to destabilize the Yorkist regime. On the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, it was logical for Margaret of Anjou’s brother John Duke of Calabria in February 1467 to suggest an alliance between his sister and Warwick; this may also have been proposed by Margaret’s chancellor Sir John Fortescue in memoranda to the French king.52 Such facile deductions were also made nearer to home. Two sources,
Hearne’s Fragment
and Thomas Basin, indicate that Warwick’s over-cordial reception by Louis in 1467 prompted suspicions of treason. Edward himself did not altogether rule such possibilities out.53 The earl, like everyone else, had Lancastrian kinsmen and especially kinswomen, knew Lancastrians, and was potentially implicated in the Lancastrian plots uncovered in 1468–9: Thomas Porthaleyn, one of those charged in Cook’s plot in mid-1468, had been an important Warwick administrator on the 1430s, 1440s and 1450s; John Hawkins was servant to Warwick’s ally, Lord Wenlock; and his new brother-in-law the Earl of Oxford was arrested, allegedly ‘confessed much thing’, but was then acquitted.54 Sir Thomas Hungerford, whose family Warwick had assisted to rehabilitate, was convicted for further treasons later in 1468 and was executed in January 1469.

Actually there is no evidence that Warwick himself ever seriously considered turning Lancastrian. Though Edward feared the worst, none of the plots that were uncovered indicated the Lancastrians to be more than isolated, predictable and easily identifiable individuals. The shock at Sir Thomas Cook’s involvement was that he was so unexpected as a London alderman at the heart of the regime and a principal beneficiary from it. There was nobody more difficult for Lancastrians to reconcile with than their destroyer, the most ruthless and merciless of their opponents, and Warwick himself had too much to lose. To restore the Lancastrians must threaten the tenure of forfeited estates by himself and his family, challenge his local supremacy in the North, and raise up other rivals to his dominance of policy. A Lancastrian alliance was an admission that he had been wrong, which he would not willingly do: nothing suggests that he was a subtle or flexible negotiator. Could Warwick carry his retainers with him? Was it not the highest of high-risk strategies? Disagreement was not incompatible with loyalty and ought not to be equated with emnity. If such constitutional recti-tude proved impractical, it was far preferable for Warwick to recover his dominance of the existing regime, ideally peacefully, alternatively by force. Control of Edward IV, then substitution of his brother Clarence, relegated co-operation with the Lancastrians to a distant third, the last resort, in 1470. There is no evidence to suppose that it ever rated higher before that.

However such charges had their uses. It was Herbert who despatched the Lancastrian envoy with his charges against Warwick to Edward. Although not involved in foreign policy and hence not initially regarded so seriously by Warwick, Herbert was the most ambitious and dangerous of the earl’s opponents. From being a principal officer in Wales of Warwick
and
York, he had made himself Edward’s indispensable agent there and was rewarded, ultimately, on the fall of Harlech with the earldom of Pembroke in October 1468. He had acquired a host of grants and offices, including the elevation in 1465 of Raglan into a marcher lordship. Nor was his ambition confined to Wales. His interest in Dunster has already been touched on. He also sought to extend his authority by a series of marriages. According to the
Great Chronicle
, he solicited the marriage for his son and heir of the heiress of Bonville and Harrington, daughter of Warwick’s sister Katherine and stepdaughter of Lord Hastings. Warwick reportedly declined,55 perhaps partly because Herbert was insufficient in status and lineage. Instead Herbert bound his son to a Wydeville in 1467, contracted alliances for other daughters to two royal wards Viscount Lisle and Lord Grey of Powys, and projected yet further matches to Henry Tudor and Henry Percy.56 Tudor was heir apparent to the Lancastrian earl of Pembroke, who was still influential in Wales. As son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, he was also heir to the resumed earldom, honour, lordship and castle of Richmond. Percy was heir to the forfeited earldom of Northumberland. If Pembroke had yet to obtain royal consent to marry them to his daughters, he was nevertheless speculating on their restorations, a game that the Nevilles had played so well and that his Wydeville alliance made much more feasible. He had other arrears due to him like those he remitted for the marriages of Lisle and Grey of Powys. Were Pembroke to succeed, the principal losers would be Warwick, the Nevilles and Clarence, who would lose their Percy estates, Richmond honour itself, the eastern wardenry, and their unchallenged dominance of the North.57 And by 1468 it was Pembroke who had greater influence with the king.

By the spring of 1469, therefore, Edward’s foreign policy was in ruins. Warwick could reasonably feel that he could do better. He had sound grounds for hostility to the king’s new favourites. So too did the king’s next brother and heir male, George Duke of Clarence, who had no desire for his hand to be hawked around as a diplomatic pawn and who preferred instead to advance himself by marrying Warwick’s daughter Isabel, the greatest of English heiresses. It was also the best match that Warwick could arrange. That the marriage was indeed concluded in the face of Edward’s hostility, a dispensation being secured secretly in Rome, was itself a political triumph for both parties. By binding Warwick yet more closely to the house of York, it could have fostered a
rapprochement
with the king. Actually, however, Warwick’s thoughts dwelt less on reconciliation than on revenge. The marriage was the foundation for an immediate coup d’état: a pre-emptive strike. A rebellion in Yorkshire led by one Robin of Redesdale, whose earlier insurrection had been easily crushed by Warwick’s brother John,58 was not Lancastrian in origin but Neville. Hence Edward underestimated it and his favourites were defeated and destroyed at Edgecote on 24 July 1469,59 the king himself becoming Warwick’s puppet. That the eventuality was not foreseen indicates that Warwick chose this course of action; it was not yet forced upon him.

9.3 WARWICK’S FIRST COUP 1469

Edward IV’s first reign had been a disappointment to his subjects. Such is the reasonable deduction from the rebellions of Robin of Holderness and Robin of Redesdale in the North and of the men of Kent in 1469 and the popular backing for the Readeption of Henry VI in 1470–1. There were real grievances and real dissatisfaction.60 The removal of Henry VI had not proved to be the universal panacea. Financial solvency, law and order, the removal of corrupt favourites, international stature and, by implication, the recovery of English possessions in France had not materialized. Henry VI’s debts remained unpaid and new ones were contracted. Corrupt new favourites succeeded the old. Edward IV moreover made rash promises that he could not keep. His assurance in 1467 that he would ‘lyve vpon my nowne and not to charge my Subjettes but in grete and urgent causes’ and his call to arms against France in 1468 had both been popular,61 but the promised invasion came to nought and the taxes granted were diverted to ordinary expenses. The rebels complained of taxes and tributes.62 His foreign policy collapsed. Already in 1468 Monypenny reported that people in London and throughout England were saying that those responsible for Edward’s foreign policy should have their heads cut off.63 In 1468 Warwick had identified Earl Rivers, his son Scales, Lords Herbert, Audley and Stafford of Southwick as his enemies at court. In 1469 the rebels added to these Rivers’s wife Jacquetta Duchess of Bedford, another son Sir John Wydeville, and Sir John Fogge.64 It was apparently at this time that one Woodhouse, a jester, appeared before the king in long boots and staff and explained that ‘thorwth many Cuntrees of your Realm...the Ryvers been soo hie that I coude hardly scape thorw theym, But as I was fayn to serch the depth wyth this long staff’: he meant by it, explained the chronicler, ‘the grete Rule which the lord Ryvers & his blood bare that tyme withyn hys Realme’. Warkworth was not the only chronicler to agree.65

Such was also the message of the articles and petitions of the rebels of July 1469.66 They were concerned by the king’s poverty, that thrust financial burdens on the people, and with the breakdown of justice, which arose whenever ‘the seid Kings estraingid the gret lordis of thayre blood from thaire secrete Councelle’ in favour of self-interested parvenus, ‘seducious persones’, who sought only ‘theire singuler lucour’ at royal and public expense. Such had been the three principal articles, the rebels claimed, behind the depositions of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI. Now they applied once again. Whereas no king had been better endowed than Edward IV, his wealth was dispersed to his favourites ‘above theire disertis and degrees. So that he may nat lyf honorably and mayntene his estate and charges ordinarie withinne this lond’. They had caused him to change the coinage, reduce his household, ‘charge us his trewe commons and subgettis wyth suche gret imposicions and inordinate charges...[to] the utter empoverysshyng of us his treue Commons and subjettes’, the enriching of themselves to the tune of 200,000 marks (£133,333.33), and the dread of anyone who incurred their malice. They had caused the king to misappropriate taxation, ‘accordyng to the promyse that he made in his last parliament, openly wyth his owen mouthe unto us’. They had even spent ecclesiastical wealth collected for the crusade, thus threatening an interdict. They had committed all kinds of crime and encouraged crimes by their maintenance and had excluded from the royal council any ‘true lordis of his blood’ who might frustrate ‘theyre fals and disceyvable purpos’. The offence of these ‘seducious persones’, not really treason at all, was what in early times was meant by accroachement of the king and the ‘appec[h]yng’ or diminishing of his estate.

Much of the tally of charges has the ring of truth. King Edward did indeed (wisely) reduce his household, at least below the size of Henry VI’s. He did alienate crown, Lancaster and forfeited lands and did reward the Wydevilles and Herberts generously, in part from these sources. Among many financial expedients, he had resorted to recoinage, borrowing money without repayment, forced loans, tenths and taxes. And he did use tunnage and poundage for purposes other than the keeping of the sea and direct taxation for ordinary expenses. In principle, therefore, it is possible that he over-used purveyance and seized the goods of rich men from their executors. More specifically, what of the charge that financial motives lay behind the ‘impechementes of treasounes to whom they owe any eville will; so that ther can be no man of worshippe or richesse...or any other honest persone, in surete of his lyf, lyvelode, or goodis’? Many suspected Lancastrians had been ‘sent for’, imprisoned or placed in protective custody, some tried, a handful convicted, some secured with bonds, others obliged to surrender their lands or wives’ inheritances, fined, and even executed? In particular, there were the highly topical and notorious cases of Sir Thomas Cook, convicted the previous year only of misprision of treason (foreknowledge), who was fined £8,000 and pillaged by Rivers, Jacquetta and Fogge, and in 1469 of the heir to the Courtenay earldom of Devon: ‘Menne seyde the Lorde Stafforde of Southwyke was cause of the seyde Herry Curtenayes dethe, for he wolde be the Erle of Devynschyre, and so the Kynge made hym afterwarde...’67 Note that Rivers, the Duchess Jacquetta, Fogge and Stafford were all among those charged in the manifesto. As for the embezzlement of crusading revenues, might not this refer to the king’s use of the priorate of St John’s to provide for the young non-Hospitaller Sir John Wydeville? Note the appeal once again, here and elsewhere, to religious motives. Subsequent events substantiate the popular hostility to Rivers in Kent and Stafford in Somerset, their home countries where they had ‘the rule’; Stafford was to be lynched by the men of Bridgwater.68 Surely the author had also heard Edward speak with his own mouth at the Westminster Parliament of July 1467?

That such speculative questions need to be asked indicates the lack of precision of the articles. They are of general application, for general consumption and allegedly widely distributed, and do not specify a particular region. In so far as local grievances can be detected, they relate not to Yorkshire whence Robin of Redesdale hailed, but to Kent and London: hence the apparent allusions to Cook; the inclusion in Fogge of a Kentishman and keeper of the royal wardrobe; and the harking on the diversion of tunnage and poundage from the keeping of the seas. As in 1459–60, the grievances are those of the Cinque Ports, staplers and shipmen, who duly obeyed Warwick’s summons. Others current in 1450–60, against the constable of Dover for example, are omitted, presumably irrelevant, because the current constable was Warwick himself.

What, then, were the remedies to ‘the grete inconveniencis and mischeves that fall in this lond’? Not the king’s deposition or even the threat of his deposition, the ominous warning that Miss Scofield perceived in the parallels drawn between him and his disastrous predecessors. The rebels stressed their loyalty. They were the

trewe and feythefulle subjettes and commons of this land for the wele and surete of the Kyng our sovereigne lord and his heirs and the commonwele of this land, evir to be continued. For we take God to recorde we entende but only for the wele and surete of the Kyng oure sovereigne lord, And the common wele of this lond.

Theirs was another loyal rebellion. They sought the punishment of those named ‘accordyng to their werkes and untrouthes’ as an example to others; the appropriation of royal revenues to ordinary charges, so that the king could maintain his estate without taxation; the punishment of any seeking grants in contravention of this; the appropriation of tunnage and poundage to the keeping of the sea; and the observation of the laws of Edward III. Why rebel? Why not petition the king? Perhaps they had. The petitions do not say. King Edward, unlike King Henry, was presented not as ignorant but as ill-advised. The petitions were therefore addressed to the ‘trewe lordis, spirituelle, and temporelle, to yeve assistence and aid in thys oure true and goodeley desyres’. It was such lords spiritual and temporal – Warwick, Clarence and Archbishop Neville – who received the petitions. Finding them