Warwick the Kingmaker (63 page)

Given all that had passed, it is surprising to find that negotiations occurred between the two parties at Coventry. Feelers were supposedly put out on the earl’s behalf, which prompted Edward, anxious to avoid bloodshed, to offer the earl his life, the lives of his army, and ‘dyvars othar fayre offars made hym, consy-thar his greet and haynows offenses’. This implies that Warwick was willing to abandon his Lancastrian allies and dishonour his promises of the previous year. Did Warwick foresee the conflicts within the Readeption outlined above and was he forestalling them by a further change of sides? Was his victory of the previous year and the whole Readeption merely strengthening his hand in negotiations with King Edward? Invigorating though such speculation is, it rests on insecure foundations. Our sole authority is
The Arrivall
, Edward IV’s own retrospective propaganda.96 If such contacts did indeed occur, may it not be that Warwick offered Edward the duchy of York under King Henry VI? Further offers were made later at the instance of Clarence, who did not want his father-in-law destroyed, but these too were rejected: we may speculate, as
The Arrivall
does, whether this was because distrust ran too deep, because of the solemn engage-ments given to the Lancastrians, or for other reasons.97

Following Edward’s departure from Coventry, Warwick may have hoped to catch him between his army and the walls of London, but he found his hold on the capital to be weaker than he had supposed. Far from holding the city or joining the earl, the Lancastrian Duke of Somerset and Earl of Devon left it on 8 April to meet Queen Margaret in the West Country: surely the most disastrous strategic error? The populace could not be relied upon in Warwick’s absence. Hence Archbishop Neville, who was left to defend the city, proved unable to persuade the Londoners to keep King Edward out. He lacked the confidence in his brother to continue resistance and reached the best deal for himself with Edward that he could. He failed to withdraw King Henry to safety, either in the Tower or at Calais. When London was yielded into Edward’s hands, so too was Henry VI. Warwick’s failure to fight at Coventry deprived him of the military initiative, Clarence’s defection passed it to King Edward, and the fall of London enabled the latter to defeat his enemies in detail.

Even at this juncture, Edward may have been weaker than the combined opposition but they could not unite. Throughout the 1471 campaign, Pembroke was in Wales and missed all the action. Warwick’s Calais garrison and the Bastard of Fauconberg’s shipmen could not be brought to bear until too late. The leading West Country Lancastrians, Somerset and Devon, made no attempt to join the earl, waiting instead for Queen Margaret and suffering separate defeat and death at Tewkesbury. Thus it was Warwick’s army alone that Edward attacked on Easter morning, 14 April 1471, not far from Barnet in Hertfordshire. Advancing from London on the Saturday, Edward pushed back the earl’s advance riders and dislodged an advance guard from Barnet itself. Probably Warwick’s forces were still the larger. Again he ranged his army on the defensive, though his flanks could not be secured, and protected them with cannon. He planned again that his foes would destroy themselves attacking his guns as at Châtillon. His cannon were fired all night before the battle: ineffectively, because of the lie of the land. They gave away his precise dispositions. After such a night it is hard to understand the Crowland continuator’s claim that Warwick sought to take Edward by surprise by an attack on Easter Day! It was Edward who attacked before dawn, when the poor visibility was to his advantage and contributed to confusion in his enemies’ ranks. When Montagu turned his flank, his success was concealed from Edward’s army and he came to blows instead with Oxford from his own side. It was a hard-fought battle with many casualties.

Once the result was clear, Warwick attempted to escape on horseback, perhaps, as
The Arrivall
suggests elsewhere, hoping to escape to Calais and to fight another day. Had he survived, still popular and with his shipmen and garrison intact, he might yet have contrived a further transformation. This time he failed. Boxed into a wood from which there was no escape, he was slain. His body was stripped and robbed: his seal is in the British Library; perhaps it is his gold ring that belongs to Liverpool City Museums. If Edward sought to save him, it was surely for exemplary execution rather than any gentler motives. The bodies of Warwick and his brother Montagu, who was also slain, were displayed at St Paul’s as proof that they were definitively dead.98 There was to be no myth of his survival, no hopes of his return. He was still only forty-two years old.

NOTES

1. Scofield, i. 504–5; Hicks,
Clarence
, 41.

2.
Paston L & P
i. 410.

3.
Crowland Continuations
, 117.

4. Scofield, i. 505n, 506;
RP
vi. 232. The earl was at Warwick on 22 Nov., Warwicks. RO CR 1998/J2/177.

5. C 81/830/3022; Hicks,
Clarence
, 40–7.

6. Scofield, i. 507n; Hicks,
Clarence
, 43–7, 50–1.

7. Hicks,
Clarence
, 48–9.

8. See P. Holland, ‘The Lincolnshire Rebellion of March 1470’,
EHR
ciii (1988), 851–69, esp. 863, 866–7, 869.

9. Ibid. 854, 866.

10. Hicks,
Clarence
, 54.

11. A. Payne, ‘The Salisbury Roll of Arms c.1463’,
England in the Fifteenth Century
, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), 197; see above p. 230.

12. Hicks,
Clarence
, 55, 58–9.

13. ‘Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire’, ed. J. Nichols,
Camden Miscellany
i (1847), 6, 9, 11–12. The following account of the rebellion is based on ibid.
passim
; Hicks,
Clarence
, 52–61.

14. PSO 1/51/2360A;
RP
vi. 232.

15. PSO 1/51/2630A; ‘Chron. Lincs.’, 10.

16. ‘Chron. Lincs.’, 13–15; Hicks,
Clarence
, 52–61; Holland, 854–61; Goodman,
Wars of
the Roses
, 73.

17.
CPR 1467–77
, 218.

18. Scofield i. 519–20;
Hansisches Urkundenbuch
, ed. W. Stein (Leipzig, 1899–1907), 663n; C. de la Roncière,
Histoire de la Marine Française
, ii (1900), 340.

19. Calmette and Perinelle, 311–12.

20. Scofield, i. 520–1; Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, iv. 350–1; G. Chastellain,
Oeuvres
, ed. K. de Lettenhove (Brussels 1863–5), v. 458; Commines,
Mémoires
, ed. Calmette and Durville, 197.

21.
CSPM
i. 135–6.

22. Scofield,
Edward IV
, i. 522ff.; P. de Commines,
Mémoires
, ed. L. de Fresnoy (1747), iii. 121, 132–3;
CSPM
i. 136–7; U. Plancher,
Histoire Générale et Particulière de Bourgogne
, iv (1781), cclxi–cclxxxiii; BN MS 6977, f. 68-v, 73. For what follows, see Chastellain,
Oeuvres
, v. 463.

23. Scofield, i. 525–6; Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, iv. 110–14, 349–50; Roncière,
Marine
Française
, 344; J. de Roye,
Journal
, ed. B. de Mandrot (Paris, 1894), i. 238–9.

24.
CSPM
i. 136.

25. Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, iv. 121–3, 128, 349; BN MS 6977, f. 173, 20486, 20490.

26. Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, iv. 112, 114.

27. Scofield, i. 526; Roncière,
Marine Française
, 341.

28. BN MSS 20490, f. 91; 6977, f. 26–v; 20485, f. 101; 20486, ff. 6, 8; Vaesen,
Lettres
, iv. 112;
CSPM
i. 140.

29. Scofield, i. 526; Roncière,
Marine Française
, 344.

30.
CSPM
i. 136.

31. Ibid. i. 137;
Vale’s Bk.
218.

32. Calmette and Perinelle, 315–16; BN MSS 6977, f. 197-v; 20486, f. 26; 20487, f. 19; 20490, ff. 12, 52.

33. Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, iv. 111, 113.

34.
CSPM
i. 138–9.

35. Ibid. i. 136.

36. Ibid. i. 138;
Hanserecesse von 1431–1476
, ed. G. von der Ropp, vi, 277–8. The memorandum in BN MS 6964, f. 27, printed in T. Fortescue,
Family of Fortescue
(1880), 80–2, is discussed in Hicks,
Clarence
, 65n, 68, and Gross,
Dissolution
, 75–9, at 79, which date it respectively to 1470 and 1468. Whilst obviously Fortescue composed the treatises over time, the reference to Warwick’s daughter in the singular points decisively to a date after Isabel’s marriage to Clarence in May 1469.

37. BN MS 6758, f. 44v;
CSPM
i. 139. For what follows, see
Vale’s Bk.
218–19.

38. T. Basin,
Histoire de Louis XI
, ed. C. Samaran, ii (Classiques 27, 1963), 16–18; Chastellain,
Oeuvres
, v. 467–8; see also
CSPM
i. 140;
Vale’s Bk.
217–18.

39.
CSPM
i. 139–41.

40.
Vale’s Bk.
215–18,
pace
ibid. 48.

41. Ibid. 217.

42. Hicks,
Clarence
, 68.

43.
Vale’s Bk.
222–5.

44. Basin,
Louis XI
, ii. 25–9;
Lettres de Rois, Reines et autres personnages des cours de France
et d’Angleterre
, ed. J. Champollion-Figeac, ii (Paris, 1847), 488–91.

45. Scofield, i. 530n; Hicks,
Clarence
, 69–70. On 29 June Warwick was not prepared to leave prior to the marriage, Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, iv. 349–50.

46. A. J. Pollard, ‘Lord FitzHugh’s Rising in 1470’,
BIHR
lii (1979), 170–5; Waurin, v. 607; Goodman,
Wars of the Roses
, 74. Pollard overlooked Waurin’s reference which, however, wrongly states that [FitzHugh] was executed.

47.
The Arrivall
, 12.

48.
Vale’s Bk.
217–18;
Warkworth’s Chron.
10.

49.
Fortescue Family
, 82.

50. Basin,
Louis XI
, ii. 50–1.

51.
Warkworth’s Chron.
, 4, 10–11;
CPR 1467–77
, 205, 207, 211; DURH 3/48/5; E 28/90/22d; PSO 1/34/1784, /1786; C 81/831/3069, /3071.

52.
Vale’s Bk.
218–19.

53. Ibid. 218.

54. Ibid. 215–18.

55. Ibid. 220–1;
Warkworth’s Chron.
51.

56.
Vale’s Bk.
221.

57. Ibid. 222; Ellis,
Original Letters
, ii.i. 139–40.

58.
Warkworth’s Chron.
10; see also ‘muche pepull’,
Coventry Leet Bk.
358.

59. Roye,
Journal
, i. 245.

60.
Coventry Leet Bk.
358–9; Roye,
Journal
, i. 245–6;
Vale’s Bk.
218.

61. Waurin, v. 611;
Coventry Leet Bk.
359.

62. Ibid. 355–9;
Warkworth’s Chron.
11;
Crowland Continuations
, 121; Basin,
Louis XI
, ii. 50–1; Waurin, v. 611.

63.
Warkworth’s Chron.
11;
Coventry Leet Bk.
358–9;
English Historical Documents
1327–1485
, ed. A. R. Myers (1969), 306–7. For what follows, see Westminster Abbey MS 12183, f. 18.

64.
Crowland Continuations
, 123.

65.
Warkworth’s Chron.
13.

66. Hicks,
Clarence
, 78;
CPR 1467–77
, 232, 244; Myers,
English Historical Documents
, 306.

67.
Warkworth’s Chron.
12–13.

68. Hicks,
Clarence
, 83–5.

69.
The Arrivall
, 23.

70.
Foedera
, v.ii. 194.

71. Scofield, i. 556, 562. Prince Edward apparently married Anne Neville at Amboise on 13 December 1470.

72. Ross,
Edward IV
, 153–4.

73. Wright,
Political Poems
, ii. 272–3.

74. Chastellain,
Oeuvres
, v. 465.

75. Hicks,
Clarence
, 84–5; ‘Chron. Lincs.’, 15–16;
The Arrivall
, 7; see also Ross,
Edward
IV
, 158.

76. Hicks,
Clarence
, 83; ‘Chron. Lincs.’, 14. Warwick was at Warwick on 17 Jan. 1471, E 404/74/22, 28/3 & 12/5/1482.

77. Chastellain,
Oeuvres
, v. 490.

78. Scofield, i. 558–9, 564–5; Myers,
English Historical Documents
, 306;
CPR 1467–77
, 250; C 1/49/45; Maidstone, Centre for Kentish Studies, MS Sa/Ac1 m. 199; Ross,
Edward IV
, 161–1; see also Sa/Ac1 m. 199; Ross,
Edward IV
, 161–1; see also C. F. Richmond, ‘Fauconberg’s Kentish Rising of May 1471’,
EHR
lxxxv (1970), 675–6.

79. Commines,
Mémoires
, ed. Dupont, iii. 271–2; Rainey, ‘The Defense of Calais’, 116n; Chastellain,
Oeuvres
, v. 488; see also
DKR
xlviii (1887), 448–9.

80. Ross,
Edward IV
, 157;
CPR 1467–77
, 251–2.

81.
The Arrivall
, 2.

82. Plancher,
Bourgogne
, iv. clxxxix; Commines,
Mémoires
, ed. Dupont, iii. 271–2; ed. Calmette and Durville, 208.