Henry VI

by Bertram Wolffe

  Henry had sent Thomas Kent on a mission to York and it was after his return on 13 February 1452 that preparation against York increased.63 Copies of York’s manifestos seeking support had been sent on to Henry by at least seven loyal towns, including Oxford, Colchester and Canterbury, and on 17 February he sent back orders to them to resist him.64 These privy seal letters of 17 February refer to earlier proclamations by which Henry had already made it ‘openly and universally known throughout this our land’ that rebellion was planned under feigned and pretended claims to be acting for the common good and various commissions had either in fact gone out, or were in process of being issued, ordering the raising of loyal forces to stand against those endeavouring to subvert the king’s estate and destroy certain of its loyal subjects. Buckingham, Bonville, Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham and John Dynham of Nutwell had been named to muster and march against them in the south-west, Lord Scales in Norfolk and Suffolk, Lord Audley, Lord Bergavenny, the governor of Leeds castle, the sheriff and many gentry in Kent.65 The sheriff of Surrey and Sussex raised the men of his shires as instructed and duly brought them to the king at Blackheath.66 All the nobility had been summoned to Henry’s presence to assist him to ‘rebuke and chastise’ his rebels and Lord Cobham, who had ignored the summons, was sent a second stern warning to present himself ‘incontinent upon the sight of these further letters’ on 17 February.67 It is therefore inconceivable that York could have expected a peaceful, compliant reception from Henry who had already declared him a rebel and Somerset loyal. He set out, as his letter to the citizens of Shrewsbury on 3 February clearly indicated, with the firm intention of bending Henry to his will by force of arms.68

  Leaving London on 16 February, with instructions to close its gates against York,69 Henry marched north via Barnet, St Albans, Dunstable and Stony Stratford to reach Northampton on 22 February. Intelligence that York had crossed the Thames by Kingston Bridge, after London had duly refused passage to his herald, orought him back to the capital on 27 February. Crossing over London Bridge to Southwark next day, and to Blackheath and Welling on 1 March, the main royal force was finally drawn up on the heath where the Cade rebels had defied the king in June 1450. York was discovered strongly entrenched a few miles to the east on Dartford heath,70 with an impressive artillery train and supported by the earl of Devon to the south, Lord Cobham north towards the river, and seven ships with supplies on the Thames. In spite of York’s strength, variously and inflatedly estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 men,71 Henry’s force was indubitably the stronger. According to Abbot Wheathamstead it was three times the size of York’s.72 Henry had had ample warning on this occasion to prepare for his first military confrontation with his cousin of York.

  On 2 March an embassy of lords, led by the bishops of Winchester and Ely, the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, Viscount Bourchier and Lord Sudeley, prevailed upon York to face facts and submit himself to Henry in his tent at Blackheath. The next day,73 kneeling before him, together with Devon and Cobham, he presented lengthy articles of complaint against Somerset, vainly accusing him on old scores of making unprincipled financial profit from the surrender of Maine, of personal responsibility for the attack on Fougères, of the treasonable surrender of Rouen, of a shameful final composition with the enemy, made to save his family and his own skin, and, finally, the only item of recent history, of demoralizing the English garrison at Calais by intruding himself, the very personification of corruption and defeat, as their captain there.74 Henry in his proclamation to the shires had already indicated his full confidence in those persons under attack. Any alternative explanation that he had now tricked York into submission with a prior promise to have Somerset tried on these charges must therefore be rejected.75

  York was conducted back through the city in the midst of the royal army, escorted by two bishops, and a few days later made to swear the most solemn oath of allegiance and loyalty to Henry on the Evangelists at the high altar of St Paul’s, touching the cross and receiving the sacrament in Henry’s presence, with the cathedral filled to capacity. Subsequently he affixed his seal and sign manual to a written version of his oath, recording that, henceforth, he would come at the king’s commandment whenever summoned and would never again make any assembly of his people without his command or licence, or attempt anything ‘by way of faite’ (armed force) against the king or any of his subjects.76 He was then allowed to depart. Henry moved to Windsor on 22 March and was in his favourite Winchester for the Palm Sunday weekend, returning to Windsor for Maundy Thursday. Here on Good Friday, somewhat belatedly following the example of the pope’s general jubilee, indulgences and pardons of 1450,77 he proclaimed the offer of a general pardon, in honour of the loyal subjects, Christ’s crucifixion and the Virgin, to all who had been guilty of disloyalty to himself in great or small matters and would sue to chancery for it. Only the murderers of Moleyns and Aiscough were specifically excluded from his clemency. Some 2,500 people ultimately availed themselves of the privilege, including York, Devon, Sir William Oldhall, Thomas Yonge and a majority of others who had had no connection with the rebellion.78

  The kingdom was at peace and the loyalty of at least the vast majority of his subjects had apparently been conclusively demonstrated.79 The king was now ruling his kingdom. Indeed, he could claim that, had it not been for the fractious antics of the duke of York, which had menaced the peace and unity of his realm, he might well by now have been emulating his illustrious father by personally leading an expedition to France. Such had at last been declared to be his intention. Commissioners were appointed from 26 January 1452 to solicit contributions towards the cost of an expedition to France.80 Their instructions declared that Henry had now resolved that attack was the best form of defence and would in person lead his army to the marches of Calais to seek out his adversary and destroy him, before Charles VII could himself attack England’s sole remaining continental possession with a view to invading the kingdom of England itself. The same day Lords Rivers and Welles and Osborne Mundeford in Calais were commissioned to requisition all ships there and bring them over to Sandwich ‘for our crossing into our kingdom of France which, God willing we are disposed and determined to undertake with the greatest possible diligence and expedition’. Orders to arrest all carracks in the port of Southampton until further notice, to provide transport, had already been issued.81

  There is some evidence that Charles VII was planning an attack on Calais82 and it might be supposed that the mention of Henry’s initiative personally to lead a counter-invasion was merely a desperate ruse to obtain finance to resist him. Nevertheless, as soon as York’s rebellion had been mastered, letters went out on 14 March to Lord Clifford to assemble a fleet in the Downs off Sandwich and the Camber, again stressing Henry’s intention to ‘go over in our own person’. A credence, which Clifford was given to show to all people concerned, reveals that Henry had personally discussed his plans with him and further letters eight days later set out his requirements in detail. Ships available included the Grâce Dieu of Calais, the Anthony, the George and the Valentine of Hull and the Trinity of Dartmouth. Clifford was to acquire others and victual them all so that he had at least 1,000 sailors, who would be paid 12d a week. The masters of the vessels, who were all to be knights and notable esquires, would receive 10 marks or £10 at his discretion, besides their spoils of war. Clifford’s own fee was to be 100 marks and the earl of Shrewsbury would command the fleet once it was assembled.83 But after this no more was heard of Henry’s determination to face his adversary of France on the battlefield. On his past record one must doubt whether he would ever have brought his plans to the point of execution, even in the most favourable circumstances. In fact he had to turn his attention to the disturbing situation in England. In April and May there were further risings, the aftermath of Dartford, in Kent and the Welsh marches involving servants and advisers of Richard duke of York. 1452 was to be notable for Henry not as the year in which he personally invaded France but as the year in which
these further risings and continuing doubts about York’s intentions moved him to undertake his longest and most ambitious exemplary and punitive judicial progress, covering eleven western shires, from 30 June until 5 September.

  Apart from references in one chronicle, details of these further troubles are only known from oyer and terminer proceedings at Dart-ford in Kent in May and at Ludlow, Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury in August and September. Although the outbreaks were scattered over different parts of the country, they were not isolated incidents. It seems that some of York’s followers from Dartford, on the way home, planned further rebellion near their leader’s London residence of Baynard’s castle on 6 March. Later, in Ludlow, they slew one of Henry’s yeomen of the chamber, Richard Fazakerley, sent to arrest various members of York’s following, provoking a rising there on 20 April. These men of Wales and Shropshire, at Baynard’s castle and back in their own country, made clear their intention to put York on the throne, while not actually naming him. They said that, through a parliament of the whole realm and with the assistance of another ‘who was entitled to the crown of England’,84 they would deprive Henry of his crown and royal power because he was ‘not able nor of sufficient power to rule the aforesaid kingdom, nor by right ought to have done so’.85 From 6–8 May there was a further rising in Kent under the captain John Wilkins. This had some connection with the earlier disturbance in Ludlow. Two persons were named in both the Kent and Shropshire indictments, John Sharp, gentleman, of London and Robert Ardern, esquire, former member of parliament for Warwickshire and sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Ardern was confined in Kenilworth castle until taken to Ludlow by yeomen of the household to stand trial there in the autumn. The disturbances at Ludlow and the Kentish rising were both notable for their alleged political objectives. Some 300 men rose in the villages north and east of Sevenoaks and between Gravesend and Rochester under John Wilkins from Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, claiming that Cade was still alive, that help was coming from York’s son, the earl of March, and from Lord Cobham, and that within a few days, with 5,000 men, they would kill those about the king and depose him. They would take upon themselves the rule of the kingdom and have all the petitions of the last parliament fulfilled. The rising was nipped in the bud with remarkable speed. The earl of Shrewsbury and seven other commissioners of oyer and terminer, including the judges Bingham and Portington, sat in judgement at Dartford from 12 to 16 May. Twenty-eight of the accused were hanged forthwith, and another ‘harvest of heads’ sent to London.86 Thirty-eight of the rebels obtained pardons on 17 June.87 Malicious accusations, even made to Henry in person, caused suspicion of complicity in the rebellion to fall upon his household chamberlain, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, who was said to have been compromised by Wilkins’s ultimate confession, while he was being taken from the Tower to his execution at Dartford, after intensive interrogation by the council. The unfortunate chamberlain had to go to extreme lengths in obtaining sworn testimonies and counter-accusations and in character assassination of his accuser, a London priest Robert Colynson, withdrawing from council meetings until Henry finally, but belatedly, declared himself satisfied of his innocence at Eltham on 4 February 1453.88

  The journey which Henry began from Eltham on 23 June 1452 turned out to be the longest royal progress and judicial perambulation of the reign. It extended west to Exeter, through Somerset and Wiltshire, to cross the Severn at Gloucester, to his father’s birth-place at Monmouth, north through the Welsh march to Ludlow and Bridgnorth and thence to Kenilworth and Coventry, returning via Banbury, Woodstock, High Wycombe and Sheen to Eltham on 6 September.89 His entourage was very substantial, augmented from those fifteen lords and their retinues and the six judges named in a commission of oyer and terminer for Bristol and eleven counties on 6 July. The dukes of Buckingham and Somerset and the earls of Wiltshire and Worcester headed this commission, which included Lord Bonville of Chewton and Shute. Conspicuous by their absence from it were Richard duke of York at Ludlow and the Courtenay earl of Devon at Tiverton.90

  Henry’s progress through Devon was recorded with daily chronological accuracy, from a lost Exeter latin chronicle, by John Hooker, chamberlain of the city, in the mid-sixteenth century. The knights, esquires and nobility of the county from near and far met him ‘with his great train of noble gentlemen and others’ at the county boundary and conducted him to Forde abbey for the night of Wednesday 14 July. The next day he visited Bonville’s place at Shute on the way to Ottery St Mary, and went on to Exeter on Monday 17 July, arriving after dinner. Three hundred or more persons, headed by the mayor, all in the livery of the city, rode out to meet him at Clyst Honiton. At Livery Dole, at the approaches to the city, he was met by the Franciscans and Dominicans. The priors of St Nicholas and St John, with all the city clergy in their copes and vestments, with two crosses born before them, greeted him at the high cross outside the South Gate and ‘incensed the king with their frankincense and perfumes’. Henry kissed the cross, received the keys of the city and then proceeded through the South Gate, which was gorgeously adorned with painted scenes. The mayor, bareheaded and carrying the mace before him, led the way up South Street which was hung with silks and tapestries, past the Carfax fountain, running with wine for the occasion, into the suitably decorated High Street as far as the Broad Gate to the Close. Here he was received by the bishop, canons and quire, and dismounted to process on foot and offer at the high altar. He was lodged in the bishop’s palace for that night and the next. On the Wednesday he left by the East Gate for Honiton and from thence he passed into Somerset, to Donyatt near Ilminster on 20 July. The bishop, the canons and the city fathers shared his expenses in Exeter and the mayor presented him with £50 when he left. Two judges and Lord Bonville also received gifts. The judicial sessions were held in the bishop’s hall by the unnamed justices under the direction of the duke of Somerset. Two men who were tried there, and condemned to death for treason, were subsequently pardoned by Henry at the suit of the bishop and canons, who successfully claimed that the king’s judges had sat in judgement contrary to the privileges of their sanctuary.91 Henry’s presence on a judicial progress in the heart of Courtenay country was in any case exemplary as well as punitive and a few pardons after conviction were quite germane to his purpose.

  It has hitherto been assumed that the climax of this perambulation came later, when Richard duke of York was honoured by his sovereign with a visit to Ludlow castle on 12 and 13 August 1452.92 In fact the household accounts show that Henry stayed not with York at Ludlow but with the Carmelite Friars.93 Moreover, judicial sessions were held on 10, 11 and 12 August at Ludlow, before the earl of Wiltshire, and before Judges Portington and Byngham at Bridgenorth. Those principally tried and condemned were York’s followers, accused of the rebellions in London, Kent and the Welsh marches in March and April 1452 and now specially assembled there in York’s own country for exemplary trial.94 One strongly Yorkist chronicler later describes, under 1452, what must have been this punitive occasion in grossly exaggerated terms: he states that on Somerset’s advice Henry rode to various towns of the duke of York where his tenants had to appear naked before him with nooses round their necks to beg for mercy because they had earlier taken the field with their lord against Somerset. The most atrocious weather imaginable was thrown in for full measure, making the account at first sight appear altogether too improbable: they were made to appear naked before the king to beg for pardon in ice and snow.95 Nevertheless, the judicial records do confirm that Henry’s visit to York’s heart-land in August 1452 was no honour, but a demonstration of the strength of the House of Lancaster to the very face of his disloyal, Yorkist would-be heir.

  Returning to Eltham on 6 September 1452 Henry spent a month there, at Sheen and at Greenwich with his queen, before setting out about 9 October for a further judicial perambulation through the other principal area of York’s influence south of Trent: Hertfordshire and Essex, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire. This occupi
ed him, his loyal leading magnates, headed by the dukes of Exeter, Norfolk and Somerset, the earls of Oxford, Wiltshire and Worcester, together with Viscounts Beaumont, Bourchier and Lisle, seven barons, the Lord Chief Justice and eight of his fellow justices, until he returned to Eltham from Barking abbey on 11 November.96 Not all of this company were with him all the time, or involved in the trials. Those who held sessions at York’s town of Grantham, while Henry was at Newark, on 24 October, were Lord Moleyns and Judges Prisot, Markham and Danvers. They tried and condemned to a traitor’s death, his quarters to be exposed wherever Henry should assign, one John Wynawey, accused of raising rebellion at another of York’s towns, Stamford, on 24 February, designed to encompass the death and destruction of the king.97

  Christmas and the first half of January 1453 were spent with the queen at Greenwich. Here Henry held an investiture for the knighting of his two half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor, creating them earls of Richmond and Pembroke.98 During this visit to the queen at Greenwich Prince Edward must have been conceived.99 What was to be Henry’s last judicial progress followed from Greenwich on 8 February, through Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, until he arrived at Reading via Berkhamsted castle for the opening of a new parliament on 6 March. Again the commission of oyer and terminer, issued on 8 January, comprised a similar impressive selection of nobility, the Lord Chief Justice and eight fellow judges.100 Henry’s long-expected appearance at Norwich, foreshadowed in earlier addresses of the duke of Norfolk to the county, in which he had declared himself especially appointed as his personal representative to establish good order and bear rule there meantime, seems to have taken place on 18 February.101 Henry was now clear about who were his friends and enemies. York was superseded as lieutenant of Ireland from 5 March 1453 by James Butler, earl of Wiltshire. When Somerset was given a life grant of all the principal offices in the royal forests and parks south of Trent, this was declared to be a reward for his good services ‘on both sides of the sea’. Devon joined Cobham in prison. Bonville was exalted in the west country as life constable of Exeter castle and conservator of the Exe from source to sea. Sir William Oldhall’s freehold lands and property were granted in fee to Somerset and to the newly created earl of Pembroke.102