Henry VI

by Bertram Wolffe

  Henry’s public appearance to receive the kiss of homage from the new archbishop of Canterbury on 22 August 1454, a ceremony only omitted by sanction of parliament in time of pestilence, and to hand him his cross, must be taken as the first indications of returning senses,22 though, at his final recovery, he had forgotten it. He had substantially recovered by 27 December, when he ordered his almoner to ride to Canterbury and his secretary to Westminster, to make thank offerings at the shrines of St Thomas and the Confessor. On 30 December he learnt his fourteen-month-old son’s name for the first time, inquired who were his godfathers (Kemp and Somerset),23 and expressed himself well pleased. At this point the queen told him that Cardinal Archbishop Kemp was dead, which he did not know. He had in fact suffered a complete amnesia for the period of his illness, not knowing what had been said to him or where he had been. He was now for the moment free of all worries: ‘in charity with all the world and so he would all the lords were’. Wainfleet and Robert Botyll, the Prior of St John, two of his intimate councillors, in audience on 7 January 1455 found him completely lucid and fully recovered and wept for joy at it. He could now say matins of Our Lady and evensong and hear Mass with due appreciation.24 Could he resume the government?

  For a while after the onset of his illness the processes of government gradually ran down headless. With one solitary exception, dated 3 October 1453, privy seal writs ceased to be dated at Clarendon from 11 August. Some other warrants, bearing the royal sign manual, but dateable only from their delivery clauses, continued to reach the chancellor at Mailing in Kent until 22 October. Minor administrative uncertainty was inevitable, but the council at Westminster could and did continue to give effect to measures already generally decided before Henry’s departure. More than twenty cajoling and threatening letters went out to the Percies and Nevills and their supporters, including the two earls, in late July and early August, ordering attendance on Sir William Lucy and his fellow justices and arrangements for the assembly of reinforcements for Shrewsbury in Gascony continued uninterrupted until 14 August in spite of the annihilation of the English army at Castillon on 17 July.25 But the ultimate source of authority was paralysed; how could the disputes of the great now be settled, or their claims maintained, except by their taking the law into their own hands? Thus bickerings of the Percies and the Nevills now erupted into open armed conflict. At Heworth near York on 24 August, where a force of Over 700 Percy retainers and servants, led by the earl of Northumberland’s younger sons Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, and Sir Richard Percy, ambushed a strong party of Nevills which included the earl of Salisbury, his countess Alice, his sons Thomas and John, and Thomas’s newly married wife Matilda, niece and joint-heiress of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. The Nevills were returning as a family from the wedding at Tattershall and making for their manor of Sheriff Hutton some twelve miles north of York. The immediate cause of this particular confrontation was the potential damage which this marriage would do to Percy interests. Cromwell, by Henry’s grant, had obtained the former Percy manors of Wressle (Yorkshire) and Burwell (Lincolnshire), forfeited in the disposal of Percy estates which had followed their unsuccessful rising against Henry IV. The earl of Northumberland, seeking to reconstitute his grandfather’s estates, had made counter claims to these manors, but now by this Cromwell-Nevill marriage they would strengthen the position of his rivals, the increasingly powerful Nevill family. The fighting was inconclusive. So far as is recorded, none of the principals was injured, though substantial slaughter of their followers on both sides was alleged. For the first time in the reign, armed confrontation between the great had ended in open warfare.26

  Another landed dispute of the great also involved the acquisitive Cromwell, this time with Lord Grey of Ruthyn and the young duke of Exeter, Henry Holand, a dispute which was soon to bind Percy and Holand together in armed pursuit of their aims. Exeter, a notoriously unstable character, was doubly of the blood royal. He was the great-grandson of Richard II’s mother Joan from her first marriage to Sir Thomas Holand. She was the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, youngest son of Edward I. He was also the grandson of Elizabeth of Lancaster, duchess of Exeter, daughter of John of Gaunt and sister of Henry IV, who had married as her third husband the dashing Lancastrian knight ‘Green Cornwaille’, later Lord Fanhope. After Fanhope’s death Cromwell had purchased the manors of Ampthill, Millbrook and Grange (Bedfordshire) from his executors, by prior arrangement with Fanhope. In 1452 Exeter had claimed these lands. Lord Grey of Ruthyn, as another grandson of Elizabeth of Lancaster, had claims equally as strong, or as weak, as Exeter’s. Grey came to an agreement with Cromwell, but Exeter forcibly dispossessed Cromwell of Ampthill in 1453. On 4 July all three parties had appeared at Westminster, supported by armed forces, to overawe a court sitting by virtue of a writ of novel disseisin, sued out by Cromwell against Exeter. Henry had consequently consigned all three magnates to a brief spell of imprisonment in Windsor, Wallingford and Pevensey castles, before dismissing them back to their respective estates. On 19 January 1454 a newsletter from London reported that Exeter and Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, had been together at Tuxford, some twenty miles south of Doncaster, to make a sworn confederation in furtherance of their common aims against the Nevills, Cromwell, and any of their supporters.27

  Official pretence that Henry was still in control, and merely absent for unavoidable reasons, was actually kept up until 23 March 1454, but some steps had to be taken in the council to cope with such unavoidable, new and mounting problems by those of its members present at Westminster in October 1453. It may have been the failure of a very sparsely attended council meeting, consisting only of the chancellor, the duke of Buckingham and the bishop of Hereford, on 8 October, to get any response to most strongly worded reprimands, appeals and summonses to the two northern earls and the two principals in the Percy-Nevill quarrel, Egremont and Sir John Nevill, which led to the summoning of a great council to take up the reins of government which had fallen from Henry’s grasp. Its declared purpose, most notably and understandably in view of the several festering magnate disputes, was ‘to set rest and union betwixt the lords of this land’. At the back of their minds they must also have realized that the oldest and most potentially dangerous York-Somerset quarrel would have to be taken into consideration. At first they evaded the issue by simply not summoning York to council meetings. It was another, comparatively small council group of five bishops, led by the bishop of Winchester, with the treasurer, the earl of Worcester, Sudeley, John, Lord Dudley, and the premier baron, the Prior of St John, who on 23 October despatched a special messenger to apologize for this ‘oversight’ and to urge York to attend.28 Their move had presumably been made much easier from 13 October, when Queen Margaret gave birth to a son. York now had no right to any exalted treatment as Henry’s presumptive successor, or as automatic regent by right of an entitlement to the succession. From 13 October he could be treated as Somerset’s equal.

  York was in London from 12 November, and immediately showed that he had no intention of letting bygones be bygones and would take full advantage of Henry’s illness. York was not just raking up past history out of jealousy and resentment to destroy a rival. He had either to remove Somerset or cooperate with him. As far as he was concerned Somerset’s past failures made it impossible to work with him. Through the medium of the duke of Norfolk, he at once reasserted the old charges against Somerset. The loss of Normandy and now Gascony, he claimed, were both due to his cowardly and treasonable acts. Those who thought that Somerset’s culpable acts in the royal service, whatever they had been, were less than treasonable, and those who thought that peace and unity among the lords should be achieved at all costs, in the desperate circumstances of the king’s incapacity, were brushed aside.29 On 21 November York required, and was given, a public declaration, under the great seal, from his fellow councillors, among whom Somerset and Beaumont were the only noticeable absentees, that all men were free to attend upon him and serve him. He alleged (and this
is incidentally confirmed as true by a letter of 6 October 1454 to John Paston), that Henry, the queen and Somerset had made efforts to ostracize him, by warning men to keep away from him at various times over the previous two years, on pain of the royal displeasure.30 This is the earliest indication of Queen Margaret’s hostility to York, even if we take it only as a reflection of her husband’s basic attitude towards him. Somerset, by contrast, was established as her trusted confidant and adviser as well as Henry’s. Her receiver-general’s accounts at Michaelmas 1453, in recording an annuity payment of 100 marks to Somerset, speak of him as her most dear cousin, of his good counsel and worthy service given and to be given, and of the great affection and kindness he had shown in matters vital to her.31 From 23 November 1453 York’s ascendancy in the great council was evident when Somerset was committed to the Tower and the earl of Devon freed from Wallingford castle to take his place in the council, where his declarations of his innocence of all treasonable allegations made against him were accepted.32 As was subsequently declared in parliament, York took the charges made against Devon, his earlier accomplice, as charges directed against himself.33

  A newsletter, written by a well-wisher of the duke of Norfolk, which had mentioned the sworn pact between Exeter and Egremont on 19 January, also gave an invaluable insight into the political situation at Westminster after the Christmas and New Year festivals in anticipation of the assembly of parliament due on 11 January 1454.34 The writer knew of unsuccessful attempts made at court, by the queen and the duke of Buckingham, to rouse Henry from his stupor through his infant son and described the consequent, universal state of uncertainty and apprehension with which the great were preparing for the approaching assembly. The cardinal archbishop and chancellor, considered to be Somerset’s principal friend,35 was surrounding himself with an armed guard. Some of Henry’s household men, Tresham, Joseph, Daniel and Trevelyan, had framed a bill to provide a permanent garrison at Windsor for the protection of the insane king and his infant heir. Somerset, from the Tower, had secured all the lodgings to be had in its vicinity for his servants and retainers and had spies placed in all the great households. Buckingham had ordered 2,000 badges for his followers and the other magnates coming were all strongly supported. The most prudent, like Warwick, were bringing a second substantial band quite apart from their escort and, following York’s example, transporting their armour and arms separately in carts to avoid any accusation of making a rising. Some eight or nine worthy people had gathered all this intelligence for Norfolk’s benefit. He was now warned by his correspondent also to take all these sensible precautions, lest the chancellor should issue writs against him. He was advised to be ready to counter any charges against himself by pointing to the great activity being made on Somerset’s behalf, which he could legitimately claim was directed against himself. The Speaker of the parliament, Thomas Thorpe, was busy working against York; Henry’s Tudor half-brothers, apparently coming to Westminster in York’s company, were likely to be arrested on arrival. But the most interesting items of news concerned the queen’s entry into politics as the champion of the Lancastrian interests. She had had prepared a bill under five heads, which included a claim to be nominated regent for her husband, with control over all state appointments and royal patronage, civil and ecclesiastical, and the provision of livelihood sufficient to maintain the king, the prince and herself.

  York was expected on 25 January and was certainly present in great council meetings, where high matters of state were being decided, by 9 February, when certain royal powers were delegated to Salisbury and Warwick as keepers of the west march towards Scotland.36 Three days earlier the council had been made aware that there were two lieutenants of Ireland by Henry’s appointment and had instructed the treasurer to retain the emoluments of the office.37 A few days after Dartford, Henry had given the lieutenancy to York’s deputy’s courtier son, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, who had appointed his own deputy, the archbishop of Armagh, in June 1453. But in the changed circumstances of the king’s total incapacity York had now secured a new ratification of his original ten-year appointment to run its full term from 1447. Nothing more was now heard of Wiltshire’s appointment. At the end of his original term in 1457, York was to receive a new grant for a further ten years.38 Council members were now subscribing their names to the acts of the council as had not been done since the end of the minority. On 6 February they had also instructed the treasurer to go to Reading where the parliament was due to assemble on 11 February and move it to Westminster for the 14th.

  On 13 February 1454 York’s pre-eminence in the council was officially established. An assembly of twenty-eight lords in the great council chamber, among whom only Somerset, Northumberland, Wiltshire, Beaumont and Bonville were noticeable absentees, nominated him as king’s lieutenant, to open and preside over the parliament.39 The de facto power in the land was now the whole council and, while parliament was in session, the lords spiritual and temporal. Men still petitioned the king by the advice of his council to grant, etc., but petitions were now endorsed ‘by advice of the council’ only, and signed by all present.40 On 15 March York, Wiltshire and Beaumont were all among twenty-two lords signing the creation in parliament of the infant Edward as prince of Wales and earl of Chester, so at this point York specifically recognized the Lancastrian succession. The number of lords absent from this session of parliament was very high (60 out of a possible total of 105). Such reluctance to participate in affairs during Henry’s incapacity clearly disturbed the new lieutenant since within a fortnight of its assembly graduated fines for non-attendance were being imposed, making this assembly unique in the middle ages.41 A similar reluctance to obey summonses to great council meetings, except among regular councillors, was also evident,42 but threats of penalties here against absentees were apparently quite ineffective.43 However, there is no sign that council membership was restricted to any clique or party.44 Only the imprisoned Somerset and the distant Northumberland were continual absentees among the regular councillors. The king’s resumption of power was to be duly indicated by a return of the old form of documents from 25 February 1455, with a sign manual superscribed on petitions, and a presence, in place of signatures, written out by the clerk at the bottom.

  There was certainly no particular enthusiasm for York’s presidency in the Commons of this parliament and understandably so, since one of his first actions was to cause the imprisonment of their Speaker Thomas Thorpe. Wearing a second hat as a Baron of the Exchequer, Thorpe had confiscated some of York’s property stored in the bishop of Durham’s town house and a Middlesex jury had found for York, imposing a £1,000 penalty. The new lieutenant refused to countenance a Commons’ petition for his release on the grounds that parliamentary privilege had been broken, and forced them to elect a new Speaker. Through him, Thomas Charlton, on 19 February, they rejected outright requests for £40,000 for the defence of Calais and wanted to know what had happened to all the earlier grants of the Reading parliament. Moreover, they persistently requested the appointment of a ‘sad and wise’ council which they claimed Henry had promised them, and were clearly not impressed by what had been done in his name so far.45

  No official mention had been made of his illness, even yet. How long this formal pretence could have been kept up is questionable, but another act of God now intervened. Chancellor Kemp died on 22 March and from that moment not even a semblance of government could be carried on because the great seals of England were now unusable. They were perforce solemnly secured under the private seals of various lords and lodged in the exchequer. It was now at last imperative that the king’s will be ascertained, or that his total incapacity be publicly demonstrated, since the chancery was now as paralysed as he was. Consequently the deputation of lords spiritual and temporal, led by the bishop of Winchester and the earl of Warwick, waited upon him at Windsor, on the eve of the Annunciation, with the duty of reporting back exactly what happened for enrolment on the parliament roll. This was the interview wh
ich produced the first and last full description of Henry’s condition.46 They had first to inform Henry of the assembly of parliament and the appointment of York to preside over it. If there was any sign that communication had been established, he was then to be told of Kemp’s death and the sealing up of the seals, and pressed to nominate a new chancellor and archbishop. Furthermore, he was to be asked either to approve the membership of the acting council or to change it, since the Commons persisted in calling for a ‘sad and substantial council’. The completely negative results of this interview, reported on 25 March, may have been anticipated, because, only two days later on 27 March, York was appointed by his peers as Protector and Defender of the kingdom of England and Chief Councillor of the king. 1422 had been taken as the precedent. But what is most noticeable is not so much the speed of the final decision to institute a protectorate, following the ultimate official report on Henry’s condition, but the eight-month delay before any decision had been taken at all.