Henry VI
Page 44
Thus York had finally achieved by force of arms in half an hour what in politics had painfully eluded him for the last five years: the elimination of his chief political rival, the head of the legitimized Beaufort house, and control of the king’s person. Had Henry himself perished in the fight, with or without Somerset, York’s cause, whatever it was, would have been irretrievably lost, for apart from the odium of regicide there would have been only the prospect of a second long minority before him in which Queen Margaret, no more his friend than Henry himself, would almost certainly have played a major role.7 Moreover, as time was to demonstrate, however great Henry’s own limitations as king, none of York’s principal associates ever saw him as the alternative.
There is no record of the effect on Henry of the trauma of the battlefield, which at the age of thirty-three was still unknown to him. Standing by his banner, set down and abandoned by its bearer, variously reported to be his carver, Sir Philip Wentworth, his steward, Lord Sudeley, and the treasurer, Wiltshire, with his household men being cut down around him, he must have anticipated for himself the fate shortly to be meted out to Somerset. If shock had indeed caused the original onset of his illness, a further relapse now seemed most probable and he was certainly sick again within the fortnight. Moreover, the physician Gilbert Kemer, summoned from Salisbury to attend him at Windsor on 5 June, was assumed to know the nature of his illness.8 From the end of the battle until the day in parliament the following February when he personally terminated York’s second spell as Protector and Defender of the Realm and principal councillor,9 Henry was in any case now more or less a puppet in the hands of York and his associates. The day after the battle they escorted him back to London, York riding on his right, Salisbury on his left and Warwick ahead, bearing his sword. Before lodging him in the bishop of London’s palace that same evening they paraded him through the streets of the capital, ostentatiously showing him all possible honour and deference, as from completely loyal subjects. On the Sunday, Whitsunday, they staged a crown-wearing in St Paul’s where, apparently at his own insistence, Henry received his crown from York’s hands.10 New dispositions of offices were already known in the capital that same day; York had taken the constableship of England and Warwick the captaincy of Calais, though he found himself refused admission by the garrison there, as previously York had been. Their other noble associate, the chancellor’s brother, Viscount Bourchier, took the treasurership in place of the fugitive Wiltshire. The three leaders, with the earl of Devon, now ‘kept the roialte and sport’ for the whole week and a proclamation, made in Henry’s name, forbade all talk about the battle.
York had now to try to consolidate their position by means of a parliament. Writs of summons were promptly issued on Whitmonday. Meantime Henry was first moved to Windsor and then to Hertford castle, with the queen and infant prince, until the parliament assembled on 9 July. York at nearby Ware kept a close eye on him, with Salisbury at The Rye, seat of York’s councillor Sir Andrew Ogard, and Warwick only a few miles away with Sir William Oldhall, whose forfeiture had just been reversed, at his residence at Hunsdon.11 They considered it essential that Henry himself should be made to open the parliament and special payments made to three surgeons for their great labour and care to the king’s person at this time probably indicate successful efforts to make him presentable for the occasion.12 That Henry realized his own limitations at this time is clear, because on 12 July he made over to Wainfleet and John Chedworth, bishop of Lincoln, the oversight, correction and reformation of the statutes of his two beloved colleges for the rest of his natural life, a task which he had hitherto personally supervised.13
York had been supported at St Albans by only a tiny, though powerful, minority of the peerage. The backing of a substantial concourse of peers in the assembly was almost as vital as that the king should be seen to preside over it. Henry’s chief supporter in the battle, the duke of Buckingham, had since been bound over under substantial bonds to support them; even Wiltshire was summoned, though without success. A superficially respectable total for the first session was achieved, but including the unique number of 18 abbots and 2 priors out of a possible total of 27 religious, together with the 2 archbishops and 11 bishops. Sixty lords spiritual and temporal took a personal oath of allegiance to Henry on 24 July. Each of the temporal lords, led by York, took him by the hand in turn, but there were only 27 of them out of a possible total of 53. After the end of the second session, on 11 December, 65 out of the total of 100 peers who had been summoned were sent writs of privy seal warning them that their absences had been noted and commanding them under threat of severe and unprecedented penalties to attend at the next session fixed for 14 January.14 For the Commons also there was no great enthusiasm to be elected.15 The names of 204 elected members of this parliament are known, compared with 278 for the 1453–4 assembly. It is difficult to say how successful ‘Yorkist’ electoral management at this election was. There had been ‘besy labor made in sondry wises by certain persones’ (unnamed) to get their nominees elected in Kent.16 But whether these efforts had any connection with central politics is impossible to determine. Kent elected Sir Gervase Clifton, who was to lose his head for his support of Queen Margaret at Tewkesbury, and Sir Thomas Kyriell, whom she beheaded for treason in support of the earls at St Albans in 1461. The duchess of Norfolk considered it very necessary that this time knights of the shire for the county should be her husband’s ‘menyal servants’ and his two nominees, John Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlain, were duly returned, albeit with much local resentment about Howard because he was a stranger to the shire.17 Predictably this parliament did contain very many fewer members of Henry’s household, only 26 compared with 61 in the previous 1453–4 assembly.
The parliament duly opened on 9 July with Henry on his throne and York most prominent as the principal trier of petitions for England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Its proceedings were given an unusual air of businesslike efficiency by the appointment of five separate committees to see to the rule and financing of the royal household, the financial needs of Calais and Berwick, the keeping of the seas, the retention of bullion within the kingdom and the suppression of disorder in Wales. Two other subjects were also generally to be considered: how to employ the 13,000 archers granted by the previous parliament and how to secure harmony among all the lords of the land.18 But the primary work of the assembly was to accept and approve a specious justification of the treasonable actions of York, Warwick and Salisbury and all their supporters, in giving the king battle at St Albans. This was urgently presented on 18 July after Warwick and Cromwell had publicly quarrelled the previous day over who had been responsible. Henry’s general pardon of Easter 1452 had proved to be ineffective as protection for the Dartford rebels. Another was now issued, but an additional ‘parliamentary pardon’, by legislation, was designed as the better way of giving the perpetrators of St Albans full legal protection against everybody, including the king. The spurious history of events recounted in it does not bear examination. It was only made acceptable, in spite of bitter feeling in many quarters,19 by the device of heaping the entire blame on three scapegoats: the dead Somerset, York’s enemy Thomas Thorpe and the insignificant William Joseph of the royal household.20 Before the end of the first session, on 31 July, a petition got up in the Commons to rehabilitate the memory of Humphrey duke of Gloucester by proclamation, declared him to have been Henry’s true subject, in life and death. Thus York henceforth identified himself with a growing tradition of the good Duke Humphrey as patron of loyal opponents of Lancastrian misrule, falsely accused of treason.21
A further act of resumption, presented early in the parliament,22 but only accepted in modified form towards the end, after Henry had terminated York’s second protectorate, gives some reliable indication of the Commons’ temper. In its original form it sought yet another annulment of Henry’s grants from the coming Michaelmas 1455. It was markedly less respectful to the House of Lancaster than earlier acts, requesting the resumptio
n of all duchy of Lancaster lands put in feoffment to perform their wills, either by Henry or his father. This, if accepted, would thus have anticipated Edward IV’s disendowment of Eton and King’s Colleges. All reversionary grants of Humphrey duke of Gloucester’s offices, now alleged to have been obtained by members of the court in anticipation of his early demise, were to be annulled, together with certain life grants of royal offices in Ireland, now established as York’s own special sphere of influence. The exemption proposed for Queen Margaret slightingly specified that what she already had should not be exceeded; no exemption at all was requested for Henry’s Tudor half-brothers. Penalties of the Statute of Provisors were to be invoked against anyone accepting a grant contrary to the act after Michaelmas, with a 1,000-mark forfeiture imposed for every offence. The Commons themselves were to have the right to veto any exemptions, which were to be proposed only during the lifetime of the parliament. The survival of many petitions for exemption, but with the decisions of the ‘lords spiritual and temporal’ rather than the Commons upon them, shows that a further thorough reduction of annuities and pensions still held by household members and others was indeed intended under this act.23 However, it had not received the royal assent when Henry removed York from his second protectorate in February 1456, on which observers considered its fate depended24.
When the prorogued parliament reassembled on 12 November 1455 it found that Henry was not there to open it and that York had been appointed his lieutenant to do so in his name only the day before.25 Henry had been returned to Hertford castle towards the end of August and reports were about in London at the end of October that he was once more incapacitated.26 York, Warwick and Salisbury were still spoken of as in control of his movements and probably had intended to bring him back to Westminster formally to preside over the assembly once more. This was not to be. On the second day of the session the Commons began to petition the lords through their Speaker to appoint York Protector again, as previously when Henry had lost his wits. How could their constituents know whom to petition otherwise, they asked, and alarming riots in the West Country between Courtenay and Bonville followers, they maintained, clearly showed the need for a punitive force under royal command. It is not impossible that York put them up to it, but the mere absence of Henry, without any explanation given, is really sufficient in itself to explain the Commons’ alarm. They repeated their petition two days later, and as soon as Speaker Burley had left, the lords did elect York as Protector for the second time. But he protested his unworthiness and required time to formulate his conditions. After the weekend Burley was back again, repeating the request and asking for adjournment of the parliament so that York and other lords could leave urgently to settle the disturbed West Country. He had to wait a further two days before York’s conditions had been drawn up. These included the nomination of a new council, a guarantee that they should be paid for their attendance, a substantial, guaranteed salary, with a down payment of 1,000 marks in advance, for himself and a new guarantee of tenure. He would no longer accept an appointment during royal pleasure. It now had to be until he should be relieved of it by the king in parliament, on the advice of the lords spiritual and temporal. Subject to three extra safeguards over salary and tenure, he accepted the office from 19 November 1455 and his patent clearly stated that the cause was once again the sickness with which it had pleased the Almighty to inflict the king. Involvement in affairs of state would prevent his recovery.
There are thus no grounds for believing that Henry was not once again seriously ill with his original complaint: the terms on which York was again made Protector and Defender of the Realm and the king’s principal councillor, as well as the cause stated, were identical, except for his extra conditions, with those of March 1454. Moreover, once again the really long-term possibility that it might be the infant prince of Wales who ultimately relieved York of his office when he reached years of discretion and not Henry, was envisaged and allowed for.27 One new step was taken. On 22 November the governance of the realm was formally committed to the council and the record of it enrolled on the parliament roll, together with York’s patent. Henry’s inability to govern was thus confirmed, along with his inability to perform the formal duties of kingship. Yet Henry’s transference of governmental powers to the council, for which there was no precedent in 1453–4, does indicate that he was still capable of some action at that stage. Moreover, it did contain one reservation: ‘in all such matters as touch the honour, worship and surety of his [Henry’s] most noble person they shall let his Highness have knowledge what direction they take in them’.28 This does suggest that the loss of his faculties this time, though serious enough, was something less than total and that he was himself conscious of his limitations. The councillors, headed by York as principal councillor, began to sign official acts on 19 November, as had been customary during the minority and the first protectorate.29 Henceforth appointments were no longer made by the succinct royal formula ‘during pleasure’, but by the cumbersome but significant ‘until he be removed by advice of the lords spiritual and temporal of our council for the time being because of reasonable offence in the exercise of the said office proved before the said lords’.30 The council, not the Protector, was henceforth, in theory, the supreme power in the land. There are some signs during the few remaining years of the reign that Henry did at times exert his will on the conduct of affairs, but the council’s delegated powers were never formally rescinded. Although the royal sign manual reappeared on documents from 16 March 1456,31 signatures of the council members meeting in Star Chamber did continue to appear intermittently until the end of the reign. Perhaps most significantly, there is no contemporary notice at any time of Henry’s subsequent full return to health.
There is no record of when Henry was moved from Hertford to Westminster, but he was there at hand in the palace on 25 February 1456. On that day he appeared in the parliament chamber and, following to the letter the terms agreed for York’s dismissal, relieved him of his protectorate – in parliament, with the advice and assent of the assembled lords, ordering him no longer to meddle with the office.32 What caused this exertion is explained in Benet’s chronicle. The occasion was the passage of the controversial resumption act being ardently pressed for by York and the Commons. Almost all the lords present were against it and they fetched in Henry as the only superior authority to prevent its passage, at which York resigned his office and left the parliament.33 Divided opinions in the upper chamber over this punitive resumption act would be consistent with John Bocking’s letter of 9 February.34 In fact, a compromise measure was now given the royal assent.35 York lost his title, but not immediately his employment. The final act of resumption specifically rejected the proposed penalties of Provisors and forfeiture; Henry reserved his prerogative in all things, with the right to make whatever exemptions he pleased, by advice of the lords during the life of the parliament (143 exemptions followed). Exemption for his own enfeoffments for Eton and King’s College and for Queen Margaret were to be complete, except that she was to surrender and be compensated for any lands which should belong to the prince of Wales’s inheritance. This was to be preserved intact for him until he reached the age of fourteen. The Tudor half-brothers were also fully exempted. There was to be no question of submitting the exemptions to the Commons. This act of resumption is therefore further evidence that Henry was again briefly active in government at this point. Reductions in the exemption petitions imposed by the ‘lords spiritual and temporal’ were not rescinded, though some of them were subsequently regranted. Likewise a much reduced provision of grant for his household at £3,943 19s 4¾d, made some time before 1 January 1456 for the twelve months to 30 September 1456, was not altered, suggesting that the severe establishment reduction of 145436 had indeed been carried out.
The political circumstances at the opening of this third, post-Christmas session of this parliament are fortunately described in the Paston Letters, which henceforth provide almost the only insight into
politics and government for the rest of the reign. On Monday 9 February 1456 an apprehensive York and Warwick arrived before any other lords with substantial numbers of followers, in martial array. On the previous Saturday the writer (John Bocking to Sir John Fastolf) had heard that York would be discharged from office on arrival and he thought he would have been ‘distrussid’ (distressed) had he not arrived in force. But Henry, it seems, was in fact disposed to keep him on, again an indication that he realized his own limitations. However, he was now to be only principal councillor, not Protector, called chief councillor and lieutenant. This was what happened and it was not to the queen’s liking. Bocking also referred to Queen Margaret as a ‘grete and stronge labourid woman, for she spareth noo peyne to sue hire thinges to an intent and conclusion to hir power’.37
Henry had been ill in varying degrees since St Albans. There was talk that his wound received there had done permanent damage. During the first two sessions of the parliament, the first of which he had formally presided over, the second of which he could not, York, Warwick and Salisbury had maintained control of him. He had now asserted himself in February 1456, which meant changes, but the history of the remaining five years of the reign suggest that henceforth political life consisted of struggles to manipulate him; that his mental if not his physical health was henceforth precarious and his periods of effectiveness few and far between. Until the middle of August there was no sudden change in the direction of affairs of state. York’s loss of the protectorate did not mean dismissal for himself or his principal associates, Salisbury and Warwick. They continued as councillors. In contrast to his treatment of York in the spring of 1455 Henry did not now dismiss Warwick as Captain of Calais. Indeed Warwick, who was still being ‘obstinately kepi out’38 of Calais, in spite of apparently satisfactory financial arrangements ultimately agreed with the Staple merchants for payment of the soldiers’ wages,39 only secured admission there in April 1456, after commissioners to give satisfaction to the rebellious garrison had been sent in March.40 In fact he owed his admission to Calais to Henry’s recovered ability to act in affairs of state. Henry approved the arrangements on 16 March with the issue of a full pardon under his sign manual to the garrison of Calais, their agents and factors, for all their illegal acts in seizing and selling the Staplers’ wool and authorized the treasurer of Calais to issue individual pardons to all concerned.41