Henry VI

by Bertram Wolffe

  In April 1457 the queen and Henry moved temporarily to Hereford to support a commission of oyer and terminer headed by those peers of the realm on whom the court could rely: Buckingham, Arundel, Shrewsbury, Wiltshire, Beaumont, Audley and Chief Justice Fortescue, sitting to punish Sir William Herbert and Sir Walter Devereux and their associates in their home country. This was done excessively harshly, according to the Paston Letters, rousing much local sympathy for them.84 Among others charged were Thomas Herbert, senior and junior, of Little Troy, alleged to have raised men at Ross-on-Wye in June 1456 to march against the king at Kenilworth, though, of course, Henry had not, at that stage, yet moved to the Midlands, thus indicating ex post facto rationalization in the spring of 1457 of events of the previous year.85 There was undoubtedly considerable unease at court about the loyalty of the shires, for in July 1457 commissions were issued from Kenilworth to fourteen magnates and knights in sixteen counties surrounding Kenilworth and Coventry, in a block stretching from Berkshire north to Derbyshire and Lincoln and including Hereford, Shropshire, Gloucester and Worcester to the west. Each of these fourteen nominees was to be a kind of lord lieutenant to raise a posse of the county to resist and suppress the king’s rebels. Neither York nor Warwick nor Salisbury was among those nominated.86

  Why Henry decided to return to Westminster in early September 1457, after more than a year’s withdrawal to the Midlands, is a matter for conjecture. It was not news of an apparent French invasion and sack of Sandwich on 28 August which brought him back, since this reached him on his way at Northampton, where he stayed from 2–7 September.87 It appears that improving health had briefly roused him to his duty to govern the whole realm from its political and administrative centre once more. But even when he did return the first half of October was spent in Chertsey abbey and most of December, January and the first half of February 1458 in Reading, Abingdon and Chertsey abbeys again. His mere presence speeded up minor administrative processes. For example, during his long absence in the Midlands the abbot of St Albans had been trying in vain to establish the validity of his abbey’s exemption from the 1456 resumption act. He describes how he had to wait month after weary month until the king’s return to get his petition through the privy seal office, even though his agent was a king’s councillor and a high exchequer official. This he finally achieved on 12 November.88 But little or nothing was achieved in important matters of government. A great council meeting was summoned for some date after 12 October. It adjourned inconclusively on 29 November. Its declared purpose was ‘to set apart such variances as be betwixt divers lords’. York was summoned, Salisbury brought from Doncaster, apparently under the escort of Viscount Beaumont. Probably because of poor attendance the council was perforce further adjourned to 27 January 1458, when, according to Abbot Wheathampstead, Henry in a brief appearance at Westminster personally addressed it on the evils of dissension among the lords.89 York, Salisbury and the young Somerset were present, but absentees were still being summoned on 14 February. From 20 February until, 14 March 1458 Henry was at Berkhamsted castle and this great council, which had originally been intended for October 1457, does not in fact appear to have done anything until the middle of March 1458.90 What finally happened is described by the numerous London chroniclers. The great council, once assembled, turned out to be two separate armed camps. Henry himself was again absent.91 Certain members summoned, who were considered to be impartial on the issues involved, held morning consultations in the city, at the Blackfriars, with York, Salisbury and Warwick and afternoon consultations, at the Whitefriars in Fleet Street, with Somerset, Northumberland, Egremont and Clifford, whose fathers had been slain at St Albans. They were billeted outside the city at the request of the civic authorities. All that was achieved was a formal accord on the limited issue of atonement and compensation for the principals who had suffered death or injury at St Albans. Details appear to have been left to the king, who decreed that York and his associates should pay £45 per annum to St Albans abbey for masses for the dead. Their dependants should be compensated from crown debts owed to York, Salisbury and Warwick. A great ‘love day’ procession to St Paul’s followed, on Lady Day 25 March 1458, with Henry wearing his crown, Salisbury and Somerset walking together before him, followed by York and Queen Margaret behind, hand in hand. This grand, formal, empty state occasion was aptly recorded for posterity in Lydgate’s banal verse.92

  This formal healing of the rifts between sections of Henry’s nobility, first crystallized in the open armed conflict at St Albans on 22 May 1455, in fact settled nothing, because basic problems remained untouched by it. Who should control a feeble-minded monarch who was yet not completely incapacited? How could those of his natural advisers who felt themselves continuously at risk when not in his presence, obtain security? Contending parties had been created in the state during Henry’s personal rule, even while he was in full possession of his senses. His rule had always tended to promote faction, because it had never been strong or wise enough to dominate opposing interests. The loss of his wits had given unexpected but brief supremacy to Richard duke of York, the party with whom he had never been able to work. This brief authority had rested on the king’s necessity, not his trust. As soon as he recovered sufficiently to act he returned to his persistent, partisan promotion of the rival Beaufort interest coupled now with his slighting of the Nevills, which led to the first battle of St Albans. But the political assassinations perpetrated there, and the hollow atonement made for them three years later, provided no solution. During these years a new interest had emerged to oppose the supremacy of York, the mettlesome Angevin queen, who was creating a narrow Lancastrian interest around the feeble king, centred on the rights of her infant son. Since 1456 it had been impossible for any normal political life to be maintained under such conditions.93 ‘And that same yere [1458] alle thes lordys departyd from the Parlyment [sic], but they come nevyr alle togedyr aftyr that tyme to noo Parlyment nor conselle, byt yf hyt were in fylde with spere and schylde.’94

  1 Paston Letters, I, 345.

  2 ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans’, B.I.H.R., XXXIII (1960), 1–72, now the indispensable account of politics in 1455 and 1456.

  3 The resulting assembly can hardly be considered anti-’Yorkist’, but it consisted of men handpicked for their loyalty, stability and substance. Of 45 shire nominees identifiable in a surviving list of those sent privy seal writs of summons for 21 May and dated 21 April, 14 were household members, 35 had sat in previous parliaments, 34 were justices of the peace and 25 had been sheriffs (P.P.G., VI, 339–42).

  4 P.R.O., E.404/70/3/2, 71/pt.1/57.

  5 Coventry Leet Book, 247–8.

  6 Paston Letters, I, 328–9.

  7 Cf. Armstrong, op. cit., 42–8.

  8 See above, p. 272.

  9 R.P., V, 321–2 (25 February 1456). York became Protector again on 19 November 1455.

  10 Armstrong, op. cit., 51, 54; Benel’s Chronicle, 214.

  11 Armstrong, op. cit., 26, 54; Paston Letters, I, 334, 335–6; P.R.O., E.28/86, 6 June 1455.

  12 Issue Roll E.403/801, m.7 dated 16 July, cited by J. R. Lander, ‘The Duke of York’s Second Protectorate, 1455–1456’, B.J.R.L., XLIII (1960), 51, n. 4.

  13 Ancient Laws, 623–4, but wrongly dated there to 1445, not 1455.

  14 See J. S. Roskell in B.I.H.R., XXIX (1956), 193–5.

  15 ‘Sum men holde it right straunge to be in this Parlement and me thenketh they be wyse men that soo doo’: John Jenny to John Paston, 24 June 1455 (Paston Letters, I, 340–1).

  16 P.P.C, VI, 246–7.

  17 Paston Letters, I, 337, 340, 341–2.

  18 R.P., V, 279–80.

  19 Armstrong, op. cit., 61; Paston Letters, I, 346.

  20 R.P., V, 280–2, 283–4; Armstrong, op. cit., 58–62.

  21 R.P., V, 335a; Armstrong, op. cit., 62.

  22 R.P., V, 300–3.

  23 There are some 30 examples of such reductions in P.R.O., S.C.8/28, 105, 117, 124, 138, 141 and
C.49/61, 63, 64, 65. The family of the dead Somerset, Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, Lord Cromwell and Sir Thomas Stanley were conspicuous losers under the act. The chief beneficiary, as it turned out, was the infant prince of Wales.

  24 Paston Letters, I, 378, 9 February 1456; ‘The resumption, men truste, shall forthe, and my Lordes of Yorkes first power of protectorship stande, and elles not’ (John Bocking to Sir John Fastolf).

  25 R.P.,V, 284.

  26 Paston Letters, I, 352.

  27 R.P., V, 284–9, cf. ibid., 242–4.

  28 Ibid., 289–90.

  29 P.R.O., E.28/87/3.

  30 P.R.O., E.28/87/29A, inserted into a grant of 16 December (cf. C.P.R., 1452–1461, 276).

  31 P.R.O., C.81/1546/89C.

  32 R.P.,V, 321–2.

  33 Benet’s Chronicle, 216.

  34 See above, p. 298, n. 24.

  35 R.P., V, 303–20.

  36 Ibid., 320. This parliament, in giving formal livery of the duchy of Cornwall, principality of Wales and earldom of Chester to the prince, stipulated that the contributions made from these revenues to the royal household expenses must continue (ibid., 294).

  37 Paston Letters, I, 377–8.

  38 R.R, V, 341.

  39 P.R.O., C.81/1546/893, b (27 and 31 October 1455).

  40 P.R.O., E.404/70/3/44 (16 March 1456).

  41 P.R.O., C.81/1546/89C, authenticated by the sign manual only; 0.81/1546/89(1 dated 1 May 1456 repeated with the sign manual and 7 council signatures including Salisbury’s.

  42 Paston Letters, I, 388.

  43 Correspondence of Bekynton, II, 139–41; Devon, Issues, 480–1.

  44 Stevenson, Wars, I, 323.

  45 Foedera, XI, 383; Correspondence of Bekynton, II, 142–4; Ramsay, Lancaster and, York, II, 195.

  46 Devon, Issues, 481.

  47 Ibid.,, 482.

  48 Lancaster and York, II, 198–9.

  49 H.B.C., 85, 92, 93, 221: 24 September (Booth), 5 October (Shrewsbury), n October (Wainfleet).

  50 Thomas Gascoigne’s theological dictionary (Lociet Libra Veritatum, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers, Oxford 1881), 214, sub ‘Regnum Angliae’: ‘regina traxit ad locum mansionis suae, in comitatu Chestyr’. The editor suggests that for the ecclesiastic Gascoigne the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, commonly called the bishopric of Chester in the fifteenth century, explains this reference. Henry was at Lichfield 29 August-8 September and entered Coventry with the queen on 14 September.

  51 Paston Letters, I, 387.

  52 Ibid., 392–3.

  53 See R. L. Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster, 178–82, 228–30; R. A. Griffiths, ‘Gruffyd Ap Nicholas and the Fall of the House of Lancaster’, The Welsh History Review, II (1965), 224ff, and H. T. Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses (Cambridge 1915), 96ff, for the rest of this paragraph.

  54 R.P., V, 342.

  55 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 340; P.R.O., S.C.8/115/5703 as cited by Professor Storey, op. cit., 179.

  56 Coventry, Leicester, Northampton, St Albans, Reading, Chertsey, Peterborough and Crowland.

  57 Cited by R. L. Storey, op. cit., 184, from P.R.O., K.B.9/287, no. 53.

  58 See above, p. 20.

  59 Coventry Leet Book, 263–6, 286–92, 297, 298, 299–300, 301.

  60 The note of places where the great seal was affixed to documents in C.P.R., 1452–1461, passim shows how closely the chancellor’s movements coincided with the king’s.

  61 Davies’s Chronicle, 79; see above, p. 20.

  62 The files of Warrants for the Great Seal 1456–1458 (P.R.O., C.81/1465, 6, 7, 8) consist of 194 pieces almost entirely authenticated solely by Henry’s sign manual.

  63 P.R.O., C.81/1466/12 (1 August 1457).

  64 P.R.O., E.404/71/1/58 (Coventry 12 March 1457).

  65 12 March 1456–20 November 1459.

  66 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 500–1.

  67 References (P.R.O., E.404/71/2/11–85) given by Storey, op. cit., 182, reveal the earl of Shrewsbury paying out of his own pocket on nine occasions over £300 for various envoys and messengers, for armaments, to buy a ship for the passage of soldiers to Calais and for Henry’s wedding present to the duke of Buckingham’s daughter (cf. 71/1/98; 71/2/37), the chamberlain Sir Thomas Stanley and the squire of the body John Hampton making similar payments.

  68 P.R.O., E.401/863 under 15 November 1458: items of between £10 and £40 from 21 sheriffs totalling £506 13s 4d.

  69 There were only 7 out of 34 counties which did not have a member of the household as sheriff at some time between 1456 and 1460 (see Robin Jeffs, op. cit., 341–3).

  70 P.R.O., E.28/88/31 2 November 1458.

  71 P.R.O., E.401/863 under December 1458.

  72 P.R.O., C.81/1467/1; C.P.R., 1452–1461, 360–8; Devon, Issues, 483 (£710 8s 10½d ultimately paid by Booth. He was given £226 13s 4d for collecting it.)

  73 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 355 (Coventry, 1 March 1457, 100 marks from Somerset’s heir).

  74 P.RO., C.81/1546/92; E.28/88/26; C.P.R., 1452–1461, 295–8, 432; Foedera, XI, 389. I am indebted to Dr Robin Jeffs for the total taken from P.R.O., E.370/2/22 (roll of fines).

  75 P.R.O., E.404/71/4/25.

  76 P.R.O., E.404/71/1/40.

  77 Davies’s Chronicle, 79.

  78 C.P.R., 1452 1461, 406–10; Coventry Led Book, 304.

  79 R.P. V, 233.

  80 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 371, 400, 410, 405, 405.

  81 P.R.O., K.B.9/287/53.

  82 Paslon Letters, I, 403, 407–9.

  83 P.P.C, VI, 333–4; Coventry Leet Book, 297; R.P., V, 347.

  84 P.R.O., K.B.9/35/24, 44, 60, 70, 71, 72; C.P.R., 1452–1461, 353, 348; Paston Utters, I, 416–17.

  85 PRO., K.B.9/35/32.

  86 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 370–1.

  87 Coventry Leet Book, 301; London and the Kingdom, ed. R. R. Sharpc, III, 382.

  88 Registrum, I, 265–8.

  89 Ibid., 296–7.

  90 P.P.C, VI, 290–4; C.P.R., 1452–1461, 428; Paston Letters, I, 426.

  91 Benet’s Chronicle, 221: ‘Rex tenuit magnum concilium apud Westmonasterium rege absente set consilio laborante circa pacem inter dominos.’

  92 kegistrum, I, 298–308; Davies’s Chronicle, 77; Six Town Chronicles, 145, 160; Lydgate’s verses printed in Chronicle of London (ed. Nicolas), 251–4.

  93 C. A. J. Armstrong, op. cit., 43.

  94 Gregory’s Chronicle, 203–4.

  Chapter 16

  THE LOSS OF THE THRONE

  Foreign policy, the relations between monarchs, were matters for kings and princes alone in the fifteenth century and the renewal of diplomatic – activity between England and France in 1458 after a lapse of nine years might be taken as good evidence that Henry was himself once more ruling, particularly as this represented a reopening of negotiations for peace. There had been indications, during a lucid period early in 1456, that this would represent his wishes. At that time the would-be French traitor Jean II duke of Alençon was trying to promote a new English invasion of Normandy. His overtures had been well received by Protector York, who said he looked forward to leading such a force himself before the autumn of 1456. But Alençon’s envoy had had a different reception from Henry. He had expressed a most unchristian wish to fight Burgundy, not France, if he fought anyone before he died, to punish him for treacherously breaking faith with him in his youth. He said he desired only friendship with his uncle Charles, whom he hoped would aid him to discipline his own internal enemies, as he gladly would aid his uncle against his. He marvelled at the disloyalty of Charles’s princes against such a noble king, but added that his own were no better.1 Two English embassies were active in 1458. On 29 August Queen Margaret’s former chamberlain, Sir John Wenlock, and Louis Gallel, called Henry’s master of requests of his household, the father of Alençon’s envoy Edmund Gallel, received Henry’s authorization, under his sign manual, to open peace negotiations with France and Burgundy.2 The proposals which Wenlock and Gallel put forward, oddly first to Burgundy and then lo France,
were for marriages with three Burgundian or three French princesses for the infant prince of Wales, for one of York’s sons and for Henry duke of Somerset. At about the same time Richard Beauchamp-, bishop of Salisbury, also appeared in Calais, discussing breaches of the truce with Burgundy and claiming to be Henry’s personal envoy. He had ostensibly been sent to gather information about the life of his recently canonized predecessor St Osmund, but was really seeking, in conjunction with the Captain of Calais, the earl of Warwick, lo open negotiations with Charles VII through Pierre de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy.3

  In fact these diplomatic activities only serve to reinforce the picture gained from the scrappy evidence of domestic history at this time: doubts about the king’s authority and confusion as to whom these envoys really represented. It has been suggested that, in reality, both these embassies in the autumn of 1458 were active merely on behalf of York, Warwick and their associates.4 Both Wenlock and Gallet were to be found supporting York in 14595 and suffered forfeiture for it. The ambiguity of Sir John Wenlock’s position is typical. Having fought for the king at St Albans, he was yet elected Speaker in the 1455 parliament and may have begun his successful career in the Yorkist interest at that point. Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, was to be the envoy sent from Worcester in Henry’s name to invite York and his associates to surrender in 1459, presumably as the person most likely to be acceptable to them. All that can be said with certainty is that both these embassies of 1458 were received with suspicion by Burgundy and France and serious doubts were entertained about their real allegiance. French historians, relying on a report made by the Count of Foix to Louis XI in 1461, on his recollections of Charles VII’s relations with England at this time, accept that already in the spring of 1458 York made his own approaches to Charles VII to enlist some kind of aid against Henry, overtures which were contemptuously rejected by the high-minded Charles VII on the same grounds on which Henry had rejected Alençon’s overtures: the dishonour of associating with a disloyal subject who was bound in allegiance to his own sovereign.6 This cannot be disproved. The similar belief of the chroniclers Chastellain and d’Escouchy, however, that Queen Margaret had actually invited Brézé’s sack of Sandwich in August 1457 to assist her against York’s pretensions can, as Beaucourt realized, be firmly rejected.7 When she did finally ask Brézé for naval help to prevent Warwick’s return to England from Calais in 1460, after the encounters at Blore Heath and Ludford had made party divisions apparent, the novelty of the request, and the extreme danger to her person from her own supporters if it became known, were urgently conveyed to Charles VII by Brézé. This makes it clear that nothing similar had ever happened before.8 The bishop of Salisbury’s mission in 1458 was regarded with particular suspicion by the French, since the bishop claimed to have the especial backing not only of his fellow bishops but also of York, Norfolk, Salisbury and Warwick, for what he had to say.9 As for Wenlock and Gallet, Charles VII insisted on sending the herald Maine back to England with them to assess the strength or weakness of Henry’s own position there. Maine reported that Henry, early in 1459, was very poorly supported by his princes and nobles, a view confirmed by a conversation he had with an emissary from Constantinople who was there at the same time.10 He also reported that it was then notorious in London that a ‘great parliament’, presumably a great council, had been planned to deprive Warwick of his captaincy of Calais. It had been broken off and Warwick was publicly declaring that he would insist on holding the office for the six remaining years of his original grant and, rather than surrender it, relinquish his English lands. This French report fits in with several rather obscure chronicle references to Warwick narrowly escaping assassination by members of the royal household when leaving Westminster palace, variously dated to November 1458 and early February 1459.11 This incident was the first clear evidence of continuing dissensions at home after the loveday of 25 March 1458.