by Charles Ross
But he had serious defects as a political leader. He lacked the panache and popular appeal of Warwick the Kingmaker, or the charm and affability of his own son Edward. He seems to have been a proud, reserved and aloof man, who was also headstrong and sadly lacking in political sensitivity. His arrogant claims to be the king’s principal councillor, and later to be king himself, were selfish causes unlikely to commend themselves to his fellow-peers. Though convinced of the justice of his own case, he made little effort to win over the nobility, and his failure to attract their support is one of the main reasons for the repeated rebuffs to his schemes in 1450–52.2
His failures were, however, due only in part to personal deficiencies. They were also inherent in the structure of medieval English politics. As long as England remained very much a personal monarchy, it was difficult for any man or group of men to control the government against the king’s will, except by the use of force. As a critic of an unpopular administration, as in 1450–51, York could expect much support from the commons in parliament, themselves in restless mood. But parliaments could not be kept in being indefinitely and the king could ignore their wishes once they had been dissolved. York failed wholly in his attempt to drive Somerset and his friends from court or to get himself formally recognized as heir to the throne. But when, early in 1452, he tried to impose himself on the king by force of arms, he found himself even more isolated. Neither lords nor commons had much sympathy for violent action against the person of their lawful king. York’s attempted coup d’état ended in his humiliation, and at Ludlow later in the year the young Edward may well have witnessed the unwelcome spectacle of the duke of Somerset presiding at one of a series of trials of York’s tenants and retainers.1
It is about this time that we first hear references to Edward and his brother, Edmund, appearing on the political scene in support of their father, in spite of their extreme youth. The London Chronicles report that York himself was released from custody after the abortive field at Dartford because his son, the earl of March, was marching on London with ten thousand men. It is easy to dismiss the story on the grounds that the council had no cause to fear a ten-year-old boy but there were plenty of experienced soldiers in the Welsh March to form a powerful retinue for Edward as nominal leader, and Edmund, by then just ten years old, was attending a meeting in the great council chamber in London in February 1454.2 We know for certain from a contemporary letter of 19 January 1454 that Edward accompanied his father to London at the head of their household troops, ‘cleanly beseen and likely men’, shortly before the duke was commissioned to open parliament on behalf of the invalid king.3 This is the first directly contemporary reference to Edward by the style of earl of March. But it was probably some time before this that Henry VI had been prevailed upon to create Edward and Edmund earls of March and Rutland, though no record of the creation has been preserved; and by 13 June 1454, in a letter to their father, the boys sign themselves ‘E. Marche’ and ‘E. Rutland’.4
Duke Richard’s ambitions became a serious threat to the ruling court party only when certain leading magnates, for reasons of their own, quarrelled with Somerset and found in York a focus for their discontent. Between 1452 and 1455, events in the north of England changed the situation to York’s advantage. For more than half a century the two great families of Nevill and Percy had competed with each other for office, land, and territorial influence north of Trent. This long-standing rivalry, which had been dormant for some years, was sharpened in the 1440s by the expansion of Nevill influence in Cumberland and Westmorland and on the West March towards Scotland. The senior Nevill, Richard, earl of Salisbury (York’s brother-in-law), possessed to the full the drive for family aggrandizement which was the hallmark of the Nevill family in its heyday, and he had skil-fully exploited his mother’s Beaufort connections at court to achieve local dominance in the north-west. Percy reaction to this was led at first by Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, the turbulent second son of the head of his family, Henry, earl of Northumberland. In 1453 the scene of the feud shifted to Yorkshire, where both families had extensive estates, and virtual private war broke out, which threw the whole county, and later other parts of the north, into upheaval.1
To claim that ‘the Nevill-Percy feud was the chief single factor which turned political rivalry into civil war’ may be something of an exaggeration,2 but it certainly had implications, both immediate and long-term, of considerable importance. First, the bitterness and rivalries it engendered in the north of England survived the private war of 1453–4 and powerfully influenced the struggle between York and Lancaster between 1459 and 1464. As we shall see, for the north of England the true meaning of the Yorkist triumph was the victory of the Nevill interest over the Percy family and their allies. For a decade the Percy interest lay in ruins, only to be revived by Edward himself at a critical point of his fortunes. Secondly, the feud soon dragged in others beside the original protagonists and helped to determine their attitudes to the struggle between York and Somerset at the centre of government. On the Nevill side, Salisbury and his younger sons, Thomas and John Nevill, were soon joined by their elder brother, Richard Nevill, earl of Warwick. This energetic and formidable magnate, now, at thirty-five, in his prime, had quarrelled independently with Somerset over rival claims to the great Marcher lordship of Glamorgan, and was holding it by force in contempt of royal orders.3 The earl of Northumberland and his younger sons, Egremont, Richard and Ralph Percy, were joined by his heir, Lord Poynings, by north-country barons like Clifford and Roos, and by the young Henry Holland, duke of Exeter, who was both stupid and violent, and had dangerous pretensions of his own.
Finally, the immediate result of the feud was to make possible York’s re-emergence as an effective claimant to political power through a newly-formed alliance with the Nevill earls. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of their support. Each of them commanded resources little inferior to York’s own. In addition to his position as warden of the West March, which gave him the opportunity to maintain a private army at the king’s expense, Salisbury had large estates in the north, especially Yorkshire, inherited from his father, Ralph Nevill, earl of Westmorland. His marriage to the Salisbury heiress, Alice Montagu, brought him further substantial estates mainly in south-central England. His income at this time may well have exceeded £3,000 a year.1 His son, Richard Nevill, in whom Nevill greed and ambition found their most extreme incarnation, was the wealthiest of the English earls. His marriage to the principal heiress of the former Beauchamp earldom of Warwick brought him vast estates in the midlands, southern England and South Wales. He enjoyed a yearly net income from land of not less than £3,900.2 According to a recent estimate the Nevill earls (like their Percy rivals) could put about ten thousand men in the field, and this suggestion is far from implausible.3
Warwick’s quarrel with Somerset may well have been the key factor in drawing both him and his father away from hitherto profitable connections with the court. At least by the end of 1453 they were moving towards an alliance with York. By then the whole situation had been radically-if temporarily-changed by the breakdown of the king’s health: from August 1453 until December 1454 he was incapable of conducting the government of his realm. Fearful of a regency dominated by the queen, Margaret of Anjou, other lords besides the Nevill earls gave their support to the duke of York, and his growing ascendancy culminated in his appointment as protector of England on 27 March 1454. His main achievement, even though partisan in the sense that it led to the triumph of his Nevill allies, was to put an end to the growing anarchy north of Trent. There is some truth, if also some exaggeration, in a contemporary chronicler’s claim that ‘for one whole year he governed the entire realm of England well and nobly, and miraculously pacified all rebels and malefactors … without great severity’.1 It is true that he took the opportunity to improve his own and his friends’ position in other ways. The earl of Salisbury was made chancellor on 2 April 1454; York’s Anglo-Irish rival, James Butler, earl of Ormond and
Wiltshire, was removed from the lieutenancy of Ireland; and York himself superseded Somerset as captain of Calais. But the council records show that these measures had the approval of a large number of lords, and they must not be regarded as narrowly partisan.
Henry VI’s recovery at the end of 1454 has rightly been described as a national disaster. The political pendulum swung back again from a comparatively widely-based administration, enjoying the support of a goodly number of lords, to a small partisan council dominated by the court. Somerset was released from prison and restored to his command at Calais on 6 March 1455, and Salisbury was dismissed as chancellor. Fear of reprisals from Somerset and his friends caused York, Salisbury and Warwick to leave London in haste. They were summoned to appear before what they rightly suspected to be a great council called especially to punish them, at Leicester on 21 May 1455. Instead, they gathered men in the north and came down in force to meet the king and his lords at St Albans. According to one chronicler, the young Edward joined them from Ludlow with a force of March men, but this is not confirmed in any other of the several surviving accounts of the First Battle of St Albans (22 May 1455).2 This skirmish – for it was little more-was soon over. The fighting ceased as soon as Somerset, the earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford had been killed. With the deaths of their leading enemies, York and the Nevills had achieved their immediate ends.
Yet their position was still far from secure. They owed their victory to their more numerous rank-and-file, but still had little committed support from most of their fellow-barons. For this reason they tried to win over moderates like Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and his Bourchier kinsmen, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry, Viscount Bourchier. They also bade for support from the commons in parliament and advanced a programme to deal with the main immediate problems facing the government, the financing of Calais, the keeping of the seas, and the pacification of Wales. Pressure from the commons led to York’s appointment as Protector for a second time, on the pretext that the king should be spared the strain of dealing with renewed disorders in the West Country.1 During their brief period of power (19 November 1455–25 February 1456) the Yorkists helped themselves to the spoils of office, the grasping Nevills taking the richest rewards.2 Politically, their most important gain came from Warwick’s appointment as captain of Calais. Eventually, after negotiations with the Company of the Staple and the garrison over financial arrangements, this gave him control of the largest military establishment in the service of the Crown. By the summer of 1456 he was firmly established in Calais, which became a Yorkist stronghold and eventually a base for invasion of great strategic importance.3
But at home York’s ascendancy proved short-lived. King Henry would have been willing to retain York as his principal councillor, but his masterful queen, Margaret of Anjou, who openly hated York and his friends, increasingly became the real driving force at court. Her entry into politics may have been inspired by fears for the succession of her infant son, Edward, prince of Wales (born on 13 October 1453), or that she would lose all reality of power so long as York retained his position.4 From 1456 onwards her uncompromising hostility to York and the Nevills was the major obstacle to any genuine pacification between the rival groups of magnates. The Yorkist group felt itself increasingly insecure, and its reactions became correspondingly tense and nervous. Meanwhile, the moderates amongst the lords strove to keep the peace and lent their support to King Henry’s well-meaning efforts to reconcile his great men. The results were disappointing. The Yorkists eventually agreed to pay compensation to the families of the lords slain at St Albans. But the so-called Loveday of 24 March 1458, when the rival parties marched arm-in-arm to St Paul’s Cathedral, was acted out against the ominous backcloth of thousands of armed retainers quartered inside and outside the gates of London. The growing size of baronial retinues on every public occasion is a more accurate sign of the times than this classic example of a hollow reconciliation.
Even in the meagre records of the years 1457–8 we can discern the steady growth of suspicion and hostility. The queen’s influence can be seen in the retirement of the court to the midlands, where she strove to build up a personal government and a following based on her son’s earldom of Chester and the broad midland estates of the royal Duchy of Lancaster. ‘The queen,’ said a Paston correspondent, ‘is a great and strong laboured woman, for she spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power’, and as one hostile chronicler later observed, ‘the queen, with such as were of her affinity, ruled the realm, gathering riches innumerable’.1 Two personal enemies of York, the earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire, held the office of treasurer of England in succession between 1456 and 1460. The court gave a warm welcome to the sons of the lords killed at St Albans, the violent young Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, Henry Percy, third earl of Northumberland, and John, Lord Clifford. The king’s half-brothers, Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, and Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, were working to increase royal influence in Wales and the Marches. In response, Warwick defiandy consolidated his hold on Calais and defeated an attempt by the court in November 1458 to oust him from his command in favour of Somerset. Both parties looked for foreign support. Warwick’s negotiations with Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in these years seem to have included plans for a marriage between Edward of March and the duke’s niece, Katherine, daughter of the duke of Bourbon, a scheme later revived when Edward became king.2
What finally brought about an open breach was the evident determination of the court to crush its opponents by force. A final decision seems to have been made at a meeting of the great council at Coventry on 24 June 1459. York, Salisbury, Warwick, and Warwick’s brother, George Nevill, bishop of Exeter, were not summoned. Others excluded, presumably because of their Yorkist sympathies, were Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury, his brother, Henry, Viscount Bourchier, William, earl of Arundel (now Warwick’s brother-in-law), and William Grey, bishop of Ely.3 Facing indictments from this council, the Yorkist leaders laid plans to forgather in a strength sufficient to gain them a hearing from the king, who was personally still anxious to keep the peace. The duke of York at Ludlow was to be joined by Salisbury with his North-Country followers and by Warwick with a force of men from the Calais garrison under Andrew Trollope. The queen’s party in turn endeavoured to forestall this hostile concentration. Marching south from Middleham, Salisbury was intercepted at Blore Heath in Shropshire by a royalist force from Cheshire under Lord Audley. In the indecisive battle which followed (23 September 1459), Audley was killed and Salisbury’s younger sons, Thomas and John Nevill, were taken prisoner.1 The Yorkists managed to effect their reunion and prepared to meet the advancing royal army under Henry VI from a fortified position at Ludford Bridge, near Ludlow. Believing the court could no longer be trusted, they rejected royal offers of pardon, but the Calais soldiers now refused to fight against the king in person. Their defection was probably less important in bringing about the ‘Rout of Ludford’ (12-13 October) than York’s numerical inferiority: ‘his party was over-weak’, not having mobilized its potential strength.2 York and his friends now prudently decided on flight, leaving their troops to surrender and abandoning Ludlow to pillage by the royal army. The duchess of York and two of Edward’s brothers, George and Richard, fell into the king’s hands, but York himself, and Edmund, earl of Rutland, made good their escape to Ireland. Edward of March chose instead to go with Salisbury and Warwick to south Devon, where they found shelter in the house of the widowed Joanna Dinham, probably at Nutwell, near Newton Abbot.3 With an appreciation of services rendered which was to become characteristic of him, Edward later rewarded her with the grant of the custody and marriage of a royal ward, and a present of £80 to distribute among her tenants and servants.4 Sailing in a ship bought by her son, John Dinham, the earls eventually reached Calais in safety on 2 November 1459. At this point the seventeen-year-old Edward shook off the tutelage of his father and emerged as an independent political fi
gure in his own right. The dramatic events of the next fifteen months were soon to place him in command of his country’s fortunes.
1 As suggested by R. A. Griffiths, ‘Local Rivalries and National Politics: the Percies the Nevilles, and the Duke of Exeter, 1452–1455’; Speculum, xlii (1968), 613; and see Genealogical Tables. The male line of John of Gaunt’s elder daughter, Philippa, was in 1450 represented by her grandson, King Alfonso V of Portugal.
2 J. R. Lander, Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth-Century England, 73, suggests that he may have begun to use the name as early as 1450.
1 J. T. Rosenthal, ‘The Estates and Finances of Richard, duke of York’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, ii (1965), 115–204; ‘Fifteenth-Century Baronial Incomes and Richard, duke of York’, BIHR, xxxvii (1967), 233–9. He seems, however, seriously to underestimate York’s landed income: see C. D. Ross, ‘The Estates and Finances of Richard, duke of York’, Welsh History Review, iii (1967), 299–302, and the comments of K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (1973), 177–8, from whom these figures are taken.
1 See Genealogical Tables. The information comes from Annales, 764–5, 771, and Gairdner, Richard III, 5.
2 CPR, 1467–77, 439.
3 See Appendix II for evidence on this point.
4 Excerpta Historica, ed. S. Bentley, 8–9, for text of the letter: reproduced in Plate 1.
1 A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household (Society of Antiquaries, 1790), 27–8.
2 See, especially, McFarlane’s remarks on noble education in his Nobility of Later Medieval England, 228–47, and also J. Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (1966), 7–56 passim.