Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  And in all this long time, when almost all the armed force of England was assembled against our enemies, what, I ask, what action memorable or deserving of praise was done, except the capture of the aforesaid three castles?3

  But whatever Edward’s critics might say, Margaret’s great venture had failed. Neither the Lancastrian nobility and gentry of the north, who had supported the standard of Henry VI in 1460–61, nor the common people, had rallied to her cause. Probably her association with the ancient enemy of Scotland did little to commend her to many North-countrymen. Edward could now turn south to celebrate his father’s obit with splendid pomp at the family house of Fotheringhay, on 30 January 1463, comfortable in the knowledge (as Warkworth remarked) that he now ‘possessed all England, except a castle in North Wales called Harlech’.1 The Nevill lords too went south for the solemn interment of their kinsmen killed at Wakefield, the earl of Salisbury and Sir Thomas Nevill, at Bisham Abbey in Berkshire. But no sooner was their vigilance relaxed than the brittle nature of Yorkist control, dependent on the suspect loyalties of men like Sir Ralph Percy and the disgruntled Sir Ralph Grey, was again revealed.2

  In March 1463 Sir Ralph Percy turned traitor yet again, and allowed a force of French and Scots to re-occupy Bamborough and Dunstan-borough. In May Sir Ralph Grey followed Percy’s example and turned over Alnwick Castle to a force under Lord Hungerford.3 Thus, for the third time since Towton, the three strongholds were again in Lancastrian hands, and all the expensive labours of the winter campaign had been in vain. News soon came of a threat to Newcastle, and John Nevill, Lord Montagu, newly-appointed warden of the East March, was despatched to its aid, only to learn that the citizens had beaten off the rebel attack, and had captured four French ships carrying victuals to Bamborough.4 Warwick and his brother-in-law, Thomas, Lord Stanley, had meanwhile left London with a large force on 3 June. On arrival in the north they found the situation so serious that they urged the king himself to come north with reinforcements.5 For this time the rebels were to be supported by a large-scale Scots invasion. Before the end of June a substantial army had accompanied the young king of Scotland, Queen Mary of Guelders, Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou over the Border, and early in July they laid siege to Norham Castle, a few miles inland from Berwick on the River Tweed.6

  In London Edward himself planned a speedy departure. The exchequer was asked to supply £5,000 in cash for his own expenses, and a further £4,800 to finance a fleet under the earl of Worcester for combined operations in the north. The convocation of Canterbury, then sitting in St Paul’s, was pressed for more money for the king’s urgent needs in the defence of the realm against the Scots.1 Edward travelled no further north than Northampton. There a riot broke out amongst the citizens directed against the duke of Somerset, then high in Edward’s favour, which caused the king to send Somerset to North Wales for his own safety.2 But whilst he was at Northampton news arrived from the north of a notable success for the Yorkist arms. Warwick and Montagu, aided by the archbishop of York with a force of northern levies, had confronted the invaders, who had panicked and fled. The Nevills in their turn swept into southern Scotland, pillaging and burning for a distance of sixty-three miles, and only lack of victuals forced them to turn back. The siege of Norham Castle had been raised. Margaret and her young son, Prince Edward of Wales, made good their escape to Berwick, and soon after sailed to Sluys, where they arrived early in August. Henry VI himself stayed on in Scotland under the protection of the bishop of St Andrews.3

  It was widely believed, both in England and on the Continent (where these events were reported as far afield as Italy), that Edward intended to follow up these successes with a major campaign directed at crushing the Scots and putting an end to Scots independence for good.4 As Lord Hastings told the Franco-Burgundian agent, Jean de Lannoy, in a letter sent from Fotheringhay on 7 August, the Scots would be made to repent to the day of judgement the aid they had given to Henry and Margaret.5 Edward himself told parliament, when he asked for an aid of £37,000 for the defence of the realm in June, that he planned to lead his army in person against his enemies.6 Yet, with the immediate danger over, he gave himself up to the pleasures of hunting at Fotheringhay, and later in August went south to Dover to confer with his ambassadors, led by the chancellor, George Nevill, who were about to depart for important negotiations with France and Burgundy at St Omer.1 He was still publicly maintaining his intention to march against the Scots. From Fotheringhay he wrote on 15 August to the city fathers of Salisbury requesting that men should be sent to meet him at Newcastle on 13 September, and on 9 August orders were issued for the assembly of the king’s ordnance. As late as 28 August preparations were still being made for the victualling of the ‘king’s fleet against Scotland’.2 But though he moved north to York in September and remained in Yorkshire until January 1464, no further military operations of any kind were undertaken. Even the rebel strongholds in Northumberland passed the winter unmolested.

  Exactly why Edward chose not to follow up the successes of the summer and to allow the Scots to go unpunished remains something of a mystery. Probably lack of money was the chief consideration: the larger part of the aid voted by parliament, and the subsidy from convocation, went to meet heavy obligations elsewhere, notably the payment of the Calais garrison.3 In the first twenty-seven months of his reign, Edward had subsisted largely on loans, and his debts were now considerable. To mount a major military operation in the north against the rebel castles, let alone a campaign into Scotland, was almost certainly far beyond his resources. But these considerations were not apparent to his tax-paying subjects, and Edward’s conduct of affairs did not escape sharp criticism. ‘Gregory’s Chronicle’ remarks that although ‘there was ordained a great navy and a great army both by water and by land’, yet ‘all was lost and in vain, and came to no purpose, neither by water nor by land’.4 Still more pointedly, a clerical chronicler reported that the clergy resented the king’s demands, some because they were too poor, others because the money was put to no good use. The king’s great army, he adds, was intended for the subjugation of his foes by land and sea: ‘but I know not what expedition it achieved’. The fleet had clung to the coast, consumed all its victuals, and achieved nothing. ‘What a wretched outcome, shame and confusion!’ (he concludes), reflecting a disillusion widely shared by Edward’s subjects.5 Public resentment was sufficient to compel Edward in November to agree to a remission of £6,000 of the aid voted by parliament in the summer.1 Edward might also have pleaded that possession of the Northumbrian fortresses would be of little advantage to the Lancastrians if they could be deprived of foreign support; and throughout the autumn and winter of 1463 his main attention was devoted to the task of isolating the rebels diplomatically. The first improvement in England’s hostile relations with her French and Scottish neighbours came in the autumn of 1463. The ageing Duke Philip of Burgundy had been endeavouring for some time to bring about a rapprochement between Edward and Louis XI, with himself as intermediary. Louis now saw little hope of a Lancastrian restoration, and had nothing to gain from continued hostility towards the House of York. He also wished to keep the duke of Burgundy in good humour in order to carry through his plan of buying back from Philip the strategically important Somme towns ceded to him in 1435. Early in 1463 he began to respond to Philip’s overtures, and meanwhile refused to receive Jasper, earl of Pembroke, and John Fortescue, envoys sent to him by Henry VI to seek further French aid. The delay came rather from the English side. Still suspicious of Louis, and preoccupied with the events in the north, Edward did not finally give instructions to the embassy under Bishop George Nevill until 21 August. There followed a tripartite conference at St Omer, which ended in a convention between France and England signed at Hesdin on 8 October. This provided for a truce between the two countries on land, in ports and on rivers (though not at sea) to last until 1 October 1464. Each king undertook not to support the enemies of the other, and Louis specifically renounced all aid to Henry VI and the Lancas
trians. He even went so far as to tell the English envoys that he would abandon the traditional French protection for Scotland. He would not object if Scotland were brought under English control, and would even help therein if it achieved a real understanding between himself and King Edward.2

  The détente with France inevitably made more difficult the task of Bishop Kennedy and the party in Scotland still faithful to the Lancastrian cause. The pressure on Kennedy to come to terms with England had been mounting during the summer, when Edward’s ally, the earl of Douglas, was doing great damage on the West March, and a fullscale English invasion was threatened. The news that Scotland had been abandoned by her chief ally caused great dismay throughout the realm, as Kennedy himself reported.1 The bishop opened negotiations, and on 9 December a truce was concluded at York with the king of England. It was to last until 31 October 1464, and negotiations for a more permanent settlement were to begin at Newcastle in March 1464. Edward had to abandon his support for the rebel earl of Douglas, but he obtained from the Scots the all-important concession that as soon as safe-conducts then in force expired, no further aid or succour would be given to Henry VI, Margaret, Prince Edward and their adherents.2 The readiness with which the Scots came to terms after the conclusion of the truce with France may help to explain why Edward judged that a punitive war with Scotland was unnecessary as well as expensive, although it is unlikely that Edward’s subjects saw things in the same light after the costly military preparations of the summer had come to nought. The government was now widely unpopular, and resentment was expressed in a new wave of disorder and disaffection larger in scale than at any time since the winter of 1461, particularly in regions with traditional Lancastrian sympathies. From this the die-hard rebels were not slow to profit. In January and early February exceptionally strong commissions of oyer and terminer were appointed to deal with disturbances in fifteen counties from Kent to Cornwall and northwards to Warwick and Leicester. On 26 January 1464 James Gresham reported from London to John Paston that the king had called up his retainers in all haste to ride with him through Sussex, Kent, Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk.3

  Shortly afterwards, disturbances in Gloucestershire were serious enough to bring the king thither in person, in company with the two chief justices, to hold sessions of oyer and terminer against violators of the peace. A Gloucester annalist suggested that these sprang from a riot between the citizens of Gloucester and the men of the shire, but the government thought them treasonable: in thanking the mayor and corporation of Salisbury for their help, a royal signet letter spoke of certain persons ‘blinded and deceived by the malicious labour and subtle imaginations of such as be adherent and favouring to our traitors and rebels’.1 Also in February there were disturbances in Cambridge-shire. Risings in both North and South Wales and in Lancashire and Cheshire were more specifically treasonable and were very likely connected with the machinations of the duke of Somerset.2 In spite of Edward’s exceptional-and foolish-generosity to him, that nobleman had never abandoned his true loyalties to the House of Lancaster. From his refuge in North Wales he was already in touch with likely supporters, and reported to Henry VI in Bamborough that many of the chief men of Wales and others in the south and west were ready to rise on his behalf; and, in fact, a number of men from these regions were afterwards attainted for their treasonable activities at this time. To counter these dangers, Duke John of Norfolk was sent to Denbighshire to suppress traitors there, whilst in South Wales the vigorous Yorkist civil servant, John Donne, with the aid of Roger Vaughan, defeated the insurgents on 4 March 1464 at Dryslwyn, near Carmarthen.3

  It is likely that the abortive insurrections in Wales and elsewhere were intended to coincide with military action in the north by the Lancastrian leaders. In December 1463, Somerset left North Wales with a few household retainers, and made for Newcastle, hoping to profit from the fact that Edward had placed in the garrison there many of his own men, who had been with him at Northampton in the previous summer. But he was recognized and narrowly avoided arrest in Durham, escaping barefoot and in his shirt. Thus forewarned, the authorities in Newcastle were able to seize most of his supporters in the town before they could attempt any armed coup; but Edward now took the precaution of making Lord Scrope of Bolton captain of the town and stuffing it with more reliable men.4 Somerset himself escaped to Bamborough, and there was soon joined by two other Lancastrians, whom Edward had hopefully pardoned and restored to favour, Sir Henry Bellingham and Sir Humphrey Nevill of Brancepeth. From Bamborough the rebels sent urgent appeals for help to the count of Charolais and the duke of Brittany. They also received a visit from Louis XI’s agent, Guillaume de Cousinot, a fact which led the English government to believe that France was again actively interesting herself in the Lancastrian cause. Henry VI told his foreign friends that he expected a Yorkist attack on the northern castles during the summer, but for the time being (February-March 1464) the rebels seemed to have faced no organized opposition in the north. They carried out a series of raids from Bamborough, took Norham Castle, and virtually controlled most of the country immediately south of the Scottish border. Further south again, in their homeland in the Yorkshire Dales, another staunch Lancastrian family, the Cliffords, gained possession of their chief castle at Skipton-in-Craven and declared for Henry VI.1

  Edward had reacted to the outbreak of disaffection in the southern half of his realm with vigour and urgency, and he had no hesitation in proroguing the meeting of parliament, summoned for 20 February at York, on the grounds that his personal presence was needed in Gloucestershire. As usual, he was far less sensitive to similar developments in Wales and the far north. On leaving Cambridge in February, he had not turned north, but instead returned to London to conduct discussions with envoys from Castile and with Jean de Lannoy.2 But the extension of rebel activities in the north, and the danger of sympathetic risings elsewhere, at last forced him to take action. Lancastrian activities also threatened the resumption of negotiations with the Scots. The meeting of envoys planned at Newcastle for 6 March was postponed to 20 April and, for safety’s sake, was to take place in York. Montagu was despatched about mid-April to the Border to provide the Scots ambassadors with an escort through what had now become hostile territory. His small force successfully evaded an ambush laid near Newcastle by Sir Humphrey Nevill, but was then attacked by the main body of the rebels, led by Somerset, Lords Roos and Hungerford, and Sir Ralph Percy, at Hedgeley Moor, some nine miles from Alnwick. In this engagement (on or about 25 April) the rebels were routed and Sir Ralph Percy killed. Montagu met the Scots at Norham and brought them in safety to York.3

  For more than a month before the fight at Hedgeley Moor, Edward had been making rather leisurely preparations to go north in person and lay siege to the Northumbrian castles. On 27 March he had publicly announced his intention to proceed against them ‘at the beginning of summer’.1 His main problem was cash. The aid of 1463 had long since been spent, and he was forced into heavy borrowing, the pledging or sale of some of the royal jewels, and even more dubious expedients in order to raise funds.2 He certainly showed little haste to betake himself to the north. In the middle of April he spent several days in Kent in the punishment of men responsible for further recent disturbances in the county. Parliament was then prorogued from 5 May to 26 November on the grounds of the king’s preoccupation in the north. In a now familiar pattern, Warwick had already hurried on ahead, but not until 28 April did the king himself leave London. His journey was delayed for a few days by his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville on 1 May, and he then pushed on to Leicester, there to await the muster of his troops. Arrangements had already been put in hand to assemble a very substantial force fully equipped with siege artillery. Signet letters sent to individual lords and gentry and to borough corporations asked for the supply of troops, and the sheriffs of over thirty counties were directed to array all able-bodied men and have them ready to depart at twenty-four hours’ notice.3 As the troops converged on Leicester, good news came in
from the north.

  The rebels in Northumberland, probably seeking some local success before the main weight of the royal army was deployed against them, had pushed south from Alnwick into the Tyne valley, and had encamped in a meadow called the Linnels on the south side of the river some two miles from Hexham. This intelligence reached the energetic and courageous Lord Montagu twenty miles away in Newcastle. With the aid of Lords Greystoke and Willoughby, he set out at once with all available men, and on 15 May 1464 attacked the rebels in their encampment. His victory was complete, and especially welcome because almost all the leading rebels were either taken on the field or captured soon after. This was the prelude to a round of executions which virtually wiped out the surviving active Lancastrians still in England. The Nevills, left to themselves, had a far shorter way with rebels than their royal master. Somerset and four others were put to death by Montagu on the day of the battle. Lords Roos and Hungerford, Sir Thomas Findern and two others were executed at Newcastle two days later. Six or seven more were chopped at Warwick’s castle of Middleham on 18 May. A further fourteen captives had the dubious benefit of an official trial at York before the Constable of England, the earl of Worcester, and were executed in two batches on 25 and 28 May. To complete the round-up, the Lincolnshire rebel, Sir William Tailboys, was caught hiding in a coalpit on 20 July and beheaded at Newcastle, and some 3,000 marks of Lancastrian war-funds still in his possession disappeared into the pockets of Montagu’s soldiers. Only Henry VI himself, who had not been at the battlefield, made good his escape from Bywell Castle and disappeared into hiding somewhere in the remote Pennines. Devoted Lancastrians were able to conceal their ageing, if not bonny, prince until his capture a year later.1