by Charles Ross
Born about 1431, Sir William came of a substantial gentry family with lands in Yorkshire and Leicestershire, which had a remarkable record of service to the House of York over four generations.6 William followed his father, Sir Leonard, in the retinue of Duke Richard and was with him at the Rout of Ludford. He joined Edward on his march from Mortimer’s Cross to London, and, along with two other new barons of 1461, Humphrey Stafford and Walter Devereux, was knighted by him on the field of Towton. Edward soon showed his high regard for Hastings, and his determination to increase the power of a trusted supporter in the troubled and disaffected midland counties. As early as 5 April 1461 he was a member of the king’s council, and on 13 June he was summoned to parliament as a baron.1 On 8 May he was made receiver-general of the Duchy of Cornwall for life; a fortnight later he received the profitable position of master of the mint for twelve years; and he was already king’s chamberlain when appointed chamberlain of North Wales on 31 July.2 Before February 1462 he was of sufficient importance to make an advantageous match with Warwick’s sister, Katharine Nevill, widow of William Bonville, Lord Harington.
Meanwhile, his territorial power in the midlands was being built up steadily. In July 1461 Edward appointed him for life to an important group of Duchy of Lancaster offices in the shires of Leicester, Warwick and Northampton, and, with his brother Ralph, he was already constable of the royal castle of Rockingham and held other offices in Northamptonshire.3 On 17 February 1462 he was given very large estates in Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Rutland, from the newly-forfeited lands of James, earl of Wiltshire, William, Viscount Beaumont, and Thomas, Lord Roos, and further substantial grants of land in the midlands followed in 1464 and 1469.4 His local influence was increased by the several stewardships of land given him by private persons, and his own purchases of property in this area.5 The value of this midland connection was to be proved during the troubles of 1469–71, especially in Leicestershire, formerly a strongly Lancastrian area, but where Hastings now had ‘the whole rule’ of the county: it was from these regions that Hastings produced the three thousand retainers who were the first substantial reinforcements to join Edward in his bid to recapture the throne.6
The rise of Sir William Herbert is even more spectacular than that of Hastings. This son of Sir William ap Thomas of Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, by Gwladys Ddu, daughter of Sir Dafydd Gam, was the first Welshman since the Edwardian conquest to achieve a high position in English politics and to penetrate the upper ranks of the English aristocracy. He came to command a power in Wales never seen before, and only briefly matched again. As one Welsh poet aptly described him, he was ‘King Edward’s master-lock’ in Wales.1 His employment as a virtual viceroy in Wales marks a departure from the policy of earlier English kings in relying on an alien and largely absentee English aristocracy for the government of that country.
In the 1450s Herbert had been both the earl of Warwick’s sheriff of Glamorgan and the duke of York’s constable and steward in his Marcher lordships of Usk, Caerleon, Dinas and Ewyas Lacy.2 Wooed by the Lancastrian government in its attempt to increase its influence in the Marches, Herbert had actually benefited from the Rout of Ludford, but never abandoned his Yorkist sympathies. After Northampton he joined the rebel earls and sat in the parliament of 1460 as MP for Herefordshire. In February 1461 he rallied to Edward’s standard at Gloucester, fought at Mortimer’s Cross, and marched with him to London. Like Hastings he was summoned as a baron by writ of 13 June 1461.
At this time the opportunities for a redistribution of power in South Wales were quite exceptional. The attainder of the Lancastrian Prince of Wales brought into Edward’s hands all the lands of the Principality, and that of Jasper Tudor brought the earldom of Pembroke. For the first time the lordships of the House of York were at the Crown’s disposal, whilst the accident of three minorities (of Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury) placed every other important lordship in South Wales under the king’s control, save for Warwick’s possession of Glamorgan and Abergavenny. Beginning with his appointment as chief justice and chamberlain of South Wales on 8 May 1461, Herbert was soon invested by Edward with a tremendous agglomeration of land, office and influence in South Wales. After 1463 his power was gradually extended into North Wales also.3 Not even Warwick enjoyed so complete a delegation of royal power in any one region. So great was Edward’s confidence in Herbert that (as we have seen) he was even prepared to cross Warwick’s hopes of family aggrandizement in South Wales, a decision which may partly reflect Herbert’s already considerable influence with the king.1
Nor were Lord Herbert’s rewards confined merely to the exercise of royal stewardship. His own family interests were admirably provided for. Outside Wales, he secured, in June 1463, a grant of the lordship of Dunster and all the possessions of its attainted lord, James Luttrell, in Somerset, Devon and Suffolk, and his eldest son, William, though still a minor, was recognized as Lord Dunster in 1466, in view of his approaching marriage to the queen’s sister, Mary Woodville.2 In 1462 he obtained the wardship and marriage of Henry Tudor, heir to the earl of Richmond, and in 1467 was given the wardship of the estates and the marriages of the heirs of Viscount Lisle and Lord Grey of Powys.3 In July 1463 Crickhowell and Tretower were separated from the earldom of March and made into a full Marcher lordship for Herbert’s benefit, and in March 1465 his own paternal inheritance, the lordship of Raglan, was given similar status: this creation of two new independent Marcher lordships was a remarkable sign of royal favour.4 Finally, Herbert’s services in reducing the obstinate stronghold of Harlech to obedience brought him promotion to the earldom of Pembroke on 8 September 1468. In less than ten years this grossly ambitious and grasping Welsh country squire had turned himself into an English magnate, with an annual income of some £2,400.’5
Without doubt, Herbert gave excellent service in return. From the successful campaign of 1461 to the fall of Harlech on 14 August 1468 he was responsible for military operations in Wales, and contributed to keeping the peace in that unruly land. His Welsh birth and upbringing inspired much respect in contemporary Welsh literature, where he appears as a national hero. His countrymen followed him in very large numbers to the battle of Edgecote in 1469, and many died there. His large family and numerous kinsmen provided a core of loyal servants in Edward’s Welsh service.1 Hence Jasper Tudor’s repeated efforts to raise the standard of rebellion in Wales met with little success, and the absence of any support for Warwick in South Wales, despite his Marcher interests, testifies to the success of Herbert’s labours in establishing Yorkist control in that region. In the first few years of the reign he spent very little time at court, but he commanded considerable influence with the king and queen, especially after his son’s Woodville marriage.2
The pattern of delegation of local authority which benefited Hastings in the east midlands and Herbert in Wales was repeated in the West Country, also an area of strong Lancastrian sympathies. Here William Nevill, earl of Kent, seems to have been designated as the king’s chief agent, but, with his death in 1463, his influence passed to another of the new men, Humphrey Stafford, created Lord Stafford in 1461. Local offices, forfeited estates and wardships were showered upon him, and in return he served on a large number of political and administrative commissions in the south-west.3 A greedy and ambitious man, he achieved the height of his ambition when he was raised to the earldom of Devon in 1469, shortly before his death in the Edgecote campaign.1 Thereafter his mantle fell on another Westcountryman, John, Lord Dinham. As a Devonshire esquire, Dinham had come to Edward’s attention when he gave refuge to the young earl of March and his Nevill kinsmen after the Rout of Ludford, and engineered their escape to France. Although active in the royal service in Devon and Cornwall, his advancement was relatively slow. He was a councillor as early as 1462, but was not created a baron until 1467, and he becomes really prominent only after the fall of Humphrey Stafford.2
Others amongst this gr
oup of king’s friends served Edward primarily at the centre of government. Amongst them were the two or three members of the established nobility who (apart from the Nevills) enjoyed the king’s confidence in the first decade of his reign. The senior member of the group in age and experience was Henry Bourchier, Viscount Bourchier. Uncle by marriage to Edward himself, and brother of Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury, Henry was an experienced soldier and statesman, who had already acted as treasurer of England in the Yorkist administration of 1455–6. Raised to the earldom of Essex in June 1461, he was Edward’s first treasurer (until April 1462), steward of the royal household from 1467 to 1471, and then treasurer again until his death in 1483. He was therefore constantly about the king’s person and was a leading member of the royal council. Hence he served on few local commissions and his local influence, chiefly in Essex, was exercised from a distance. Perhaps because of his wealth, he received few rewards from the king.3 Bourchier was also important as head of a family which had early declared for the House of York and remained consistently loyal to it. His two brothers, William, Lord FitzWarin, and John, Lord Berners, and his younger son, Humphrey, created Lord Cromwell in 1461, had all married baronial heiresses. FitzWarin was a useful supporter of the Crown in the West Country, as was his son, Fulk Bourchier; and both Lord Cromwell and Berners’s son, Humphrey, were later to die fighting for Edward at the battle of Barnet.4
Bourchier was succeeded as treasurer of England in April 1462 by one of the more unusual members of the Yorkist peerage. John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, Edward’s first cousin by marriage, had spent four years travelling and studying in Italy and returned to England in September 1461, with many of the civilized and scholarly interests of the Renaissance, and is rightly remembered as an early lay patron of humanist studies and a noted collector of books. He had also imbibed some of the political ruthlessness of contemporary Italy. As Constable of England (1463–7 and again in 1470), he earned an evil reputation for cruelty, and was branded ‘the Butcher of England’ soon after his death. He also served Edward as steward of the royal household (1463–7), admiral (1463) and deputy-lieutenant of Ireland (1467–8). He was clearly much trusted by Edward, and appears as a member of the royal council within two months of his return from Italy. Like Bourchier, he was often with the king, and was not active in the counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon where most of his lands lay.1
The remaining members of the group may be introduced more briefly. John, Lord Audley, who had defected to the Yorkist earls after being taken prisoner in Calais in 1460, became one of Edward’s most active supporters in the shires, chiefly in Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire, where his estates were situated; and in the first decade of the reign he served on an impressively large number of local commissions. Although denounced by the rebels in 1469 as one of the king’s grasping favourites, his rewards had in fact been quite modest.2
The others were all new Yorkist lords. Sir John Wenlock had risen from quite obscure origins to become chamberlain to Queen Margaret of Anjou, but in 1455 he attached himself to the Yorkists, and was attainted by the Coventry Parliament. He had shared the exile of the earls in Calais, and fought at Towton. He already had much diplomatic experience, and it was chiefly in this capacity that he served Edward. From 1461 to 1470 he was abroad for some part of every year as an ambassador. But he was also a royal councillor as early as September 1461, was created a baron in the first parliament of the reign, and was rewarded with offices of profit and dignity and grants from forfeited Lancastrian estates, chiefly those of the ex-chief justice, Sir John Fortescue.1 Sir Walter Blount, of Elvaston in Derbyshire, had been a servant of Duke Richard of York, and in 1459–60 was probably with the earls in Calais. On 21 June 1461 he was appointed treasurer of Calais, and on 24 November 1464 he became treasurer of England. In 1465 he was created Lord Mountjoy. Though his two offices may have given him some opportunities for profit, they also involved him in heavy lending to the Crown, and he had to wait a long time for repayment.2 He also waited long for any other reward for his services. He had no grant of any substance until August 1467, about the time he married the king’s aunt, Anne, dowager duchess of Buckingham, when he was given a group of Courtenay lands in Devon and Hampshire. No attempt was made to increase his local influence in Derbyshire. But he was clearly a member of the inner circle at court, more particularly after his marriage.3 Sir Walter Devereux, whom Edward created Lord Ferrers of Chartley in 1461, had long-standing and close connections with the House of York. His seat at Weobley in Herefordshire gave him an interest in the Welsh Marches, and he served on a number of commissions on Welsh affairs and was appointed captain of Aberystwyth Castle in 1463. In 1462 he had a substantial grant of lands, partly in the Marches, and partly in Berkshire and the east midlands, where the estates of his wife, heiress of the Ferrers family, chiefly lay.4 Finally, Sir John Howard, one of the most active of Edward’s gentry servants, and a man with extensive influence in East Anglia, was raised to the peerage as Lord Howard early in 1470. In the second half of the reign he was to become one of the king’s closest and most trusted councillors.5
Several points emerge from this survey of the careers of this inner ring of Edward’s supporters. First, there is a clear distinction between the rewards gained by men like Hastings, Herbert and Stafford, on the one hand, and those who served Edward at the centre of government on the other. The heaping of material rewards on members of this group was largely confined to men who were expected to have special responsibilities in certain regions and was inspired by essentially political considerations. None of the others was given land, local office, or wardships on any significant scale. Even to those who stood high in his favour and were his intimate friends and councillors, Edward did not dispense patronage without discrimination. Men of established wealth like the earls of Essex and Worcester were rewarded only with offices of dignity or profit or with promotion within the peerage. Secondly, it seems clear that in promoting, aggrandizing and delegating great authority to his new men, Edward was inspired by a wish to offset the excessive power of the Nevills, under whose power he had begun his reign. To be master in his own realm, he needed his own men to execute his policies. It is significant that, save for Worcester and Audley, all owed their titles (or, like Essex, their promotions within the peerage) to Edward’s favour. Only Essex and Worcester had ever held high office or enjoyed royal confidence before 1461, and even they were more powerful and prominent under York than they had ever been under Lancaster. The rest owed their entire advancement to Edward’s favour.
The emergence of this group of king’s men, soon to be reinforced by some of the queen’s Woodville relatives, is the most important factor in the politics of Edward’s first decade. The king’s reliance on this ‘new court party’ led by the Woodvilles, Herbert, and Humphrey Stafford has recently been branded as a singular error of judgement on Edward’s part, on the grounds that these newly-created magnates were unpopular upstarts, who could not withstand the enmity of Warwick because they were unable to attract any binding loyalty from the gentry.1 This view seems rather perverse. In the crisis of 1469, Herbert and Stafford were able to raise very considerable forces from Wales and the West Country, and there seemed to be no lack of support for them from their home regions. Herbert’s defeat at Edgecote on 26 July was at least in part due to his quarrel with Stafford the night before, and the battle itself proved a close-fought affair, which might easily have gone the other way. Similarly, William, Lord Hastings, was able to build up a powerful and durable connection in the midlands which proved of great value in helping his master to recover the throne in 1471. That he still commanded much support amongst the lords, including quite important families like the Bourchiers, is shown by Warwick’s inability to rule through a captive king for more than two months.1
As a group, the king’s men showed considerable loyalty and political homogeneity. They are to be found at Edward’s side in moments of political crisis. Thus in June 1467, when the king decided
to override publicly Nevill obstruction of his policy, he took the unusual step of making a personal visit to Archbishop George Nevill’s lodgings in order to relieve him of the Great Seal. Ten of the twelve notables whom he chose to accompany him in this act of self-assertion belonged to the group of men whose careers have been discussed above.2 Not only were they willing to support him in his widening breach with the Nevills, they also showed themselves more ready than the Nevills to accept the consequences of the king’s ill-advised marriage, and to tolerate and cooperate with the queen’s Woodville relatives.3 Finally, they remained conspicuously loyal to Edward during the recurrent crises of 1469–71. Three of them – Worcester, Pembroke and Devon – lost their lives on his behalf. Others shared his Netherlands exile. Those who remained behind in England were viewed with deep suspicion by the Readeption government, and quickly rallied to Edward’s standard on his return.4 Only one, John, Lord Wenlock, deserted to Warwick and the Lancastrians. Whether for reasons of self-interest, gratitude, or personal respect and affection for their royal master, they displayed a capacity for sustained loyalty, although some of them at least might have made a good bargain with Warwick’s regime. But in 1469 they remained a minority amongst the baronage. They failed to preserve their master’s throne because his rule had not yet commended itself to the remainder of the baronage, a majority of the gentry, and to popular opinion in general. The Yorkist regime was not yet widely enough based to withstand a combination of Warwick’s ambition, Clarence’s disloyalty, and the revival of Lancastrian sentiment which had been weakened but not destroyed.5