Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  1 On this point, see below, pp. 412–13.

  1 See below, pp. 183–4.

  2 Gregory, 219; RP, V, 511; Scofield, 1, 273–4, 292.

  3 CP, X, 239–40; Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 131.

  1 CPR, 1461–7, 119, 429; and 533, 572, for his appearance on commissions of array and piracy in 1466.

  2 CP, VI, 621; Cal. Inquisitions Post Mortem, IV, 344, 348; CPR, 1461–7, 181, 284, 363–6; CFR, 1461–71, 216.

  3 See below, pp. 123–4.

  4 CPR, 1452–61, 632; 1461–7, 86.

  5 Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 124 (excluding the defenders of Harlech and those provisionally attainted).

  6 The dead were the earls of Devon, Northumberland and Wiltshire, and Lords Clifford, Nevill, Dacre of Gilsland and Welles; the active rebels were the dukes of Somerset and Exeter, the earl of Pembroke, and Lords Hungerford, Roos and Rougemont-Grey. The other peer was William, Viscount Beaumont, for whom see above.

  1 For the political activities of these peers, see CP, V, 428 (FitzHugh); VI, 130–1 (Grey of Codnor), 198 (Greystoke); VIII, 223 (Lovel); XI, 20, 22 (Rivers and Scales), 569 (Scrope of Masham), 706 (Shrewsbury). John, 2nd earl of Shrewsbury, killed at Northampton, was several times described in official documents as a rebel (e.g. CPR, 1461–7, 30), but his son, John, 3rd earl, was allowed whilst still a minor to enter on all his lands in August 1464, except those granted to and retained by William, Lord Herbert (below, p. 78, n. 2). Lancastrian suspicions of the loyalties of FitzHugh (who had married Warwick’s sister, Alice Nevill) and of Greystoke (FitzHugh’s brother-in-law) are recorded by Annales, 775–6, but though both seem to have marched south with Margaret and fought at St Albans, they were soon trusted by Edward (e.g. commission to Greystoke, 13 May 1461, to arrest and try rebels, CPR, 1461–7, 30) and they acted as triers of petitions in the 1461 parliament. Willoughby (whose father was killed at Towton) and Grey of Codnor had also fought with the queen at St Albans, but both were soon serving King Edward.

  1 CCR, 1461–8, 56.

  2 J. S. Roskell, ‘Sir Thomas Tresham, Knight’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, ii, no. 6 (1959), 313–23, and his Commons and their Speakers in English Parliaments, 1376–1523 (Manchester, 1965), 110–11, 263–6, 270, 282–3, 368–9.

  3 Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 139–40; Roskell, Speakers, 282. Inevitably, Tresham supported the Readeption in 1470–71, and was executed after the Battle of Tewkesbury.

  4 CPR, 1461–7, 35. Of those not attainted, some remained under suspicion: e.g. Richard Ill’s future councillor, Sir William Catesby, who fought with Henry VI at Northampton and Towton, did not obtain a pardon by making a fine until 22 December 1461 (ibid., 35, 120), and does not reappear on the Northamptonshire commissions of the peace until 1465. For his close Lancastrian associations before Edward’s accession, see J. S. Roskell, ‘William Catesby, Councillor to Richard III’, Bull. John Rylands Library, xlii (1959), 145–74.

  5 E.g. Sir Ralph Bygod, sometimes styled Lord Mauley, was killed at Towton, and might therefore have been attainted, but his son was allowed to succeed to his estates (CPR, 1461–7, 228–9). Bygod and Catesby (see previous note) appear with many others in a list of attainted persons quoted by Annales, 778–9: this was probably a draft list from which names were afterwards removed – hence his total of 150 names.

  6 Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 144–5; ‘Bonds, coercion, and fear’, 333–5. See also ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 141, for Edward’s generosity to the wives and families of attainted persons.

  1 Professor Lander’s guess that they were worth nearly £18,000 a year (op. cit., 147) is certainly too low. My own estimate, the evidence for which cannot be detailed here, would be of the order of £30,000.

  2 PL, IV, 61. All Dacre received in the early years of the reign were the lands claimed by his wife, Joan, as heir general of her attainted grandfather, Thomas, Lord Dacre. Although initially substantial (12 manors in Cumberland, 2 in Westmorland, 4 in Lancashire, and 1 in Lincolnshire), this grant was eroded by properties given to her sister-in-law, Eleanor, and the claims of the heir male, Humphrey Dacre; and ultimately Fiennes got only 4 manors (CPR, 1461–7, 140; 1467–77, 26, 96; RP, VI, 43–5; CP, IV, 8). For the meagre rewards of Arundel and Suffolk, see CPR, 1461–7, 15, 42, 435, 512, 547: compare the rewards of Warwick and Hastings mentioned below, pp. 70–1, 75.

  1 T. B. Pugh, ‘The Magnates, Knights and Gentry’, in Fifteenth-Century England, 107–9. For the lack of a strong Yorkist affinity amongst the gentry, see below, pp. 329–30-

  2 For details and references, see Appendix III.

  1 ‘Hearne’s Fragment’, in Chronicles of the White Rose of York, 23; Commynes, I, 192–3.

  2 For details, see T. B. Pugh, Glamorgan County History, III, 197–8. It is worth noticing that Warwick took care to grant himself the wardship of these Stafford lands when the chance came during the Readeption, and rewarded himself with most of Herbert’s Welsh offices after the latter’s death at Edgecote (CPR, 1467–77, and below, P. 133).

  3 Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, I, 564. This and other offices had been given to Warwick for life on 10 November 1460, but were granted to Hastings for life on 4 July 1461, and in tail male 7 March 1466.

  1 CPR, 1461–7, 25, 105, 122, 151–2, 287.

  2 Ibid., 225.

  3 Ibid., 332, 340–1. He had previously been given custody of the king’s mines in Devon and Cornwall, and nine manors forfeited from the Beaumont family (ibid., 19, 195).

  4 See below, pp. 322–8.

  5 The peers’ sons were Humphrey Bourchier, Lord Cromwell (son of Essex), Thomas FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers (son of Arundel), William Herbert, Lord Dunster (son of Lord Herbert), and William Lovel, Lord Morley (son of William, Lord Lovel). The gentry ennobled were William, Lord Hastings, William, Lord Herbert, Humphrey, Lord Stafford of Southwick, Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers, John, Lord Wenlock, Robert, Lord Ogle, Thomas, Lord Lumley (all in 1461), Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy (1465), John, Lord Dinham (1467) and John, Lord Howard (1470). See T. B. Pugh in Fifteenth-Century England, 116–17, for a useful list of Edward’s peerage creations.

  1 For Hastings’s character, see More, Richard III, 10–11, 52, 226; Mancini, 69, 89, CC, 564–5; GC, 231; for his will, W. H. Dunham, Lord Hastings’ Indentured Retainers, 17–18.

  2 A. L. Brown, ‘The Authorization of Letters under the Great Seal’, BIHR, xxxvii (1964), 149. His constant presence at court is revealed by the frequency with which he witnesses royal charters (P.R.O., C. 53/191–4).

  3 PL, IV, 61; Commynes, I, 201; More, Richard III, 10–11 (’for the great favour the king bare him’).

  1 Mancini, 69.

  2 PL, V, 148 (James Arblaster, writing on behalf of the duchess of Norfolk).

  3 Dugdale, Baronage of England, I, 581–3 (from the Hastings family papers); Hist. MSS Comm. Reports, MSS of R. R. Hastings, I (1928), 99, 271–2, 302; Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors, 1461 to 1485’, BIHR, xxxii (1959), 163. Warwick’s appointment of Hastings on 2 April 1468 as steward of all his lordships in Leicester, Rutland and Northampton may have been an attempt to salvage something of his waning influence with Edward.

  4 Dunham, op. cit., 41, 47 ff.

  5 Calmette and Perinelle, Louis XI et l’Angleterre, 215; Hist. MSS Comm. Reports, Hastings, I, 301 (wrongly dated to 1461 instead of 1471).

  6 For the family background and early career of Hastings, see Dugdale, op. cit., I, 579–80; CP, VI, 370–71; Dunham, op. cit., 19–21, and references there cited.

  1 The creation is discussed in CP, V, 370 n., where it is assumed that he (and William Herbert) were specially created some time before their summons to parliament on 26 July 1461. In fact, his creation seems to date from his summons by individual writ on 13 June (CCR, 1461–68, 61).

  2 Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors’, 168; CPR, 1461–7, 9, 26, 130.

  3 Somerville, op. cit., I, 564; CPR, 1461–7, 13. Both grants are w
rongly dated in CP, V, 471.

  4 CPR, 1461–7, 103–4 (Roos lands, etc.); 353 (honours of Peverell, Boulogne and Haughley, 1464); ibid., 1467–77, 154 (stewardship of Fotheringhay, Northants, 1469).

  5 Dugdale, op. cit., I, 180–3; MSS Comm. Reports, Hastings, I, 296.

  6 Arrivall, 8–9; VCH, Leicestershire, III, 100.

  1 Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, ed. E. D. Jones (1953), 4.

  2 For Herbert’s early career, see the articles in DNB, XXVI, 218–20; Dictionary of Welsh Biography, 354; T. B. Pugh, ed., Glamorgan County History, III, 259–61; D. H. Thomas, ‘The Herberts of Raglan as supporters of the House of York in the second half of the fifteenth century’ (Univ. of Wales M.A. thesis, 1968).

  3 His principal offices and land-grants in Wales were as follows: chief justice and chamberlain, South, Wales, 8 May 1461; constable of Cardigan, for life, 2 August 1461; grant in tail of the castle and lordship of Pembroke, Kilgerran, Castle Martin, etc., 3 February 1462; chief justice of Merioneth and constable of Harlech, 17 June 1463; chief justice of South Wales, and steward of Usk, Caerleon and other Duchy of York lands in South Wales, in tail male, 26 September 1466; chief justice of North Wales and steward of lordships of Denbigh and Montgomery, etc., for life, 28 August 1467; constable of Conway and master-forester of Snowdon, 11 November 1468 (CPR, 1461–7, 7, 42, 114, 271, 526–7; 1467–77, 22, 41, 113). In addition to the custodies of the Stafford lordships in South Wales and the Talbot lordships in Hereford mentioned elsewhere, he acquired the custody of the duke of Norfolk’s lordship of Gower on 12 February 1462, and soon converted temporary control into ownership; by September 1468 the 4th duke of Norfolk conveyed both Gower and Chepstow to Herbert, an act confirmed by the king on 3 May 1469 (CPR, 1467–77, 112; Glamorgan County History, III, 258–9).

  1 T. B. Pugh, Glamorgan County History, III, 198, believes that the incident demonstrates that Herbert’s influence with the king was superior to Warwick’s. But Edward had his own ideas about regional authority (v. the similar transfer of offices from Warwick to Hastings noted above, p. 71), and a more likely explanation is that advanced in Glamorgan County History, 261.

  2 CPR, 1461–7, 286, 366.

  3 Ibid., 114; 1467–77, 25, 51, 62.

  4 Ibid., 1461–7, 268, 425–6.

  5 T. B. Pugh, The Fifteenth Century, 92.

  1 R. A. Griffiths, ‘Wales and the Marches’, in The Fifteenth Century, 159, and references there cited; and see below, p. 131. For his work on Welsh commissions, see CPR, 1461–7, 30, 38, 45, 65, 98, 100, 132, 280, 355; 1467–77, 29, 54, 58, 102, 103.

  2 His absence from court is reflected in the fact that he did not attest a single royal charter before 1466: P.R.O. Charter Rolls, C. 53/191–4. The Croyland Chronicler, p. 551, specifically links the growth of his influence at court with the Woodville marriage: on this point, see T. B. Pugh, The Fifteenth Century, 93. For examples of his presence at court after 1466, see Scofield, I, 417, 443–4; CPR, 1461–7, 529; 1467–77, 127; CCR, 1461–8, 456–7. A good example of his influence with the king may be seen in the inability of the young earl of Shrewsbury to recover his lordships of Goodrich and Archenfield, co. Hereford: though never forfeited to the Crown, these had been granted to Herbert in 1461, and were specifically excluded when John Talbot was given licence to enter on his inheritance in August 1464 (CPR, 1461–7, 329).

  3 No good account of Stafford’s career exists, but see the article in DNB and Wedgwood, Hist. Parl., Biographies, 793–4. He was granted virtually all the former Courtenay estates in Devon, and amongst other offices held the stewardship of the Duchy of Cornwall for life, the custody of the forest of Dartmoor, the stewardship of the Duchy lands in Devon, and was constable and steward of the lordship of Bridgwater, Somerset (CPR, 1461–7, 25, 116, 120, 129, 360, 438–9; 1467–77, 22–3, 124, 156).

  1 See below, pp. 129–32.

  2 R. P. Chope, ‘The Last of the Dynhams’, Trans. Devonshire Association, 1 (1918), 431–92; CP, IV, 378–9; Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors’, 168. Before 1467 his only substantial grant consisted of 8½ manors forfeited from the Hungerfords in Devon and Somerset (CPR, 1461–7, 359–60, 1 October 1464).

  3 For his career, see CP, V, 137–8; Dugdale, Baronage, II, 129. He had already been treasurer of England, 1455–6. The only reward of substance he received was the grant to him and his wife, Isobel, the king’s aunt, in 1462, of 18 manors, in belated fulfilment of the will of Edward’s great-uncle, Edmund Mortimer, earl of March (d. 1425), to the value of 500 marks (CPR, 1461–7, 145).

  4 See below, pp. 167–8.

  1 For his career, see the biography by R. J. Mitchell, John Tiptoft, and further below, p. 155, for his death and reputation. The phrase ‘Butcher of England’ first occurs in the early-sixteenth-century versions of the London Chronicles (e.g. GC, 212–13), but he was already called ‘the harsh hangman and executioner’ (Trux carnifex et hominum decollator) in the immediately contemporary Brief Latin Chronicle, 183.

  2 See Wedgwood, Hist. Parl., Biographies, for an account of his career. He served on 31 commissions before 1471, excluding commissions of the peace. His only rewards consisted of his appointment, 2 May 1461, as steward and keeper of royal lands and forests in Dorset, with the custody of Wardour Castle, and a grant in July 1467 of two Surrey manors, valued at £37 5s a year, forfeited from the earl of Wiltshire (CPR, 1461–7, 8, 87; 1467–77, 22).

  1 His career is fully described by J. S. Roskell, ‘John, Lord Wenlock of Someries?, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society Publications, xxxviii (1957), 12–48; The Commons and their Speakers in English Parliaments, 1376–1523, esp. pp. 258–62, 370–1.

  2 For his loans to the Grown, see below, p. 379. For his career, see Wedgwood, Hist. Parl., Biog., 86 and CP, IX, 344–9. In Wedgwood he is misleadingly treated as being primarily an associate of the earl of Warwick, but before 1460 Richard, duke of York, calls Blount his servant, and he was already a king’s knight by 13 August 1461 (Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser., i, no. 40; CPR, 1461–7, 41); and see the next note.

  3 Ibid., 1467–77, 24–5 (for the Courtenay lands). He went with Edward to relieve George Nevill of the Great Seal in June 1467, and his later service on commissions was largely confined to the special commissions of oyer and terminer to which other members of the court party were appointed; and Edward’s confidence in him is also shown by his being empowered to receive rebels into the king’s grace, 25 April 1470 (CCR, 1461–8, 456; CPR, 1461–7, 490, 554; 1467–77, 102, 171, 207).

  4 CP, V, 322–3; Wedgwood, Hist. Parl., Biog., 272–3.

  5 For Howard’s career, see below, pp. 324–5.

  1 T. B. Pugh, Fifteenth-Century England, 93

  1 See below, pp. 133–5.

  2 CCR, 1461–8, 456. The others were his brother, Clarence, and his cousin by marriage, William FitzAlan, earl of Arundel.

  3 The heirs of the earls of Essex, Pembroke and Kent all married Woodvilles; see further below, p. 93.

  4 Essex, Mountjoy and Cromwell were temporarily arrested during the Readeption, and Audley, Devereux and Howard were removed from the bench of JPs. See below, pp. 157–8.

  5 See below, pp. 122–5, 127–8.

  Chapter 5

  THE KING’S MARRIAGE AND THE RISE OF THE WOODVILLES

  In the spring of 1464 Edward of York was Europe’s most eligible bachelor. Young, handsome and genial, he was also increasingly secure on his throne. His marriage could now be used as a useful weapon in England’s dealings with her continental neighbours, and as a means of establishing his dynasty amongst the ruling houses of Europe.

  Plans of various kinds for his marriage had been discussed since his infancy. In 1445, when he was no more than three years old, his father had proposed a grandiose match with Madeleine, the eighteen-monthold daughter of King Charles VII of France. After exchanges of letters and envoys, the king had agreed, and then the scheme was dropped.1 In the summer of 1458 his name had been mentioned again as part of an elaborate proposal (which may have been part of He
nry VI’s peace-making activities) for a triple marriage alliance between the prince of Wales, ‘a son of the Duke of York’ and the duke of Somerset with three ladies of the ducal house of Burgundy. Meeting no response, the English envoys made a similar proposal to the king of France, but again it was never seriously discussed.2

  The notion of a marriage alliance with Burgundy was revived soon after Edward’s accession. In October 1461 an English mission headed by Lord Wenlock proposed a match between the young king and the beautiful Mademoiselle de Bourbon, a niece of Duke Philip and sister-in-law of his heir, Charles, count of Charolais. This union represented for Edward a means of consolidating his dynasty, and, he hoped, of detaching Charolais from his strong support for the Lancastrian cause. Philip, however, was not then willing to commit himself definitely to a dynasty still very insecure on its throne, and no progress could be made.1 Then in 1462 Warwick proposed that Edward should marry the Scottish regent, Mary of Guelders, despite her age and dubious reputation – the Lancastrian duke of Somerset was reckoned amongst her lovers – but this was blocked – if ever seriously meant – from the Scots side.2 In 1464, according to diplomatic rumours, the Burgundians were willing to revive the proposed Bourbon marriage, as a counter to the French marriage now being negotiated for Edward IV, but apparently it was never seriously pressed.3 At the same time another suitable claimant for Edward’s hand made her appearance, when, in February 1464, Henry the Impotent of Castile proffered his sister and eventual heiress, Isabella. Though the match would have aided Edward’s plans for an alliance with Castile, the offer was declined. Twenty years later, the slight still rankled with Queen Isabella, especially since Edward had chosen to marry a mere ‘widow of England’.4