by Charles Ross
1 This was the explanation adopted by the most perceptive of contemporary observers, the Groyland Chronicler, 551: ‘the earl continued to show favour to all the queen’s kindred, until he found that all her relatives and connections, contrary to his wishes, were using their utmost endeavours to promote the other marriage, which, in conformity with the king’s wishes, eventually took place between Charles and the lady Margaret, and were favouring other designs to which he was strongly opposed’.
1 This was partly in response to English protectionist statutes in 1463. The English in their turn responded with a ban on all Burgundian imports except foodstuffs in 1465 (Statutes of the Realm, II, 395–9, 411–13). For the context of this, see below, pp. 358–60.
2 See below, pp. 158–9, for the unpopularity of Warwick’s French alliance in 1470–1471, and for English popular nationalism in general, V. J. Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century, 35–106 passim
1 John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was his great-grandfather on his mother’s side; his affection for the House of Lancaster is mentioned by Commynes and Chastellain, both of whom knew him well; and he was paying pensions to the exiled dukes of Somerset and Exeter (J. Calmette, ‘Le Mariage de Charles le Téméraire et de Marguerite d’York’, Annales de Bourgogne, I (1929), 194–5).
2 B. A. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé, François II, Duc de Bretagne, et r Angleterre, 1–3, 60–1, 70 ff.
3 For the diplomacy of autumn 1464 and 1465, Scofield, I, 355–60, 378–80; Calmette and Perinelle, Louis XI et l’Angleterre, 63–72; Thielemans, Bourgogne et Angleterre, 415–17.
4 P. M. Kendall, Louis XI, 142–86. The ‘Somme towns’ were the domains of the French Crown on either bank of the Somme and between that river and Flanders, originally ceded to Burgundy in 1435 and since repurchased by Louis.
1 Calmette and Perinelle, 69.
2 So described by E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 551. It is known only from a despatch by the Milanese ambassador in France, printed in Calmette and Perinelle, 72, n. 2.
3 Calmette, op. cit., 195–6; Scofield, I, 404. Don Pedro died on 29 June 1466.
4 Rymer, Foedera, XI, 562–6 (for the instructions); Scofield, I, 405–7; Calmette and Perinelle, 72–3.
5 P. M. Kendall, Warwick the Kingmaker, 189, claims that ‘at first sight the two men hated each other, politically, viscerally’. But both CC, 551, and Polydore Vergil, 118, merely say that Warwick hated Charolais because of Charles’s marriage to Margaret of York in 1468.
1 Scofield, I, 406, and Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 551, both wrongly attribute to this year French proposals apparently first advanced in 1467. Charolais’s fears of an Anglo-French rapprochement are set forth in the document printed in Calmette and Perinelle, 298–9.
2 Thielemans, op. cit., 420–1, and documents cited there.
3 Calmette and Perinelle, 79–80. Annales, 787, gives the pension as 4,000 marks (£2,666 13s 4d): cf. Scofield, I, 406, and Jacob, op. cit., 551, for the figure of 40,000 gold crowns (about £8,000). Edward was also in touch with various other foreign princes at this time. The chronicler, Gregory, 235, mentions under 1467 the arrival of ambassadors from Castile, Scotland, Naples, the duke of Ferrara, the Emperor Frederick III, and the pope (as well as France, Burgundy and Brittany) – a sign of the growing international acceptance of the Yorkist regime.
1 Rymer, Foedera, XI, 578; Scofield, I, 412–13.
2 For details of the embassy, Calmette and Perinelle, 81–7; Scofield, I, 424–6; and for Louis’s hopes, CSP, Milan, I, 118–20.
3 Ibid., 120.
1 Excerpta Historica, ed. S. Bentley, 171–212 (Chester Herald’s account); Scofield, I, 414–20. Not a single Nevill is mentioned as playing any part.
2 Annales, 786, which claims that he was ill a week later when dismissed from office.
3 Scofield, I, 407; Annales, 789.
4 CCR, 1461–8, 456–7.
5 Pocquet du Haut-Jussé, op. cit., 123; Calmette and Perinelle, 88.
6 The circumstantial account in Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 346–9, though followed by Calmette and Perinelle, 89, exaggerates the hostility of Edward’s reception; cf. Annales, 787, and Scofield, I, 426. Apart from Clarence, however, their reception at Westminster was handled by strong supporters of Burgundy, Hastings, Scales and his brother, John Woodville.
1 Rymer, Foedera, XI, 580–1 (Charles’s ratification of the treaty, 15 July; for Edward’s, 17 July, Scofield, I, 427); Rymer, Foedera, XI, 583–90 (for Castile). Edward had already concluded a treaty with an enemy of France, King Ferdinand I of Naples (Scofield, I, 401–2), and was in active negotiation with another, John II, king of Aragon (Calmette and Perinelle, 98–9).
2 Rymer, Foedera, XI, 591–600; Scofield, I, 430–2; and below, p. 364 and n. 2.
3 Calmette and Perinelle, 95–6 (dates as for marriage-treaty below).
1 Scofield, I, 446–50, 450–3.
2 Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 48 ff., for a good modern description. Lengthy contemporary accounts of the marriage and the subsequent festivities are in Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, III, 101–20, IV, 95–144, and Excerpta Historica, ed. Bentley, 227–39; and see PL, IV, 198–9, for the great impression made on John Pas ton the younger, who was in Margaret’s retinue.
3 Rymer, Foedera, XI, 618–25; Pocquet du Haut-Jussé, op. cit., 128–36.
4 RP, V, 622–4; and for Warwick’s attitude, below, p. 118.
1 Rymer, Foedera, XI, 626–30; Pocquet du Haut-Jussé, op. cit., 138–41; Calmette and Perinelle, 101–2; Scofield, I, 472–3.
2 Pocquet du Haut-Jussé, op. cit., 142; Scofield, I, 473.
3 This was the belief of the Milanese agents in France, one of whom reported (November 1468) an improbable English landing on the French Mediterranean coast (CSP, Milan, I, 126–7).
4 The evidence for Margaret’s plan is a statement in Annales, 792; although dismissed by Scofield, I, 477, it is supported by a Milanese report that Louis had given her seven ships at Rouen, cited by Calmette and Perinelle, 104 n. 3. For the fleet at sea, Annales, 792; Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, 182; and for the reconquest of Jersey (where the castle of Mont Orgeuil had been in French hands since 1461), Scofield, I, 478–80.
5 Kendall, Louis XI, 196–224, esp. 213–14.
1 Rymer, Foedera, XI, 631–5; and, for the relations of England with Brittany and Burgundy, Scofield, I, 483–5; Pocquet du Haut-Jussé, op. cit., 142–4. In 1469 Edward was presented with the collar of the Burgundian order of the Golden Fleece, and Duke Charles was made a Knight of the Garter.
2 See below, pp. 122–4.
3 Annales, 791; Gregory, 237; and below, p. 120.
4 Calmette and Perinelle, 303–5 (Memoir presented to the chancellor of France by Henry VI’s chancellor, Sir John Fortescue, after 17 May 1468).
1 Annales, 785 (the only chronicler to mention it). For details of the great feast provided, see Scofield, I, 399–400. Sixty-two cooks were employed to prepare (amongst a host of other things) 104 oxen, 1,000 sheep, 500 deer, 400 swans, 2,000 geese, 2,000 chickens, and 13,000 jellies, tarts and custards, at what must have been the biggest festivity of the entire fifteenth century.
2 Annales, 789, and above, p. no.
3 CSP, Milan, I, 119 (reported as an accomplished fact); Waurin, ed. Dupont, II, 334, places it immediately after the Woodville marriages of 1464–6, and claims (in a circumstantial story) that Edward heard of it immediately afterwards.
4 Annales, 788, for the dispensation. Edward now had two daughters by Elizabeth Woodville – Elizabeth, to whom Warwick stood godiather, born 11 February 1466, and Mary, born August 1467.
5 For details, see Appendix III.
1 See p. 110, n. 6, above. Though Waurin is demonstrably inaccurate as to detail and can (as Scofield showed, I, 426) be misleading, he had access to much first-hand information. He had been in England during the Bastard’s visit, and in 1469 had personal conversations with Warwick at Calais, apart from drawing upon the considerable amount of material on English a
ffairs which reached the court of Burgundy (Dupont’s Introduction to her edition of Waurin, III, xxxii-iv).
2 CC, 557, says that the three brothers were possessed of such outstanding talents that if they had been able to live without dissensions, ‘such a threefold cord could never have been broken without the utmost difficulty’; Mancini, 63, for his comeliness, ‘worthy of the crown’, and his eloquence; GC, 206, for his remark at the trial of Sir Thomas Cook: when the mayor of London ‘being a replete and lumpish man’ fell into a doze, Clarence ‘said openly in his derision, Speak softly, sirs, for the mayor is asleep’. See also the remark of the contemporary antiquary, John Rous of Warwick (The Rows Roll, ed. W. Courthope, no. 59) that he was ‘right witty and well-visaged’
1 Extensive provision was made for Clarence between August 1462 and January 1463 including forfeited Percy lands – some forty-two manors and lordships – in Northumberland and Yorkshire, the Honour of Richmond in Yorkshire, taken from his brother, Richard, and large estates in the west, forfeited from the earl of Wiltshire. These arrangements proved unsatisfactory for various reasons, and fresh provision was made in August and September 1464, which gave Clarence the lordship and county of Chester during pleasure, some lands in Kent and Surrey, and St Briavels and the Forest of Dean for life. Apart from these he retained the Yorkshire lands of the Percies and the Wiltshire lands mentioned above, and some important reversions. His holdings are detailed in a definitive grant of 2 July 1465 (CPR, 1461–7, 198–90, 212–13, 226–7, 327–8, 331, 362, 454–5). The valuation comes from RP, V, 578, where his lands to the net value of 5,500 marks a year (£3,666 13s 4d) were exempted from the 1467 Act of Resumption, exclusive of reversions worth 1,000 marks extra.
2 CPR, 1461–7, 142, 488–9, 529; 1467–77, 55. From 1466 onwards he was appointed to the commissions of the peace in eighteen counties, chiefly in south-west and south-central England.
3 Annales, 788–9.
1 Polydore Vergil, English History, 118.
2 Annales, 788–9; Waurin, ed. Dupont, III, 193 (report from England to Louis XI by his agent, William Monypenny, 16 January 1468).
3 Annales, 789; second report from Monypenny, 8 March 1468, printed in H. Morice, Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l’histoire de Bretagne, III, 159–61; CSP, Milan, I.
1 RP, V, 618.
2 See below, pp. 406–7.
3 Annales, 788–9; CPR, 1467–77, 55; CCR, 1468–76 (for the bonds, which show Lords Mountjoy and Dudley standing surety for Shrewsbury, and Hastings for Lord Grey).
4 CPR, 1467–77, 55; Annales, 788.
1 Waurin, ed. Dupont, III, 193–4 (Monypenny’s letter of January 1468).
2 Scofield, I, 423; Hist. MSS Comm. Reports, 54 (Beverley Corporation MSS), 142, and 15th Report, App. Part X (Shrewsbury Corporation MSS), 30; R. A. Griffiths, thesis cited above (p. 43).
3 Scofield, I, 423; CPR, 1461–7, 529 (for enquiries into unpaid revenues, 20 March 1466); Evans, Wales in the Wars of the Roses, 165–6. The earl of Worcester had been chief justice of North Wales since 25 November 1461 (CPR, 1461–7, 62), until replaced by William, Lord Herbert, who was also appointed constable of Harlech, on 28 August 1467 (CPR, 1467–77, 41). For Jasper’s invasion, see above, p. 114.
4 Excerpta Historica, ed. Bentley, 227–8. Scofield, I, 456, and Kendall, Warwick, say wrongly that they stayed at Stratford Langthorne, Essex.
5 Apart from the evidence cited below, Richard and George Nevill appear regularly on the witness lists to royal charters throughout 1468, John Nevill less frequently (P.R.O., Charter Rolls, C. 53/195/mm. 6–16). In June and July 1468, Richard and John were appointed to major commissions of oyer and terminer (for the trial of Thomas Cook and others) in the city of London, Middlesex, Surrey and Essex (CPR, 1467–77, 102–3).
1 Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors, 1461–1485’, 159–60.
2 For the breach with the Hanse, see below, pp. 361–2, 365–6.
3 PL, IV, 303–5.
1 Scofield, I, 454–5, 457, 459–62.
2 Ramsay, Lancaster and. York, II, 326 and n. 1; Plumpton Correspondence, 20.
3 Loc. cit.; Hist. MSS Comm. Reports, Various Collections, IV, 206–7 (Salisbury Corporation MSS); and above, pp. 65–6.
1 Plumpton Correspondence, 19–20 (for the arrests and executions); GC, 207 (for the tennis); for Tresham, see above, pp. 67–8.
2 Oxford may have been at liberty by 7 January 1469 (PL, V, 5) and was pardoned all offences on 15 April (CPR, 1467–77, 155; also for Marney’s pardon); for Tresham, Roskell, The Commons and their Speakers, 282–3.
3 The original record of the case is among the Ancient Indictments in the P.R.O., K.B. 9/320, from which the quotation comes. Clarence and Warwick were members of the commission, appointed on 12 December 1468 (CPR, 1467–77, 128), but did not serve; it also included eleven judges and professional lawyers. See also Bellamy, The Law of Treason in the Later Middle Ages, 164–5.
4 Warkworth, Chronicle, 6. For the king’s presence, Hist. MSS Comm. Reports, as above.
1 Warkworth, Chronicle, 11–12; Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 171–3.
2 Wilkinson, Constitutional History of England in the Fifteenth Century, 151. The manifesto is printed in the notes to Warkworth, Chronicle, 47–9.
3 Waurin, ed. Dupont, III, 191.
1 M. M. Postan, ‘The Economic and Political Relations of England and the Hanse from 1400 to 1475’, in E. Power and M. M. Postan, Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, 133, 139–41; and below, pp. 362–6.
2 Above, pp. 55–6, and for a similar reaction in 1475, below, p. 236.
3 Below, pp. 393–4, 404–13.
4 Monypenny’s letter of 8 March 1468 (Morice, op. cit., III, 159–61); Commynes, I, 214–15. The Great Chronicle, 207, is one of several sources which mention Warwick’s generosity: ‘The which earl was evar had in great favour of the commons of this land, by reason of the exceeding household which he daily kept in all countries … ’.
5 ‘The Wars of the Roses’, 112.
Chapter 7
THE YEARS OF CRISIS, 1469–1471
(i) Warwick’s Challenge and Failure, 1460–1470
The two years from June 1469 to May 1471 form a period of political instability without parallel in English history since 1066. Control of the government changed hands three times, and two of these changes involved the crown itself. Warwick’s successful rebellion enabled him for a time to overpower Edward and rule in his name (July-October 1469). Then Edward’s recovery of power led to Warwick’s second rebellion, and his expulsion from the realm in April 1470. His invasion turned the tables on Edward, who had to flee to the Continent and see his throne restored to Henry VI (October 1470-March 1471). Lastly, Edward’s return led to the final overthrow of his Nevill and Lancastrian enemies, the deposition of Henry VI, and his recovery of the throne (March-May 1471). For Edward-the only king of England ever to lose his throne and then recover it – these were the decisive years. His personal triumph in 1471 contributed largely to the greater strength and security of his rule during his second, and more peaceful and prosperous, decade.
In spite of their importance, we know little of the risings in the north which heralded two years of renewed civil war in England. Contemporary narrative accounts are meagre, confused and contradictory, and both the character and chronology of these rebellions remain obscure.1 Trouble first broke out in Yorkshire late in April 1469, when a large assembly of malcontents gathered round a captain calling himself Robin of Redesdale or Robin Mend-All. They appear to have been dispersed by John Nevill, earl of Northumberland, only to regroup later in Lancashire.2 Immediately after, the earl was called upon to deal with another and separate movement of discontent originating in the East Riding of Yorkshire under a leader known as Robin of Holderness, who has been identified (rather uncertainly) as Robert Hillyard, from Winestead, near the Percy family lordship of Pocklington.1 Historians have generally followed the suspect authority of Polydore Vergil in explaining
this second rising as a movement of protest against the much-resented claim by the Hospital of St Leonard at York to take a thrave (or twenty-four sheaves of corn) from each ploughland in the four northern counties. This demand had caused trouble for over a century, and as recently as the previous summer it had been under review by the king and council: after an investigation conducted by Warwick himself and the two chief justices, they had pronounced for the hospital against the ‘withholders’ amongst the East Riding gentry.2 Yet the only really contemporary source to mention this rebellion says nothing of the hospital’s claim, but asserts that the rebels were followers of the Percy family, seeking to bring about the restoration of the young Henry Percy to the earldom of Northumberland.3 Whatever its nature, the rising was efficiently suppressed by John Nevill, who scattered a disorderly force marching on York and beheaded the leader. By the end of May all seems to have been over, though some of the rebels may have joined the much more dangerous movement now taking shape (or reviving) under Robin of Redesdale during June. As he moved southwards from Yorkshire towards the end of June, Robin began to attract large numbers of recruits.4