by Charles Ross
Another problem which confronted Edward in the autumn of 1469 was to devise a new political settlement in Wales. To fill the vacuum left by the death of the all-powerful and respected earl of Pembroke, he now chose to rely upon Richard of Gloucester, who first emerges at this time as Edward’s trusted and responsible lieutenant. Appointed Constable of England for life on 17 October (in spite of the claims of Scales), in November he became chief justice of North Wales and chief steward and surveyor of the principality of Wales and the earldom of March, and, on 7 February 1470, he replaced Warwick as chief justice and chamberlain of South Wales during the minority of Pembroke’s heir.3 Lesser offices in Wales were entrusted to Lord Ferrers, Sir Roger Vaughan, Sir William Stanley and John Donne, who was now made especially responsible for West Wales.4 Edward also had at his disposal a variety of lands and offices which had been accumulated by Humphrey Stafford, earl of Devon. Some were given to John, Lord Dinham, who gradually took Devon’s place as the government’s chief supporter in the far west, and to the young John Stafford, younger son of the duke of Buckingham killed at Northampton, whom Edward was to create earl of Wiltshire in January 1470.1 The largest share, however, went to John Nevill, earl of Northumberland. On 27 February 1470 most of the estates of the former Courtenay earls of Devon were granted to him, apparently as compensation for the extensive Percy lands in the north which he had to surrender when Edward gave them to Henry Percy on 1 March, three weeks before he was restored to his ancestral earldom.2
Warwick’s brief triumph in the summer of 1469 had not solved his problems. He had destroyed some of the royal favourites, and temporarily reduced the influence of the Woodvilles. Through his son-in-law, Clarence, and his nephew, Bedford, he had brought the Nevills closer to the throne if Edward had no male heir. Yet he had not succeeded in re-establishing himself as the king’s principal councillor with a great influence on the formulation of policy. Warwick now returned to the pattern of 1460. Government through a puppet king having failed, he turned to the more desperate remedy of replacing Edward by a king of his own making, George, duke of Clarence. Warwick’s contumacious ambition lies at the root of the upheavals to follow. The degree of miscalculation which this scheme implied is telling evidence of his want of political judgement. Even if Edward were not very popular, the events of the summer and early autumn had shown that public opinion in general was not anxious to see him driven from the throne. Nor was Clarence an especially attractive substitute for his elder brother. Moreover, the opposition to the king stood out as nakedly selfish and factious, for in 1470 there was no pretence of championing popular grievances, and no programme for the reform of government. Above all, Edward was now on his guard. Although he went to considerable lengths to give Warwick and Clarence the chance to avoid charges of treason, he was far less complacent about the dangers of popular disturbances or their connection with the treachery of great men. In contrast to his actions in 1469, he responded to the crisis of spring 1470 with energy and decision.
The spark-point of the renewed upheavals was provided by a series of disturbances in Lincolnshire in the early months of the year. According to the contemporary but official narratives of these events, they were fomented from the first by Warwick and Clarence. Some modern writers have regarded these narratives as wholly propaganda attempts by the king to brand them with treason.1 Others, more reasonably, have doubted whether the ‘great rebels’ actually instigated the risings, but believe that they were ready enough to exploit them;2 and there can be no question but that Warwick and Clarence soon began to behave in a treasonable fashion (as we shall see). Other historians have chosen to regard the risings as essentially Lancastrian in character; but, although Lincolnshire was a county with strong former Lancastrian connections, especially among the great landowning families, this view can be discarded as having no justification in the evidence.3
The trouble sprang from a private feud between Sir Thomas Burgh, of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, who was Edward’s master of the horse, and a former knight of the body, and Richard, Lord Welles and Willoughby, whose chief estates lay in the south-east part of the county. Welles, his son, Sir Robert, and his brothers-in-law, Sir Thomas de la Lande and Sir Thomas Dymmock, attacked and destroyed Burgh’s manor house, carried off his goods and chattels, and drove him from the shire.4 Such incidents were far from rare in fifteenth-century England, and only a month later Berkeley and Talbot supporters clashed in a minor pitched battle near Nibley Green in Gloucestershire, which ended in the death of Thomas Talbor, Viscount Lisle, and many of his men.5 What gave the Lincolnshire affair a wider importance was the king’s decision to intervene, in order to restore the peace and demonstrate the royal authority in person. On 4 March he announced in a letter to Coventry that he intended to leave at once for the north, and asked them to send troops to join him at Grantham on 12 March. Welles and Dymmock had already been summoned to appear before the king at Westminster.1 News of the king’s descent upon the north produced widespread rumours in Yorkshire that he did not intend to honour the general pardon granted earlier to all former rebels, and that his intent was to ‘come thither and utterly destroy those that late made commotion there’.2 Similar fears of a Bloody Assize were also strong in Lincolnshire, a county which had sent many men to join Redesdale’s rebellion; it was reported that ‘the king’s judges should sit, and hang and draw a great number of the commons’.1 Whether or not under the influence of agents sent by Warwick and Clarence, Sir Robert Welles now set himself up as ‘great captain of the commons of Lincolnshire’, and on 4 March he caused proclamations to be made throughout the county for an assembly to meet at Ranby Hawe near Lincoln two days later to resist the king, who was ‘coming to destroy the commons of the said shire’.2
When the news of Welles’s call to arms reached him, Edward was already at Waltham Abbey in Essex (7 March), in company with Arundel, Hastings, Henry Percy and other lords.3 As he moved north to Royston, on 8 March, he received further and more alarming news, from Lord Cromwell’s steward at Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire, that the rebels were making for Stamford, where they were to be joined by assemblies from Yorkshire and other counties to the number of 100,000 men. He still seems to have had no great suspicion of Warwick and Clarence, for, on the same day, letters arrived from the duke, saying that he and the earl would join the king on his journey north, to which Edward responded by sending them commissions to array troops in Warwickshire and Worcestershire. The next day he pushed on twenty-one miles north to Huntingdon, where he was joined by the captive rebels, Welles and Dymmock, who had been sent on after him from London; and he then caused Welles to write to his son, Sir Robert, demanding his submission, otherwise his father and Dymmock would be put to death.
By Sunday, 11 March, Edward was a further twenty-one miles north at Fotheringhay. There he received news that the rebels were heading for Leicester for a rendezvous on the following day with a force under Warwick’s command. The rebels, directed by Warwick, planned to allow the king to proceed northwards: he would thus be cut off from London and threatened from two sides by the Yorkshire insurgents and the troops of Warwick and Welles. But on the Monday Sir Robert Welles received his father’s letter and turned back towards Stamford. Edward now moved confidently against the Lincolnshire men. Reaching Stamford on the same day (12 March), he discovered that the rebels lay at Empingham, some five miles west, and were disposed to fight; after ordering the summary execution of Lord Welles and Dymmock, he then ‘incontinent took the field’. The result was more a rout than a battle, with the rebels discarding clothing as they fled to give the engagement the name of ‘Lose-Cote Field’. By nightfall they had been dispersed, and the king was safely back in his lodgings at Stamford.
The official chronicle tells us that the complicity of Warwick and Clarence in the rising first became obvious during the battle, when the rebels had advanced crying ’A Clarence! A Clarence! A Warrewike/’; some of them, including Sir Robert Welles, wore the duke’s livery; and treasonable
messages from the duke and earl were found in an abandoned helmet. Whether or not he was now convinced of their defection, Edward still hoped to avoid an outright breach, calculating perhaps that the failure of the rising might bring them to a timely and discreet submission. Messages were sent directing them to disband the forces they had raised under their commissions of array, and come to the king only ‘with convenient number for their estates’. They told Edward’s messenger, John Donne, that they would do so, but were observed by him to set forth in the direction of Burton-on-Trent.
On 14 March the royal army reached Grantham, where Sir Robert Welles and other leaders of the Lincolnshire rising were brought before the king. Upon examination, they confessed openly (at least according to the official chronicle) that Warwick and Clarence were ‘partners and chief provokers of all their treasons’, and that their purpose had been to put Clarence on the throne. News now came in of hostile gatherings in Richmondshire, where John, Lord Scrope of Bolton, Sir John Conyers (‘Robin of Redesdale’), and other kinsmen and friends of Warwick were raising his Wensleydale connection. Probably about the same time he heard news of a separate rising in the West Country, almost certainly stirred up by Clarence, and led by six members of the Courtenay family. John Nevill, earl of Northumberland, was commissioned to array the king’s lieges in Cumberland and Westmorland against the northern rebels, and orders were issued for the arrest of the Courtenay dissidents.’ But when news of Edward’s victory in Lincolnshire reached them, the Yorkshire rebels dispersed.1
Edward was now in position to take a firmer though still diplomatic line with Warwick and Clarence. In reply to further ‘pleasant writings’ from them, saying they would join, him at Retford, he despatched Garter King of Arms to command their appearance before him. Clarence was told that the king would ‘entreat you according to the nigh-ness of our blood and our laws’, but if he and Warwick did not cease ‘that unlawful assembly of our people in perturbation and contempt of our peace and commandment’, Edward would proceed to punishment. The rebel lords replied by demanding a safe-conduct for themselves and their fellowship, together with pardons for themselves ‘and all the lords and others that had taken their party’. After consulting his own lords, Edward replied in angry tones. He would treat them ‘as a sovereign lord oweth to use and entreat his subjects, for his ancient enemies of France would not desire so large a surety for their coming to his royal presence’. He could not be too liberal of his pardons, for ‘it should be too perilous and too evil example to all other subjects in like case’. They must now come to his presence or face the consequences.
Edward had every reason for confidence. The royal army had now been swelled by the retinues of the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the earl of Worcester and Lord Mountjoy, who had joined him as he moved north, and probably by the great midland connection of Lord Hastings; and local levies were coming in under the commissions of array sent to twelve eastern and south-eastern counties between 8 February and 2 March.1 When Edward left Doncaster in pursuit of the rebels on Tuesday, 20 March, it was reported that ‘were never seen in England so many goodly men, and so well arrayed in a field’.2
In contrast, the political isolation of Warwick and Clarence now became apparent. After their flight to France, Edward ordered the seizure of the lands and property of fifty-three of their supporters.3 An analysis of this list shows that they had commanded the support of a number of substantial country gentry. Apart from the four leaders of the Lincolnshire rising, all then dead, they included eleven knights and sixteen esquires, of whom no fewer than seventeen sat in parliament either before or after 1470, many as knights of the shire.4 But many had ties of professional self-interest with either the duke or the earl, such as Sir Walter Wrottesley of Staffordshire or Sir Edward Grey, who were members of Warwick’s council. Others, like Sir Hugh Courtenay (whose son, Edward, was restored to the earldom of Devon in 1485), were men of Lancastrian sympathies who remained loyal to the cause of Henry VI during the Readeption and later. Others were former Lancastrians like Sir Nicholas Latimer who turned to rebellion for reasons of private discontent. Some may have been inspired by bitter memories from the past, like the Surrey esquire, George Browne, whose father, Sir Thomas, had been executed by the Yorkist leaders when they entered London in 1460. Of those charged with treason, at least nine were able to obtain pardons from Edward soon after.1 Some fell into the king’s hands at Southampton in April 1470, and were nastily put to death by the earl of Worcester. Many escaped with their leaders to France. But it is a sign of Edward’s persistent generosity to his opponents that most of these men survived both this crisis, and their later support of Henry VI, to prosper in Edward’s second decade.
A more significant feature of the rebellion of 1470 is the failure of Warwick and Clarence to attract any support from their fellow-peers. The earl’s brother-in-law, John de Vere, earl of Oxford, though he had taken no active part in the rising, found it prudent to flee to France. The loyalty of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, was suspected at the time, but he seems to have made no overt move.2 Warwick certainly hoped for help from another brother-in-law, that shifty trimmer, Thomas, Lord Stanley, for, on 20 March, as Edward took up their pursuit, they left Chesterfield for Manchester to seek his aid. But he had no wish to commit himself to a discredited cause, and may, in any case, have been prevented from supporting them by a clash with Richard of Gloucester, coming up from Wales to his brother’s aid.3 Even John Nevill, earl of Northumberland, showed no disposition to risk life and fortune for his brother’s sake, and indeed gave valuable help in suppressing the Yorkshire rising.1 The English baronage in 1470 showed little sympathy for a cause based on nothing more appealing than personal ambition and wounded pride. Faced by this lack of response, Warwick and Clarence now had no choice but to flee the realm and seek safety (as they hoped) in Calais.
Meanwhile, the king, after ordering the execution of Sir Robert Welles and Richard Warin, captain of the Lincolnshire footmen, before the entire army at Doncaster on 19 March, set out the following day in pursuit of Warwick and Clarence. Finding them flown from Derbyshire, he checked his march and turned towards York, partly because he feared a lack of supplies for his large army in the Pennine uplands, and partly to place himself between the rebel leaders and ‘the strongest of the north part, whereupon they hoped and would have been fain joined with’. At York he received the submission of Scrope, Conyers and the other northern insurgents, and on 24 March issued a proclamation against Warwick and Clarence. If they appeared before him by 28 March, he would have them in his grace and favour. If not, they were to be treated as rebels and traitors, and a reward of £1,000 in cash or £100 yearly in land was offered to their fortunate captor. This much-publicized patience was, however, a little specious, for the previous day he had written to his deputy-lieutenant in Ireland, Edmund Dudley, announcing that he had replaced Clarence as lieutenant by Worcester, and that he was to refuse all obedience, aid and comfort to the duke and earl as rebels and traitors. Similar orders were sent to Calais.2
Edward’s final act during his five-day stay at York was the restoration on 25 March of Henry Percy to his father’s forfeited earldom of Northumberland. The king had obviously contemplated this move for some time, for on 27 October he released the Percy heir, who had been in custody since 1464, from his imprisonment in the Tower. He then swore fealty to Edward: T faith and truth shall bear to you as my sovereign liege lord … of life and limb and of earthly worship, for to live and die against all earthly people.’3 John Nevill was compensated on the same day by promotion to the marquessate of Montagu. The lands he had been given in south-western England on 27 February were a good deal more than a ‘magpie’s nest’, as he scornfully described them, but they were not an adequate compensation for the great Percy estates in the north which he had to surrender; and on 24 June he had to give up his office of Warden of the East March to the new earl.1 This move is the more surprising in view of the admirable service which John Nevill had rendered to E
dward, and his conspicuous loyalty to the king, even against the pull of family ties. Presumably Edward had come to the conclusion that only the traditional influence of the Percy family, now wielded by a man who owed much to Edward, could command the turbulence of the north. Presumably, too, he hoped that Montagu’s new title, the dukedom given to his son, George of Bedford, and a royal bride for the latter, might mollify him for the loss of his princely northern earldom, Percy’s restoration, though it forfeited the loyalty of Montagu, was to prove invaluable to Edward in the critical period following his landing in 1471, but ultimately it contributed to the downfall of his dynasty.2
(ii) Edward’s Deposition and Exile
About 27 March 1470, Edward left York in pursuit of his ‘great rebels’. Calling troops to join him on the way, he moved through Nottingham, Coventry and Wells to Exeter, where he arrived on 14 April – a ride of 290 miles in 18 days. By now the birds had flown. Taking with them the countess of Warwick and her daughters – with Duchess Isabel of Clarence now heavy in pregnancy – they sailed from Devon for Calais. Warwick had not forgotten that a navy could be as vital a political asset as an army. His first thought was to increase his strength by securing his great ship Trinity, and perhaps others, berthed at Southampton. But Anthony Woodville, the new Earl Rivers, whose naval squadron was fitting out there for service in the Channel, was not to be caught unawares, as he and his father had been at Sandwich in 1460, and the rebel attack was beaten off with the loss of both ships and men.
At Calais a further disappointment awaited the refugees. Entry was refused, and they had to withdraw out of range of the guns of the fortress. Actual command in Calais at this time was in the hands of Warwick’s deputy, John, Lord Wenlock, but the garrison as a whole remained loyal to Edward, partly through the efforts of a Gascon exile, Gaillard, Lord Duras, and partly through promises of aid from the duke of Burgundy. Wenlock may have felt that to admit Warwick would have been dangerous both to the earl and to his own position. At Warwick’s insistence, wine was sent out to the ships for the comfort of the duchess of Clarence, who was now in childbirth – the mother survived, though not the child – but there was nothing else to encourage the rebels. Privately advised by Wenlock that Calais was a mousetrap, Warwick now decided to seek the aid of the king of France.1