by Charles Ross
When he finally left Nottingham in October 1481 to make his way towards London, Edward’s embroilment with Scotland was already reacting unfavourably on his continental diplomacy. Here the major event of 1480 had been the signing of a treaty of alliance with Mary and Maximilian of Burgundy. The chief intermediary was his sister, the dowager Duchess Margaret, whose visit to England between June and September 1480 was made the occasion for the customary ceremonies and display. But her serious diplomatic purpose was to get Edward’s aid against France, and, if possible, a full treaty of offensive alliance. To achieve this the hard-pressed Burgundian government was prepared to go to considerable lengths, but the negotiations were hampered by Edward’s intention of driving the hardest possible bargain. Not only did he demand that Maximilian should replace the French pension which Edward could expect to lose if he made an alliance, he also wanted to marry his daughter, Anne, to the heir of Burgundy, without paying any dowry for this wealthy husband.4
Maximilian’s protests were overborne, and his bargaining position was weak. The result was a handsome diplomatic triumph for Edward. In a series of instruments sealed between 1 and 5 August 1480, Maximilian pledged himself to pay Edward 50,000 crowns’ pension annually if he lost his pension from the king of France, as well as promising Philip of Burgundy to marry Anne of York on terms entirely favourable to the English king. All he got in return was permission to recruit 6,000 archers in England to serve in the war against France at Burgundian expense, and Edward’s undertaking that if his attempts to mediate in the struggle between France and Burgundy did not succeed, he would openly declare for the duke.1
This Burgundian treaty of 1480 is a notable monument to the theme of avarice in the foreign policy of Edward’s later years. His main concern seems to have been to exploit Burgundy’s desperate straits to guarantee himself a continued foreign pension, as well as getting an advantageous marriage on the cheap. How far he regarded himself as now committed to Burgundy is not altogether clear. French scholars have argued that the rapprochement with Maximilian was intended as nothing more than a means of blackmailing the king of France.2 But before the treaty was signed Edward personally told his sister Margaret that Lord Howard had reported to him that Louis was now prepared to concede almost all he asked relative to the truce and the marriage of the dauphin and Elizabeth of York, and was even prepared to spend half the yearly revenues of his kingdom to accomplish this purpose; nevertheless, she reported to Maximilian, Edward was willing to go ahead with the treaty. This may indicate either that Edward was exaggerating Louis’s pliancy in order to get better terms from Burgundy, or that he had really ceased to have faith in Louis’s promises. Certainly Louis took the threat of an English attack seriously enough. In a letter written on 5 November 1480, he declared that the English had shown they intended to make war, and his defence preparations included the stationing of Swiss troops in Normandy and the concentration of Scots ships at Dieppe. On the other hand, Edward would not agree to participate openly in Maximilian’s scheme to revive the old triple alliance of England, Burgundy and Brittany, though he did encourage negotiations between the two dukes, conducted in London, which led eventually to the Breton-Burgundian treaty of alliance of 16 April 1482.1 With Brittany herself, England’s relations became closer. Plans for a marriage between Edward, prince of Wales, and Anne, the heiress of Brittany, were already under discussion in the summer of 1480, and some kind of treaty of amity was drawn up in November. In May and June of 1481, agreements were reached on the marriage and on a treaty of mutual aid. Edward was to provide Brittany with 3,000 archers at his own expense for three months, and up to 4,000 more at the duke’s expense, should Brittany be attacked by France. If Edward decided to invade France himself, the duke was to assist him with 3,000 archers for three months. But it is significant that there was no precise commitment from England on whether or when England might invade.2
For these reasons it would not do to assume that English diplomacy in 1480 and early 1481 was merely a manoeuvre to twist the arm of the king of France.3 If this really were his intention, his plan misfired. The first result of Edward’s treaty with Burgundy was Louis’s pointed failure to pay the instalment of the English pension due at Michaelmas 1480. It also provoked him into stirring up the Scots against England. Finally, it encouraged him to explore the idea of a direct settlement with a weakened Maximilian, which would enable him to jettison his commitments to England. Meanwhile, his annoyance with Edward was intense: he brushed aside English offers to mediate between France and Burgundy, and a peace conference planned for October 1480 broke down.4
The early months of 1481 saw increased pressure from Maximilian for more active English measures against France. A Burgundian mission led by the prince of Orange came to England in February to urge that Edward should invade France in the coming summer. The duke’s plans for joint action were similar to those adopted for 1475, but Maximilian showed himself far more accommodating than ever Charles had been. If an invasion should prove impossible, then at least, he asked, England should supply more archers to buttress his own war effort.5 It was here that the Scottish entanglement began decisively to limit England’s freedom of action. As English resources were mobilized against James III, it became clear that Edward could venture nothing substantial on the Continent, despite reassurances from Edward and his councillors that, war with Scotland permitting, he would either invade France or at least send sizeable contingents to Maximilian’s aid. The duke had to be content with a promise from Edward to meet him personally in Calais at Michaelmas.1
This was the more necessary since Edward himself was now seeking a rapprochement with France. In March 1481, whilst the prince of Orange was still in London, and the negotiations for the Breton aid treaty were in process, he sent Thomas Langton to France to explain to Louis that such troops as he had already sent to Maximilian were intended to help the duke to suppress rebellion in Guelders, and were not to be used against France. Although Louis had failed to ratify the preliminaries of 1479, England would continue to respect the truce agreed in 1477, on condition that Louis immediately resumed payment of the English pension and also sent an embassy to London to regulate arrangements for the marriage of Elizabeth of York and the dauphin. If Louis accepted these terms, then the great army now being assembled in England would be sent against the Scots, and not to the Continent. Louis agreed with alacrity, since Edward’s offers implied his abandoning any attempt to get the preliminaries of 1479 ratified as well as any active support for Maximilian. Edward’s reward was the appearance in London on 14 August 1481 of Louis’s agent, Pierre le Roy, bearing 25,000 crowns, the Easter instalment of his pension.2
Amidst the conflicting alternatives of a complex diplomatic situation in 1480–81, Edward’s shift off course towards a reconciliation with France and away from an anti-French coalition may have been influenced, as contemporaries on the Continent believed, by his avarice for French gold and his stubborn hope of carrying through the French marriage. Nor could he seriously contemplate war on France without help from parliament, and his difficulties in raising money between 1472 and 1475, combined with the unpopular outcome of the 1475 expedition, made it unlikely that such help would be readily forthcoming. But the decision to make war on Scotland was more important than either of these considerations. His further decision to continue the war in 1482 proved entirely conclusive in forcing him to abandon any idea of an active anti-French policy on the Continent and deprived him of any lever to force King Louis to make his promises good.
Even to continue the war against Scotland was not without its problems. Money was short and large drafts of cash to Gloucester and Northumberland on the Marches had to be raised in part by a return to borrowing. The high price and scarcity of grain following on the bad harvest of 1481 made it difficult to victual the troops in the north. During the winter of 1481–2 there were signs of a revival of disorder and unrest, especially in the northern counties.1 But in April 1482 a new prospect was opened by the arri
val in England of a suitable pretender to the Scottish throne. James III’s brother, Alexander, duke of Albany, was a kind of Scots Clarence, restless, ambitious and unprincipled. His plots against King James led to his flight to France in 1479, where Louis provided him with a wife, Anne de la Tour, daughter of the count of Boulogne and Auvergne. Edward’s agents got in touch with him late in 1481 and he responded to Edward’s offers to promote his claim to the throne of Scotland. At Fotheringhay on 11 June 1482 a treaty drawn up in the Scots vernacular set forth the terms of Edward’s contract with Albany. In return for recognition as lawful king of Scotland, and English aid to make good his claim, Albany admitted England’s claim to Berwick and the disputed borderlands, promised to deliver Berwick to Edward within a fortnight after his installation in Edinburgh, to do homage and fealty to him, and to break off all Scots confederations or alliances with the king of France. Finally, he was to marry Cecily of York, ‘if the said Alexander can make hymself clere fro all other Women, according to the Lawes of Christian Chyrche’ – a cynical reference to his recent French marriage. Edward now had his puppet-king to focus opposition to King James in Scotland.2
Active preparations for war had been afoot for some time before this treaty was signed. Edward again announced his intention to lead his army in person, and in company with Albany reached Fotheringhay on 3 June, where they were joined by Richard of Gloucester, fresh from a successful raid into south-west Scotland, during which he was said to have taken and set fire to Dumfries and many other towns. But after the signing of the compact with Albany, Edward changed his mind, and decided to return to London, possibly for reasons of ill-health.3 On 12 June Gloucester’s commission as lieutenant-general was renewed, and effective command of the operations against Scotland now passed into his hands. In order to keep the king informed of the progress of the war, a courier system was instituted – the first example of its use in England – with riders stationed at intervals of twenty miles, so that a letter passed at the rate of two hundred miles in two days through a chain of messengers. This arrangement operated successfully from 4 July until 12 October.1
Whilst Edward went south again to Dover, probably to oversee the outfitting of his fleet under Robert Radcliffe, Gloucester and Albany moved rapidly northwards. By 18 June they were in York, where they were handsomely received by the mayor, aldermen and guildsmen of the city. By mid-July a very sizeable English army, numbering perhaps 20,000 men, began to assemble on the Border under Gloucester’s command, with the earl of Northumberland, the marquis of Dorset, Lord Stanley, Sir Edward Woodville and several northern barons as his lieutenants. Faced by this imposing force, the town of Berwick opened its gates to the English, though the citadel still held out, and the invasion had begun.2 The political situation in Scotland scarcely favoured a vigorous or united resistance to the English assault. James III was on hostile terms with many of his barons, who resented his lowborn favourites. Aristocratic discontent with his rule exploded as the Scots army advanced south from Edinburgh to confront the English. James III himself was seized on 22 July, and many of his courtiers were hanged at the Bridge of Lauder; the king was taken back to Edinburgh and placed under guard in the castle. The English army, which had moved forward pillaging and devastating over a large area of Roxburghshire and Berwickshire, was thus able to enter Edinburgh without resistance before the end of July.
The Scots lords and their forces had withdrawn from the capital and were lying at Haddington, fifteen miles to the east, and were only too willing to negotiate. The changeable Albany lost no time in renouncing his new-found claim to the Scots throne in return for a promise that he should be restored to his position and property. This breach of his agreement with Edward seems to have been accepted without objection by the duke of Gloucester.1 The Scots leaders then asked for a treaty of peace with England, and the renewal of former agreements between the two realms, including the proposed marriage of James, duke of Rothesay, and Cecily of York. In reply, Gloucester said that he had no authority from Edward to make any peace settlement upon these terms, but he demanded, as essential preconditions for any settlement, the surrender of Berwick Castíe and the repayment of all monies so far paid for the dowry of Cecily. He seems to have obtained no guarantee about Berwick, but on 4 August the city authorities of Edinburgh entered into a pledge that James’s son should marry Cecily, if that were still Edward’s wish, otherwise they would guarantee the repayment in yearly instalments of all that part of her dowry already paid. They further promised to send James’s sister, Margaret, to England for the long-delayed marriage to Earl Rivers.2
With this undertaking Gloucester seems to have been content, and he now made the very strange decision to leave Edinburgh and return to Berwick, where, on 11 August, all but some 1,700 men of his army were disbanded. He may have been influenced by worry about his long lines of communication and lack of victuals for his troops. Albany’s defection had changed the situation politically, since the only definition of the objectives of the campaign was that contained in the compact with Albany. Fourteenth-century experience had shown that whilst England could launch powerful armies into the Scottish Lowlands, which the Scots could not meet on equal terms, any occupation of Scots territory was likely to prove unstable and highly expensive and too dependent on the weather-cock loyalties of the Scots nobility.3 Yet Gloucester’s precipitate withdrawal from Edinburgh threw away a great advantage: as commander of a powerful army installed in the capital he could surely have dictated far more satisfactory terms to a distracted Scots government. He may have felt, following Albany’s defection, that he lacked instructions on major issues, but he seems to have made no attempt to await further direction from the king in England, with whom the courier system ensured rapid communication. Gloucester’s lack of resolution meant that the only practical outcome of an expensive campaign was the recovery of Berwick-upon-Tweed – the castle finally surrendered after a siege on 24 August – and the signing of a short truce to last until 4 November.1
However much Edward might choose to exult over Berwick’s recapture in a letter to the pope on 25 August, it was but small return for the expenditure of so much money and effort. At least one well-informed contemporary believed that Edward was angry at the outcome of the campaign, and criticizes Gloucester for his premature retreat:2
What he effected in this expedition, what sums of money, again extorted under the name of benevolences, he uselessly squandered away, the affair in its results sufficiently proved … [after relating the capture of Berwick]. This trifling, I really know not whether to call it gain or loss – for the safe-keeping of Berwick each year swallows up ten thousand marks – at this period diminished the resources of the king and kingdom by more than a hundred thousand pounds.
The chronicler exaggerated, but his point was valid. Whatever might have been achieved in Scotland after Albany’s defection, the advantage had been lost and nothing was settled. Perhaps the fault was not wholly Gloucester’s, for there are marked signs of indecision and lack of grasp in Edward’s conduct of policy in these last few months of the reign. Not until October 1482 did he decide to call off Cecily’s marriage with the future James IV, and demand the promised repayment of the marriage portion. About the same time the marriage planned for Rivers and Margaret of Scotland was also dropped. During the autumn he made no attempt to come to terms with King James, and the short truce was not renewed. By mid-November he seems to have decided to renew the war with Scotland in the coming year.3
If the invasion of Scotland had caused Edward little satisfaction, events on the Continent brought him even greater disillusion. In January 1482 a Burgundian mission under the Comte de Chimay arrived in England bearing an urgent appeal from Maximilian. He again urged Edward to invade France in the coming summer, and on no account must he fail to send the 5,000 or 6,000 troops he had promised. Edward was to be reminded again of his past undertakings, and to be told that, if reports that he had signed a new truce with France proved true, this would mean total
ruin and destruction for Maximilian’s cause.1 Yet Edward proved merely evasive. His war with Scotland, he said, prevented him from invading France that year and even from sending any troops to aid Maximilian. The best he could advise was that Maximilian should make a truce with France, and wait for the expected death of Louis XI (who had suffered two strokes in March and September 1481, and was now clearly a deeply ailing man).2 Only if Louis refused a truce and then invaded Burgundian territory would England send the promised troops. A further mission in March from Maximilian’s agent, Pierre Puissant, got no more satisfactory answer from Edward, in spite of the duke’s warnings that he could hold out little longer, since the Members of Flanders were already pressing for peace, and he doubted his ability to hold them in line. A further peace conference had been arranged to meet at Arras and he was proposing to send representatives.3
This was Edward’s last chance, for on 27 March 1482 Mary of Burgundy died from injuries received in a riding accident. The estates of Flanders and Brabant, loyal to her dynasty but dissatisfied with Maximilian, took charge of her children and opened peace negotiations with King Louis. From the French standpoint this opened new opportunities, for a marriage between the dauphin of France and Mary’s baby daughter, Margaret, could bring with it, as her dowry, Artois and the county of Burgundy or Franche-Comté. Any lingering hope Maximilian might have of aid from England was finally destroyed in September 1482, when Louis published the hitherto secret truce he had signed with Edward in the previous autumn. Maximilian could no longer control the representatives of Flanders and Brabant, and on 23 December France and Burgundy came to terms at the Treaty of Arras. Its conditions included the marriage of Margaret of Austria and the dauphin Charles and the transfer of Artois and the county of Burgundy, and Maximilian’s allies, England and Brittany, were excluded from the peace. For Edward this meant not only the loss of his long-cherished French marriage but also of his French pension. Louis now had no further need to humour him, and the next instalment of the pension, due at Michaelmas 1482, was never paid.1