Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  The personal activity and support of the king was a vital element in the entire process of law enforcement. The Paston Letters reveal in detail how close an interest Edward took in the affairs of this particular corner of his realm, especially in the early years of his reign. In July 1461 Thomas Denyes thought it expedient ‘that the king were informed of the demeaning of the shire’. The king’s will and concern was made known through the mouths of his servants. Justice Yelverton said in December 1461 that ‘the king had commanded him to say that if there were any man, poor or rich, that had cause to complain of any person he should put up his bill … the king would have his laws kept… he was displeased with the manner of their gathering, and would have it amended’. Sir Thomas Montgomery, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk from 7 November 1461, said a month later that ‘he would neither spare for good, nor love, nor fear, but that he would let the king have knowledge of the truth’. The king’s interest was shown too in his selection of men for local office, often men known locally to be close to Edward. Thus in December 1461 Yelverton could say that he and Montgomery had come down ‘to set a rule in the country’, and of Montgomery he remarked ‘as for a knight there was none in the king’s house that might worse a be for bore [i.e., ill-spared] than the Sheriff might at this time’. Shortly before, in October, Sir John Paston had failed to answer two royal summons to appear before the king, sent under the privy seal by two yeomen of the chamber. His disobedience provoked a royal outburst: ‘we will send him another tomorrow,’ said the angry Edward, ‘and by God’s mercy, if he come not then he shall die for it. We will make all other men beware by him how they shall disobey our writing.’ When he did appear he found himself flung in the Fleet prison, along with Sir John Howard, the sheriff of Norfolk, whose dispute with him had occasioned the royal summons.1 Edward’s agents were at pains to present him as a king who was at once well informed, benevolent to the well disposed, but sharp to correct the wrongdoer. Thus Yelverton in 1461: ‘he [the king] conceiveth that the whole body of the shire is well disposed and that the ill disposed people is but a corner of the whole shire … [the] misdoing groweth not of their own disposition but of the abbetment and stirring of some ill disposed persons which is understood and known to the king’s highness’. If any complainant would not accept Yelverton and Montgomery’s rule, then the king himself ‘should set the rule’. Any false or malicious complaints would be sharply punished. Or Justice Peter Ardern in February 1464: ‘the king wills that justice be had’.2 In the second decade of the reign we hear less from the Pastons of such direct royal interventions, probably because the county had become more peaceful; but they were still forthcoming when needed. In August 1473, for example, orders were sent to the sheriffs of Yorkshire, Cumberland and Westmorland, to express the king’s displeasure at the continued forcible occupation of Hornby Castle by Sir James and Sir Robert Harrington: it was in ‘contempt of his laws, to the worst example of all his well disposed lieges; which his highness will not of his royal duty suffer to remain unpunished’.3 Later still the king is to be found acting as arbitrator in one of those disputes about land which had caused so much trouble in the past. In October 1479, there having been ‘great variance’ between John, Lord Cobham, and his stepfather, Robert Palmer, esquire, over a group of manors in the West Country, both parties were summoned before the king, and bound over in the huge sum of 50,000 marks to stand by the king’s award. This was made ‘after great deliberation’, and in witness of his action the king signed the letter close setting forth the terms of his decision.4

  Edward’s promise to tour the realm and deal with serious disturbances of the peace was no idle boast. Even before it was made, he had visited the West Country and the Welsh Borders to show the majesty of the royal person, to do justice, and assert his authority. In the early years of the reign especially, the king, often in company with several great lords and a group of justices, was as peripatetic as any twelfth-century king. In 1462 he made a judicial progress to the east midlands. In January 1464, with the two chief justices, Markham and Danby, he descended upon Gloucester to deal with a local feud between the townsmen and the men of the shire, and his arrival saw the setting up of a commission of oyer and terminer. This was appointed on 5 February and after extremely swift action in summoning juries and hearing cases, all was done by 10 February. Five days later he was on his way to Cambridge to deal with disturbances there, and soon after he was punishing rioters in Dartford, Kent. In 1467 he went to the north midlands to look into a feud between his own supporters, and in 1469 made a semi-judicial progress through East Anglia. Others followed, though less frequently, in the second part of the reign, in 1473, 1475 and 1476. In Hampshire and Wiltshire in November 1475, where returning troops were running amok, he acted ruthlessly, sparing no one, not even his own ministers and servants, according to the Croyland Chronicler.1 How much people hoped from a royal visit to their locality may be illustrated again from the Paston correspondence. In 1469, for example, the Pastons hoped that if only they could persuade the king to see for himself the devastation wrought by the duke of Suffolk, they at last could get redress against this powerful enemy.2 The personal appearance of the king was often the only answer men could think of to remedy serious disorder. In 1475 the commons petitioned against major disorders in Herefordshire and Shropshire, committed both by the men of those shires and from the adjacent Marches of Wales, whereof, they said, no remedy could be had ‘without your high presence there’, or at least ‘great might and power sent by your highness into those parts’; and it was apparently in response to this that Edward sent the queen, the prince of Wales, ‘many great lords spiritual and temporal, and many other notable persons, as well as your judges, as others of great honour and discretion’, to deal with the problem.3 Even as late as May 1482 the council of the Duchy of Lancaster, sorrowfully surveying the continuing disorders within the county palatine, urgently hoped that Edward would visit Lancashire in person to provide the necessary correction.4

  Where treason was involved, the king was often at pains to supervise the proceedings personally. In autumn 1461 the rebel Sir Baldwin Fulford was brought before the king in Bristol before being tried. In 1468 the Lancastrian agent Cornelius was brought into the king’s presence at the monastery of Stratford, and it was probably Edward’s personal decision which three days later landed him in the Tower, there to be tortured in the hope of incriminating his confederates. In 1469 the trial of Hungerford and Courtenay was delayed until Edward arrived in Salisbury in time to hear the verdict pronounced. That very conspicuous villain, Henry Bodrugan, and his associates, were to be brought before the king in person when arrested in 1474.1

  A limited but useful role in the investigation of treason and the repression of major crime was played by the king’s council. Professor Baldwin believed that at least in the early years of the reign the royal council in its judicial capacity reached an ultimate point of weakness, largely because of its inability to compel offenders to appear before it, and that instead major cases were generally summoned to appear before the king in chancery. Only after 1468 does the council’s authority seem to strengthen.2 This, however, seems to be a mistaken view. Between 1461 and 1463 it is impossible to distinguish between the kind of cases considered by council and chancery, and although between 1463 and 1468 a majority of writs summoned men to appear before chancery rather than council, this was probably a matter of administrative convenience, reflecting an attempt to relieve the burden of work of a council much preoccupied with administrative and financial problems. The jurisdictions of the two were by no means mutually exclusive.3

  In any event the council in its judicial capacity was not regarded as a major tribunal to enforce the law. It retained a residual authority derived from the king himself to do justice where other means were lacking, especially where persons of great might were concerned. But it did not initiate actions itself, nor did the king use it for this purpose. Its judicial business was usually on petitions from individuals or re
sulted from the work of informers. It did not pass judgements involving the loss of life and limb, and generally it merely referred complaints for action to the proper common-law authorities. Thus in 1482 a petitioner sought for justice against one William Idle, who with a large number of rioters had committed an act of forcible dispossession of property, and was being maintained in his quarrel by none other than the king’s brother-in-law, the duke of Suffolk – hence the appeal to the council. The case was simply sent by letter bearing the royal sign-manual to Sir William Stonor, a knight of the body, Humphrey Forster, esquire, and their fellow-justices of the peace in Oxfordshire.1 Otherwise a commission of oyer and terminer might be appointed to deal with the matter. Edward’s reign saw no serious effort to extend conciliar jurisdiction at the expense of the common-law agencies.

  What the council could do in its judicial capacity – for this purpose it often sat in the Star Chamber, though there was as yet no Court of Star Chamber2 – was to provide improved methods of investigation. Its evidence was presented in writing, and it could seek evidence on matters of fact from outside sources without reliance on juries. It could make use of informers, whose activities were encouraged in the Yorkist period – under the act against liveries of 1468, for example, an informer was to be rewarded with half of any property forfeited by the accused.3 Parties summoned before the council could be subjected to inquisitorial interrogation, though this rarely involved physical duress. The use of torture to obtain information was almost unknown, and only two instances can be traced in Edward’s reign, both in connection with a major treason enquiry.4 But the new practice of examination, with the opportunity to obtain reliable information, to cross-check it and to re-examine, gave conciliar methods an obvious advantage in treason enquiries, where the council played an increasing part in collecting and preparing evidence. Thence it spread gradually into the common law. In November 1482, for example, Earl Rivers and other commissioners appointed to investigate a feud in Norfolk were instructed first to examine the parties and put their findings into writing: only then were they to proceed to enquire by jury into the alleged felonies.5

  How effective was the Yorkist campaign against disorder? From the evidence of the Paston Letters, it has been argued that there was a great improvement in the level of public order. The vast difference in atmosphere between the letters of the 1460s, preoccupied by fear and violence, and those of the period after 1472, concerned with ‘normal’ politics, could not have occurred if life had not been more peaceful in Edward’s second reign.1 Dr Bellamy reached a similar conclusion about the results of two decades of strong government. The Yorkists did not deserve their reputation for judicial ruthlessness, but ‘even more praiseworthy was their success by established and even antiquated methods in reducing endemic disorder to manageable proportions and thereby setting the stage for the final assault on local disturbance’.2 Elsewhere it has been suggested that the growing concentration of the commissions of oyer and terminer on cases of treason implies that a strong government was now more capable of dealing with serious crime other than treason through more regular tribunals.3

  But there are a number of reasons and a variety of evidence for taking a more sceptical view. Clearly, in the suppression of treason and insurrection Edward had enjoyed a considerable measure of success. Until his premature death and the minority of his son provoked lethal dissensions amongst the Yorkist magnates, no sensible man could have predicted the overthrow of the dynasty only two years later. Much of the disorder of the early years of the reign, as we have seen, was linked either with treason or with the violence let loose by civil war, and once the Lancastrian-Nevill challenge had been defeated, some of the earlier violence was bound to disappear, as it does from the Paston correspondence. In any event the often-quoted Paston evidence must be used with the greatest caution. Much distortion has been introduced into our view of fifteenth-century English history by rash generalization from the particular conditions of the Pastons’ East Anglia. This was a region where several great magnate interests – York, Mowbray, de la Pole, de Vere – had grappled with each other in the 1450s and 1460s. With York enthroned, de Vere removed in 1471, and Mowbray extinct by 1476, local competition amongst the magnates inevitably declined. East Anglia is arguably not a ‘typical’ area. But was English society in general more peaceful and law-abiding by 1483? And had the ability of the mighty and their minions to create violence and pervert justice been seriously reduced?

  The commons in parliament evidently thought otherwise. In the early years they seem to have exercised a certain patience with a king still harassed by rebellion, and who had already promised in 1461 to take vigorous action against wrongdoing. Bishop Nevill’s opening speech to the parliament of 1463 reaffirmed the royal preoccupation with its theme of how justice should be kept.1 But in 1467 the commons called the king’s attention to the increase of murders, riots and other outrages, and asked for urgent measures to enforce the laws; and the king in reply promised stern action. The second session of the same parliament (May-June 1468) saw the passing of the major act against unlawful retaining. That there was justification for the commons’ concern is shown in the serious dispute amongst Yorkist supporters in Derbyshire at the end of 1467, in the reference to ‘the great riots and oppressions done to our subjects’ mentioned as the reason for commissions of oyer and terminer in six midland counties at the end of 1467, and in the king’s own decision to surround himself with a bodyguard of two hundred chosen valets and archers when he went to Coventry to keep Christmas in that year.2 But the 1472–5 parliament, which had before it a number of petitions for the redress of serious crimes, was still deeply concerned about the problem, especially abuses of the system of livery and maintenance which still went largely unpunished. They complained especially of,

  the great abominable murders, robberies, extortions, oppressions, and other manifold maintenances, misgovernances, forcible entries … affrays … committed and done by such persons as either be of great might or else favoured under persons of great power, in such wise as their outrageous demerits as yet remain unpunished … to the great discouraging of your well-ruled and true liegemen, and to the great emboldishing of all rioters and misgoverned persons …

  and they went on to ask for the enforcement of existing statutes directed against these evils. They asked further that proclamation should be made throughout the realm of the relevant statutes and the penalties to be incurred under them. They also called attention to the special disorders in the Welsh Marches, where ‘the outrageous demeaning of Welshmen’ had been abetted by the keepers of castles. Later in this parliament they petitioned against the acquittal of evildoers indicted for riot and felony in Herefordshire, in spite of the king’s pledge that they should be punished.3 Finally, in the last parliament of the reign (January-February 1483), they returned to the charge, asking for the more vigorous enforcement of the criminal-law statutes and the legislation against labourers, beggars and vagabonds, and the granting of liveries.4

  Like most medieval petitioners, the commons may have been prone to exaggeration, but the government never questioned the truth of their complaints. Indeed, on more than one occasion it publicly admitted the extent of lawlessness and disorder in the country, although inclined to regard it as a consequence of civil strife. Thus in his address to the parliament of 1472 the chancellor advanced as one reason for an invasion of France that it would keep the ‘multitude of misdoers’ occupied elsewhere. He spoke eloquently of

  the multitude of riotous people which have at all times kindled the fire of this great division [the civil war of 1469–71] is so spread over all and every coast of this realm, committing extortions, oppressions, robberies, and other great mischiefs, that if for them a speedy remedy be not found, it is to doubt that the prosperity, wealth and richesse, so greatly desired, can not be had nor purchased surely to the king’s people.1

  There was no doubt a certain truth in the suggestion that civil war gave a free rein to private vendetta,
like the Berkeley-Talbot feud in Gloucestershire which ended in a pitched battle at Nibley Green in 1470, the Harrington-Stanley feud in Lancashire between 1469 and 1473, and the long-running quarrel in the midlands between the Harcourts and the Staffords of Grafton, which flared up again in November 1470, with the murder of Sir Robert Harcourt by the Bastard of Grafton and 150 of his retainers.2 But there is also an air of resigned hopelessness in the chancellor’s suggestion that only a foreign war could solve the problem by engaging the criminally disposed against the national enemy.

  The misfortunes of the Paston family in the 1460s are a well-known case-history in the workings of ‘bastard feudalism’, and need be mentioned only briefly here. An air of constant crisis hangs over the correspondence as they struggled to fend off the armed attacks of powerful neighbours by enlisting the aid of equally powerful neighbours. What is striking is their inability to get any redress against their mighty enemies. Even when the king came to Norfolk in 1469 and surveyed the ruins of Hellesdon manor, devastated by the duke of Suffolk’s men four years before, he would promise no action. They were told they should have put in bills to the justices of oyer and terminer when the king was at Norwich. Caister Castle, taken from the Pastons by the duke of Norfolk after a veritable five-week siege in the summer of 1469, was not finally recovered until after Norfolk’s death in 1476.1 The support of men like Norfolk and Suffolk was far too important to Edward in these troubled years for the king to risk offending them. But if things improved for the Pastons in the later years of the reign, it would not do to assume that there was a similar level of improvement elsewhere in the country. There is ample evidence that private feuds, major disorders and a high level of violent crime continued to the end of the reign, and that they cannot be explained in terms of the licence given by civil war. Offenders with the right connections showed a remarkable capacity to defy the law openly over periods of years, often successfully ignoring repeated royal orders, and yet, despite their offences, were able to obtain royal pardons and retain the king’s favour.