Henry’s rescue from Warwick’s Yorkist army at St Albans ahead of Edward’s arrival thus made his deposition by the Yorkist leadership in London easier, a contrast to the situation the previous October when York’s similar claim had been blocked by his peers. Until the point when York claimed the throne all forced seizures of government had been subject to the fiction that they were in the King’s name to save him from ‘evil advisers’, as when York and his allies in the 1455 ‘revolt’ had claimed that they were only seeking access to Henry’s presence which their court foes were denying.70
The Queen, whose expected personal role as a fifteenth-century female did not encompass deputizing for a weak or preoccupied husband, could still have induced Henry to go at the head of an army–as he had done earlier to confront York and did in 1459–but was now regarded as partisan rather than in the traditional role of a queen as peacemaking conciliator. This was inevitable by 1456–8 given the rumoured threat of York to her husband’s throne, however much rumours of her son’s real parentage may have been current to add to her resentment. (The extent of this factor before 1460 is unclear.71) But she was not the first queen to be regarded as a dangerous political partisan–Henry III’ s Provencal Queen, Eleanor, whose relations had been monopolizing patronage along with his half-brothers in the 1240s and 1250s, was pelted with refuse by angry Londoners as she tried to sail under London Bridge in 1262 and the initially popular Queen Isabella, leader of the 1326 rebellion, was attacked for giving power to her lover Roger Mortimer and was supposed to have murdered her husband, Edward II. In both cases their political role was ended after the resolution of the conflicts in which they were leading figures, Eleanor by reason of age and eclipse by her son Edward I after 1265 and Isabella by forcible marginalization by her son Edward III in 1330. Both were French, like Margaret, so her origin was not to blame despite the recent humiliation of a complete French victory in Normandy. Margaret remained the leader of her cause in exile in 1461–70, and so continued to be vilified by the new regime.
As of autumn 1459 the Queen’s and her factions’ full intentions are unclear, with exile and confiscation for any captured Yorkist leaders as likely as a bloodbath in retaliation for St Albans. But the fleeing York’s wife, Cecily Neville, prudently sent her youngest sons abroad. Even if York, his two elder sons, his brother-in-law Salisbury, and the latter’s son Warwick had all been captured and judicially murdered by their foes Somerset, Buckingham, and Clifford in retaliation for the 1455 killings the younger sons of York and Salisbury would have survived to claim their fathers’ lands in due course. The ascendancy of the Queen’s faction could not have lasted indefinitely, and any mass-confiscation of Neville lands to benefit her Percy allies would have left embittered exiles at large ready to attack England at the first opportunity with the backing of the House of Burgundy, 1460s rivals of the Queen’s French allies.
Had Henry not been in a state of mental incapacity after the shock of St Albans (his first exposure to combat) in 1455 York would not have had the same excuse to resume his Protectorship, though he could have kept Henry away from Westminster so that potential doubters did not know the royal condition and exaggerated the latter. A king normally lived in public, but after Henry slipped into some form of catatonic state he had been kept in seclusion at Clarendon near Salisbury from July to December 1453 without much controversy, with limited access by official delegations once he was thereafter installed closer to London at Windsor. If necessary, access to Henry could have been restricted again under pretence of renewed illness, though details of the truth would have duly leaked out. The fact that York was deprived of his Protectorship, probably with clear evidence of Henry’s full recovery used in Parliament by his opponents and possibly at Henry’s own insistence, within nine months of his victory in 1455 shows his limited grip on power. Even with the King incapacitated and York’s principal enemies dead or powerless his faction could not maintain full power for him, and his continuation on the Council from February 1456 (apparently at the King’s request and against the Queen’s wishes) only led to his gradual eclipse by the ‘court party’, led by Margaret and the Beauforts, over the next year or so. Clearly a ‘middle party’ of peers (and the bishops?) were unwilling to see either of the two rival factions predominant in 1456–8 and neither could stage a coup to deprive the other of all offices and lands, while lack of clear direction in policy or judicial ‘police action’ against local feuds increased private conflicts in the counties. But this stalemate could not last long term.
The struggles of 1450–61: some further points for consideration
(i) A third royal deposition in 133 years, autumn 1460/ March 1461–how legal was it?
In 1459–60 the struggle for control of the government led to naked military conflict, with York eventually victorious. As in spring 1455, the anti-York party at court (now led by Margaret) resorted to military confrontation; but this time they sought to move in on York’s estates to pre-empt an attack on London. The first clash duly took place as royal troops intercepted Neville forces en route to aid York at Blore Heath, and the most was made of the King’s presence with the army to make all who resisted seem to be traitors. Having escaped from the advancing royal army converging on his base, Ludlow Castle (centre of his Welsh Marches lands inherited from the Mortimers), York was able to take refuge in loyal Ireland–an ironic result of his court enemies sending him there out of their way in 1447. His eldest sons, Edward and Edmund, and his wife’s nephew Warwick were able to secure control of Calais, with its largest and most coherent body of disciplined troops in the country, and returned to England to defeat the court party at Northampton. The important role of the Calais garrison in England’s military conflicts in 1455–71 has been underestimated; and from 1455–70 they were under Warwick’s control. Crucially, when Edward IV sacked and drove out Warwick in spring 1470 the Earl’s deputy at Calais, Lord Wenlock, stayed loyal and refused Warwick entry so he had no choice but to seek aid from Louis XI and the exiled Queen Margaret (though Wenlock himself later defected to Margaret and died fighting for her at Tewkesbury in 1471).
For the moment the Yorkist dominance of 1455 was restored. But even then their victory in summer 1460 preserved enough support for the King among the peerage for York’s claim to the throne in October to be blocked. His military triumph was achieved by Warwick, Salisbury, and his own heir Edward of March in invasion from Calais while he remained in Ireland; would he have risked an attack with ‘inferior’ Irish troops on the court had Warwick not been able to secure the well-armed and disciplined troops at Calais? When he belatedly arrived in London flaunting the royal arms and physically laid his hands on the throne in Westminster Hall, a sign of confidence, he met unexpected resistance. Even Warwick, to whose victory he owed his return, argued fiercely with him in private,72 while the principal peers and bishops objected to York now claiming to be the rightful king via descent from Edward III’s second son Lionel on the grounds that he had always previously borne the arms of (i.e. claimed descent via) the fourth son Edmund, Duke of York. By that legal argument, York had always acknowledged that he was the representative of a line junior to Henry’s, not of the genealogically senior line of Lionel. The use by York of the ‘heir of Edward III’s second son’ argument as his justification implied that Henry had never been rightful king, and neither had Henry IV or V; it was more legally dangerous than the argument for deposing a–rightful–king for misrule that had disposed of Edward II in 1327 and Richard II in 1399. The arguments used against Edward and Richard could have been used against the equally incompetent and partisan Henry VI,but his mental illness was a potential argument for sparing him the harsh political fate of these rulers.
Both these men had voluntarily abdicated in public in front of assemblies of leading (hand-picked) nobles, Edward at Kenilworth and Richard in the Tower, and this semi-public renunciation had been followed up by confirmation of the act by an incumbent Parliament.73 York lacked the presence of either a large body of
acquiescent peers or the Commons, and thus could be accused of a coup–which could be reversed by armed force later if Margaret’s army defeated him. He thus sought to allege that he had been rightful king all along; had he based his claim on the descent from Edward III’s fourth son, Duke Edmund of York, the legal grounds would have been shakier as Richard II had never explicitly and publicly named Edmund as his heir. Edmund had been named regent–the normal role for the next adult male kin of the king–when Richard left for Ireland in 1399, but the then heir of Lionel’s line, Edmund Mortimer, had been unavailable as he was underage.
The legal controversy was then put to Henry as king and supreme legal arbiter, and he stood by his own right to the throne. This meant that there would be no voluntary abdication, as in 1327 and 1399, and Henry would have to be deposed involuntarily. This had never been done since the rebel barons of 1216 had withdrawn their allegiance from King John for misrule, and transferred it not to his son but to his niece’s French husband. Finally, on 31 October a compromise, proposed by the new Chancellor George Neville (Warwick’s brother), left Henry the Crown for his lifetime under the political control and direction of affairs by York–a sort of permanent regency without the excuse of mental illness. There were potential legal precedents for this, in the direction of political affairs by committees of rebel lords who could not trust their adult sovereign to govern responsibly in 1264, 1310, and 1388. But none of these committees had ever been seen as permanent. The possibility arises that some people who joined the invading Henry of Bolingbroke in 1399 anticipated this solution to the problem of a vengeful and unstable Richard II, short of deposing him–if the later allegations of Henry promising not to depose Richard were accurate.
The grounds for deposing Henry by the ‘Great Council’ on 3 March 1461 were set out in a petition to Parliament that autumn,74 which presumably followed the same lines as Bishop Neville’s arguments to the public rally at St George’s Fields on 1 March and the case made to the Council on the 3rd. Henry and his father and grandfather had been usurpers, as the correct claim to the Crown had lain with the line of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, not his younger brother John ‘of Gaunt’. York had been the rightful heir as senior descendant of Lionel, and Edward had inherited that claim. Moreover, Henry’s reign had seen endless disorder, misrule, injustice, violence, rapine, and vicious living–which could be taken as a sign of God’s disfavour as well as his unfitness to rule. He had violated the truce-agreement of October 1460 and was thus a perjurer75–though he could hardly be blamed for the uncontrolled actions of his partisans at Wakefield; he had joined and headed their army in February 1461. This left unanswered the argument that if Henry and his ancestors had been usurpers, their royal actions could be illegal–which invalidated all royal laws and grants of lands and titles since 1399.
(ii) The existence of Edward, Prince of Wales: the crucial reason for armed conflict, or only an excuse?
The disinheritance of Edward, Prince of Wales, was necessary for York’s claim and his long-term consolidation of power. Had the Prince not been born the removal of Henry would have given York the Crown–though the Duke of Exeter claimed an alternative right as the nearest descendant of Henry’s great-grandfather John ‘of Gaunt’, in the female line (and unlike the Beauforts fully legitimate). The enmity of the Queen meant that York could not rely on exerting power as a principal councillor during a minority for the Prince as Henry’s successor, which would have been a problem had Henry continued in his catatonic state after 1454; hence York’s securing a Parliamentary act in 1455 that only the King in Parliament (could remove him. (Of course, another Parliament, ‘fixed’ by the Queen and the Beauforts, could cancel this.) The blatant disinheritance of the Prince of Wales for political reasons in October 1460 was unprecedented for England, apart possibly from the disinheritance of John’s son Henry by those rebel barons who had invited Prince Louis of France to reign instead in 1216; and that could be excused by the argument that an adult king was necessary, plus the doubts about his parents’ marriage. (John had divorced Isabella of Gloucester to marry Henry’s mother, Isabella of Angouleme, in dubious circumstances.)
The Dauphin (Charles VII) had been disinherited in France in the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 on similar grounds of not being his father’s son. The long time between Henry’s marriage (1445) and the child’s conception (early 1453), and the chances that the unworldly King was incapable of siring a child, made the idea that a desperate queen had resorted to a ‘stud’ to produce an heir–and thus thwart York’s claim to the throne–plausible. It was politically convenient but possible, although it is only speculation that it was news of the Queen’s pregnancy had helped Henry’s first mental collapse in 1453.76 Rumours of a move by York or his supporters to secure his long-term domination of politics after his return to power in 1453 by this means could have caused the irrevocable alienation of him and the Queen–as the King’s closest companion, vital to control of influence and appointments–after the Prince’s birth. But tension between the two was already apparent in 1452.
Logically, then, it is possible that if the King’s increasing mental incapacity had been less apparent, rumours as to the Prince’s parentage would not have arisen, or gained enough currency for them to alienate Margaret from their perceived Yorkist sources. Her first English court ‘patron’ as a new arrival, Suffolk, had been killed in 1450 and it was vital to the development of private magnate feuds into bloodletting during the 1450s that she backed the Somerset/Exeter faction against York. This was apparent before the Prince’s birth, with York’s role as heir to the throne being linked to the rumours of 1450 that the Cade revolt had been carried out with his connivance to depose Henry. But the birth of a son added to her reasons to turn implacably against the Duke–particularly as the King’s illness meant that York was able to exert full political control of the government for the first time in 1454–5 as the sick monarch’s closest adult heir.
The right to an English regency (or headship of the governing Council) crucially lay with the monarch’s male kinsfolk–Edward III’s cousin Lancaster, not Queen Isabella, in 1327, Gaunt not Princess Joan in 1377 and Henry V’s brothers in 1422. Had either Duke Humphrey or his elder brother Bedford produced a son they, not York, would have been the legal claimant to Royal guardianship, regency, and the succession and thus York would have seemed less of a threat. He could still have been leader of the anti-Suffolk faction and a potential military challenger to the King’s power and favourites, as was the royal cousin and senior magnate Thomas of Lancaster to Edward II in 1310–22. Nor would the closest royal male relative automatically win control of political affairs on the removal of the King’s ‘bad advisers’ by magnate revolt–Henry of Lancaster had been prevented from assuming this role despite personal guardianship of Edward III in 1327. Roger Mortimer had won out over Henry of Lancaster in gaining political power then; York could still have been more powerful in political terms than a surviving son of Humphrey or Bedford on the defeat of the Suffolk/Beaufort faction.
The position of the Queen as ‘head’ of the court faction, in opposition to the ‘reversionary’ claimant, was more marked after 1455 when Edmund, Duke of Somerset and the senior magnate of the Suffolk/Beaufort faction, was killed; (as was the veteran head of the Percies, ‘Hotspur’s heir); Somerset’s heir Duke Henry was younger and even more inexperienced than the French Queen. The senior magnate of this faction was now the Duke of Exeter (Holland), who as a royal descendant and self-proclaimed potential heir to the throne could threaten Margaret’s position and so was not trusted by her. His claim lay via male descent from Earl Edmund of Kent, son of Edward I’s second marriage, and was thus more remote than that of the Dukes of Buckingham (who were descended from Edward III’s youngest son Duke Thomas of Gloucester) but was not complicated by female descent.
By the confrontation between the royal army and York at Ludlow in 1459 Margaret was seen as the head of the ‘court’ party, trailing the King along behind her as she led the ar
my on York’s headquarters, and in winter 1460–1 she was raising an army of northerners to attack the Yorkist leadership in London. Her role as the symbol and spokesperson of royal authority on behalf of her weak husband made her a crucial political player beyond the normal role of a Queen (usually a mediating figure, though not in the cases of Henry III’s Eleanor of Provence and Edward II’s Isabella). Instead of being a force for stability, Margaret was seen as fiercely partisan–with the threat to her son’s succession at York’s hands an obvious reason for her to be his implacable opponent. It should be said in her defence that the ‘Tigress of Anjou’ as she was later nicknamed, the implacable foe of the York dynasty, did not become a partisan political player until the mid-1450s and was not necessarily only inactive as she was finding her feet in English politics earlier. Despite her links to Suffolk and the Beauforts it was only after the deaths of the senior male court leadership at St Albans in 1455–‘targeted’ for elimination by their foes in front of her and Henry, in the manner of a blood-feud –that she rose to prominence as an implacable defender of their faction.
The War of the Roses Page 6