Warwick the Kingmaker (14 page)

The monks of Tewkesbury continued their founders’ chronicle down to the death in 1476 of Isabel Duchess of Clarence. It records the history of the family, not very accurately, itemizes births and christenings, confirmations, marriages and deaths. It reports how the earls of Gloucester built Tewkesbury bridge, endowed it with tolls, and otherwise patronized the town just like the Beauchamps at Warwick. The priory of Goldcliff that Robert FitzHamo had also founded was granted by Henry VI to Duke Henry, who conveyed it in 1442 to the abbey as endowment for his mother’s chantry. The chronicle was continued on several occasions. It treats the Countess Anne and George Neville first as coheirs; and then, presumably after 1461, Anne as sole heir. It is decorated with illuminations of the coats of arms of successive patrons down to those of Warwick’s two sons-in-law after 1471 and contains stylized illuminations of many of them. The Countess Isabel lies on her deathbed. Our Warwick is portrayed as a stout, bearded man, who holds his sword point uppermost and rests his left hand on the scabbard; his shield of many quarterings appears below.91

These were traditions to which Warwick found himself heir: a spiritual or moral cement that enhanced the whole. They were traditions of which he was a part: the Swan cup and Guy’s armour remained in his castle at Warwick. The swan crest and the muzzled bear appear on his seals. Warwick used the badge of bear and ragged staff from at least 1452; in 1450 his retainers were issued with badges of ragged staves; and Warwick died wearing a ring engraved with a bear. He features as a mourner on his father-in-law’s tomb in the Beauchamp Chapel, as a drawing and a life in the
Rous Roll
, as a roundel in the pedigree of the
Beauchamp Pageant
, and as an illumination in the Tewkesbury Abbey Chronicle. He saw value in Rous’s historical researches: when the antiquary found material on legendary earls of Warwick at St Albans Abbey in the
Gesta Abbatum
of Matthew Paris, he sent a copy to the earl.92

It is not improbable, though not susceptible of proof, that he was among the ‘many lordes & ladyes and other worshipfull people there beyng present’ at his father-in-law’s funeral at St Mary’s Warwick on 4 October 1439 or that of his mother-in-law at Tewkesbury in 1439–40. Such traditions were worth fostering even at some material cost. In 1450–1 he confirmed the charter of Robert FitzHamo to Tewkesbury Abbey, the charters of his Despenser and Beauchamp predecessors to Cardiff and to Margam Abbey, and in 1452 secured royal confirmation of charters to both Margam and Tewkesbury. Several times he secured the necessary royal licence to alienate in mortmain for his wife’s ancestors’ foundations. He gave land to enlarge the churchyard at Warwick College. He helped feoffees to endow Duke Henry’s chantry at Tewkesbury and Earl Richard Beauchamp’s executors to endow the Beauchamp Chapel.93 Several of his most trusted officers spent all their adult lives and almost all his own life carrying out his father-in-law’s wishes and had still not finished at his own death. Among the three hospitals at Warwick, there was no almshouse for retired servants: a highly fashionable and expensive concept, to be found at Edward IV’s Windsor, Suffolk’s Ewelme, and Cardinal Beaufort’s St Cross, which was to be his model. Warwick therefore determined to construct Guyscliff more solidly and endow it better, as his father-in-law had wished, and to enhance it with such an almshouse. Rous indeed claims that Warwick came to prefer the Warwick traditions to those to which he was born. Instead of following the example of his parents, brother and maternal ancestors, he intended rejecting the Montagu mausoleum of Bisham, claims Rous somewhat improbably, in favour of the Beauchamp Chapel of his father-in-law.94

Warwick was thus part of vibrant traditions and legends that offered guidance on how he should behave. He chose to live within these traditions and indeed to model his conduct to fit them. He chose also to rely on the trusted servants of his Beauchamp and Despenser predecessors. He was wise to do so. He had much more to gain than lose by accepting them and much more to lose than gain by rejecting them. Those administrators and retainers still on the payroll could have become mere employees or, worse still, have identified themselves with his rivals the Beauchamp and Despenser coheirs. By fulfilling his hereditary role as earl of Warwick and lord Despenser, by behaving as they expected, he was able to draw on their devoted service and was able to trust them. No doubt Berkeswell, Hugford, Rody, Nanfan and Porthaleyn were good administrators, but he could not have trusted them as much as he did, witnessed both by what they did and by what additional rewards they received, if they had not been devoted to his cause. He would then have needed to import servants devoted to his family, the Nevilles, on a much larger scale than he actually did and would have risked alienating those to whom he was the natural lord.

Many Beauchamp officers and annuitants remained on the payroll in 1449. Our Warwick was an outsider, who had not expected to succeed and can have known little of the estate or of its key personalities before 1449. Understandably he brought with him some trusted personnel from his northern origins: his brother Sir Thomas Neville; Colt, Sotehill and Stokdale, who acted as mainpernors; Richard Clapham, Thomas and John Otter; and later William Kelsy.95 The Warwick inheritance was no windfall to be plundered to patronize northerners, as the earl’s son-in-law Richard III was later accused of doing to the South from 1483. There was continuity of personnel at all levels: among the lesser ministers of Warwick – the bailiff, parkers, rent-collector; among the leading estate officers; and among the retainers. Moreover, from the moment of his succession, Warwick – like any other lord – tried to strengthen his retinue. Some received new rewards, like Hugford, who was feed from Brailes; others were feed anew, like Stafford and Burdet, whose families had long associations with the earldom: and Lord Ferrers of Chartley, far from being the rival to Warwick that has been suggested, accepted the earl’s lordship and his retinue was included in the earl’s. If Ferrers died almost at once, his heir Walter Devereux already enjoyed the largest fee from Warwick’s lordship of Abergavenny. That Warwick was a resident lord who modelled his conduct on earlier lords reinforced the claim to hereditary service and loyalty that emanated from his countess’s acceptance as the rightful sole heiress. The birth of their daughter in 1451 promised the continuance of the line into the next generation. By then he had succeeded to the hegemony that his father-in-law had enjoyed.

NOTES

1. Oxfordshire RO Dil II/b/6 attached bill;
CChR 1427–1516
, 41, 50;
Reports on the
Dignity of a Peer
, v. 242;
Rous Roll
, no. 54. Allegedly he was also ‘king of the Isle of Wight’,
Monasticon
, ii. 63–4.

2.
CPR 1441–6
, 400–1;
Rous Roll
, no. 54.

3.
Monasticon
, ii. 63;
Rous Roll
, no. 55.

4.
CPR 1441–6
, 437.

5. Ibid. 436;
1446–52,
1; RP v. 182.

6. Hicks,
Richard III
, 337–51.

7. M. A. Hicks, ‘Between Majorities: The “Beauchamp Interregnum” 1439–49’,
HR
, lxxii (1999), 31.

8.
CPR 1446–52
, 242;
CPL 1447–55
, 438.

9. By Carpenter,
Locality
, ch. 11, esp. 400–1, 403–6, 410–12, 418–19, 422, 434, as corrected in Hicks, ‘Between Majorities’.

10.
Ministers’ Accounts of the Collegiate Church of St Mary Warwick 1432–85
, ed. D. Styles (Dugdale Soc. xxvi, 1969), 16n, 17n; Carpenter,
Locality
, 687–9;
List of Sheriffs
(PRO Lists & Indexes ix), 158; Warwicks. RO 1618/W1915.

11. Hicks,
Richard III
, 337–51.

12.
CPR 1436–41
, 279; F. Devon,
Issues of the Exchequer
(1840), 445, 455.

13. M. A. Hicks, ‘The Forfeiture of Barnard Castle to the Bishop of Durham in 1459’,
Northern History
xxx (14. E 159/232 brevia Mich. 34 Hen. VI m. 19;
Excerpta Historica
, ed. S. Bentley (1833), 6–7. The undated original, C 81/1370/56, is in a file that spans 21–36 Hen. VI. The king’s presence at Windsor on 15 October does not fix the year. In 1445 York ceased to be a custodian. The commission was never enrolled.

15.
Monasticon
, ii. 63;
CPR 1436–41
, 359–60.

16. Habington,
Survey of Worcestershire
, i. 120–1; DL 26/65; BL Roy. MS 17 BXLVII f. 165v; SC 12/18/45 f. 13;
List of Sheriffs
, 158.

17. Hicks, ‘Between Majorities’.

18. E.g. Oxfordshire RO Dil II/b/8 m. 6; II/b/6 att. bill.

19. Deduced, E 368/220 m. 120; Exeter MS Chanter 722 ff. 3, 9v.

20. E 28/79/31. 1997), 225.

21.
CPR 1446–52
, 37–8, 87; see also Hicks, ‘Between Majorities’. Eleanor had probably remitted her third-share for an annuity, Pugh,
Glamorgan County History
, iii. 186.

22. C 81/1546/14; Hicks, ‘Between Majorities’.

23.
GEC
i. 28–9, 30n; C 139/96/1/15; C 81/761/9607. The original entail of Abergavenny is lost, but see R. I. Jack, ‘Entail & Descent: The Hastings Inheritance 1370–1436’,
BIHR
xxxviii (1965), 11.

24. E 368/220 m. 120.

25.
CPR 1446–52
, 1.

26. R. Virgoe, ‘The Composition of the King’s Council 1437–61’,
BIHR
xliii (1970), 158.

27.
CPR 1446–52
, 1.

28. Hicks, ‘Between Majorities’.

29.
The Brut
, 515;
Chronique de Mathieu d’Escouchy
, ed. G. Du Fresne de Beaucourt (SHF, 1874), iii. 360–1; BL MS Harley 807 f. 75v; A. J. Pollard,
John Talbot and the War
in France 1427–53
(1983), 65. For Fauconberg’s ransom, see D. Rowland,
Genealogical
Account of the Most Noble House of Neville
(1830), 85–6;
CPR 1446–52
, 496.

30. Watts,
Henry VI
, 284n; Pollard,
Talbot
, 65–6.

31. See above p. 30. The Tewkesbury Chronicle states Harpenden, very close to Ewelme, and that she was buried at Reading Abbey,
Monasticon
, ii. 64.

32.
CFR 1446–52
, 111;
CPR 1446–52
, 87.

33. Griffiths,
King & Country
, 261.

34.
CPR 1446–52
, 235–6; C 81/1454/38.

35.
Warwickshire Feet of Fines
, iii, ed. L. Drucker (Dugdale Soc. xviii, 1943), no. 2683 quoting CP 25(1)/294/74/41. Although the action was initiated and £40 was paid by Colt for a licence to agree (E 401/821), it was deferred and suspended (CP 40/758 rot. 285-d; CP 40/760 rot. 356d), and was only completed in 1466. No draft fine now survives.

36. E.g.
CPR 1446–52
, 274; E 28/79/37; C 81/1454/27.

37.
Warwicks. Fines
, no. 2683;
CPR 1446–52
, 451.

38. Hicks,
Richard III
, 324.

39. A. F. J. Sinclair, ‘The Beauchamp Earls of Warwick in the Later Middle Ages’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1987), 387.

40. C 81/761/9098, which is misrepresented in
CPR 1446–52
, 262–3.

41. C 81/1454/27. Although signed by Henry VI and delivered to chancery on 6 June, it was not enrolled and presumably not implemented.

42. 6 Dec. 1450, E 159/230 rec. Hil. 32 Hen. VI m.4.

43.
CPR 1446–52
, 264–5; C 81/761/9107; C 81/1462/3, printed in Rowland,
Neville
, 137–8; see also
CPR 1452–61
, 107. Additional oral explanation must be presumed.

44. Storey,
Lancaster
, 237.

45. C 139/135/5/11.

46. BL Add. Roll 74169 m. 2d.

47. C 139/135/5/11.

48. C 139/135/5
passim
.

49. Warwick CRO WCM 49; W. Rees, ‘Accounts of the Rectory of Cardiff and other Possessions of the Abbey of Tewkesbury in Glamorgan 1449–50’,
South Wales &
Monmouth Rec. Soc.
ii (1950), 179.

50.
RP
v. 182–3.

51.
Dignity of a Peer
v. 244.

52.
Paston L & P
ii. 37; Bloom, ‘Letter of the “Kingmaker” ’, 120.

53. Ibid.

54. Rees, ‘Cardiff Rectory Accounts’, 182–3.

55. C 81/1371/16; C 139/135/5.

56. C 139/135/5/13, 16;
CFR 1446–52
, 155, 162.

57.
CPR 1446–52
, 432–3.

58. C 139/135/5/16.

59.
CPR 1446–52
, 432–3.

60. The mainpernors were Witham and Colt,
CFR 1445–52
, 157–8. The patent was exemplified at Leicester on 21 May 1450, PSO 1/18/938.

61. C 139/135/5/16.

62.
CFR 1445–52
, 144, 181, 182.

63. C 139/135/5/4;
CPR 1446–52
, 309; see also E 149/189 m. 1.

64.
CPR 1446–52
, 409; E 159/227 rec. Hil. 29 Hen. VI m. 9d.

65. E 28/79/37. Brome did not receive livery as chamberlain in 1447–50, E 101/409/18.

66. E 159/227 rec. Hil. 29 Hen. VI m. 9d, 149d; E 159/230 rec. Hil. 32 Hen. VI m. 4. Colt’s deputies were John Otter (usher), Thomas Stokdale, Thomas Witham and Ralph Ingoldsby (clerks), E 403/793 m. 4.

67. C 139/135/5/16: not the royal grantees of 2 Aug. 1449,
CPR 1446–52
, 274.