Warwick the Kingmaker (15 page)

68. Rees, ‘Cardiff Rectory Accounts’, 179, 182–3; C 56/30 no. 8; Birch,
Margam Abbey
, 346; G. T. Clark,
Cartae et alia munimenta quae ad Glamorgancie pertinent
, (Cardiff, 1910) iv. 1618–19, 1621–5, 1631–2; W. de Gray Birch,
History of Margam Abbey
(1897), 346.

69.
Records of the County Borough of Cardiff
, ed. J. H. Matthews (6 vols, Cardiff, 1898–1911), i. 138–41.

70. Warwicks. RO WCM 491 m. 5.

71. Warwicks. RO WCM 491 mm. 5–6, 4d; BRL 168023 m. 3;
Stratford Gild Accounts
(1912), 31;
Rous Roll
, no. 58. For what follows, see Warwick RO WCM 491 mm. 5, 6.

72.
CPR 1452–61
, 587; J. M. W. Bean,
From Lord to Patron
(Manchester, 1989), 185; SC 6/1038/2 m. 2; BRL 168023 m. 2; BL Egerton Roll 8541 m. 3; Worcs. RO 989/113.

73.
Rous Roll
, no. 56; Warwicks. RO CR 26/4, p. 28.

74. WRO WCM 491 mm. 5, 6; Exeter MS Chanter 722, f. 7; Warwicks. RO CR 26/4, p. 128.

75. P. B. Chatwin, ‘Documents of “Warwick the Kingmaker” in Possession of St Mary’s Church, Warwick’,
Trans. Birmingham Arch. Soc.
lix (1935), 3, 4; Warwicks. RO CR 1886/EM2.

76. E.g. BL Add. Ch. 72684;
CPR 1476–85
, 97; E 28/79/31;
CPL 1447–55
, 593;
Monasticon
ii. 64; E 28/79/31.

77. Carpenter,
Locality
, 189–90, 458.

78. Carpenter,
Locality
, chs 11 and 12; S. M. Wright,
The Derbyshire Gentry in the
Fifteenth Century
(Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii, 1983), 74; I. Rowney, ‘Government and Patronage in the Fifteenth-Century: Staffordshire 1439–59’,
Midland History
viii (1983), 49–69, esp. 55–6, 65–6.

79. K. B. McFarlane,
Nobility of Later Medieval England
(Oxford, 1973), 223; C. Rawcliffe,
The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham 1394–1521
(Cambridge, 1978), 150;
Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals
, ed. L. C. Loyd and D. M. Stenton (Northants. Rec. Soc. xv, 1950), no. 229.

80. H. Castor, ‘ “Walter Blount was gone to serve Traitours”: The Sack of Elvaston and the Politics of the North Midlands in 1454’,
Midland History
xix (1994), 21–3, 32.

81. This section reinterprets the material in Carpenter, ‘Sir Thomas Malory and 15th-century Local Politics’,
BIHR
liii (1980), 31–43;
Locality
, ch. 12; Griffiths,
King &
Country
, 366–71.

82. This rough total deducts the Lisle estate, Wickwane, Mereworth, the Countess Eleanor’s dower, and a half share of Glamorgan from McFarlane’s estimate of Earl Richard Beauchamp’s income,
Nobility
, 199.

83.
Rous Roll
,
passim
;
Pageant of the Birth, Life and Death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of
Warwick
, ed. H. Dillon and W. H. St John Hope (1914); W. Worcestre,
Itineraries
, ed. J. H. Harvey (1969), 209–11. Unless otherwise stated, this section is based on these sources
passim
.

84. Worcestre,
Itineraries
, 209–11. For Brewster, see also M. Lowry, ‘John Rous and the Survival of the Neville Circle’,
Viator
19 (1988), 101. For the cottage, see Devon RO MS Chanter 722 f. 6.

85. E 154/1/46.

86. Warwicks. RO CR 26/4 p. 110; E 154/1/46.

87. E. Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors: the Use of Baronial Propaganda in Medieval England’,
Journal of Medieval History
10 (1984), 25–40, esp. 28, 31, 33, 35.

88.
Boroughs of Medieval Wales
, ed. R. A. Griffiths (Cardiff, 1978), ch. 5, esp. 110, 124.

89. Clark,
Cartae
, v. 1631–2; L. J. Hopkin-James,
Old Cowbridge (1922)
, 46–7; W. De Gray Birch,
History of Neath Abbey
(Neath, 1902), 138–9; idem,
Margam
, 346; see above nn. 68–9.

90. R. K. Morris, ‘Tewkesbury Abbey – the Despenser Mausoleum’,
Trans. Bristol &
Gloucs. Arch. Soc.
, xciii (1987), 142–55.

91. Bodl. MS Top. Glouc. d. 2 [Chronica de Theokesburie], pp. 31–2, 36; see also P. B. Pepin, ‘
Monasticon Anglicanum
and the History of Tewkesbury Abbey’,
Trans. Bristol &
Gloucs. Arch. Soc.
xcviii (1981), 95–7.

92. A. Gransden,
Historical Writing in the Middle Ages
, ii (1982), 311.

93.
CPL 1455–64
, 593;
Monasticon
, ii. 64; Hicks,
Richard III
, 342–3, 345; Birch,
Margam
, 347; Birch,
Neath
, 138–9; Matthews,
Cardiff Recs.
i. 38–40, 42; C 56/30 no. 8.

94.
Rous Roll
, no. 57.

95.
Warwicks. Fines
, no. 2683; Carpenter,
Locality
, 126n;
CFR 1445–52
, 158.

4.1 THE ASCENDANCY OF THE OPPOSITION

Warwick came of age and into politics at a time of escalating political crisis. Military defeat led first to the collapse of Suffolk’s regime, then to a decade of political instability that culminated in 1461 in a dynastic revolution. The disasters of 1449–50 are traditionally regarded as inescapable. From ‘May 1448...the loss of Normandy was already inevitable’.1 Similarly Suffolk’s narrow faction, self-interested and corrupt both nationally and in the localities, was widely hated and feared, isolated, and hence doomed to destruction once the political nation reasserted itself. It is evidence of his weakness that in 1447 he sought to destroy his principal critic, the king’s uncle Humphrey of Gloucester, and that Richard Duke of York, Gloucester’s successor as heir presumptive, was exiled to Ireland. Suffolk’s regime could not abide criticism or co-operate with ‘the ancient royal blood of the realm’. When disasters came, there was no fund of goodwill among the commons, who demanded reform, or even amongst the aristocracy. Suffolk ‘so distrusted his fellow peers’, notes Professor Griffiths, ‘that he refrained from appealing to them for judgement, as was his right, in accordance with Magna Carta’.2 Though relinquishing Suffolk’s services, King Henry governed on through his almost equally discredited colleagues, strove to withstand the irresistible tide of reform, and thus lost the chance of a fresh start. There was no new administration broadly based enough to attract the confidence necessary for effective prosecution of the war abroad and government at home. Instead political divisions persisted, the regime remained on the defensive, and the possibility of reform at home or recovery abroad passed away.

That several of the principal statesmen of the late 1440s paid for their failure with their lives testifies to the passions aroused against them and their regime early in 1450. It was
after
the failure of their policies that enemies penned the articles of impeachment of Suffolk, the manifestos of Jack Cade, and the savagely satirical verses. Such charges have been substantiated with evidence contemporary to the regime itself. The Paston letters, for instance, are damning about the Tuddenham and Heydon gang, Suffolk’s East Anglian allies. Jack Cade’s revolt has been traced back through to origins in the 1430s.3 It is from such vivid testimony that the notoriety of the regime has been established.

Well-documented and sanctioned by time though this orthodoxy is, it relies overwhelmingly on partisan and retrospective evidence. All the principal witnesses are hostile. The Pastons, though strictly contemporary, were partisans. Suffolk’s men were their personal enemies and they themselves were their victims. As so often happens when a government collapses, the fact of its fall, the desire of its enemies to complete its destruction, and the opportunities thereby afforded brought many grievances to light that might otherwise have been overlooked. The articles of impeachment and Cade’s manifestos are valuable evidence that can often be substantiated in detail, but they may be less remarkable than they at first appear. Suffolk’s sins compare with those of other administrations at other times that did not fall.

Many of the counts against Suffolk are absurd, untrue or unproven; others apply equally to other ministers or relate to matters authorized by the king. That some can be substantiated tells us that the relevant events or the discreditable conduct did indeed occur. It does not necessarily mean that they threatened the continuance of the regime or brought it down. So, too, with the polemical poetry. It was
because
of the loss of Normandy that criticism arose and proliferated, that charges were framed, that verses were composed, sharpened and circulated. If there was already disquiet before 1450, it was in retrospect that the fall of ‘good Duke Humphrey’ acquired its new, symbolic, significance. The chorus of hostility and the dirt that was dug does not demonstrate the gradual decay of the regime. The tide of criticism flowed the stronger
because
the disastrous policy enjoyed general support almost to the end. There was a consensus among the magnates in support of the treaty of Tours, the surrender of Maine, and the arrest of Gloucester.4 But for the seizure of Fougères, the truce could have continued into 1450, might have been further extended, and the loss of Normandy could have been postponed or even averted. Perhaps we are right with hindsight to see Suffolk’s policy towards France as doomed, though even the French did not foresee so easy a victory, but we cannot be certain. It was defeat that has caused modern historians to condemn the policy and that prompted the political crisis at home that generated the vitriol by which the regime is judged. If Normandy had not been lost, would Suffolk’s regime have attracted the notoriety with which this chapter began?

The immediate background to Warwick’s majority was quiet and peaceful. Spectacular victory in France had given way to an apparently unending war of attrition, that no longer offered successes to justify the financial strain. It was a relief when warfare ceased and Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou. Regarded at the time as a diplomatic coup for Suffolk, the match was widely welcomed and celebrated, and was expected to lead in due course to a lasting peace. As late as June 1449 the Lords in Parliament approved François de Surienne’s seizure of Fougères.5 Peace relieved much of the pressure on the English government. Garrisons could be reduced and military expenditure curtailed. With the most divisive issues of policy – peace or war? – resolved and with expenses greatly reduced, domestic government could revert to a peacetime footing: there was no call for parliamentary taxation and a chance for Lord Treasurer Lumley to retrench.6 If attendance at the royal council declined and few magnates attended, this was as much because there were few matters of moment to decide or initiatives to take as because power was monopolized by those immediately attendant on the king. Everyday politics, once again, was about patronage rather than policy.

None of this was unusual. It was the normal, if unfamiliar, peacetime situation, when routine administration replaced crisis management and when decisions were implemented rather than made. The great retired to their estates, content to leave government to the king, ministers and courtiers. It was the mark of a government confident in the support of the political nation that a formal parliamentary trial was staged early in 1447 for the king’s uncle and heir Humphrey of Gloucester, the resolute opponent of the accepted peace policy and hence, by extension, of the popular peace itself. Had it taken place, Gloucester’s trial could have been as carefully orchestrated and as apparently unanimous as that of Clarence thirty years later. Even a king like Henry VI, who lacked much inclination or capacity for government, was capable of occasional decisive action and secured obedient compliance from the political nation when he took it. On an everyday level, as always in medieval governments, it was those in favour and those around the king who shared the fruits of royal patronage, among them those arising from Gloucester’s fall and the Beauchamp minorities. Ministerial and household offices revolved within a small group among whom Suffolk, in succession to Cardinal Beaufort, was the leader. Such dominance at court had repercussions locally, where it was the clients of those in power who were best placed to secure royal favour, to lord it over their neighbours, and, indeed, to corrupt the administration of justice.