Warwick the Kingmaker (20 page)

The Nevilles’ presence at Heworth is explained by the chronicler pseudo-Worcestre:

In the month of August Thomas Nevyle, the son of the Earl of Salisbury, married [Maud Stanhope Lady Willoughby] the niece of Lord Cromwell at Tateshale in the county of Lincoln. And after the wedding when returning home there was a very great division between Thomas Percy Lord Egremont and the said earl near York. This was the beginning of the greatest sorrow in England.68

Probably the Nevilles were heading for Salisbury’s castle of Sheriff Hutton. Henry VI had licensed the match on 1 May.69 As the youthful widow of a wealthy baron, as the coheiress with her sister Joan of their late brother Henry Stanhope’s modest Nottinghamshire estates, and as coheiress of the veteran statesman Lord Cromwell himself, Maud offered her husband the glittering prospect of an estate of genuinely comital proportions. Cromwell’s bonds to various Nevilles probably assured them that the inheritance would actually materialize.70 It was his new castle at Tattershall that was the venue. Cromwell wanted this match – and that of his other coheiress to a younger son of Viscount Bourchier and nephew of York – to provide his nieces and successors with husbands of royal lineage and the connections to defend his somewhat dubiously-acquired wealth after his death. It is hard to see how a Neville alliance could have helped Cromwell in his feud with the Duke of Exeter either at court or in the East Midlands.

Reading into chronicler’s comments that the marriage was the cause both of the Percy–Neville feud itself and the subsequent civil wars, modern historians have searched for reasons why the Percies should have objected so violently to the match and have found them. Cromwell held the East Riding lordship of Wressle and Burwell (Lincs.), formerly Percy possessions forfeited and still coveted by the family, which by this match could have passed on Cromwell’s death to Maud and thus to the Nevilles, supposedly their arch-rivals. ‘This particular match was obnoxious to the earl of Northumberland’, writes Professor Griffiths. ‘Resentment at Neville aggrandisement was second nature to him, but it was heightened by the connection with Lord Cromwell.’ So, too, for Professor Pollard. ‘This was the first time that Neville was to gain directly at the expense of Percy.’ Why had ‘Sir Thomas Nevill’s profitable match...inevitably aroused the jealousy and resentment of his Percy cousins, the two landless younger sons’?71 Unless of course they were rivals for Maud’s hand, of which there is no evidence whatsoever! These are original notions, but too speculative. Why should Maud, rather than her sister, inherit these particular properties? They were not settled on her marriage, for in 1454 Cromwell enfeoffed them to use for the performance of his will, that might take a long time yet. There were disturbances at neither place. And why should Egremont initiate a feud in Yorkshire to thwart an event years ahead that might never happen? Besides the antecedents demonstrate that the quarrel, whatever its nature,
preceded
the marriage and originated with Egremont and Sir John Neville in Yorkshire and focused for some mysterious reason on Topcliffe. The marriage was not the cause of the feud, but the occasion for the skirmish at Heworth. If anything, the chronicler indicates that Salisbury was the target. It was his son John, not Thomas, with whom Egremont had already crossed swords. Neville-inspired indictments are the sole source that Egremont was the aggressor at Heworth.

In retrospect, Heworth was the beginning not the end, as the feud escalated. There were unsuccessful attempts to mediate in late September, first by the mayor of York and then by Archbishop Bothe, Salisbury’s brother Bishop Neville, and the second Earl of Westmorland. The trio may not have been impartial, for on 8 October the council told them not to assist the Nevilles. It also complained to both earls of their continuing ‘grettest assemblees of our liegemen’, urging them to settle their differences peacefully rather than violently as parliament had provided, and instructing them to submit on pain of degradation. The crisis was reached on 20 October when the two parties at full strength were only four miles apart: at Topcliffe the earl of Northumberland, his sons Lord Poynings and Egremont, and lord Clifford; at Sandhutton Salisbury, Warwick and his other sons, FitzHugh and Scrope of Bolton. They did not fight. A truce of some kind was arranged, that enabled Northumberland to return to Leconfield and Warwick and Salisbury to leave at once for London.

Whatever the original cause of the Neville–Percy feud, by 20 October it had become a contest for regional hegemony. Witness the participation of other Yorkshire noblemen. Witness the presence of Percy retainers from Northumberland and Cumberland and of Northumberland himself, who was at Petworth (Sussex) at the time of Heworth.72 Witness, especially, Warwick. Both sides mobilized all their resources. Warwick had been absent from his home country since his unexpected promotion in 1449 and did not return even when he joined his father Salisbury as joint-warden of the West March in December. With pressing business in Cardiff on 24 August, nevertheless he proceeded via Tewkesbury on 6 September, when his countess was at Grafton, via Stratford to Berkeswell (Warw.) on 12 September, Lichfield (Staffs.) on the morrow, and thence via Middleham to Sandhutton on 20 October.73 For Warwick it was a turning point in his career. Immersed in the affairs of his new inheritance, commuting between Warwickshire and South Wales, he had encountered his father Salisbury only on major political occasions, at parliaments, councils and at Dartford, and had surely escaped paternal direction in politics. He had not even attended his brother’s wedding at Tattershall. Not only did Warwick engage himself in the Nevilles’ northern affairs, in October 1453 – surely in response to his father’s urgent summons? – but in national politics, in which henceforth the two Neville earls were to be both active and inseparable.

Nor was this the only escalation. If Cromwell was the Nevilles’ ally, was not Cromwell’s enemy that of the Nevilles too? Hence perhaps Exeter’s support for the Percies – and the Percies’ support for Exeter – next year. Significantly it was at the house of Maud Dowager-Lady Stanhope at Tuxforth in Nottinghamshire that Egremont and Exeter ‘ben sworne togeder’ in January.74 Three separate feuds were becoming entangled and two sides were emerging. And, as we shall see, the Nevilles became aligned with York, permanently. No wonder pseudo-Worcestre saw Heworth as the beginning of the sorrows!

The greatest danger, which actually materialized, was that one side should be the king’s and the other, therefore, opposed to him. It was a king’s task to prevent this by imposing order rigorously on the parties as Henry VI, to his credit, had recently done. Even-handed justice, whilst desirable, was inessential. King Henry’s council tried to appear impartial, but was probably not in practice. Already there were indications of royal favour to the Percies. Whatever its initial stance, the council inclined increasingly towards the Percies. Since Sir William Lucy and Judge Portington actually took the Percy side, it seems the second commission of 27 July had a distinctly pro-Percy bias. It was against co-operation with the Nevilles that the council warned in October. Whilst Salisbury reappeared in the royal council after a three-year absence on 18 and 22 July 1453, it is striking that he saw no advantage in remaining even though the council was prosecuting his sons. Somerset and the other councillors could not dissociate Neville defiance in the North and in South Wales. The full authority of the crown was deployed in favour of Somerset and the Percies and against the Nevilles. And yet that authority was ineffective in both venues, defied not just by the Nevilles, but by the Percies too. Warwick in South Wales risked the threatened rupture in his allegiance and the two northern earls ignored the threat of degradation, which had never before happened and which doubtless they disbelieved. They were right to do so: both Neville earls resumed their council seats. To back up its threats, effective action was needed by the king, doubtless again manipulated by Somerset. Somerset could not do it by himself. And so it could not be done at all, for the king was mad. And the first fruit of that madness was an immediate escalation of the feuds that had been so effectively stifled in the previous two years.

It is not quite clear when King Henry’s madness began. Certainly later than 7 July, the date offered by
Giles’s Chronicle
; later probably than 27 July, when he set off for Clarendon. Perhaps he was overset by the news of Châtillon: the disastrous defeat and death in Acquitaine of Shrewsbury and Lisle, and hence, shortly, the loss of Bordeaux (19 October) and Gascony itself. The government fetched him back to Windsor. Somerset and his ministers continued acting as though he was sane, striving to regulate feuds with his authority, yet tied to court, unable to proceed to the provinces to repress disorders. They must have hoped, even expected, the king to get better. But they could not continue once his illness was established. Already, no doubt, news had leaked out, though the fiction of his authority was maintained. The birth of an heir apparent in Prince Edward on 13 October 1453 offered some inkling of where authority might lie. Parliamentary authority would be required, but parliament needed management. Parliament, due to resume at Reading on 12 November, was to be prorogued until February, pending agreement amongst themselves by the great, who were summoned to a great council in November supposedly ‘to sette rest and union betwixt the lords of this lande’.75 That, we may presume, was decided by those hostile to York, who was not summoned, for on 23 October he was invited at a meeting of nine councillors not including Somerset, the chancellor (Cardinal Kemp), or the treasurer (Wiltshire). No realistic consensus could be achieved without him. And perhaps because he would not come otherwise, as perhaps he had failed to attend councils and parliament since Dartford, they added that the great council would consider the ‘variance betwixt hym and sum othre of the lordes’.76 As Johnson observes, this must mean Somerset. In Henry’s absence, those who were not York’s satellites were prepared to revive a quarrel that the king had thought to have quashed. They did not want Somerset, whose rule would cause the realm to perish, and they saw in York the only credible alternative.

That applied also to Warwick and his father Salisbury. It was at this point that they committed themselves to York and for these selfish reasons – not from a public-spirited commitment to the commonweal and reform. Henceforth Salisbury, after a gap of ten years, and Warwick were to immerse themselves in national politics, an involvement that lasted for the rest of their lives. It was at this point that Warwick, still only 25 years old, became a political figure of the front rank.

York and a small entourage arrived early for the great council on 12 November. He was in no conciliatory mood, determined to avenge former injuries rather than to heal wounds, perhaps more interested in destruction than good rule, and confident that circumstances now favoured him. The king was no longer available to make decisions and he no longer had the dubious status of heir presumptive. Now that a constitutional avenue had opened to him, it was possible to repair fences with former allies like Norfolk who had baulked at his attempted coup in 1452, and with those penalized for that attempt. Salisbury, Warwick and Cromwell attended all known sessions of the council in the Star Chamber at Westminster, latterly with Salisbury’s brother Fauconberg, captured in Normandy and recently ransomed, his retainers FitzHugh and Scrope of Bolton, and Cromwell’s ally Grey of Ruthin. Conspicuous absentees were their adversaries Northumberland, Poynings, Egremont, Clifford and Exeter, who failed to appreciate, it seems, that the affairs of the North and Ampthill might be decided at Westminster. The assembly thus offered hope to the Nevilles whom, we may safely assume, had no desire to legitimize and reinforce the authority of their rival Somerset.

At least half of those eventually attending were late and thus missed the opening session on 21 November, which York hijacked. The minute records him rehearsing at length, once again, his loyalty, his commitment ‘to all that sholde or might be to the welfare of the king and of his subgettes’, before embarking on the business for which, he pointed out, he had been summoned. Apart from approval for his ‘moderate’ request to have his banned councillors back, the Earl of Devon was freed from the incarceration he had suffered since Dartford, and an appeal of treason was made by Norfolk of Somerset, who two days later was consigned to the Tower. The session on 30 November, attended by 52 peers and councillors, was much less controversial.77 Who could object to an oath to keep order and to enforce the lawful instructions of the council to keep the peace?

Much more difficult was what form the government should take, which was considered by only twenty-three peers on 5 December, again in the Star Chamber. Those who absented themselves included not only the inexperienced, non-councillors and most of the barons, but such recent ministers as Sudeley and Beauchamp, and partisans on both sides with causes to champion. Salisbury’s brothers Bishop Neville and Fauconberg were absent; so, too, his retainers, FitzHugh and Scrope of Bolton. So varied a group was not excluded; they absented themselves to avoid commitment and responsibility. Warwick, Salisbury and the others present were self-selecting. It was a lively debate, we may deduce, that reached the lame conclusion that the royal council could take decisions during the king’s infirmity, but only on matters that could not be put off: ‘in estuinge irreparable inconvynyentees... as must of nessessyte be entended unto and by the whch yf the[y] wer not forsene grete inconveyence wer lyeke to ensue’...Even that result was subscribed by only fourteen peers – a bare majority of those present: only the bishops and an abbot, surely immune from future penalties, and the three dukes, two Neville earls, and York’s brother-in-law Viscount Bourchier among the lay magnates dared subscribe. Some sort of government must continue. The Earl of Worcester, now Lord Treasurer, did not; neither did Bishop Waynflete, the earls of Pembroke and Wiltshire, too close perhaps to the king to concede his power; nor the barons, Cromwell among them. Far from demanding power, even the subscribers were frightened of responsibility, fearful of taking on royal prerogatives, and formally protested that they did only what was essential until parliament had specified their powers.78 What if the king recovered? What, moreover, if parliament held them accountable for what was going wrong? For the same reason, fuller minutes of decisions were taken, so that authority and especially responsibility could be shared.79 It was probably to place his loyalty on record rather than to justify the restoration of his councillors that York had the council minute of 23 November formally exemplified next day, on 6 December.80 It showed that he had kept his oath at St Paul’s.