Warwick the Kingmaker (28 page)

Henry was committed to peace. He opened proceedings on 27 January 1458 by addressing the assembly in person on the dangers of dissension between lords.29 He wanted a peaceful and permanent end to feuding. So, most likely, did the Yorkists. Their enemies may not have done. They had no choice, however, for the king required them to proceed to arbitration. Arbitration was an established mechanism of resolving disputes that entailed independent investigation of the grievances, arguments and evidence of both parties by a panel of arbiters acceptable to both sides, and the imposition of an award that settled the issues. Such awards were always compromises. They were also enforceable at the common law. In this case the king himself was to make the award. To ensure that the result was indeed acceptable to all and stuck, Henry was willing to devote the whole council session to the matter and to allow negotiations more like those between sovereign states. First the judges and then the bishops acted as mediators whilst he removed himself to Berkhamsted Castle (Herts.), which was reasonably accessible. Exeter, Somerset, Egremont and Clifford visited him there about 1 March,30 presumably to influence the result: probably unsuccessfully. That Henry was not in their pocket is shown by the decision to confirm Warwick as keeper of the seas to the considerable offence of Exeter as hereditary Lord Admiral, who was compensated with £1,000 from the hanaper. It was a month into discussions, on 5 March, before several parties bound themselves to keep the peace until Michaelmas.31 We can only guess at the stages along the route of what was evidently a protracted, difficult and latterly intensive set of negotiations that the victims of 1455 probably did not wish to succeed. The award refers to the examination of evidence from both sides, consultations with both parties, the hearings of grievances and the substances of controversies, their responses, and depositions. We need to recall this when considering the deceptively slender conclusion. On this occasion, unlike 1452 and 1455, persistence paid off and negotiations were brought to a successful conclusion.

The original award is missing from the close roll where supposedly it was enrolled; only a damaged exemplification survives. It is in English. The Latin version in Whetehamstede’s
Register
was probably the abbot’s own translation. The award is an impressively long and thorough document. The king desired a settlement, it says, ‘for the tranquillity and conservation of his realms and territories and against external threats’ – for foreign powers rejoiced in English divisions! – and ‘for sane direction and rule at home’. The award tackled the ‘controversies and differences...caused principally by a certain siege and attack before this time at the town of St Albans’. Henry recognized the Yorkist lords always to have been faithful lieges. The two parties dropped their differences and stopped their lawsuits. The Yorkists were to endow a chantry with income of £45 a year for the souls of those killed at St Albans. York was to pay the Dowager-Duchess of Somerset 2,500 marks (£1,666.66) and the new duke another 2,500 marks; Warwick was to compensate Clifford with 1,000 marks (£666.33).

In each case payment was to be made by reassigning royal debts. Salisbury was to forgo the fines due from Egremont. He was also to return the obligations of knights, esquires, tenants and servants of Northumberland and Egremont arising from the Percy–Neville feud. The sheriffs of London were released from penalties for Egremont’s escape and Egremont himself was bound to keep the peace towards Salisbury for ten years. And should there be any further disagreements between the servants and tenants, they were to be settled by the two chief justices. Resort to mediation, the courts and the judges were ordained for other kinds of dispute. The whole was to take effect within two years.32

Apparently the victims had still looked for vengeance rather than compromise as late as 9 March, when Warwick was warned, but he had insisted on attending the council. ‘He wolle to Westmynster on the morow maugre them all’.33 It was to exert his personal influence rather than merely to rubber-stamp the agreement that the king returned to Westminster on the 16th.34 On 23 March all parties sealed bonds to abide the king’s award. York was bound in £10,000, Salisbury and Warwick each in £8,000, Salisbury’s bond also committing his younger sons, towards Somerset’s widow Eleanor, the new duke and his brothers and sisters, the new earl of Northumberland and his brothers Egremont, Sir Ralph and Richard Percy, all of whom sealed equally impressive recognizances, and their servants and tenants.35 If they did not comply with the award, these enormous sums would be due and payment could be enforced by the courts. Those paying would be ruined. The penalties were a formidable incentive to all the parties to keep the terms. Of course none of them would have sealed the bonds if the terms had been unknown or unacceptable. This must be an occasion when the details of the verdict had been negotiated in advance. The award was not imposed with royal authority from on high, but was a compromise that they had all agreed.

However it was not merely a series of legalistic settlements of specific differences. The package needed to be seen as a whole and as a mechanism for reconciliation and fresh beginnings. It was intended to set the contending parties at amity. As the ballad commissioned on the occasion states:

Love hath put out malicious gouernaunce,

In euery place both fre & bonde

In Yorke, in Somerset, as I vnderstonde,

In Warrewik also is love & charite,

In Sarisbury eke, in Northumbrelande,

That euery man may reioise in concord and unite.36

And on 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Lady Day, the king and queen, the reconciled parties, the negotiators, lords spiritual and temporal consecrated the agreement by solemnly processing to St Paul’s and celebrated mass there. York walked alongside the queen, Salisbury walked beside Somerset, Warwick with Exeter, and the king wore his crown. ‘Rejoise, Anglond, our lordes accorded to be.’37 The poet captures the euphoria of the moment.

Modern historians have attached little weight to the accord. Henry VI was pathetic and at best well-meaning. The Loveday was a charade that failed. The participants cannot have been sincere, for the feud soon resumed and escalated and civil war lay only eighteen months away. More detailed research has revealed that the Yorkist concessions were limited. Far from actually making payments to the victims, they only handed over tallies that were worthless to them in the current state of public finances. York indeed managed to exchange them for licences to ship wool that may have made him £5,000.38 The accord pandered to Henry’s wishes. Kings had the right to impose settlements and Christians had a duty to seek reconciliation. The Yorkists could not be seen to disagree.

Such an interpretation, however, is anachronistic and rationalizes the Loveday in the light of later events. It was not just the writer of the ballad that praised the accord, but also all the Yorkist chroniclers who were aware of the end result.39 They did not underestimate Henry’s achievement or minimize the difficulties that were overcome en route. Nor should we. Remember how earlier attempts at arbitration in 1452 and 1455 had foundered, apparently because York and Somerset were irreconcilable. No accord could have been achieved in 1458 if both parties had been set against it. Remember how much divided the parties on this occasion. Blood had been spilt. The Yorkist lords claimed to have been acting at St Albans as loyal subjects in the king’s interests against traitors. They had been in the right and all the blame rested with Somerset, Thorpe and Joseph. Moreover they had an act of parliament to back them up. Their immunity from punishment and their honour depended on maintaining this stance. As for their opponents, the victors were rebels, traitors and murderers whom they wished to see punished and destroyed. There was little common ground on which to build.

Without abandoning their claims to loyalty and justification, the Yorkists were induced to accept that they had been responsible for the deaths of Somerset, Northumberland and Clifford. They agreed to contribute to the good of their souls – though they may well have preferred them damned! – and to make meaningful compensation to the victims. The surrendered tallies were worth more to the recipients who enjoyed royal favour than to the Yorkists. Whilst the verdict against Egremont stood, the Yorkists had to accept that the fines designed to destroy him were excessive. Egremont was allowed free, but curbed by bonds to keep the peace. And they themselves had to forget the attempted arrests, ambushes and murders to which they had been subjected. Yet it is not really true that all the concessions were made by the Yorkists, still less, as recently suggested, that it was ‘a triumph for their enemies’.40 The heirs of the victims were obliged to accept their fathers’ killers as loyal subjects and abandon plans for revenge. The chantry at St Albans was for the souls of all the fallen on both sides. And the penalties against their rivals were symbolic rather than punitive.

Historians have also denigrated the Loveday because it came too late; it was confined to ‘the limited issue of atonement and compensation for the principals who had suffered injury or death at St Albans’; it was an ‘evasion of the real issues’; it did not address the real problems. Who was to rule – Margaret or York? Perhaps Henry did not see the problem. What about reform, financial retrenchment, and international affairs? Did not the award ignore ‘the entire public dimension’, ‘the misgovernment of the realm, the misleading of the king, the unavailability of justice’, that St Albans had been fought about?41 Such charges are misconceived. The quarrel of victors and victims was paralysing politics as completely as that between York and Somerset had done. All parties accepted that the king had a right to rule. All had an interest in peace. Warwick and the other Yorkist subjects knew themselves to be isolated. They could not expect to control the administration again or to win any conflict. Warwick himself really wanted the accord and was prepared to take considerable personal risks in pursuit of agreement. It offered an end to the tension and crises that threatened their lives and futures and the opportunity to return to the normal life and career of great magnates. It wiped away the unfortunate legacy of York’s two protectorates and offered them a fresh start. It was because he saw the accord was to his advantage that Salisbury had an exemplification made of it.42 As late as 11 February 1459 the Yorkists abode by the requirement to amortize land to St Albans for the souls of the victims.43 Only the accord offered them hope of a peaceful future.

For the king and the public it offered hope also. Peace at home, as the Loveday ballad says, offers the prospect of good governance, wealth and prosperity. With peace restored at home, it was now possible to turn to international affairs:

Rejoise, and thanke God for euermore,

For now shal encrese thi consolacion;

Oure enemnyes quaken & dreden ful sore,

That peas is made there was diuision.

Whiche to them is gret confusion.

‘Ffraunce and Britayn repente shul thei,’ continues the ballad.44 Peace at home offered scope for warfare abroad. Actually this was not seriously considered. Peace at home instead offered the means to peace abroad. In May overtures were made to France and Burgundy for a cessation of hostilities: for a truce cemented by marriages involving Prince Edward and the offspring of the rival dukes of Somerset and York. With an end to war, there could be an end to war expenditure. Calais could be reduced to its peacetime establishment and cost. The seas need not be kept. Resources would be freed to restore royal credit. Trade and hence customs revenues could revive. We cannot show that Henry’s government had such a vision, but if it did the reconciliation of the warring factions was a prerequisite and had to be attempted.

Initially the Loveday did bring peace at home. The serenity of a ballad
On the
Ship or Poop
of January 1459 documents how much committed support the government now enjoyed. Henry himself was ‘the noble ship of good tree’. His son was the mast, his step-brother Pembroke the mainyard, the Lancastrian dukes of Somerset and Exeter were the rudder and the light, and Buckingham was the stay. Devon, Grey of Ruthin and Beauchamp were the shrouds, Northumberland the sail, Roos, Clifford and Egremont the bonnets, Shrewsbury and Wiltshire the topmasts, and Beaumont, Welles and Rivers the anchors. Altogether the poet lists as king’s men three dukes, five earls, a viscount, and seven barons, totalling sixteen; a third of the parliamentary peerage and more of the higher ranks, were identified with the king. ‘Now is oure shype dressed in hys kynde’, says the poet, celebrating the unity of the Lancastrian regime and his kindred. They include victims of the Neville–Percy feud and St Albans. Whilst guarding against the ‘waves bothe wilde & wode’ and ‘ragged rokkes’, it ends with a call for unity. St George is the lodestar

To strengthe oure kynge and england ryght,

And felle our fomenus [foemen’s] pryde...

Whos[o] loue it not, God make hym blynde

In peynes to abide.

If foemen sound foreign, what follows seems to warn off domestic opposition. Moreover Prince Edward replaced another mast,

Crased it was, it my[ght]t not last;

Now hath he one that wold not brest –

The old leyde on side.45

The prince made Lord Protector York unnecessary.

Yet there was no aggression to the ballad, which is not directed against anyone. At least initially the Loveday ended domestic strife. King Henry deserved the confidence of the overwhelming majority of the lords that he enjoyed in the great councils of 1456–9 and the ensuing civil wars. Ironically it was the self-confidence of the Yorkists, now reconciled with their enemies, that was to contribute to the eventual breakdown.