Warwick the Kingmaker (30 page)

Reiving and days of the march were nothing new to the son of a Scottish warden of marches, but border fighting on the European continent may have introduced Warwick to aspects of warfare with which he was unfamiliar. He learnt his lessons well, for amongst his English contemporaries it was he who appreciated best both the tactical use of artillery and the strategic role of seapower. Artillery was a commonplace both to the Calais garrison and its enemies. The king maintained at least 135 guns in Calais in the 1450s, both ordnance and handguns, and the victualler’s accounts testify to prodigious expenditure in gunpowder, saltpetre, gunstones and burst guns. Calais was a port that was garrisoned and supplied by sea. A captain of Calais was much involved in the issuing of safe conducts, inquiries into piracy, and impressing of ships. Warwick’s indenture made him responsible for shipping and reshipping himself to and fro at his own expense. We do not know what arrangements he made – was it at this stage that Warwick became a ship-owner? – but he must have made them. We cannot tell how familiar sea transport and naval warfare already were to him: had he ever visited his jointure at Swainstown on the Isle of Wight, his Channel Isles where he was commissioned to suppress piracy in 1451, or had he assisted in fulfilment of his father’s commission as one of the keepers of the seas in 1454? How far had Warwick proceeded by 1457 along the route that made him the second largest English ship-owner in the 1460s with perhaps eleven ships of 2,300 tons worth about £3,000?63

Warwick was the obvious choice for a naval command following the French raid on Sandwich on 24 August 1457. Commanded by Pierre de Brezé, seneschal of Normandy, and in numbers variously estimated from 2,000 to 15,000 men, the French attacked at dawn by both land and sea, sacked the town, and carried off many prisoners in spite of an effective counter-attack by Sir Thomas Kyriel lieutenant warden of the Cinque Ports as they withdrew.64 Was this the occasion when a message from Warwick in Calais reached Lydd via Dover that ‘the Frenchmen will come hither’? As a response to English piracy, which it probably was, the raid on Sandwich was a failure, for few ships were taken and hence it failed to curb piracy. To English opinion, however, it was a national disgrace comparable to the loss of France itself. It revived the threat of invasion and demanded urgent countermeasures. Three months later Norwich still feared a further descent and for several more years such apprehension was a potent political force, albeit generally unwarranted. On 3 October 1457 the king and great council appointed Warwick to go to sea with an armed force against the king’s enemies. £3,000 voted in 1453 for maritime defence was claimed and ships were commandeered. Warwick simply had most immediate access to the ships and manpower. Such an emergency measure, taken ahead of agreement on all the aspects normally covered by an indenture, did not necessitate a permanent appointment, but it obviously made one more likely. On 26 November Warwick indented as keeper of the seas for three years from the previous March on the same terms as in 1454. His appointment was confirmed and regularized by three patents of 27 December 1457.65

Warwick was commissioned by the king to keep the seas ‘for the resistance of his enemies and repressing of their malice’. He was to operate to the ‘comfort and relief of his subgettes, frendes, allies’ and those covered by English safe conducts and do ‘to the kynges ennemyes all the hurt adnoyssaunce’ possible by land and by sea. He was not to molest those on his own side and was to prevent piracy by others. He could issue his own safe conducts, such as that for two years of 1459 to the
Marie
of Bayonne.66 He was to comport himself after the forms of war and the law of arms: thus specifically he was to have a third of the spoils of his men and the crown a third of the thirds. To fulfil his objectives, he was required to recruit 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 men ‘armed and arraied for the war entyndyng upon the sea’ and shipping as expedient. In return, he was to have all the receipts of the tunnage and poundage from all ports except Sandwich and Southampton, which were appropriated to other uses, and £1,000 a year from the Lancaster enfeoffments. Money was to be paid to him direct by the customers by indentures without recourse to the exchequer. He was even allowed to nominate the customers himself and did so: hence John Otter became collector of the customs of London and on 1 July 1458 Henry Auger at Chichester and William Nesfield at Poole.67 He could keep any goods that he lawfully seized. He was thus offered complete assurance of reimbursement of his costs at a time when the crown’s existing debtors had very little hope of payment. Should funds not be forthcoming or, more realistically, if the crown should again reassign the revenues, Warwick was offered the (not very promising) recompense at the receipt of the exchequer or allowed to withdraw from office without penalty. Less than three months later when the duchy revenues had not materialized he invoked this clause and secured an emergency payment of £500 in cash refundable from the hanaper.68

Unfortunately Warwick’s indenture specifically released him from rendering any account, so we have no data revealing how he raised the ships and crews required or whether indeed he did. The five ships of the forecastle, three carvels and four pinnaces at his command in May 1458 surely fell well short of what his indenture envisaged.69 John Nanfan, his governor of the Channel Isles, his retainer Richard Clapham, his customer Henry Auger, and John Paston stand out among those commissioned to impress men and purvey stores. From at least 20 April 1458 he could call on the only remaining royal ship, the
Grace Dieu
of 1446, master John Paynter, which was apparently at Bristol and required repairing, munitioning and manning at his own expense.70 No other commissions are recorded in 1458. Masters and mariners were to be impressed and supplies seized in 1459, but not ships. Does this mean that the rest of Warwick’s fleet was made up of his own ships and those of volunteers? Some, no doubt, were ships from Calais and perhaps even crewed by the Calais garrison; others hailed from the Cinque Ports. Lydd paid the expenses of divers men going to Dover to join Warwick at sea.71 Yet others were ships of Dartmouth, Plymouth and Fowey, C. L. Kingsford’s nursery of West Country seamen and notorious centres of piracy.72 With control of the customs, Warwick could pay them, but naval service was high risk. Probably they served for profit, which determined the kind of service that Warwick’s navy undertook. At their request and in view of the high price of wheat, he secured a safe conduct for three Gascon, Norman and Breton ships to trade with south-western ports.

On 4 March 1458 the royal council believed that the French fleet was at sea and wanted Warwick to meet it. The
Grace Dieu
was to serve under him, it was reported on 20 April.73 Again, on 7 September, Lord Chancellor Waynflete had heard tidings from Normandy that the French intended to repeat their Sandwich exploit. The lords had been alerted and ordnance had been sent to Southampton castle.74 Nothing materialized. On 10 March 1459 Warwick was again planning to send a fleet to sea under his own command or that of his lieutenant.75 We do not know what Warwick did to the French. Probably not very much. Did he avoid them? His activities in that quarter did not attract attention from the chroniclers and are not recorded among the public records. We cannot tell whether Warwick was successful in sweeping the French from his seas. It seems unlikely that he cleared the Channel of English pirates, since it was surely in response to them that neutral shipping took to sailing in convoy.

Piracy was nothing new. There was plenty before Warwick became keeper or indeed captain of Calais. As early as 22 November 1455 it was reported that two fishing vessels licensed by him had been captured by English pirates.76 Some of the Calais garrison were also pirates: were the lengthy vacations of the treasurer’s accounts sometimes a euphemism for piratical cruises? On 4 March 1457 Warwick himself, the mayor of Calais, and four Hanseatic merchants were commissioned to arrest Andrew Trollope, a member of the Calais garrison, and bring him before the council for seizing Hanseatic cloth that had paid the customs from the
Julian
of Blakeney, an English vessel of Lord Roos, and pillaging it off the Norwegian coast. It seems unlikely that they did, for it was allegedly on the earl’s own orders that on 10 March 1457 Trollope and two other Calais soldiers had seized three ships containing wool worth £4,000 at Tilbury Ferry and bore them off to Calais, where captains and crews were dismissed and the cargoes and ships dispersed. If they were preying on those exempted by the king from the Staple, their action would be popular, though illegal, with staplers, London merchants and residents of Calais. On 24 and 28 April 1458 Warwick was among those commissioned to inquire into piracy against friendly Burgundian shipping by vessels from Calais: the
St Barbara
of Dordrecht with an English-owned cargo was carried off to Calais and despoiled and the
Cristofre
of Campe en route from Holland to Prussia was taken to Newcastle upon Tyne, where ship and cargo were sold. On 3 and 7 May Warwick was again commissioned to inquire into the seizures of the
James
and
Marie
of Spain by the pirates of Fauconberg in contravention of safe conducts and to make restitution.77 Calais was alive with piracy, Warwick’s officers being as active as anyone else, and the king’s commissions came perilously close to asking Warwick to investigate himself. He did not respect the neutrality or safe conducts of the Spanish, Hanse, Burgundians or Genoese.

We know this because of Warwick’s attacks on three foreign squadrons in the summer of 1458. The first, on Trinity Monday (28 May), was a Spanish fleet of 22 sail, including no less than 16 great ships of the forecastle. Spying them from Calais and with the clear alternative to leave them alone, he embarked with a mere five ships of the forecastle, three carvels and four pinnaces. Far from being bold or dashing, this was foolhardy and could easily have led to disaster. Eighty of Warwick’s men were killed and another 200 captured. The battle was hand-to-hand, ebbed to and fro, and lasted for six hours. Right at the start John Jerningham of Somerleyton (Suff.) and twenty-three others boarded a 300-ton ship, struggled to overcome the crew, were captured when the enemy boarded back, and were later freed in exchange for captured Spaniards. Altogether Warwick took six prizes and sank six. ‘And as men sayne’, reported Jerningham, ‘there was not so gret a batayle upon the sea this xl winter.’ Warwick was not satisfied: back at Calais on 1 June, Jerningham reported that ‘my lord hathe sent for more schippis, and lyke to fyzthe to-gedyr agayne in haste’. But the other ten Spanish ships escaped.78

Emboldened by this experience, Warwick assailed another friendly squadron, this time the Hanseatic fleet of seventeen hulks on its return from La Rochelle. Since they were friendly with England, the Hanse complained to the king, who appointed a commission of inquiry into the sea battle between Warwick and his retinue and the men of Lübeck, to sit at Rochester and report back in August. Probably by then – and certainly by 7 September – Warwick had attacked a flotilla of two Genoese carracks and three Spanish great ships, capturing all except for one of the Spaniards.79 With complaints from friendly powers and demands for restitution flooding in and international relations in a flux, it is no wonder that the government mooted replacing Warwick as captain of Calais in the winter of 1458–9.

Warwick’s victories were clearly profitable. His share must have gone a considerable distance towards financing the costs of the fleet itself, for which of course he was separately paid, and his service in Calais, for which reimbursement was delayed. The spoils may have compensated members of the Calais garrison in his ships and made naval service desirable to other mariners from whom such convoys were otherwise immune. Profit alone may explain his actions. There were other advantages. Customs revenues lost by licences of exemption were recouped. Exemptions were disliked by those who paid customs. So, too, were the Genoese in the aftermath of their notorious attack on the Bristol merchant Robert Sturmy in the Mediterranean in 1457. Thus Warwick’s victories earned him popularity and renown: with his own men; with London merchants and staplers; with public opinion; and with chroniclers unaccustomed to any sort of success. As it was the government that had issued exemptions and that rescinded its embargo on the Genoese in August 1458, Warwick was applauded for opposing royal policy. Hence, it has been argued, the support of London for the Yorkist lords in 1459–61.80 That Warwick had vanquished friends and neutrals was a side issue, for were they not all foreigners? The same prejudice explains attacks on Flemings and Lombards in London in 1457–8. But Warwick’s exploits in 1458 do mark a change in practice, for was there not a Bay fleet to attack every year? His irresponsible aggression contributed to political breakdown in England.

6.3 THE OPPORTUNITY MISSED

It is notorious that the Loveday of St Paul’s did not deliver enduring peace. By the summer of 1459 the Yorkist lords had lost the trust of the crown. Political violence returned. The countdown to civil war had resumed. Why this occurred is not easy to say. Of course the parties to the Loveday had doubts. They had to prove their sincerity by their conduct. But all had so much to gain. York, Salisbury and Warwick could resume their normal roles confident in their own security. The government could look to peace abroad and relative solvency. And even for those in receipt of royal favour, it was worth more under conditions of domestic harmony. Nor is the collision of regional hegemonies the answer. None of their major feuds revived. Lancastrian consolidation in North Wales and the West Midlands did not overtly clash with the local hegemonies of York and Warwick. Whatever the rhetoric of the Yorkists, one crucial difference in the summer of 1459 was that their quarrel was no longer with other noblemen, but with the king. King Henry himself lost patience with them. One new factor was certainly disagreement on international and maritime affairs. For them Warwick was largely responsible.