Warwick the Kingmaker (38 page)

The Yorkist coup d’état was successful. There remained three deficiencies: the Tower and Guines still held out; the queen, prince and other Lancastrians in the North, in Wales, and the West had not yet acknowledged defeat and submitted; and foreign intervention could yet overcome their achievement.

The Tower soon fell. It was not victualled for a long siege, supplies were severed by land and water, for Warwick’s ships commanded the Thames, and considerable damage was caused by artillery firing over the river. Accordingly, on 18 July, the commanders agreed terms for capitulation that spared themselves and exposed the others to punishment. Even on release, they were not safe, for the populace wanted revenge for the casualties they had caused in the City. Scales sought sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, but was seized as he travelled on the Thames by Warwick’s shipmen, who killed him and cast his body naked in the churchyard of the priory of St Mary Overy (now Southwark Cathedral). Since he was a war-hero and godfather to March, there was genuine regret at his death. Warwick and March attended his funeral the same day at the priory. Immediately afterwards Warwick ordered a stop to such violence.54 Hungerford was licensed to go abroad on pilgrimage.55 It was tacitly conceded that the original garrison had been acting on royal instructions and the king’s behalf. Sir Thomas Browne and others who had broken through the Yorkist cordon into the Tower on 10 July, with the mistaken intention of prolonging the siege, were tried for treason at the Guildhall before Warwick, Bourchier, the Lord Mayor and judges on 22–3 July. Browne was charged with treason and rebellion against the king, with seeking to destroy the true lords of his blood, and with waging war against the king’s lieges in London by shooting wildfire and other weapons into the City to the destruction of houses and the deaths of nine named individuals. Browne and five servants of the Duke of Exeter, hereditary constable of the Tower, were convicted and executed. So too, soon after, was John Archer, one of the duke’s councillors. As a Milanese observer remarked, ‘it is not thought that he [Warwick] will stay his hand, but will put to death all those who have acted against him’.56 It is hardly surprising such executions were popular. The best way to consolidate the new regime was to eliminate its opponents, by killing them or imprisoning them – the Bishop of Hereford was gaoled at Warwick Castle57 – or to terrify them into submission. One wonders what attainders the Yorkists planned for their forthcoming parliament.

As Warwick had promised at Calais, his successful invasion isolated Somerset. Guines could no longer expect to be relieved. Now they were in control of the government machine the Yorkists were able to instruct him in the king’s name to surrender the castle to Warwick. Warwick returned to Calais, where he was reunited with his countess and mother and was nobly received by the town’s patricians, bourgeois and soldiers, whom he thanked for guarding the colony so well against his enemies. Next day (8 August) he met Somerset himself at St Pierre. Having kissed, Somerset promised not to fight the earl again, and was allowed to retire with Roos and Trollope to Dieppe. Whetehill took over at Guines.58 Somerset’s capitulation also restored peace at sea and enabled commerce to resume between England, Calais and Burgundy. That was what the merchants of the Staple had paid for.

That left unreconciled those in the North, Wales and West Country who had not accepted the verdict of Northampton, who absented themselves from parliament when it met, and who refused to accept its decisions. Defiance had not persisted during York’s earlier protectorates. Most important of the irreconcilables were the queen and prince, who legitimately identified themselves with the future of the dynasty and appealed to those loyal to it. Margaret had not been at Northampton. After many vicissitudes, she brought her son in January 1461 to the North, where they found natural allies in the Percy and Clifford foes of the Nevilles, who had made themselves masters of the whole region. They did not relinquish control of Salisbury’s estates and Yorkist sympathizers in the region had to toe their line. Similarly Pembroke remained in control in Wales despite ignoring government mandates to the contrary. So too in the West Country. It was an important concentration of forces in December 1460 when Somerset, Exeter and Devon took their retainers from the south-west to join the queen in the North. She also looked for help in Scotland:59 dynastic interests prevailed over national interests. Against opponents, who rejected the verdict of battle and the manipulation of royal and parliamentary authority, the Yorkists must employ force. No doubt, as on many previous occasions, many lesser men would be disarmed by the Yorkists’ claim to represent royal authority.

The Yorkist invasion had enjoyed widespread international backing. Duke Philip, the Dauphin Louis, Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan and Pope Pius II were all sympathetic; Yorkists were also suspected of encouraging James II’s aggression on the northern frontier. Actually he was merely anti-English, regardless of faction, and his death in August before Roxburgh was as advantageous to the Yorkists as the Lancastrians. Philip and Louis were pleased with the Yorkist successes. Their support implied hostility from Charles VII and Philip’s heir Charles the Bold. The Dauphin’s emissary Seigneur de la Barde was well received by Warwick in September. The Yorkists sought to maximize Coppini’s usefulness by praising him to the pope, recommending his promotion to the cardinalate, even licensing him to accept an English bishopric. The Burgundian emissary to Scotland Lord Gruthuyse thwarted Margaret of Anjou’s attempts to ally with the Dowager-Queen Mary of Guelders. It took the Lancastrian victory at Wakefield to bring about an agreement of the two queens at Lincluden College near Dumfries and an understanding that may have included a marriage alliance between Prince Edward and Princess Mary of Scotland.60

The Yorkists soon nominated more sympathetic ministers. On 25 July it was Warwick’s own brother George Bishop of Exeter who succeeded Archbishop Bourchier as chancellor. Viscount Bourchier resumed the treasurership and Robert Stillington replaced Lawrence Bothe as keeper of the privy seal. Warwick’s veteran feoffee Beauchamp of Powicke remained steward of the household, but Warwick’s younger brother John became chamberlain with control over access to the king and considerable say over who served about him. Warwick’s Welsh retainer Sir Walter Scull succeeded Tuddenham as treasurer of the household. There were considerable changes among the lower ranks. In November Wenlock became chief butler of England, Dynham chancellor of Ireland, and Fauconberg and Blount respectively lieutenant and treasurer of Calais.61

It was a partisan regime and narrowly based. Apart from the three earls, Viscount Bourchier and Fauconberg, the only lay lords present at the transfer of the great seal and with the king at Canterbury were the four barons Beauchamp, Cobham, Grey of Ruthin and Scrope of Bolton.62 There were no new faces: the adherence of Scrope of Bolton is unsurprising for a Richmondshire baron whose wife Joan was sister of Warwick’s own brother-in-law FitzHugh. The familiar signatures of Archbishop Bourchier, Bishops Grey and Neville, the two Neville earls, Stanley, Dudley and Wenlock appear on a council minute of 11 November; only Lord Stourton was new.63 Attendance at the session of parliament in between was probably not much better. When the Lancaster feoffees were reconstituted on 7 October to include Salisbury, Warwick, Bishop Neville, Grey of Ruthin and Beauchamp of Powicke for the first time, the only new peer was Warwick’s brother-in-law William Earl of Arundel.64 Not a feoffee, but nevertheless a highly significant recruit, was John Duke of Norfolk, the white lion of the political poems.

It is difficult to accept that the new Yorkist regime was sincerely committed to reform since it neither retrenched nor introduced reforms to parliament. There was no new source of income. No attempt was made to secure a parliamentary grant of taxation. No act of resumption was proposed. Whilst the lands of the queen and prince were indeed resumed, as the Yorkists had wanted in 1455–6, it was only to endow the new protector and his sons to a lavish level perhaps exceeding the anticipated yield. Instead the regime relied on repeated loans totalling £11,000 from the City corporation between 4 July 1460 and 7 April 1461, £1,500 from three City livery companies and doubtless similar sums from others unrecorded, and at least £7,000 from ministers and officials in September; other sums were lent to the Neville earls, such as £100 lent to Warwick by the mercers’ company.65 The customs were appropriated neither to the royal household nor the most deserving and long-standing debtors, but to the staplers, Warwick’s financiers, to those willing to lend to the regime, always on good security, and to Warwick himself as keeper of the seas. He now secured the whole subsidy, including that from Southampton and Sandwich that had been with-held in 1457.66

The new regime was more greedy for royal patronage and assets than the maligned Lancastrian favourites. Obviously the Yorkists resumed possession of their estates and indeed their offices: Warwick was reappointed governor of the Channel Isles on 8 August. On 8 October officers at Middleham and Ware (Herts.) were ordered to pay arrears to Salisbury and those at Penrith, Wressle and Pontefract were instructed to surrender control. These were probably merely the most recalcitrant.67 On 1 December Salisbury joined his heir with him in new grants of the chief stewardship of the North Parts of the Duchy of Lancaster and of the duchy lands in Lancashire and Cheshire. He himself became great chamberlain of England, chief steward of the South Parts with Warwick (1 December) and keeper of the royal mews jointly with his son Thomas (22 August), who was appointed constable and steward of the Lancaster honour of Bolingbroke (20 October) and steward of Boston (Lincs.) as well. Warwick’s range of interests emerges from these new duchy stewardships and his new role of feoffee, which gave him a dominant place in duchy administration especially in the North-West. He enhanced his authority in the Channel by adding the wardenship of the Cinque Ports and the governorship of the Channel Isles to the captaincy of Calais and by securing a further three-year term as keeper of the seas. On 18 November he extended his Midlands influence northwards by accruing the offices of constable, steward and master forester of the Lancaster honours of Tutbury (Staffs.), Duffield (Derbys.), and Leicester and the stewardship of Castle Donington (Leics.). And on 4 November on the sureties of Sir Walter Wrottesley and John Hay he was granted the keeping of the marcher lordships of Newport, Hay, Huntington, Brecon and Goodrich in the minorities of the heirs of Buckingham and Shrewsbury.68 Was he already viewing the young duke and earl as eligible suitors for his daughters? On 8 February 1461 he was elected knight of the Garter.69 What is clear is that he was enhancing his possessions and authority on all fronts and amassing what had formerly been divided between the queen, Buckingham, Shrewsbury, Wiltshire and Beaumont. Since his brothers were respectively chancellor and household chamberlain, this was decidedly a Neville-dominated regime. It was during these months that the foundation was laid for the rule of the Nevilles in the early years of Edward IV.

Warwick now overshadowed his father and uncle, his brothers, and his cousin of March. It was he who combined rank, experience and energy. He dominated the new regime. ‘The government of the country’, a Milanese observed in July, ‘will remain in the hands of Warwick...Everything is in Warwick’s power and the war is at an end and he has done marvellous things. God grant him grace to keep the country in peace and unity.’70 Friar Brackley asked that God preserve Warwick, his father and brothers. ‘Yf owt come to my Lord Warwik but good, fare weel ye, fare well I, and al our frendys, for be the weye of my sowle this lond were vttirly on-done, as God forbede...’71 Warwick was now the principal Neville and the whole country was lost without him.

Warwick was everywhere and did everything. After the sessions in the London Guildhall on 22–23 July, he witnessed the transfer of the great seal to his brother at the bishop of London’s palace on the 25th. There followed a lightning visit to Warwick on 28 July. On 2 August he reached Canterbury for evensong in company with the king, the papal legate, March, Salisbury, Bishop Neville and two Bourchiers. The archbishop and the prior of Christ Church were their hosts. There was a solemn procession on the morrow. Patents were sealed restoring Warwick’s possession of Guines and the Channel Isles. Though the king remained at Canterbury for another fortnight, Warwick sped to Calais, sealing his agreement with Somerset on the 8th, feasted those who loved him both there and at Sandwich. His wife, mother and Wydeville prisoners accompanied him. Warwick caught up with the king at Greenwich on the 19th and shared in his grand reception in London, where the mayor, bourgeois and merchants came to him in his lodgings to thank him for the great benefits that he had performed and was still doing daily. It was at London on 24 August that the three Yorkist earls issued a safe conduct to John Davy of Bridgewater.72

Thereafter Warwick’s movements are less certain. Waurin gives a lengthy account that is difficult to locate either chronologically or geographically. It seems improbable that he went at once to Warwick since Waurin records him and his countess moving around, on pilgrimage to Walsingham, and shadow-boxing with Northumberland, perhaps in Lincolnshire, near the residence of his kinsman Richard Welles, Lord Willoughby who allegedly warned him against starting a war ahead of parliament. Thence he travelled via ‘Fil’ to ‘Lislefil’, most probably Lichfield in Staffordshire, whence Anne proceeded to Warwick.73 Warwick himself met up with York at Shrewsbury, where they celebrated and spent ‘four days between them devising their affairs’. The duke went on to Ludlow and the earl to Warwick.74 All this may have been in fulfilment of (and hence subsequent to) a commission of 8 September to Warwick to arrest rebels in the ten Midland counties of Oxford, Gloucester, Shropshire, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Northampton, Rutland, Derbyshire and Staffordshire.75 It was probably at Warwick that he was so well received by the local lords and ladies, who nevertheless ‘complained to him of the great evils and damages done to them by the Duke of Somerset, who had pillaged, robbed and destroyed their vills and castles and taken any places of the earl’ the previous autumn.76 Certainly he was there on 28 September, when he issued a warrant of payment for supply of bullocks to the household by the grazier Benet Lee. The following day he visited Walford Parva in the south of the county, where he was one of the feoffees who leased land there to Thomas and Emma Ingram. Next day he and John Greville, Thomas Ferrers, Thomas Hugford, Richard Hotoft, Thomas Broughton and Thomas Walgrave, the first four at least being retainers, presided at quarter sessions, at which several of those who had wasted their lands the previous year were indicted. We know of four such indictments because much later they were moved to the court of King’s Bench by writ of
certiorari
. Probably there were others that were not. He was back at Westminster for the opening of parliament on 7 October, when he was again a trier of petitions.77