Warwick the Kingmaker (49 page)

The capitulation of the castles enabled Edward and indeed Warwick to retire southwards. Both were at Middleham again on 17 January 1463; on the 30th Warwick feed Sir Richard Redman and yet another Harrington from the lordship.83 Warwick attended his parents’ funeral at Bisham on 14/15 February, the royal council at Westminster on 5 and 7 March, granted an annuity in London on the 18th, and witnessed the opening of another parliament at Westminster on the 29th, when he was again a trier of petitions.84 Foreign affairs were scheduled for the summer, but again northern affairs intervened. The peaceful intermission was disappointingly brief. All three castles reverted to the Lancastrians, for Sir Ralph Percy carried Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh to the enemy and Grey, disappointed not to be captain of Alnwick, betrayed it.

His uncle of Kent, formerly Fauconberg, who may have been Warwick’s lieutenant in the East March, died at Durham on 9 January 1463.85 Some reshaping of command was essential. Some may already have occurred since FitzHugh, Warwick’s brother-in-law and future lieutenant of the West March, first served as commissioner of array for Cumberland in December 1462. Montagu, who had proved himself, became warden of the East and Middle Marches in succession to Warwick, who remained in charge in the West. Warwick and Stanley, another brother-in-law, set off northwards on 3 June, immediately after Whitsun.86 Montagu, who was on the spot, staved off a threat to Newcastle and captured four French ships, including the carvel of the count of Eu. The castle blockaded by De Brezé and Grey that Montagu relieved was evidently Norham; it was known at Boulogne by 15 July that they had withdrawn ahead of Warwick’s arrival at Newcastle with ‘tout grosse puissance de gens’. 87

Whether King Edward believed it or not, he told the mayor of London that Queen Margaret had conceded to the Scots at Edinburgh the seven northern counties (sheriffwickes), many English benefices including the archbishopric of Canterbury for James Kennedy, and that she had committed England to the ‘Auld Alliance’ of France and Scotland, ‘the which we purpos to resiste with Goddes grace and arredie us therto’. Although this lurid account was intended to secure a loan,88 the fact that Angus was offered a dukedom gives some credence to the story; moreover Edward really did intend campaigning himself. At midsummer he commandeered all the ships of London and the Cinque Ports to scour the northern seas. A plea for taxation from the convocation of Canterbury on 15 July quoted a warning from Warwick of future descents on Norham. £240 sent to the earl was borrowed on the security of the tax:89 a paltry sum but all the king could manage.

Warwick foresaw a full-scale invasion. ‘Please hit the same to witte’, he wrote on 11 July from Middleham, ‘yt I knowe for certein that the Scottez, the kynges auncien grete enemyes, with his traitours and rebellez, have entred this land with grete puissance, entendyng to do therto and to the inhabitantez of ye same, all the hurt and damage that thay can ymagine’.

Apart from raising his own Yorkshiremen and unleashing Douglas on the West March, Warwick instructed Archbishop Bothe to array the northern clergy at Durham on the 15th. A muster of the clergy was a fairly desperate step, so it seems that Hastings was correct in supposing Warwick to be dependent on local resources only.90 It was not until the 26th that the invasion was launched from Berwick on Norham, ‘comprising the whole power of the kingdom garnished with great artillery’ and led by both kings (James III and Henry VI) and by De Brezé. Without waiting for Edward IV, Warwick dashed boldly forward in three battles, those of himself, his brother and the clergy of the province of York, but made no contact with the enemy, who fled in disarray ‘for fear of his coming...to their great shame and villainy and dishonour’. So great was their fear of Warwick! Hastings was not boasting on 7 August when he wrote that ‘the noble and valiant lord’ had made ‘la plus grande journee’ for many years and had followed it up into Scotland where he wasted the countryside, destroyed fortresses, and took prisoners, mainly Scots but including the Frenchman Robert of Avranches. News from the other side recorded his penetration an improbable sixty-three miles and that no castle, village or house had been spared. Even Kennedy appreciated the need to treat.91

Thoroughly discomforted, Queen Margaret sailed as early as 31 July from Bamburgh to the continent to impede the peace negotiations that Warwick also should have been attending. He had repeatedly deferred his departure. This was not because his triumph presaged another supreme effort against the Northumbrian castles. The necessary resources were lacking. Though Edward still anticipated being at Newcastle on 13 September, he did not arrive. Warwick’s fleet paraded futilely along the coast. Following the omission of the Scots from an Anglo-French truce in October, negotiations resumed. They led at length on 9 December at York to a ten-month truce with Scotland and agreement on a full-scale Anglo-Scottish conference at Newcastle in March. Meantime the English were not to support Douglas, nor the Scots the Lancastrians.92 Three days before Warwick had received the custody of the temporalities of the bishopric of Carlisle during its vacancy.

Though the castles still held out, the Lancastrians were left to their own resources. Warwick turned his attention to peace-keeping and diplomacy in the Midlands and London. There was widespread fear of treason after Christmas. Warwick was nominated to judicial commissions in eight counties on 25 January 1464 and to another twelve on 8 February. He was at Coventry on 10 January 1464 and sat in session with Worcester, Dudley, Hastings, Rivers and Wenlock later the same month. Presumably it was now that he, his countess and the king made offerings at St Mary’s Warwick. On 3, 8 and 11 February Worcester, Rivers and himself were holding sessions of oyer and terminer at Gloucester.93 Protracted discussions with French ambassadors in London lasted until April, the time fixed for definitive negotiations in the North with the Scots. Warwick indeed was among ten commissioners named to treat with the Scots on 5 April, but his brother, the chancellor, preceded him. Perhaps Warwick had set off by 29 April, when he and Montagu were exempted from the Garter chapter because they ‘were guarding the northern borders of the kingdom, by the king’s command, that they might gallantly oppose rebels and enemies, if they attempted to make an invasion’. Warwick was at York on 5 May with Archbishop Bothe to prorogue parliament.94

Meanwhile Montagu won the northern war. The Lancastrians had overrun Northumberland. To Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh and Alnwick, they had added Bywell, where King Henry himself was staying, Langley and Hexham, all on the Tyne, and even Skipton in Yorkshire. To convey the Scottish ambassadors to the intended Anglo-Scottish peace conference required an armed escort, which the Lancastrians attacked on 25 April at Hedgeley Moor. Montagu won the skirmish in which Percy, significantly, was killed. Though actually very few in number, the Lancastrians foolishly confronted Montagu in the open near Hexham on 15 May. Their army was destroyed and almost all their remaining leaders were killed or executed, Somerset, Roos, Hungerford, Findern and Tailbois almost at once. Henry VI was so nearly captured that his bycocket (coronet) fell into Yorkist hands.95

Montagu delivered it to the king at Pontefract on the 19th. On the 24th all three Neville brothers were at St Leonard’s Hospital at York when the great seal was returned to George. On the 27th, at the archbishop’s palace, Edward rewarded Montagu by elevating him to the earldom of Northumberland and granted him forfeited Percy lands worth about £1,000 a year in that shire. On 1 June 1464 Edward concluded a fifteen-year truce with Scotland.96 Next day the Scottish envoys mysteriously bound themselves on pain of £1,000 to Warwick that Sir Roos of Haukehede knight of Scotland ‘shall entre his body within the iron gate of the castle of Middleham’ or other place appointed by the earl by 30 November next.97

The last Lancastrians remained to be mopped up. On 11 June 1464 both Neville earls were commissioned with others to reduce the Northumberland castles. They were authorized to agree terms with the garrisons, Sir Ralph Grey and Sir Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth only excepted. Each was also directed to redress infringements of the truce within his wardenry.98 Bombards brought by sea to Northumberland could now be deployed since there was no immediate need for the castles to be defensible. On 23 June, when Warwick appeared before Alnwick ‘with the puissance’, it was surrendered on terms; so too was Dunstanburgh next day. On 25 June he blockaded Bamburgh, which Grey intended to defend. Chester herald, formerly Warwick herald, and the current Warwick herald Davy Griffith directed the rebels to surrender forthwith. And all those

disposed to receyve the Kynges grace, my said Lord of Warrewike, the Kinges lieutenant, and my Lorde of Northumbreland, Wardeyn of the marches, grauntith the Kyng[’s] grace and pardon, body, lyvelodes, reservyng ij. persones, is understoude, Sir Humfrey Neville and Sir Rauf Grey, thoo twen to be oute of the Kinges grace, without any redempcion.

Not surprisingly Grey rejected the offer and determined to fight. After warning him of God’s wrath for the ensuing bloodshed and of the Neville earls’ intent to prosecute the siege for seven years if need be, the heralds threatened the execution of one man for every cannon shot: King Edward still wanted his castle back undamaged! The king’s great guns
Newcastle
and
London
and a brass gun opened fire, shooting right through the walls and dislodging masonry, some of which fell on Grey in his chamber and disabled him. Whether or not an assault followed, the garrison yielded and handed Grey over to the besiegers. Thence he was conveyed to the king at Doncaster, where on 10 July he was tried according to the law of arms, sentenced to degradation from knighthood, and was executed.99 Following these elaborate rituals, Warwick proceeded via Middleham (20 July) to Lochmaben Stone near Dumfries in the West March on 23 July to redress infractions of the truce.100 On 12 December 1465 Warwick was one of the commissioners at Newcastle who further prolonged the truce until 1519.101 King Edward contented himself with what he had recovered. Retrieving Roxburgh and Berwick was unattainable.

Now that the North was pacified, Warwick was free – at last – to turn to other matters and to visit his other estates. He was never to spend as much time in the North again. It remained the source of his most trusted retainers and Middleham, it appears, was his favourite residence. It was actually only in 1465 that he accrued the Percy honour of Cockermouth and the Percy third of Egremont, making two-thirds in all, of which he had the custody earlier in year. With the hereditary shrievalty of Cumberland, they made his hold on the West March even more overwhelming. In 1465 he was to add the forfeited lands of Lord Neville in Sowerby to his own. A regrant of the chief justiciarship of the northern forests on 21 November 1466 appropriated particular local revenues to the emoluments; similar progress was made in appropriating the additional revenues he had secured for the wardenship, now worth £1,250 in peacetime rather than the £983 of 1443.102 Ironically now the borders were secure, there was less need for Warwick to be there; his rule was exercised through intermediaries, in particular FitzHugh as lieutenant and Richard Salkeld as constable of Carlisle. Like his father and grandfather before him, Warwick was developing his inheritance step by step. So, too, was his brother John, Earl of Northumberland, who in 1466 succeeded to the constableships of Pontefract and Knaresborough, more probably by surrender than by ousting his brother.103 The enthronement of the third brother George as archbishop sealed the Neville dominance of the North.

8.3 CHANGING PRIORITIES

The events of 1461–4 forced the problems of the North, his northern estates and northern retainers to the front of Warwick’s attention, rather than preoccupying him. The earl was actively interested in diplomacy, corresponding with pope and foreign rulers. He oversaw those deputizing for him elsewhere. He was appointed to commissions in the West Midlands, London and the South-East, and the West Country. His royal grants included a refund in 1463 of £3,580 spent on his ships on his ‘great journey to Ireland’ in 1460 and 100 oaks for his park of Canford in 1464.104 He was solicited for his good lordship by suitors from everywhere. Important though Yorkshire and the borders were to him, it was not solely northerners whom he trusted with his last will or who were his most prominent councillors.

During the 1450s Calais had offered Warwick a degree of maritime, military and diplomatic independence to be enjoyed nowhere else. That continued. It was there in 1469, effectively outside Edward’s reach, that his daughter was married. However Warwick could not be at Calais in the early 1460s. He had to rely on his officials there – Duras the marshal, Blount the treasurer, and Whetehill the controller – to reduce Hammes and manage day-to-day affairs. The victualler’s accounts for 1461–2 record the phenomenal consumption of guns (3), gunpowder (1120 lb), 998 gunstones, 122 bows, 3 crossbows, 8,370 crossbow bolts, and 85 lances for the reduction of Hammes, and the smaller but nevertheless considerable quantities used on the Lancastrian side.105 This time Warwick indented separately for Calais, Hammes, Guines and Rysbank and was thus free to appoint his own deputies.106 Whetehill became lieutenant of Guines; also active in diplomacy, he corresponded directly with Louis XI. By 1466 Warwick’s former household steward Otwel Worsley was lieutenant of Calais town and of Rysbank Tower. Sir Geoffrey Gate, governor of the Isle of Wight 1461–6, succeeded Duras as marshal. The principal officers in a commission of 1468 were Warwick, his lieutenant Wenlock, the treasurer and stapler John Thirsk, Duras, Worsley, Richard and Adrian Whetehill.107 There was no peace dividend at Calais, so close to the mutually hostile French and Burgundians, and Edward IV had as much difficulty as Henry VI in meeting the wages and staving off the mutiny that was again imminent in September/October 1462.108 A further assumption of responsibility by the staplers resolved the crisis, but deprived historians of the most detailed particular accounts. Warwick was described as ‘our good lord’ in a letter of 4 June 1467 from the mercers of London to William Caxton, their governor in Calais.109 The personal commitment of the garrison to Warwick was reiterated in 1470–1.