Warwick the Kingmaker (53 page)

That the breakdown is generally dated to Edward’s Wydeville marriage is not merely the perception of modern historians, but was widely believed at the time. It was not so. Warwick was disappointed, even dismayed, as he himself reported,13 but he was not humiliated by public promises about Edward’s marriage that he could not keep. He was not actually in France as once supposed.14 He recognized at once that he must make the best of the king’s choice. It was Warwick himself on Michaelmas Day 1464 who conducted his new queen into Reading Abbey, who stood godfather to her eldest daughter and presided at her churching. He missed her coronation, where Clarence stood steward, because he was on a mission abroad. He made no recorded objection to the Wydeville marriage of his nephew Maltravers, son of his sister Joan Countess of Arundel, so precipitately concluded at Reading in October 1464; nor indeed to the pairing of other sisters of the queen to Essex’s heir William Bourchier, Herbert’s heir and namesake William Herbert, or to Anthony Grey of Ruthin, though all were eligible spouses for his own daughters. That he objected to the Buckingham and Exeter matches, as we have seen, had highly specific reasons; his disapproval of the creation of the younger Herbert as lord Dunster presumably arose because he, like Clarence, was backing the restoration of the Luttrells, kinsfolk of Clarence’s clients the Courtenays of Powderham.15 Such frictions mattered, but once past, did not lead to breakdown.

The frustration of Isabel’s match to Clarence was different, not least because the duke remained unmarried despite Edward’s diplomatic manoeuvres. The king’s prohibition was not respected. That earl and chancellor worked for a papal dispensation, ultimately secretly and successfully, was not the cause of the breach. Nor indeed were the matrimonial aspirations of Herbert for his daughters, directed towards the restoration of the Percy and Tudor heirs designated as their husbands, which threatened not just the possessions of Clarence and the Nevilles in the North, but to erect anew a rival to the Nevilles’ regional hegemony.16 These were aggravating factors, that assumed a greater importance because attainable once the rupture had occurred; they were not its cause.

Of course Edward’s marriage was a symbol of his capacity for independence from all his advisers. It was rather the differences in foreign policy that the authoritative Crowland continuator saw as the key issue:

At this time emissaries were sent to England from Flanders seeking the Lady Margaret, King Edward’s sister, as a wife for the Lord Charles, eldest son of Philip, duke of Burgundy (the father being still being alive). The marriage took place and was solemnised in the following July, 1467 [recte 1468]. Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, who for some years had appeared to favour the French as against the Burgundian faction, was deeply offended...It is my belief that this was the real cause of dissension between the king and the earl rather than the marriage between the king and Queen Elizabeth...17

Yet this is often placed too early. It is far from obvious that Warwick was identified with a pro-French policy as early as 1464. Similarly it cannot have been until Buckingham was married elsewhere and Clarence’s majority, both in 1466, that the matching of Warwick’s daughters became acute.

When the Yorkists invaded England in 1460 and overthrew the Lancastrians, it was with the covert – and then, in 1461, with the overt – support of Philip the Good and the Dauphin Louis, who was in refuge at his court. This ran counter to the wishes of Duke Philip’s son and heir, Charles the Bold, who was sympathetic to his distant and legitimate relatives, the Lancastrians. The root of Warwick’s antipathy towards Charles, reported by the Crowland continuator, originated in the fears of both the earl and his king in 1462–3 at the prospect of Charles’s succession to Duke Philip.18 The Yorkist victory was also unwelcome to the dauphin’s father Charles VII, who provided more open support after the Lancastrian defeat, and the Scots. King Charles’s death in 1461 may have appeared at first to offer hope of a united pro-Yorkist Franco-Burgundian front, but in his new role as King Louis XI the former dauphin adopted his father’s policy. Louis was to prove, if anything, more hostile to Burgundy. He was open to approaches from both parties, unwilling to commit himself clearly to either, and practised a subtle diplomacy of dissimulation, double-dealing and disinformation that considered every possibility, however impractical, and which at least twice, in 1465 and 1468, brought him to the edge of disaster. King Louis came to regard Warwick as the key pawn in his chess-game; he cultivated him when he could and fêted his subordinates when he could not. Warwick’s whole career in the 1460s was presented by Kendall through the subtle twists and turns of Louis’s diplomacy and derived from the king’s own utterances, sometimes perhaps informative, but often deliberately made to his agents or Milanese ambassadors and intended to mislead their own correspondents.19

Actually foreign affairs bulked less large in Warwick’s career. That the insights acquired before 1461 remained relevant thereafter was because of repeated threats to Calais, the garrison’s proximity to both France and Burgundy, and the use of maritime power as a coercive instrument of diplomacy. The solution to Lancastrian insurrection in the North was diplomatic. Warwick maintained his own independent correspondence with foreign potentates and was regarded by both them and Edward as a key intermediary. Early in the reign, he and King Edward were of one mind, often writing parallel letters to the same recipients,20 and using the same intermediaries: Warwick herald, Thomas Colt, the earl’s secretary Robert Neville, Master Thomas Kent, Wenlock, Hastings, Galet and Whetehill. Their common objective was to secure the regime by denying support and refuge to the Lancastrians, which they sought to achieve through a combination of diplomacy and seapower. Unsuccessfully. In 1461, when the Yorkists offered both French and Scots their principal prize, King Edward’s own hand in marriage, Charles VII declined, unwilling to commit himself so irrevocably to a fledgling dynasty. Next year King Louis found Margaret’s offer of Calais too alluring, a decision which Kent’s maritime depredations caused him to regret. Louis was temperamentally unprepared to close any diplomatic door. In the event, rather than easing the pacification of the North, substantive diplomacy followed the Nevilles’ victory there.

Until then Warwick’s diplomatic role was limited by commitments elsewhere. He had been unavailable in 1462 both for the intended conference with Burgundy at Valenciennes and to command the fleet. The French envoy La Barde had to seek him in York. 1463 was the year of the conference at St Omer of England, France and Burgundy arranged for midsummer by the good offices of Duke Philip. It was abortive because Warwick, the key figure, could not come; he repeatedly deferred and never arrived. It was left on 3 October to his brother Bishop Neville to conclude a truce on land, that required Louis to abandon the Lancastrians, and to fix another conference at St Omer in April to agree a truce at sea. By this time, however, convinced that the Yorkists had come to stay, Louis wished to commit them to his anti-Burgundian coalition to be secured by the marriage of his sister-in-law Bona of Savoy to King Edward. An exchange of correspondence brought Louis’s envoy Lannoy early to England, where he was initially ill-received: the French king’s secretary Guillaume Cousinot was among the Lancastrians at Bamburgh and a French assault on Calais was suspected. It was Warwick who brought Lannoy safely to London on 21 March 1464, who was commissioned to treat with him on the 28th, and who negotiated the truce at sea on 12 April. Obviously more substantial issues were discussed. Also on 12 April, Edward commissioned Warwick and Wenlock to treat for peace with both France and Burgundy. At this stage that was what he wanted, whereas Lannoy and Louis sought an alliance with England against Burgundy. Though Warwick again was in the North, Wenlock and Whetehill were able to attend the postponed diet in late June and early July. King Louis introduced Bona to Wenlock, who agreed to urge her case with Edward. Warwick herald was also sympathetic. Louis still expected Warwick to materialize later, in October 1464.

That Warwick’s agents favoured Bona probably does reflect the views of their master. But he was by no means committed. The truce at sea was a necessity that someone had to settle and in which Warwick had an obvious interest. On 3 May 1464, even after concluding the truce, Lannoy warned Louis that something would have to be done to satisfy the English over Cousinot,
especially Warwick
.21 Certainly no French match had been fully negotiated at September 1464, when the Reading council demanded of Edward his decision whether to proceed further. If Edward had to marry, he did not have to marry Bona. It is striking that one chronicler supposed that Warwick was backing a Scottish candidate and another refuted a Spanish one. Edward probably still had an eligible alternative in Isabella of Castile, sister of King Henry IV, a possibility broached earlier in the year and later considered for Clarence. We should not read too much in Isabella’s later complaints to Richard III about her rejection by his brother since all candidates were ruled out by Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Wydeville!22 Even without that obstacle, an acceptable marriage treaty with France still had to be devised. It is however strange that Edward is never blamed for throwing away the princely dowry so vital for his finances.

Edward’s policy was subtly changing. His initial objectives were obsolete. He was no longer so weak that he needed to bind himself to France. Now, secondly, he sought peace with all parties. He wished to avoid reinforcing his most formidable and predatory neighbour, France, and in January 1465 was to agree to supply troops to Brittany to preserve its autonomy. Perhaps it was now that Warwick refused Montagu’s services as commander because he was still needed in the North? By 1468 Edward had moved further to a third position, had constructed a coalition against Louis with a view to making good his nominal kingship of France. Perhaps such aspirations were always there, but were shelved as impractical. Neither he nor Warwick had ever considered ceding Calais for dynastic advantage. This third policy required Edward to suspend any remaining doubts about Charles the Bold, just as the latter, rather ostenta-tiously, had to swallow his objections and recognize an English alliance as the price of his survival. Since Duke Philip and his son were diametrically opposed in 1461 and had to be treated separately up until the duke’s death in 1467, it was not that Edward remained constant to his original ally. And Warwick? Warwick, it appears, did not overcome his distaste for Charles, perhaps on direct acquaintance. He did come to commit himself to a pro-French foreign policy. If Louis courted and flattered him and Warwick’s subordinates succumbed to his charms, it seems that any courting happened after Warwick had made up his mind. It need not follow that Warwick was equally susceptible and that pandering to his
amour propre
made him easy to manage. The earl may well have felt that it was best to ally with England’s most powerful neighbour and to recognize that the English claim to France was unenforceable. We cannot know. It is impossible to say whether he ever considered that Edward should renounce the crown of France. No circumstances demanded an
aggressive
alliance either with France or Burgundy.

On 8 March 1465 Warwick was conservator of the truce with Brittany and on the 28th was commissioned to treat with Charles’s representative Jacques de Luxembourg. The earl, Hastings, Master Pierre Taster Dean of St Severin’s, and Master Thomas Kent spent six weeks at Calais, apart from four days at Boulogne treating directly with Charles the Bold. Nothing substantive resulted, not apparently because Warwick wanted an agreement with France, but because Charles was still inclined to the Lancastrians.23 Under further commissions of 8 May, Warwick and Hastings were abroad from 11 May to 22 July. Ten-month truces with France by land and sea were concluded, Louis agreeing not to aid the Lancastrians and Edward not to back Burgundy and Brittany against France.24 Further negotiations may have been delayed and were ultimately interrupted by the War of the Public Weal, the conspiracy of French feudatories against Louis that culminated in the drawn battle of Montlhéry on 16 July 1465. Louis soon emerged unscathed, but a further conference at St Omer in October did not happen.

What broke the deadlock, in retrospect, was the death of Charles’s consort Isabel de Bourbon in September 1465, since this enabled and perhaps prompted him to propose the marriage of himself to Edward’s unmarried sister Margaret of York. On 22 March 1466 Warwick led those commissioned to treat for a commercial treaty with Burgundy, to treat with Charles for his marriage to Margaret and for that of his daughter Mary to Clarence, and to treat with the French also.25 Warwick, it seems, was unenthusiastic. The most substantial achievement was a further prolongation of the French truces to March 1468. Louis, however, was induced to offer a choice of partners in a draft treaty in which Louis himself would pay the dowry.26 Both negotiations were pursued over the next year. Charles had no interest in Clarence and wanted a firm defensive alliance with England if he was to marry Margaret. A Burgundian match was clearly Edward’s preferred option. The French alternative, strongly preferred by Warwick whom Louis now saw as his partisan, was firmed up into marriage and a pension of 40,000 crowns (
c.
£8,000); what Louis told the Milanese duke, that there were to be three marriages involving Margaret, Clarence and Gloucester, Edward’s renunciation of the French throne and a joint war of partition against Burgundy, was probably Louis’s wish-list rather than what he could agree even with Warwick. The more realistic motive of averting the marriage of Charles with Margaret was stated in his letters of 28 May 1467 to his subjects.27 Though Warwick carried on, pressing a case that the king had decided against, Margaret herself accepted the match in October 1467 and the wedding itself was on 3 July 1468.