Warwick the Kingmaker (57 page)

5. Pugh,
Glamorgan County History
, 197–8;
Marcher Lordships of South Wales 1415–1536
, ed. T. B. Pugh (Cardiff, 1963), 240; Somerville, i. 648.

6. G. Williams,
Recovery, Reorientation, and Reformation: Wales 1415–1642
(Oxford, 1987), 203.

7. C. D. Ross,
Edward IV
(1974), 71.

8.
CPR 1461–7
, 212–13. He did not receive the revenues until 1464 or seisin until 1466.

9. Ibid. 89. Though appointed steward again on 8 March 1465 to pronounce sentence on traitors in parliament, it was Clarence who was steward for the queen’s coronation, ibid. 451;
The Coronation of Elizabeth Woodville
, ed. G. Smith (1935), 14.

10.
CPR 1461–7
, 195, 197;
1467–77
, 109, 233;
Foedera v.
i. 110.

11.
Priory of Hexham
, cii–civ.

12.
CPR 1461–7
, 265, 283–4;
1467–77
, 36;
Descriptive Catalogue of Berkeley Castle
, ed. I. H. Jeayes, 191; see also
Testamenta Vetusta
, ed. N. H. Nicolas (1826), ii. 293; Payne, ‘Salisbury Roll’, 197.

13. Scofield, i. 355.

14. A. L. Brown and B. Webster, ‘The Movements of the Earl of Warwick’s in the Summer of 1464 – A Correction’,
EHR
lxxxi (1966), 80–2.

15.
Annales
, 783–6; J. R. Lander,
Crown and Nobility 1450–1509
(1976), 110–13.

16. Hicks,
Clarence
, 31–2.

17.
Crowland Chronicle Continuations 1459–86
, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox (1986), 115.

18. Ibid.;
Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes
, ed. E. Dupont, iii (SHF, 1847), 201–2.

19. Kendall,
Warwick
, parts III and IV. Unless otherwise stated, this section is based on ibid.; Scofield, i; Ross,
Edward IV
; Calmette and Perinelle; M. R. Thielemans,
Bourgogne
et Angleterre
(Brussels, 1966),
passim
.

20. Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, ii. 38.

21. BN MS 6960, f. 616.

22.
Letters and Papers illustrative of Richard III and Henry VII
, ed. J. Gairdner (2 vols, Rolls ser. 1861–3), i. 31;
Chronicles of the White Rose of York
(1843), 15;
Great Chron.
202;
Crowland Continuations
, 115. Note that Isabella’s marriage to Clarence or Gloucester was still possible on 6 Jul. 1467, Scofield, i. 428.

23. As suggested by Scofield,
Edward IV
, i. 379;
CPR 1461–7
, 451;
Foedera
v.ii. 129.

24.
Annales
, 784; E 404/73/1/69.

25.
Foedera
, v.ii. 138–9.

26. Scofield, i. 406 quoting BN 20488, f. 22.

27. Scofield, i. 412;
CSPM
i. 118–20;
Annales
, 788; Vaesen,
Lettres de Louis XI
, iii. 144; see also ibid. iii. 155 (13 Jan. 1467)

28.
Annales
, 786.

29. Waurin-Dupont, 190.

30. Scofield i. 479.

31.
Annales
, 788; Jones and Walker, ‘Private Contracts’, 172.

32. E 404/73/3/73a & 73b.

33.
Annales
, 788;
CCR 1468–76
, nos. 93–5; M. A. Hicks, ‘The 1468 Statute of Livery’,
HR
, lxiv (1991), 16–20.

34. Scofield, i. 451–2, 474, 475–7; Waurin-Dupont, 193–5.

35. P. Morice,
Mémoires pour servir de preuve à l’histoire de Bretagne
(Paris, 1746), ii. 160.

36.
Warkworth’s Chron.
3–4.

37.
Annales
, 789.

38.
Great Chron.
207.

39.
HMC Hastings
, i. 302; C 81/818/2420.

40.
Annales
, 789–90; Ross,
Edward IV
, 120–2;
CPR 1467–77
, 131–2;
Collections for the
History of Staffordshire
ns. vi.ii (1903), 223;
Excerpta Historica
, ed. S. Bentley (1831), 227–8.

41. PSO 1/48/2477;
Collection of Ordinances
, 86; Bodl. MS Dugdale 15, f. 73; BL Add. Ch. 30873.

42.
CPR 1467–77
, 132, 153.

43.
CSPM
i. 120.

44.
Warkworth’s Chron.
3–4.

45.
CSPM
i. 129.

46.
RP
v. 622–3.

47.
RP
v. 572–3;
Annales
, 789; Scofield, i. 451–2.

48. Scofield, i. 412;
Annales
, 787.

49. Ross,
Edward IV
, 107.

50. Scofield, i. 444.

51. Ibid. i. 355.

52. Gross,
Dissolution
, 77–80;
CSPM
i. 117–18, 120.

53. T. Basin,
Histoire de Louis XI
, ed. C. Samaran (1966), i. 179;
Chrons. White Rose
, 237;
Annales
, 788.

54.
Annales
, 789–90;
Great Chron.
204;
Plumpton L & P
40; Hicks,
Richard III
, ch. 23.

55.
Great Chron.
208. The story is late. Was Cecily Bonville reserved for Montagu’s son?

56. Hicks,
Clarence
, 38–9.

57. Ibid. 38–40.

58. Scofield,
Edward IV
, i. 488.

59. W. G. Lewis, ‘The Exact Date of the Battle of Banbury, 1469’,
BIHR
lv (1982), 194–6.

60.
Vale’s Bk.
, 46.

61.
RP
v. 572, 622–3.

62. K. R. Dockray, ‘The Yorkshire Rebellions of 1469’,
The Ricardian
83 (1983), 246–57, at 252.

63. Waurin-Dupont iii. 193.

64.
Vale’s Bk.
213;
Annales
, 788.

65.
Warkworth’s Chron.
48;
Great Chron.
208.

66.
Warkworth’s Chron.
46–51, printed from Bodl. Ashmole Roll 33; another version, lacking the covering letter, is in
Vale’s Bk.
212–15. This is the source of the next four paras.

67.
Warkworth’s Chron.
8.

68. Ibid. 7.

69. Dockray, ‘Yorkshire Rebellions’, 255.

70. Scofield, i. 488; Gransden,
Historical Writing
, ii. 290.

71. Hicks,
Clarence
, 32–3.

72. Scofield, i. 494.

73.
PL
v. 35–6.

74. Dockray, ‘Yorkshire Rebellions’, 255;
Rous Roll
, no. 53;
Warkworth’s Chron.
7.

75.
CPR 1467–77
, 165; Somerville,
Duchy of Lancaster
, i. 422.

76.
CSPM
i. 132.

77. Ibid.

78. Kendall,
Warwick
, 243.

79. Hicks,
Clarence
, 37–9.

10.1 WARWICK’S SECOND COUP 1470

It was Warwick’s inability to rule with Edward in custody that resulted in the king’s return to power. Failure for Warwick was not the same as defeat. The bases of his power, his connection, and his popularity remained. What happened next was not preordained. If the initiative had undoubtedly passed to the king, several courses of action were possible. Bereft of his former favourites, Edward could have remained as much a Neville puppet, though at liberty. This option he decisively rejected. Alternatively the king could have sought revenge on his erstwhile captors. That this was his initial objective is suggested by their exclusion from the capital, the hostile language of his household men, the omission of Warwick and Clarence from commissions of array of 29 October 1469, and the summons of the great council that met from 6 November.1 What to do with the coup leaders must have been on the agenda. No revenge followed. The king’s own language was always more favourable;2 perhaps more diplomatic and non-committal. That so many attended the great council emphasized the loyalty of the Lords, their confidence in the king’s government, and hence their disapproval of Warwick’s coup. However loyal they might be, many among them were Warwick’s own kin, friends and former allies, who did not wish to proceed to extremes. Edward lacked the strength to be certain of victory in a further civil war and the justification for provoking one. Even if he preferred revenge, Edward had to receive his captors back into his allegiance.

This was not automatic. Once excluded, the rebel lords needed to be reassured about their safety. Terms had to be negotiated for their readmittance to allegiance. The Crowland continuator summarizes a complex (and un-documented) process:

There were frequent missions and embassies going between the king and the disaffected lords. Eventually, on the appointed day, in the great chamber of Parliament, the duke of Clarence, the earl of Warwick and their supporters appeared before a Great Council of all the lords of the realm where peace was made and it was agreed that all disagreements should be abandoned.3

That was after 6 December. A general pardon covered all offences before Christmas. Warwick, Clarence and the archbishop shared in further council sessions in the New Year.4

Edward offered reconciliation from a position of strength. He was the rightful king and ruler. He reconstructed his regime first and then negotiated with Warwick, who had to accept the changes made. Warwick’s brief regime was repu-diated and the king’s earlier policies resumed. Warwick’s chancellor and treasurer were replaced, Anthony Wydeville returned to court as second earl Rivers, and Warwick lost the offices in Wales that he had bestowed on himself. After Christmas the sorcery trial against the Duchess Jacquetta was terminated by her acquittal. The king reaffirmed his foreign policy on 22 December by elevating Charles the Bold to the order of the Garter. He himself accepted that of the Golden Fleece (Toison d’Or). At home, the king’s youngest brother Richard Duke of Gloucester emerged on to the political stage and was despatched to overawe Wales, with the guidance and backing of Herbert’s brother-in-law Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers of Chartley. The backing of the powerful Stafford influence was reinforced by the elevation of John Stafford to the earldom of Wiltshire. The release from the Tower on 27 October of Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, foreshadowed the restoration of the Percy earldom in the North and the dispossession of Warwick, Clarence, and Warwick’s brother John. The latter indeed renounced his Percy forfeitures on 13 February.5

Though Warwick lost his immediate ill-gotten gains, he was allowed to retain the whole constellation of offices that he had accumulated earlier. But his power was to be curbed in many ways in the Neville heartlands of northern England whence the army of Edgecote had come. The impending restoration of Henry Percy involved the loss of extensive estates and income and, more important, the division of power both on the borders and in Yorkshire, where the Neville–Percy feud had been fought. The recent death of the mad Lord Latimer and, at Edgecote, of his eldest son Henry permitted the transfer of the Latimer estates from Warwick to the custody of Cardinal Bourchier during the minority of the infant heir. In the West March the first steps in the restoration of the Dacres followed on the elevation in 1468 of the queen’s chancellor Edward Storey as bishop of Carlisle. And private negotiations for the transfer of custody of young Henry Tudor to his mother, another major Cumbrian landholder, and her second husband Sir Henry Stafford brought closer the restoration of the earldom of Richmond, to the material loss of Clarence and, in Richmondshire, of Warwick, who could expect, once again, another earl to take precedence over himself as premier earl.6 Threats that were merely potential and which Warwick had sought to dispel by his summer rebellion now became actual.

Admittedly these uncompromising moves were tempered by others that were more conciliatory. Neither the new treasurer Bishop Grey of Ely nor the new constable, Gloucester rather than Rivers, nor Edward’s employment of the Blounts and Staffords were objectionable to Warwick. Moreover on 6 November, ahead of any reconciliation, the king had formally betrothed his eldest daughter Elizabeth to Warwick’s nephew George Neville, son of Warwick’s brother John. George was created Duke of Bedford and John, somewhat later, became Marquis Montagu. This should have been the masterstroke that gave Warwick the royal match and ducal title that he had been seeking and offered his family and followers a route to royal favour other than through opposition. Warwick ought to have been disarmed, Clarence’s pretensions countered, and the unity of the Nevilles broken.7

From Edward’s angle, this was a carefully balanced package that offered Warwick forgiveness and security and recognized certain of his grievances, whilst denying him the rewards of rebellion, curbing his excessive ambitions, and clari-fying his place as a subject. That Edward believed the reconciliation to be real emerged in the spring, when he assumed that the Lincolnshire uprising had merely local origins and even commissioned Warwick and Clarence to raise men to suppress it. It was a miscalculation that might have had serious consequences.

Desperation forced Warwick to release Edward. It signalled cohabitation once again of king and earl. Warwick cannot have considered all the ramifications. It was desperation also that forced him to come to terms in December. He had no choice except rebellion against king and great council which he could not win. In between, the earl’s exclusion from court and council and Edward’s apparent reluctance to receive him back can only have fostered his distrust, which Edward’s terms did not allay and which Warwick must accept. In return for mere forgiveness for past offences, Warwick had to accept the confirmation of Herbert authority in Wales and the presence of the Wydevilles at court, the king’s new appointments, the continuance of his Burgundian foreign policy, and the curbing of his own family’s power in the North: perhaps their essential interests. Any hopes for a resumption of Neville influence on government and policy were firmly rebuffed. This was not a compromise and no security was offered by the match of two children of three and five which Edward could (and did) break when he chose. No doubt Warwick feared that Edward would take vengeance when he could.