The War of the Roses (13 page)

 

Clarence or Prince Edward of Lancaster as the next king after Henry?

Clarence would presumably have insisted on receiving all the York family estates as his right and would have been a formidable foe if refused. In due course, at the latest at Henry's death (in the mid- or later 1470s if he had lived to something like his Valois grandfather's age of fifty-four), Margaret–or Prince Edward and Somerset on her behalf–and Warwick/ Clarence would probably have come to blows on the battlefield or engineered a sudden arrest or murder. As a senior peer resident in England who had spent the 1460s building up a vast northern lordship and an experienced commander, Warwick–aided by Clarence–would have had massive resources of men and arms and been more likely to win than Margaret and her Beaufort/ Tudor allies. The final coup of the ‘Kingmaker' could have been to secure his elder daughter, Isabel's, husband Clarence's succession to Henry VI–though as he had married his younger daughter, Anne, to Prince Edward she would have been the latter's queen. The marriage of Edward and Anne had, however, been the idea of Warwick and Margaret's mutual patron in exile in 1470, Louis XI of France, and Warwick is more likely to have backed his elder son-in-law Clarence. Prince Edward, apparently a vindictive young man from the little evidence we have of him, would have been less likely than Clarence to accept his father-in-law's direction due to Warwick's past role as arch-enemy of Lancaster. At the least, his determined character would not make him an easily controlled or trustable son-in-law as king; his accession would pose dangers to Warwick that Clarence's accession did not.

Whichever of the contenders won, Warwick would have been the King's father-in-law and potential grandfather to a king. His rivalry with Margaret leaves it open to doubt if he could trust the latter and her son ‘Edward V' not to turn on him once Henry was dead. The death of Henry VI, probably by 1480, might thus have seen Warwick install ‘King George' and ‘Queen Isabel' (if the latter had still been alive), and the Yorkist line returning to the throne. If the possibly tubercular Isabel had died in 1476 as in real life, Clarence would have been available for the prestigious foreign marriage that he then sought–though not to Mary, heiress of Burgundy, as the union of England with the latter would have been commercially problematic. (Clarence could seek her hand in real life as he was not sovereign or heir to the throne, though Edward IV still vetoed the idea.) But if Warwick had managed to remove Prince Edward and his mother to secure Clarence's accession, this would have left Anne Neville–divorced or widowed–free to remarry. On or before Warwick's death there would have been a major struggle for the hand of Anne Neville and her half of the Warwick inheritance. Indeed, it is not impossible that if Richard of Gloucester–brought up as Warwick's protégé at Middleham Castle in the 1460s–was alive in exile Warwick might even have called him back to England once he had disposed of Prince/King Edward and Queen Margaret.

Richard would make a capable new husband for Anne and co-heir to the Neville inheritance, provided that Clarence–now king–could be persuaded to accept his brother's return. Richard could also be a valuable ally for the diminished Yorkist dynasty in their relations with the Beaufort and Tudor families, who would have received an access of lands and power under Henry VI's regime from 1471 and would have been probable backers of Prince Edward in a power-struggle. The amount of confiscations and exiles among the pro-Yorkist peers in autumn 1470 had been very small so there would still have been a substantial number of landowners loyal to Edward in the 1460s available to back Clarence in a ‘showdown' with the Queen and Prince, to add to Warwick's own clientele. But a regime with a narrow base of support was at risk of serious revolt, as Richard was to find in 1483–5, so Clarence would have needed as wide a range of support among the peers as possible to survive. The recall of his brother Richard would add to his trustable supporters and diminish the need for gaining the backing of Lancastrian peers.

Thus Clarence, as king after Henry following the elimination of Prince Edward and Queen Margaret by himself or Warwick, could have recalled Richard. It is possible that Clarence's son Edward, born in 1475, was feeble-minded and so a dubious heir–though his apparent limitations in real life in 1499 may have been due to his years isolated in the Tower of London. If he had succeeded to the English throne as an under-age ruler or as one with limited political capability, there was potential for new strife or even a coup by Richard. Clarence's death in this case would have seen a brief reign by ‘Edward V'–Clarence's young son, the Earl of Warwick–and a coup by Richard, ruling as in real life as ‘Richard III'. It would be crucial whether at this point, possibly the 1490s, the ‘Kingmaker' (born in 1428) was still alive and who he backed–and if he were dead whether Clarence had secured all his vast estates and military affinity for the Crown or had allowed part of them to go to Richard. Richard was a natural choice as the next husband for the younger daughter, Anne, of the ‘Kingmaker' after Prince Edward had been eliminated, and the claims of Edward IV's disinherited son Edward would have been unlikely to meet much support. The ‘usurpation' of Richard III over a genealogically senior candidate, in this scenario not occurring until Clarence had died naturally, would have been likelier in the 1490s or even 1500s than in the 1480s.

Given that the main Lancastrian line would now be extinct, the chief dynastic rivals to Richard would have been the Beauforts (assuming that Edmund, Duke of Somerset, had not been killed as Warwick defeated Margaret and Prince Edward).The senior Beaufort line, though of female descent, was represented not by the Dukes of Somerset but by Henry Tudor, son of Duke Edmund's cousin Margaret Beaufort. (Edmund had inherited the Somerset title from his brother Henry, killed in 1464 for revolting against Edward IV, and his father Duke Edmund, killed in 1455 at St Albans; the latter's elder brother John, d. 1444, had been Margaret Beaufort's father.) As a stalwart of the Lancastrian cause since 1461, Henry's uncle Jasper Tudor would have been loaded with lands and titles by Margaret after 1471 and presumably been the regime's leading supporter in Wales; Henry himself would probably have regained his father's Earldom of Richmond. As long as the Tudors had avoided being brought down with Margaret and Prince Edward in a confrontation between the latter and Warwick, Henry Tudor would have been in a good position to become a major player at court. If Clarence (born in 1449) had been succeeded in the 1490s or 1500s by his son who then proved an inadequate ruler, the House of Tudor would have stood a chance of aiming for the throne in competition with that of York.

 

Another possibility–what if the Yorkist leadership had not fractured in 1468–70? Was the quarrel of Edward IV and Warwick inevitable?

Given the senior political and military position and personal dominance of Warwick in 1461, Edward's maternal cousin (fourteen years his senior) was clearly going to play a powerful role under the new King. His role in 1459–61 as commander of Calais, an important source of trained professional soldiers at a time of armies made up of noblemen's personal retinues (usually part-time soldiers, their tenants), made him a vital captain. This was added to by his role as head of the junior branch of the Nevilles when his father, Salisbury, was killed at Wakefield, which added Salisbury's landed and military affinity to his own marital Warwick one. These earldoms had been occupied by Henry V's top commanders, who died in 1428 and 1439, before coming into Neville hands–their tenantry thus had a usefully long military tradition. His prestige had suffered from his losing the second battle of St Albans to Margaret–with possession of Henry VI–but his political ‘weight' and his seniority to the nineteen-year-old Edward quickly restored his position and he became the new King's chief adviser and military commander, with his brother George Neville (Archbishop of York) as Chancellor. His landed base and control of leading castles in the Yorkshire region (based on Middleham, later his son-in-law Richard III's home, and Sheriff Hutton) made him as dominant in the north as Richard was later to be. This was inevitable, given the debt that Edward owed to him and his father–the closest landed allies of York in 1455–61–and the Lancastrian allegiance of the only rival power in the north, the Percies (whose current head fell fighting for Queen Margaret at Towton in March 1461). One junior Percy, Sir Ralph, who was allowed to keep his castle (Dunstanburgh), on surrendering, promptly defected to the Queen in 1462. The Percies' hostility was a major factor in enabling Lancaster to hold onto the north-east of Northumberland in 1461–4, with local castles that had surrendered to the new King promptly revolting whenever Queen Margaret and/or a French force were in the vicinity. To do him credit, Edward risked trusting Sir Ralph –several times–and in 1470 was to endeavour to return the confiscated Percy Earldom of Northumberland from its new holder, his cousin John Neville, to the rightful heir.

The Percy Earldom of Northumberland was granted in 1461 to Warwick's younger brother, John Neville, a capable commander who defeated the rebel risings in Northumberland in 1463 and 1464, and with their brother George as archbishop the Neville brothers dominated the north. In military terms, their firm control was needed to combat the Queen and her adherents who were at large in Scotland and in control of the northernmost castles in Northumberland in 1461–2. Some royal reaction from this position was inevitable when Edward became older and more confident, and the apparent arrogance, intense family pride, and prickly nature of Warwick made it probable that he would take it badly. But could he have been credibly expected to go to the lengths of arresting and threatening to depose Edward? Edward did not rely entirely on the Nevilles–the Lancastrian Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, a major court magnate of 1455–60 following his father's death at York's hands at St Albans, was rehabilitated and trusted on his surrender. He betrayed the King's trust and in 1464 treacherously joined the Lancastrian rebels in the north-east; on their defeat John Neville executed him. Edward was necessarily generous to those Lancastrian magnates who surrendered, having had a relatively small number of peers in his camp when he took the throne in March 1461 and needing to acquire solid support from the nobility. Indeed, his future wife, Elizabeth Woodville, had a Lancastrian husband, Sir John Grey, killed at Towton, with the confiscation of his estates allegedly the reason for her first seeking out the King;
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her father, Sir Richard Woodville, had fought for Henry VI, as befitted his former role as the ex-King's uncle Bedford's retainer. Luckily, the chances of foreign meddling to aid the Queen's party was reduced by the deaths of the Lancastrian allies James II of Scotland (in a cannon-explosion while besieging Roxburgh Castle) in 1460 and Charles VII of France in 1461.

Their heirs aided the Queen to invade Northumberland in 1461–2, but the substitution of a regency under Bishop Kennedy for the vigorous young warlord James II in Scotland made the kingdom's disengagement from Henry VI's cause more likely. The ruthless James II had not scrupled to kill his principal magnate foe (the Earl of Douglas) in a fit of rage in Edinburgh Castle in 1452, had driven the Douglas clan out of their effectively autonomous domains in the Southern Uplands in 1455, and had been endeavouring to restore full Scots control of the Border strongholds when he was killed. Henry VI's failing government had returned Berwick to him as a vital ally; he would have been likely to continue the struggle against the national foe with more vigour than the regency did in 1461–3 and to have led major armies to aid the Lancastrian strongholds of Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh, and Alnwick. The most serious Anglo-Scots military clash since Henry IV's wars would then have been inevitable, with an English march on Edinburgh likely following the precedents of 1385 and 1400–and the weight of numbers of men and artillery makes it probable that England would have prevailed. Noticeably, in real life Edward IV promised war on the Scots and raised large sums of money from Parliament for it in 1463 but did not go through with it, only going north belatedly and then not fighting. His fleet was not used, the expected army was not raised, and there was much domestic criticism of his inactivity.
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Lack of money has been claimed as one cause for his inactivity. But the war lacked political urgency, as it would not have done had it been an aggressive and experienced James II invading the north–if that had been the case, the King's presence with a large army would have been essential.

In retrospect, indeed, Edward's failure to march north looks more like an early example of that laziness and over-reliance on his lieutenants that was to mark his northern policy in the last decade of his reign. Arguably, he failed to act quickly enough to counter the Neville threat in 1468–9 either; and he was taken by surprise by the successive treachery of Somerset in 1464, Warwick in 1469, and John Neville in 1470. The later criticism of his indulgence of his personal appetites (in both women and food) should be remembered in assessing his apparent sloth; and this criticism was not restricted to Richard III's partisans, though the latter made most use of it. Philip de Commignes, Louis XI's adviser, was commenting on it–and on Edward's weight- problem–as early as 1475.
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The lack of a need for a major Scots war in the early 1460s may well have been a major contribution to his lack of swift activity compared to his role in 1460–1 and his masterly campaign of spring 1471. Edward could act decisively and show military skill when necessary, but did not go out of his way to do so. It had its uses, not least in avoiding unnecessary loss of life and treasure in warfare; a more aggressive king might have been expected to retaliate for Louis XI's aid to the Lancastrians in 1461–3 by sending English aid to the French rebels, the ‘League of Common Weal', in 1465.