The War of the Roses (2 page)

The Cade revolt, as in 1381, focussed on Kent and led to a march on London and ‘lynch-law' by the armed protesters in the streets. (Henry, unlike Richard II in 1381, hid in the Midlands.) The extent of the anger and violence seems to have been unexpected, and probably Suffolk was too preoccupied with the danger from dissident magnates of royal blood which the Crown had faced in 1387–8 and 1399–a problem seemingly warded off by sending York to Ireland. The popular anger was bound to focus on Suffolk, given his visible monopoly of patronage and policy. But this raises the question of why an adult king had allowed one minister such a free rein, and thus Henry's culpability for the crisis. Already in the 1440s the evidence of popular rumour, recorded in the chronicles of Harding and Capgrave, spoke of Henry being scorned by his most outspoken subjects as a simpleton.
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The probability is that he was easily led by unscrupulous courtiers into giving them excessive grants rather than judiciously buying support from a wider ‘constituency'. The likely fate for a king who had such an ‘unbalanced' use of patronage had been seen in the fall of the over-rewarded and recklessly greedy Despensers in 1326 and of Suffolk's ancestor Michael de la Pole in 1386, if not the grants Richard II had made to his favourites (a somewhat wider circle) in 1397–9. Henry thus neglected his first duty as a political leader–and his generous grants to his favourite projects, such as King's College Cambridge, can also be seen in the light of reckless favouritism rather than of piety alone.
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The land-grants that Henry had been making since his effective majority (1437) were subject to a sweeping review and cancellation by Parliament in the early 1450s, an indictment of nationwide perceptions of their fair distribution of assets among the landed gentry and nobles. Like Edward II and Richard II, the King was perceived to be the tool of a greedy and politically disastrous faction. But it is clear that Edward and Richard both asserted themselves after their political ‘defeats' (1310 and 1387–8) in angry retaliation against those who had constrained them. The executions of ex-rebel Thomas of Lancaster in 1322 and of some of the ‘Lords Appellant' in 1397 were the King's work, though encouraged by their ‘ultra' supporters. In Henry's case, his personal role in the ‘reaction' in the 1450s is absent–at least from the time of his mental collapse in 1453. This helped to save his reputation in subsequent decades and he became known posthumously as a saintly fool not a villain, though it should be pointed out that any ‘evidence' of this attitude in post-1485 works may have been influenced by his nephew Henry VII's propaganda efforts to have him canonized.
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Henry VI's unwillingness to see the necessity of balancing grants among different factions at court was coupled with an undoubted political reliance on one group of lords. The latter were confident enough of his support (or his indifference to injustice) to abuse their power and manipulate local politics for their own benefit. Significantly, the major disturbances of 1449–50 broke out in areas under the dominance of Henry's favourite ministers, the beneficiaries of his lavish patronage–Suffolk in East Anglia, Lord Treasurer Fiennes in Kent and Sussex, and Bishop Ayscough in Wiltshire. All of these men, Suffolk in particular, had a collection of offices and grants of royal lands in their regions unprecedented for generations; the last such political ‘monopolists' had been the favourites of another weak king, Edward II's Despenser allies, who met a similarly grisly fate at the hands of their enemies when overthrown. Their local leadership of society had been delegated to their clients in their absence at court, and the latter were abusing the processes of government and justice without any prospect that the King would intervene.

As in 1326, 1387, and 1399, the King was seen to be partisan and not carrying out his duty to see justice imposed, and the victims ended up by taking revenge themselves; this ‘anarchy' of local armed feuding was underway well before the explosion of anger caused by the loss of Maine and Normandy in 1448–50 and so had other causes. It also preceded the return of soldiers from the evacuated lands in France and so was not due to unemployed soldiers or ruffianly retainers used to having their way by force; the infamous and long-running feud of the Courtenays and Bonvilles in Devon was descending into armed clashes as early as 1440–1.

Henry's lack of discrimination or common sense in his lavish generosity with grants of Crown lands and local offices were complained of at the time in the 1440s, and were later indicted by Lord Chief Justice Fortescue as an example of how not to run a just and successful government.
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To that extent the monopoly of royal favour and receipt of grants by the Suffolk-Beaufort faction in the 1440s was both a reason for and a result of the young King's naïve ineptitude, and it reflected his insecurity about his potential heirs–Humphrey and then York–who were the main political ‘alternatives' as his senior advisers. The early death of Henry's elder uncle John, Duke of Bedford, aged forty-six, in September 1435 was thus a political disaster as he had ‘held the ring' between Humphrey and the Beauforts in their power-struggles since 1422. Had he been alive in the 1440s he might have been still in office as lieutenant of Normandy (his regency there would have lapsed on Henry's ‘majority' in 1437) and so been unable to rein in the King's extravagance and reliance on venal courtiers. But if he had been back in England Suffolk's and the Beauforts' misrule would have been less likely, and so a violent Parliamentary ‘purge' and popular revolt in 1450 have been averted. Would this have lessened Henry's estrangement from York? (It would also have meant that Bedford's widow, Jacquetta of St Pol, would have been unavailable to marry Sir Richard Woodville, meaning that York's controversial daughter-in-law-to-be, Elizabeth Woodville, was never born.)

Henry VI was not the first king to act with injustice and suspicion towards his relatives, and ambitious courtiers were always ready to accuse a monarch's kin of treason with the hope of obtaining their confiscated lands and offices. But it is symptomatic that those kings who listened to and acted on such stories were the ones who were later accused of bad governance and placed under restraint or overthrown–Henry III, Edward II and Richard II. Even Henry V had accused his stepmother, Joan of Navarre, of witchcraft on uncertain evidence, imprisoned her, and seized her property (the main reason for the prosecution?), but she was allowed respectable accommodation while in disgrace–Leeds Castle–and eventually exonerated. Duke Humphrey's second wife, Eleanor Cobham, similarly accused of plotting to kill the King, was condemned, divorced, and deported to the Isle of Man for life–possibly due to a Beaufort plot to ensure that she did not give Humphrey any heirs to challenge them for the succession.
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Humphrey was not guiltless in his alienation from the King in the early 1440s, having been threatening Cardinal Beaufort with violence and/or political ruin for two decades and had been conspicuous for his petulant disloyalty to Bedford in the 1420s. He had been opposing the King's conciliatory French policy noisily in recent years. But proceeding to the extreme of arresting him was politically unwise. Crucially, Humphrey had had no children either by Eleanor or by his first wife, Jacqueline of Holland. Due to the papal ruling confirming the latter's disputed first marriage (regarded as void by her and Humphrey) in 1428,
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Humphrey's children by her would have been bastardized, but any children Humphrey had had by Eleanor would have been next in line for the throne in 1447–53 and the Suffolk faction would duly have feared them not York as the ‘reversionary interest'.

 

Henry's responsibility for the disasters of 1440s–not a ‘holy fool'?
Henry used to be regarded as ultra-pious even before his illness in 1453, influenced by his prudish religiosity and his foundation of King's College Cambridge; thus the blame for the disastrous policies of the 1440s could be placed on an unscrupulous Suffolk whose greed, incompetence, and acquisition of offices and lands were listed in the hostile 1450 Parliament. Even that implied that Henry was too open to the influence of unscrupulous advisers, while absolving him from the active part in ministerial misrule laid against Richard II. The requirement of Parliament after Suffolk's fall that all royal grants of Crown lands during his adult reign be ‘resumed', i.e. cancelled,
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need not imply that he had committed these controversial alienations to ‘unworthy' favourites as a conscious policy. Excessive generosity also marked his attitude towards his educational projects. But has his later ‘simpleton' reputation after his 1453 breakdown been ‘back-dated' to the period before his illness? It is now thought by historians such as Bertram Wolffe that he played a more active role in the diversion of influence and patronage to the Suffolk faction than was once thought. The records show that he made his rash of lavish grants to 1440s courtiers and their clients in person, many being politically unwise, and was requested to reverse some at the time. The King was in full possession of his faculties, and showed signs of spendthrift habits. His favouritism was notable. At the very least he showed a degree of political incompetence in his lack of evenhandedness, and was over-willing to lavish power and influence on a small group of congenial advisers.
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Like Edward II and Richard II, he had no concept of the political need for ‘balance' or for wooing powerful nobles whom his personal friends disliked.

The contrast with his father, his uncle Bedford, and paternal grandfather is notable. So is his complete lack of interest in taking up the family cause of fighting for his French Crown–though he was a crowned sovereign of France, unlike his ancestors. His response to the rising disasters after 1429 is marked, and in contrast to what was normally expected of an English king –and would have been expected of him, as he had had the usual ‘knightly' military training in arms under the veteran Earl of Warwick as a teenager. He was no pacifist at this stage, being prepared to endorse a large-scale military campaign by his court favourite Somerset to the Loire in 1443 to secure his lands though after that he naively put faith in the good will of his uncle (and new uncle-in-law) Charles VII in 1444–8. In this crucial period he also showed no interest in ‘negotiating from strength', not building up his forces ready for a potential military clash if the ‘peace-policy' failed as Charles was doing. It is probable that he entirely misread Charles' intentions, putting his faith naively in a projected meeting between them set for 1446–7, which never took place–and where his politically shrewd and unscrupulous counterpart would have run rings round him. Instead he instituted a secret negotiation with Charles via his episcopal diplomats, led by Bishops Moleyns and Ayscough, and in modern parlance ‘left out of the loop' his experienced commanders in France (e.g. York) who would have been hostile but at least knew the local military situation. He even privately promised to hand over Maine in December 1445 without any clear guarantees of an end to French claims on Normandy in return.
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The entire concept of a ‘reverse dowry'–land being given by the husband to his wife's family, not the other way around–on his marriage in 1445 was unusual, though evidently judged worthwhile to secure a truce after the failure of the Somerset offensive in 1443.

But Henry and his bishops did not appreciate that the whole lesson of French revival since 1429 was the ultimate power of military force–Duke Philip had stayed with his English allies until the tide of battle decisively turned and Bedford was dying, then shamelessly violated his oath to Henry as King of France. Negotiating from weakness would earn Charles' contempt not his respect, and in due course he resumed the war and took over Maine–and then Normandy–once his new army was ready. Henry was inflexible on refusing to give up the claim to France, which Charles had made clear in the Gravelines talks of 1439 was his ‘sine qua non', but hopeless at accepting the political and military implications of what that refusal entailed. At least after Somerset's failure and death in 1443–4, he had no senior semi-royal commander adequate to the task of fighting and loyal to his policies apart from possibly Somerset's younger brother Edmund (a competent local commander in the south of Normandy). Henry reportedly wept at the ‘betrayal' by his greatest vassal Duke Philip in 1435 and he hesitated over handing over Maine after 1445, possibly for fear that his furious local commanders would refuse to carry it out. In the event, the latter were still uncertain of government intentions and without direction when Charles invaded in March 1448, and had to negotiate their surrender on their own initiative to stop a massacre. But Henry neither sought to fight in person nor put trust in his most competent and vigorous commander, York. The latter, like equally ‘persona non grata' Duke Humphrey before 1447, was studiously ignored on his return to England for the 1445 Parliament, was neither given an extension of his governorship nor superseded in Normandy for many vital months, and was eventually sent off to Ireland in semi-disgrace. In fact, Ireland was a logical field to use his military skills, and he had a ‘stake' there due to inheriting Mortimer lands. But did his absence from England in 1450 enable enemies (Somerset?) to undermine him at court more easily? If he had been in England and helping Henry against the Cade rebels, would he have lost the King's trust as he did?

York could have been expected to be hostile to Henry's timid policy towards Charles VII, not least as his years in Normandy and his many military ‘contacts' warned him of a continuing French ‘build-up'. As he saw matters–accurately–Charles was only playing for time in the mid-1440s, not seeking a permanent settlement that left England with Normandy. As seen from court, England could not afford the level of military spending that would raise enough troops to dissuade Charles from attacking. (It would also require undesirable cuts to the King and his new Queen's spending, risking their wrath with those who suggested this.) But there is no evidence that the King–or his more forceful ‘pro-peace' ministers, led by Suffolk–ever sought to explain their rationale to York or to win him round. On the contrary, York was treated with suspicion as the politically dangerous leader of the ‘opposition' to war and ministers alike–increasing the risk of the feared clash occurring? Crucially, securing enough troops and money from the political ‘nation' in Parliament for a more vigorous policy in France after 1444 would have required a degree of honesty and seeking collaboration with elite across the nation that the government clearly avoided for its own security. As seen by Parliament's demands in July 1449, the MPs would have wanted Suffolk to be sacked.