The War of the Roses (5 page)

The lack of governmental direction and tangled motivations of the English participants (e.g. York and his court defector ally Sir John Wenlock, Speaker of the 1455 Parliament) make it impossible to work out whether the English were sincere about the alleged treaty and marriage-alliances or, as the Count of Foix told Louis XI in 1461, York was really seeking aid to overthrow Henry.
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By the summer of 1459 the court-connected chronicler Abbot Wheathampstead of St Albans was reckoning that royal justice had collapsed, i.e. that the court was unashamedly partisan in seeking to ruin York's party.
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On a military level, attempts were made to remove Warwick as commander of the large and well-trained garrison at Calais, and when he refused to resign he was supposed to have suffered a murderous attack in Westminster.
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Possibly the emergence now of a story that the Prince of Wales was not Henry's son was deliberately sponsored by York as a way to remove the danger of Margaret as regent for the boy if the King died or was deposed–and caused her obsessive hatred of him? Accordingly, as the subsequent indictment of York makes clear, he and his closest allies refused repeated summonses to court in mid-1459. Apparently, a repeat of the armed defiance of 1452 and 1455 was planned, with a summons for loyal subjects to meet the King at Leicester on 10 May armed for two months' campaigning and a reinforcement of the royal supplies of arrows for a large body of archers.
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A great council then met at Coventry towards the end of June, which York, Salisbury, and others did not attend in defiance of their summonses.
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This time the Queen's faction struck first–probably with more success as they were already in the Midlands with a large escort, not in London, when the summons to the dissident peers was issued. (Had they turned up, a repeat of Duke Humphrey's arrest in 1447 was probable–and possibly murder by the vengeful Lord Clifford, whose later activities in 1460–1 imply that he was thirsting for retaliation for 1455.)

As the Earl of Salisbury started to advance south from Yorkshire, the royal army moved quickly forwards to Nottingham to deny him the castle and he was forced to march south-west to join York at Ludlow. The Queen's army (many of them Cheshire levies, as last used as a royalist ‘private army' by Richard II) intercepted Salisbury at Blore Heath on 23 September, but was routed; the royal army then pursued him to Ludlow.
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Henry was again paraded at the head of the royal army in the advance on York's Marcher base –and proved a major psychological weapon as the court propagandists played up the treason of fighting against the King and his standard. York's men had had no such scruples in 1455, but this time Andrew Trollope, commander of the Calais troops, declared that he had not known he was being brought along by Warwick to fight the King in person and deserted after the ‘showdown' at Ludford (across the River Teme bridge from Ludlow). Apparently outnumbered, York and his older sons, Edward and Edmund, Salisbury, and Warwick (all of whom could face execution for treason) fled Ludlow overnight across the Teme bridge–with the royal commanders too incompetent to guard all the bridges and trap them. The crucial role in the confrontation, for the final time, was played by Henry in person.
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He was clearly unable or unwilling to assert himself as mediator again after the ‘Love-Day'–and thus became more of a partisan figure to the danger of his throne.

Henry's role in 1459 was that of a talisman of his Queen and her allies, used to show that resistance to their army was treason. But was his incapacity sufficient to justify removing him as king? The first rumour of this eventuality after the 1450 crisis surprisingly emanated from the court camp pre-1459, with the Queen the alleged instigator–no doubt aiming to make herself regent for Prince Edward.
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It may have been a ‘security measure' to counter-act any York-led seizure of her husband. The growing anarchy and private wars of powerful nobles showed up the King's ineffectiveness, but this did not lead to widespread desertion. For the moment the Queen was able to assert her faction's power after her military victory, and at the quickly summoned Parliament at Coventry, York, his elder two sons, Salisbury and his son Warwick, Salisbury's wife (as heiress of the Earldom of Warwick), and their principal adherents were attainted and all their lands seized.
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Pardon was possible if the accused submitted, but the sweeping and legally dubious nature of the conviction aroused support for them and was as counter-productive as York's killing of the court leadership at St Albans had been. Worse, the means used implied that Parliament could be used for legal pillaging of any court critic in future, an implicit threat to the entire social elite's safe possession of their property. Such a sweeping ‘purge' of ‘traitor' nobles had only been seen before by the restored regime of Henry III in 1265 (later wisely modified) and by Richard II in 1397–9.

This politically unwise triumphalism therefore can be seen as a factor in the failure of the majority of the peerage or landed gentry to rally to the King and Queen as York's heir, Edward, Earl of March, and Warwick led an expedition back from their refuge at Calais to Sandwich on 26 June 1460. A papal legate joined them, and so did Archbishop Bourchier–and Sandwich, pillaged by the Queen's countrymen the previous year, was hardly likely to hold out on her behalf.
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The expedition entered London unopposed on 2 July, with only the Tower holding out, and marched on to encounter the King's army near Northampton on 10 July. Crucially, the warlike Queen was not with her husband and heavy rain accompanied Warwick's assault on the royal army, which crumpled in half an hour.
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From now on the King was a prisoner in the hands of York's faction, and his removal from the throne with his supposed consent became one way to counter the control his wife and her party had over him. But support for his right to remain king was strong enough to make his threatened deposition in autumn 1460 by York's clique unpopular with a majority of the lords–and the well-informed French observer Jean de Wauvrin believed that non-partisan peers had been reassured by Warwick's group swearing not to depose him as they invaded.
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Had this oath tipped the balance against any serious rallying to the royal army in July 1460? The resistance to Henry's deposition cannot be blamed on opportunist aristocrats fearful of the rule of a strong king who would halt abuses of power, as the ‘Yorkists' could argue. In any case, to the fifteenth-century ‘mind-set' the importance of keeping sacred oaths of allegiance outweighed such practical considerations as the King's competence. At the time, the Queen and her army in the north were still a major factor, with their advance on London expected. The infant Prince of Wales was with them, so deposing Henry would not neutralize the Lancastrian dynasty. Ludlow had been sacked for assisting a ‘rebel' after its fall to the royal army in autumn 1459–would it be London's turn next if the King was deposed and his wife returned? Fear of the possible revenge to be expected on Lancastrian deserters by Queen Margaret meant that self-preservation should induce those nobles supporting her dynasty's displacement to grant York, their champion, what he wanted and prevent their enemies securing a compliant King again. The scale of ‘courtier' reprisals against the York faction in 1459 seems to have altered the balance of support by uncommitted nobles, though not to the extent of enthusiasm for Henry's immediate deposition. York's bold legal claim to depose Henry, made to the House of Lords on 16 October 1460, was promptly passed on to Henry himself as a weighty matter that only the King could decide; and as Henry refused to abdicate the question was passed to the senior judges who also equivocated and preferred to leave it to the decision of the ‘blood royal'. It was also pointed out that York claimed the throne now as direct heir of Edward III's second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence (senior to Henry VI's ancestor John ‘of Gaunt') but until this he had displayed the arms of, i.e. relied on the claim of, Edward's fourth son Edmund, Duke of York.
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He was thus changing the rules of the game to suit his current position.

Eventually, the King agreed to a compromise put by Warwick's brother Bishop George Neville–he would remain king until his voluntary abdication or death, but his son would be disinherited. This gave York the role of heir apparent and its estates (the Principality of Wales, Duchy of Cornwall, and Earldom of Chester) plus legal immunity from prosecution, as stripped from Prince Edward. Quite apart from the excuse of apparent rumours of the late Duke of Somerset being the boy's real father, nobody had taken any oaths of allegiance to the Prince yet and disinheriting him removed the threat of Margaret seizing power if Henry died leaving an under-age successor. The initiative may have come from the papal legate Copponi, as Pope Pius later claimed credit for the idea–and the support of the Pope for its legality would persuade the cornered King to give in.
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If abdicating a position given him by God was a sin, the Pope could absolve him.

Despite his failure to gain the throne, York had secured the succession, legal immunity, and vast estates to reward his family and friends–always a major inducement for a medieval semi-royal magnate. He had also secured the support of many peers–although with the Queen's party so vengeful they had little alternative to agreeing. The bloodthirsty Warwick had killed the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Beaumont, and other leading court peers in the clash at Northampton,
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clearly aiming to wipe out the opposition leadership as York had done in 1455 and thus inviting later reprisals. As of 1455–9 the perceived ‘aggressor' in the inter-royal feuds had been seen as York, who had attacked the court's army at St Albans in 1455, killed senior nobles of the rival faction in cold blood, and taken the King captive. In 1459 the Queen had been the moving spirit in the ‘coup' that ended the uneasy political truce, leading the royal army on York's headquarters at Ludlow and demanding his surrender. The Yorkist reply to their forced exile, as to the threat of arrest in 1455, had been unnecessarily violent and personal.

Who was responsible for the escalation of the crisis in 1459–60? It must be remembered that we can see events with hindsight and thus know that years of instability were to follow, but as of 1459 political actors' attention was focused on York's recent armed insurrections. The Queen's army's attack on Ludlow in 1459 was partly pre-emptive, to prevent York and Salisbury from another attack on the court as in 1452 and 1455. Technically, by levying war on the King they had committed treason and their lands could be forfeited as was done at the Coventry Parliament after their flight. Any action of armed defiance of the King and the royal army was taken as treason rather than self-defence, and so the Coventry Parliament had a legal excuse to deprive York and Salisbury of their vast landed estates so as to cripple their political-military power. But this was politically counter-productive, quite apart from the inevitable reaction to the planned enrichment of the victorious pro-court nobles (led by the Percies). As with the confiscation of Roger Mortimer's lands in 1325 and Henry of Bolingbroke's lands in 1399, this only led to invasion by the aggrieved party at the first opportunity. Luckily, York was able to defy the government and secure his ancestral lands and troops in Ireland, where he had been a popular governor in the late 1440s. The Dublin Parliament ignored all orders to remove him, and he could invade England (belatedly) in 1460. He also secured the major military force at Calais, from which his son Edward and cousin Warwick (captain of Calais) invaded the south-east in July 1460. The new court nominee to govern Calais, the late Duke of Somerset's son and successor Duke Henry, was kept at bay and captured by Warwick, and the latter's navy gained control of the Channel and a link to Ireland to co-ordinate the invasion. In June 1460 Warwick and York's son Edward, Earl of March, landed at Sandwich to be joined by Archbishop Bourchier.

 

(iii) Deposition–1460–1

As seen by the new government and its allies in autumn 1460, it was essential to avoid the Queen's party regaining the legitimacy automatically awarded by physical control of the King. From 1451–2 onwards she had become seen as an irreconcilable foe, starting with her building up armed support in the north Midlands in 1456 and then the dismissals of pro-York ministers. Margaret had driven York and his family into exile in 1459 in revenge for the ‘usurpation' of power in 1455 and the killings of her allies at the battle of St Albans; what would she do if she regained power this time? Making York king (not just regent) as he requested was the only way to keep the vengeful Queen out of power permanently, but a significant number of nobles resisted this. By the time of the ‘Yorkist' faction's seizure of power that summer, Henry's illness and an apparent unworldliness may have saved him from the fate of the equally politically ‘incompetent' and resisted Edward II and Richard II. Luckily for him, his son was still at liberty to serve as a figurehead if York had murdered him. (As soon as the boy was killed, in May 1471, York's son announced Henry's allegedly fortuitous demise.) Apart from a sense of honour for a sick man apparently ‘touched by God', on this occasion–unlike in 1327 and 1399–there was a powerful, unscrupulous, and masculine queen to blame for the King's misdemeanours and grievances against the late regime could be deflected onto her. The legend of the ‘Tigress of Anjou' was born, and was to be much enhanced by her party's bloody revenge on York and his family in December 1460 and her pillaging northern army's march on London thereafter. As with Richard II and III and Henry V, the popular conception of her was to be ‘fixed' by Shakespeare–who had used somewhat ‘sensationalized' sixteenth-century chronicles such as Hall's history of York and Lancaster.
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