Henry VI

by Bertram Wolffe

  22 King’s household chamberlain by 18 May 1451 (C.P.R., 1446–1452, 452).

  23 Davies’s Chronicle, 68–9.

  24 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Third Report (London 1872) (muniments of the family of Neville of Holt), 279–80.

  25 R.P., V, 182–3.

  26 ‘Annales’, 766.

  27 R.P., V, 226.

  28 ‘A London Chronicle’, ed. C. L. Kingsford in E.H.R., XXIX (1914), 515, ‘Annales’, 767.

  29 Political Poems and Songs, ed. Thomas Wright, II. (R.S., 1861), 229–32.

  30 Cited by Roger Virgoe, ‘The Death of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk’, B.J.R.L., XLVII (1965), 491.

  31 Paston Letters, I, 121.

  32 Roger Virgoe, op. cit., 489–502.

  33 Wright, Political Poems, 231.

  34 Mentioned with some details in the preambles to the two acts of resumption of 1450 and 1451.

  35 Paston Letters, I, 126–7.

  36 P.R.O., E. 163/8/14.

  37 For a more detailed discussion of this act and its consequences see Wolffe, The Royal Demesne, 124–30.

  38 R.P., V, 172–4; P.R.O., E.359/29.

  39 Helen M. Lyle, The Rebellion of Jack Cade 1450 (Historical Association, 1950), 9.

  40 Commissions of array to go against the rebels were issued to Beaumont, Lovell, Scales, Rivers, Dudley, Buckingham, Oxford, Devon and Arundel from Leicester on 6 June and Newport Pagnel on 10 June (C.P.R., 1446–1452, 385).

  41 Giles’s Chronicle, 39; The Brut, 517.

  42 The principal documents for the Kentish rising are in John Stow’s Annales (1631 ed.), 388–92; Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles (ed. Gairdner), 94–9; Historical Manuscripts Commission Eighth Report Part I (1881), 266 (b)-269 (a) from the muniments of Magdalen College, Oxford, cf. G. Kriehn; The English Rising of1450 (Strasbourg 1892), and Helen M. Lyle, op. cit.

  43 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 338–74 (3,327 names, with some duplication).

  44 Ibid., 383.

  45 Paston Letters, I, 131–5.

  46 Identified by Dr Roger Virgoe (see below p. 23911).

  47 Green wax was used to seal the exchequer writs issued to sheriffs for collection of fines incurred in the law courts.

  48 See above, pp. 124–5.

  49 The Governance of England, 140.

  50 In Six Town Chronicles of England (ed. Flenley), 129ff.

  51 It was not simply for their own safety, since a commission was issued to the sergeants-at-arms at the Tower to seize all the goods of the ‘late treasurer’ Lord Say in Kent on 24 June (C.P.R., 1446–1452, 390). John, Lord Beauchamp of Powicke was made treasurer in his place from 22 June (ibid., 330).

  52 ‘A Short English Chronicle’ in Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles (ed. Gairdner), 67.

  53 P.P.C., VI, 95.

  54 Ibid., 95–6; P.R.O., C.81/1371/23: orders from Berkhamsted castle on 1 July to prepare commissions for the earls of Salisbury and Northumberland, Ralph, Lord Greystock, lords Clifford and Egremont, for the four northern counties and Sir William Stanley and Sir Thomas Harrington for Cheshire and Lancashire, to array the people in their best and most defensible array to be ready when Henry sent for them.

  55 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 388, 433–5; Benet’s Chronicle, 200, ‘William Worcester’, 768.

  56 Constitutional History, III, 155.

  Chapter 13

  THE FRUSTRATION OF RICHARD DUKE OF YORK, 1450–1453

  Some two weeks after the rebels dispersed from London with their pardons Henry regarded it as safe to return south and took up the discarded reins of government once more at a great council meeting, summoned to meet him at St Albans on 24 July.1 He re-entered the capital on the 28th and was honourably received there, in spite of his cowardly desertion of a month before. He offered at St Paul’s and would have proceeded to Eton to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, but was prevented by the multitude of destitute and disorderly soldiers coming from Normandy.2 Fear of renewed widespread insurrection in Kent and elsewhere now prompted an important concession. Sixteen commissioners of oyer and terminer headed by the two archbishops, Bishop Wainfleet, the duke of Buckingham and Lord Sudeley, were sent into Kent, not as used to be supposed further to supress rebellion, but genuinely to inquire into grievances.3 There were no government indictments laid before this commission. The ninety or so presentments made before them in August, September and October at Rochester, Maidstone, Canterbury and Dartford all came from the juries of the county. Among these were many laid against the household men, who had made the futile chevauchées of 18 to 20 June into Kent, for plundering provisions and horses, stealing cash, plate, jewellery and household goods.4 Of the rest, over one-third were against the alleged oppressers and extortioners whose misdeeds had been among the grievances of the rebels: sheriffs and their undersheriffs, gaol keepers and stewards in royal service and in the service of Lord Say, the archbishop of Canterbury and other Kentish lords.5 Among those so indicted was Alexander Iden of Milton, the new sheriff of Kent and Sussex, who had captured and killed the captain of Kent and been rewarded for it. When Henry later recovered sufficient confidence to set up further commissions of oyer and terminer to punish disorder these were directed to ignore offences committed before 8 July, the day after the Cade rebels had received their pardons.

  A new dimension was given to the troubles of Henry and his household when news reached them, probably towards the end of August, that the exiled Richard duke of York, without any royal command or permission asked or received, was on his way back from Ireland.6 His defeated and disgraced successor in Normandy, Edmund duke of Somerset, had already returned among his demoralized troops, passing through London on 1 August. Defeats of such magnitude can hardly have been much recommendation for a new military appointment, but Henry was sure of his loyalty and obedience and it was probably apprehension at the news of York’s pending return that caused Henry to make Somerset Constable of England on 11 September. York’s name had been used by malcontents since the beginning of the year as a potential reformer who had a prime right to prominence in Henry’s councils. A charade had been acted before Henry as he passed through Stony Stratford on his way to the Leicester parliament when a sailor, John Harries, threshed with a flail before the king to show how York would deal with the traitors about him. The foolhardy man suffered a traitor’s death in April for his demonstration.7 But undoubtedly some men also saw York as an alternative king. A man was indicted at Ipswich and hanged and quartered for plotting in January to put York on the throne,8 one of Moleyns’s murderers made similar threats to Henry’s face.9 Jack Cade usurped York’s family name of Mortimer and called for his return from exile and Cade’s placards showed that his followers felt the need to deny any wish to depose Henry and make York king in his stead. These were false, treasonable intentions, they alleged, which had been fathered on them by the king’s entourage. York was quite untainted by any of the disasters of recent years. As heir male and heir general of Edward III he was the sole person who could dispute the Lancastrian title. Later tradition maintained that Roger Mortimer, fourth earl of March, had been proclaimed Richard II’s heir presumptive in 1385.10 There may be some doubt whether York, distant relative as he was to Henry himself, was widely regarded as his heir presumptive in 1450, but he was actually proposed as his ‘heir apparent’ in the parliament of 1451 by the lawyer member for Bristol, Thomas Yonge,11 who had been York’s attorney in England during his absence in Ireland.12

  York re-entered the kingdom as he had left it, by the haven of Beaumaris on Anglesey. From Beaumaris he passed to his estates in the Welsh marches, to strengthen his following before proceeding in military array to the capital. He communicated by letter and petition with the king and what he wrote was intended to be made public. Men were uncertain of the significance of his return and none more so than Henry himself. Two of the most prominent and unpopular members of the king’s household, John, Lord Dudley and Reginald Boulers, fled to York for protection.13 The Speaker of parliament, William T
resham, wearing Henry’s SS collar of livery,14 set out to meet him and was cut down by followers of Lord Grey of Ruthin on the king’s highway. Henry had approved hasty and ineffective arrangements to oppose his return, chiefly by members of his household whose local interest lay in North Wales and the western counties. According to York’s complaints they were specifically instructed to imprison him at Conway, kill his chamberlain and right-hand man, Sir William Oldhall, and detain two others of his council, Sir Walter Devereux and Sir Edmund Mulso.15 Perhaps their loyal zeal had simply outrun their instructions, since the king himself stated, in his first reply to York’s letters, that they had been sent to ascertain his intentions and to oppose them only if they were hostile. Henry doubted his loyalty, though there are no grounds for disbelieving York’s own stated reasons at this stage for thus returning unbidden in strength. He rightly claimed that his name had been linked with treasonable movements; he further genuinely believed that there were those who were actually labouring to have him indicted for treason. He could not have forgotten the fate of Duke Humphrey who had died under arrest, in a cloud of royal mistrust and disapproval, in 1447. He said he came to clear his own name and to prevent the corrupting of his blood. This suggests that he already had the prospect of a natural succession to the still childless Henry in mind. At any rate, he was determined, amid all the unrest and uncertainty in England in 1450, to assert and keep open his rights.

  York’s first two communications to Henry indicate that he was returning, in the first instance, in some apprehension, to defend his own good name and his own interests, not to play the reformer, anti-household advocate, or House of Commons man, let alone to topple Henry from his throne. His attainder in 1459 alleged that he finally forced his way into Henry’s presence in Westminster palace on 27 September 1450, beating down the resistance of his guards,16 but their surviving exchanges of correspondence, and the most reliable of the chroniclers, suggest that their personal encounter on that occasion, as one would expect in the royal presence, was at least calm and orderly.17 By this date Henry had issued a formal, written public declaration that he accepted him as his true subject and well-beloved cousin. Nevertheless, York’s second interview with the king, before 6 October, reveals that by then he had rapidly donned the reformer’s mantle and espoused an anti-household cause which was conveniently personified now not by the duke of Suffolk but by York’s erstwhile rival for pre-eminence in Normandy, the Beaufort duke of Somerset. According to Abbot Wheathampstead, the old resentment at his replacement by Somerset as king’s lieutenant in Normandy, as he had previously been superseded in authority by his elder brother John Beaufort, followed by his relegation to Ireland, now got the better of him, when he saw his former rival, in spite of his failures and disgrace, once more exalted in the king’s favour.18 York’s entourage knew that, when he was with the king on this second occasion, he caused consternation in the royal household by pressing Henry to do justice to those commonly spoken of as traitors, and desired ‘much after the Commons desire’. His chamberlain, Sir William Oldhall, had also been with the king and Henry had actually asked them to look favourably upon his esquire of the body John Pennycook, who was unable to gather his rents in areas dominated by York’s lordships, only to be told that ‘western men’ would not receive royal courtiers favourably, even if ordered to do so under York’s own seal.19 Oldhall also alleged that on their march to the capital near St Albans only his personal intervention had saved the former chancellor of Normandy, Sir Thomas Hoo, from death at the hands of their followers. Once again, dealings between York and his king were publicized on both sides. Henry’s formal reply to his requests for reform was to announce his intention to establish a ‘sad and substantial council’, giving them greater powers than ever he had done before.20 York would be one member, but only one among equals. The king’s philosophical justification on this occasion for taking the advice of many rather than one, in a body where the advice of the greatest and the least should be of equal weight, was later hailed by the authors of York’s attainder in 1459 as evidence that the spirit of the wisdom of God in Henry had prompted that clever counter to York’s over-weening ambition.

  Parliament had been summoned by writs dated 5 September 1450 to meet again at Westminster on 6 November.21 The causes were to provide for the defence of the realm, for the safekeeping of the sea, for urgent help to the people of Gascony in their defence against the French, and for the pacification and punishment of riotously disposed people disturbing and endangering the kingdom by their gatherings and insurrections.22 Such unrest was evident in the capital. On 29 October the mayor of London’s procession was harassed by disorderly soldiers. On 30 October and 1 November York’s arms and the royal arms were set up in various places in the city and suburbs in apposition, by rival parties.23 York and his wife’s nephew, Norfolk, had been exerting their combined influence on the shire elections in Norfolk, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire with only moderate success,24 but York’s chamberlain Sir William Oldhall was chosen as Speaker. York and Norfolk reappeared in the city in great strength on 23 and 24 November and the tension increased. Retrospectively, this appearance in such armed strength was treated by Henry as an abortive dress rehearsal for York’s later armed Dartford rising; some of his retinue who accompanied him to this parliament from Royston, Stamford and Grantham were subsequently indicted as rebels for it during Henry’s judicial progress through the eastern shires in the autumn of 1452.25 On 30 November a great shout was made in Westminster Hall for justice on traitors, allegedly engineered by Sir William Oldhall. Somerset was assaulted while he sat at dinner at Blackfriars on 1 December.26 He escaped by river in the barge of his brother-in-law, the earl of Devon, and Henry had him put in the Tower for his own safety. Two days later, in a hollow gesture of unity, Henry rode through the unruly capital with the duke of York and almost all the nobility and gentry who were present at the parliament, apparently in dutiful obedience: an impressive array of military strength 10,000 strong; a noble sight indeed, recorded one chronicler, if it had taken place in France.27 But the problems which had led to the impeachment of Suffolk and the rebellion were still unresolved. The winter parliament of 1450–1 was essentially a continuation of the interrupted 1450 Leicester session, except that now the Commons had the backing of Richard duke of York, and the mantle of Suffolk had descended on Somerset. The Commons in the new parliament presented their petition of resumption afresh and the list which they drew up of those whom they required to be removed from the king’s entourage was now headed by the duke of Somerset.28

  York himself was appointed to head a commission of oyer and terminer on 14 December to do justice on new rebels, traitors and others in Kent and Sussex,29 but there is no evidence that he ever acted, or that he had now been admitted to Henry’s confidence and favour. He was still under suspicion as the root cause of the continuing disturbances. Somerset was released from the Tower to spend his Christmas at Blackfriars.30 After Christmas Henry felt the need to make hitherto unprecedented personal efforts in the field of justice, law and order. Now, for the first time, he showed signs of exertion to defend his throne. On 25 January, before he set out on the very first judicial progress he had ever made, he issued instructions cancelling previous orders that certain of his acts should not pass without the advice of the council,31 indicating that his decision to increase the powers of his council, his only concession to York, had been short-lived. On 28 January Henry himself left for an armed, punitive and exemplary judicial progress into Kent with an entourage several thousand strong, headed by the dukes of Somerset and Exeter, four earls, five other peers of the realm and three judges. There followed a ‘harvest of heads’ throughout the shire which continued until his return to the capital on 23 February. A host of as yet unpunished miscreants waited at Blackheath32 to beg his mercy and he then ‘rode right royally through the city’.33 In the midst of his Kentish progress he had reaffirmed York’s appointment to Ireland for the remaining seven years of the original ten-
year term,34 presumably to get him out of the way. In March and April he appointed new commissions of oyer and terminer which acquitted the household men on the treasonable indictments laid against them in 1450.35 Little was done meantime in the parliament, which had met from 20 January to 29 March and re-assembled on 5 May, but in the last days of its life at the end of the month or beginning of June36 he finally answered both a petition for the banishment of thirty members of his entourage and the new resumption petition. He partially accepted the first, but exempted all peers of the realm named in it and declined to remove certain unspecified persons whom, he said, he was accustomed to have about him. Should he have to take the field against enemies within or without the land, he warned, he would summon to his presence whom he pleased.

  The second petition for a resumption had been more boldly phrased than the first. For example earlier, generous exceptions made for the king’s two foundations were omitted: their endowments were now described as ‘over chargefull and noyus’. One new request was that all exchanges of land to which the king had been a party should be reversed. Most significantly, the new petition contained a clause to appoint a committee to supervise all Henry’s future grants: the chancellor, the treasurer, the keeper of the privy seal and six lords of the council, who were to sign all instruments they authorized. Acceptance of a grant not so authenticated was to bring forfeiture of all the grantee’s freehold possessions. All Henry’s grants, and those made in his name since the first day of his reign, were again to be annulled with effect from 6 November 1449, that is, the assembly date of the previous parliament, and the operative date of the earlier, abortive act. This petition for resumption now received a favourable but firm answer. The previous act had been largely invalidated by 186 clauses of exemption. None of these applied to the new act. It is true that Henry reserved his right to make exemptions, but only during the remaining life of the parliament. By the time parliament was dissolved, Henry had added forty-three provisos of exemption, but this time they were almost all couched in general, not personal terms. The patent and fine rolls, receipt rolls and household accounts show that this second resumption, unlike the first, was no half-hearted matter. It was made effective.