The year 1452 had thus been notable for Henry’s re-establishment of order and confidence in his regime throughout the English shires, in the face of York’s first serious challenge. It was also the first, and last, year of triumph abroad. Henry’s idea of a personal expedition against his beloved uncle Charles, who had once more officially reverted to his original role of ‘principal enemy and adversary’, had typically failed to materialize, though the idea had not yet been abandoned for ever. It may be that the personal expedition to Calais, planned in the spring, had languished in port for six months or more until the autumn, as had previously happened over Rivers’s Gascony force in 1450–1. If so, it was the advent of a secret embassy from Bordeaux, led by the lord of Lesparre in Médoc in early September, offering to return to English obedience if they received sufficient substantial encouragement, which gave it a more practical purpose and converted it back into an expeditionary force to Bordeaux under John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, newly made Lieutenant of Aquitaine. Landing in Médoc, Shrewsbury established himself there without difficulty, was duly admitted into Bordeaux on 22 October, and quickly recovered the allegiance of most of the Bordelais, Libourne, St Emilion and Castillon in Perigord. French arms had not been able to erase overnight the tics and loyalties of the three-hundred-year-old English allegiance. In the spring, substantial reinforcements were sent out under Talbot’s son, Viscount Lisle, Lords Moleyns and Camoys and the bastard of Somerset. They captured the key fortress of Fronsac and no checks were suffered by this impressive English reconquest until a fresh French army under Charles Vll’s grand master of the household, Jacques de Chabannes, appeared at Castillon in Perigord early in June.103
The expedition to Bordeaux under the veteran Talbot was now regarded as a great revival of national effort in a righteous cause. Cardinal Archbishop Kemp, newly transferred to Canterbury, required prayers and processions to be held throughout his province for the success of this just war against a crafty, deceitful adversary who had ignored the spirit of truces and abstinences from war and had taken unscrupulous advantage of them to build up armies and alliances for ultimate conquest, thereby revealing what his true intentions had been from the outset.104 This was the light in which his master’s disastrous and futile peace policy now appeared, even to one of Henry’s oldest and closest advisers. Kemp had been Cardinal Beaufort’s partner in the early peace moves opposed by Gloucester and had survived unscathed the reckoning of 1450, continuing to hold, together, the highest secular and ecclesiastical office in the land. The loss of Normandy had opened the eyes even of the peacemakers.
The parliament which met at Reading on 6 March 1453 thus did so in circumstances uniquely favourable for Henry. It was summoned to ‘promote the cause of sound and firm government within the realm of England and its external defence’. One solitary chronicler states that the Commons on assembly protested that free elections had not been allowed in the shires,105 and the composition of the Lower House at first sight may appear to substantiate this, for out of 278 known members, 61 were household men, a figure more than double that for the 1450–1 assembly, nearly double the total in 1449–50 and the highest of the whole reign.106 However, the temper of this parliament showed a remarkable change from the assemblies of 1449–51. It turned out to be the most cooperative and generous one Henry ever met, so one must conclude that our solitary chronicler was voicing a dissenting and minority complaint. Henry’s stock had risen substantially since 1450 and for this reason he now secured a uniquely amenable parliament. The successful reconquest of Gascony probably stood him in greatest stead, though the effective resumption of 1451, the efficient manner in which York’s rebellion had been handled, and the wide-ranging royal judicial progresses all contributed.
Indicative of the general mood of the Commons who assembled at Reading on 6 March 1453 were their petitions concerning the events of the past three years. They now called for a formal parliamentary condemnation of Cade, his rebellion and all its aims; of all judicial sentences which had been passed under its pressure by various commissions; of attacks on the king’s advisers; of the attempts to remove some of them from his presence; of all rebellions and of all the implied stains upon Henry’s honour which had masqueraded as plans for reform. All these unpleasant memories should now be obliterated. Thanks to ‘the victorious knighthood of You our Sovereign Lord’ the difficulties had been overcome. How easy it was to be a real king with just a little consistent effort! The former Speaker and York’s chamberlain, Sir William Oldhall, was made the special scapegoat and exemplary victim, by a parliamentary act of forfeiture, for being deus ex machina to Cade, Wilkins and other rebels, especially ‘those persons [unnamed) in the field at Dartford’. ‘Those persons’ were merely declared deprived of all their royal grants. The grants of Oldhall’s lands to the duke of Somerset and the Tudor brothers were upheld. It is curious that no mention whatsoever was made of York, Devon or Cobham and that Oldhall should be thus singled out, but the explanation was probably the dangers of the special statutory penalties of scandalum magnatum against those who defamed peers of the realm and perhaps a feeling of responsibility especially to punish their own.107
The most outstanding expression of this parliament’s pro-royal sentiments was its financial generosity which provoked Henry’s personal, oral expression of gratitude on 28 March for its ‘fidelity, concern and immense good will’ towards his person. A fifteenth and tenth, to be paid half on 11 November and half a year later, was by itself not especially remarkable. But he was also now granted tonnage and poundage, the wool subsidies and poll-taxes on aliens, not, as customary, merely for a further few years, but for life, an honour which had only been bestowed once before on a Lancastrian king: on his illustrious father, after his Agincourt victory. Moreover, the rate of subsidy was raised from 40/- to 50/- for natives and from 63/4 to the impossible figure of 100/- for aliens, a level so high that it could not be collected, and had to be remitted in the following year. The convocations of Canterbury and York also granted a tenth.108
Finally there was another grant unique in English history, although the possibility seems to have been suggested in 1449.109 It was financially equivalent to three further tenths and fifteenths and consisted of provision for the raising of 20,000 archers for six months’ service, to be provided by all the lords, counties, cities and towns of England and Wales, including contingents from the palatine counties of Chester, Durham and Lancashire.110 At first sight the terms of this grant appear disingenous in the extreme and have led to the quite unjustified inference that it was made for home service for Henry’s use in anticipation of civil war.111 On the one hand it was baldly stated to be a once-for-all levy ‘for the defence of the kingdom of England’, not to be taken as a precedent for the future. On the other it was stipulated that, after the detailed local allocating of responsibility for personnel and finance had been made, then four months’ notice should be given by proclamation of the date and place of muster, to be the same for the entire force. This was then to be kept together, whole, entire and undivided, in Henry’s service for the full six months. With the necessary accompaniment of men-at-arms from the royal retinues this would have constituted a huge fighting force. For comparison, the total personnel of the army with which Charles VII conquered Gascony was estimated by the French heralds at 20,000 men.112 Six months was the normal period for which initial financial provision was attempted for any new expeditionary force sent out to Normandy or Gascony from England during this reign, after which the occupied lands were expected to provide the major part of its sustenance. Such a once-for-all force, which could only be mustered at four months’ notice, would have been patently useless either to repel an invasion or to master another rising by York. It was not so intended. By the spring of 1453 Henry had received a convincing demonstration of the loyalty of all his nobility, except three, and of their willingness to support him in the field against any who tried to force their will upon him ‘by way of fake’. Evidently therefore the declar
ed purpose of this grant ‘for the defence of the realm’, for its ‘external defence’, was a euphemism for an expeditionary force with which Henry could reconquer his French kingdom at his pleasure. This was still expected of him, and any indication of its imminence, as always, met with a generous response. The four months’ notice specified was just about the reasonable minimum required to find and assemble the necessary ships, ordnance and provisions for such a force which, for once, would now assemble with its vital wages taken care of for six months in advance.
If there could be any doubts about this interpretation they are dispelled by the immediate fate of this extraordinary military grant, exactly in keeping with Henry’s previously declared intentions and numerous false starts. Before the Easter recess it was postponed for two years in favour of an immediate further grant of another half tenth and fifteenth to finance reinforcements for the successful Talbot in Gascony. Unusually productive loans for this purpose had already been put in hand in January.113 There was a significant proviso to the postponement: ‘unless that his Excellence would take upon him the labour in his most royal person with the said 13,000 archers’,114 an obvious reference to the glorious possibility that Henry, in spite of earlier false starts, might still lead an expeditionary force in person. The Commons now made their emergency grant of extra finance for the Gascony army in exactly the same euphemistic terms as for the original 20,000 archers. It was ‘for the purveyance of good for the defence of this land’.115
These were the circumstances for which Sir John Fastolf’s secretary William Worcester composed his original Boke of Noblesse,116 ready for presentation to Henry on such an occasion, to urge and encourage him to undertake a personal expedition to avenge the great wrongs which he and his subjects had suffered by ‘unjust dissimilations, undre the umbre and coloure of trewis and abstinence of werre late hadde and sacred at the cite of Tairs … and sethe contynued ‘forthe the said trewes from yere to yere, to this land grete charge and cost, till they had conspired and wrought their avauntage, as it approvethe dailie of experience’.117 Subsequent revisions of his text, for presentation faute de mieux to the more valiant Edward IV, fail to conceal the fact that it was originally written to promote an early reconquest of France when the psychological shock of expulsion and the material losses were still fresh in English minds. The purposeful generosity of parliament in this respect suggests that in 1453 Worcester’s passionate plea for a revival of the spirit and aims of Henry V did not speak merely for a dwindling, embittered circle of the materially dispossessed. It was not for lack of will on the part of Henry’s subjects in general that no further Lancastrian conquest of France was ever launched.
1 Benet’s Chronicle, 202.
2 Ibid; soldiers still bothering the household were given 15 days’ maintenance on 25 August 1450 (P.R.O., E.28/80/83).
3 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 388, dated 1 August 1450. The rest were all legal men apart From one king’s sergeant-at-arms, William Wangford: eight high court judges, Thomas Burgoyne, under-sheriff of London, and William Laken, lawyer, later sergeant-at-law and judge.
4 The most prominent of these were John Sutton lord Dudley, Thomas Daniel, Sir Thomas Stanley, Richard Wydeville lord Rivers and Sir Robert Wingfield (see note 5 below).
5 Roger Virgoe, ‘Some Ancient Indictments in the King’s Bench referring to Kent, 1450–1452’; in Documents Illustrative of Medieval Kentish Society, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay (Records Publication Committee of the Kent Archaeological Society, XVII, Ashford 1964), 214–65.
6 At Dublin on 14 August, at Trim on 26 August; J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London 1968), 383.
7 ‘John Piggot’s Memoranda’, printed by C. L. Kingsford in English Historical Literature, 371.
8 The earliest known reference to York as a challenge to Henry’s throne, detailed by Dr Roger Virgoe in his unpublished London Ph.D. thesis ‘The Parliament of 1449–1450’ (1964), 198–9, from P.R.O., K.B.9/265/12–29.
9 Paston Letters, Introduction, xciv-xev.
10 York’s great-grandparents were Philippa, daughter of Lionel duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III, and Edmund Mortimer, 3rd earl of March. He had inherited the Mortimer lands and title from his uncle Edmund Mortimer, 5th earl of March (d.s.p. 1425). See above, p. 35.
11 ‘William Worcester’, in Stevenson, Wars, II, pt. ii, 770.
12 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 245.
13 Benet’s Chronicle, 202. The people of Gloucester had risen up against the abbey, proclaiming Boulers a traitor and blaming him for the loss of Normandy: ‘Gloucester Annals’, in Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 355.
14 R.P., V, 211–3.
15 Those whom York alleged had opposed his entry on Henry’s instruction are all precisely identified by R. A. Griffiths, ‘Richard duke of York and the Royal Household in Wales, 1449–50’, The Welsh History Review, VIII (1976), 14–25: Sir Thomas Stanley, constable of Chester, chamberlain of North Wales, controller of the household, Thomas Norris, sergeant-at-arms there and a household esquire, William Griffiths, esquire of the chamber, Richard Belth, groom of the chamber, and others in North Wales on the orders of William Say, usher of the chamber; Thomas Pulford, usher of the chamber from Chester, William Ellon, yeoman of the crown from Worcester, William Broke, yeoman of the crown from Gloucester. Also John Talbot viscount Lisle from Holt castle, apparently the only non-household agent and possibly Lionel Lord Welles and Richard Waller, two other members of the royal household.
16 R.P., V, 346, ‘with great multitude of people harnessed and arrayed in manner of war and there beat down the spears and walls in your chamber’.
17 Benet’s Chronicle, 202. Their exchange of letters most recently and accurately printed from Beverley Corporation Archives with commentary by R. A. Griffiths, ‘Duke Richard of York’s intentions in 1450 and the origins of the Wars of the Roses’, Journal of Medieval History, I (1975), 187–210.
18 Registrum, I, 160–1.
19 Paston Letters, I, 150–1.
20 Griffiths, op. cit., 205–6.
21 H.B.C, 532.
22 R.P. V, 210.
23 Bale’s Chronicle, 136.
24 Paston Letters, Introduction, xcviii; I, 160–2; K. B. McFarlane in Proceedings of the British Academy, L (1965), 89–91.
25 P.R.O., K.B.9/7/10; 65a/19, 36, 39.
26 Bale’s Chronicle, 137.
27 Benet’s Chronicle, 203; Gregory’s Chronicle, 196.
28 R.P.,V. 216, 217.
29 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 435.
30 Benet’s Chronicle, 204.
31 P.R.O., Exch. K. R. Mem. Rolls, E.159/227, Brevia, Hilary m.23.
32 Benet’s Chronicle, 204; C.P.R., 1446–1452, 442; Gregory’s Chronicle, 197; John Piggot’s Memoranda in Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 372.
33 Chronicles of London (ed. Kingsford), 162.
34 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 202 (there referred to as made on 11 February 1451).
35 Ibid., 443–5; ‘William Worcester’, in Stevenson, Wars, II, pt. ii, 770.
36 Benet’s Chronicle, 204.
37 For full details of the effects of the act see B. P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne, 248–89.
38 P.R.O., Exch. of Receipt E.410/814, 820, 821, 824, 827 (Michaelmas 1449-Easter 1452), show the impression made on the receipt rolls.
39 i.e. on the manors of Bradwell, Hadley, Havering (Essex), Kingsthorpe, Fawsley, Geddington, Brigstock (Northants), Swaffham (Norfolk), Bassingbourne and Badburgham (Cambs.), a large group of manors known as the Gurney lands (Somerset and Dorset), manors in the Isle of Wight, and the lordships of Pembroke and Cilgerran in Wales.
40 P.R.O., Exch. K.R. Various Accts., E.101/409/9, 11; 410/6.
41 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 477, Benet’s Chronicle, 205.
42 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 477.
43 P.R.O., P.S.O. 1/19/992; E.28/81/60; Virgoe, ‘Some Ancient Indictments’, 243–55.
44 Giles’s Chronicle, 42.
45 Benet’s Chronicle, 204: ‘at Stratford’ wh
ich, mentioned together with the location of Henry al Westminster and Somerset at the Blackfriars, presumably meant Stratford-at-Bow. This is confirmed by John Piggot’s Memoranda in Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 372.
46 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 389, 410,411, 414, 437, 438, 444, 447–50, 462, 476, 478; P.R.O., E.28/81/30, 38; Ramsay, Lancaster and York, II, 146; Benet’s Chronicle, 205; John Piggot’s Memoranda in Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 372; R.P., V, 214–15; Bale’s Chronicle, 138.
47 Berry Herald, 458–67.
48 Bale’s Chronicle, 138; Benet’s Chronicle, 205.
49 French Roll, 30 Henry VI m. 17, cited in P.P.C., VI, xxxvii.
50 P.R.O., E.28/81/48; E.28/84/320 (treasurer of Calais’ account). The forces sent consisted of men-at-arms on horseback at 12d a day, men-at-arms on foot at 8d a day and archers at 6d a day. The periods paid for varied from 6 to 13 weeks.
51 R. L. Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster, 89–92, mainly from K.B.9/267 no. 44.
52 See J. R. Lander in B.J.R.L. (1960), 60. Bonville was the earl’s uncle by marriage, and one of his daughters had married Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham who in the later troubles of 1455 was definitely linked with Bonville against the earl’s family at Tiverton.
53 J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland, 384–5.
54 Storey, loc. cit.; Benet’s Chronicle, 205; ‘William Worcester’ in Stevenson, Wars, II, pt. ii, 770.
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