Henry VI

by Bertram Wolffe

  14 Giles’s Chronicle, 44; Benet’s Chronicle, 210; B.L. MS. Royal 13 c.i. ‘William Worcester’, in Stevenson, Wars, II, pt. ii, 771, also says ‘rex Henricus VI subito cecidit in gravem infirmitatem capitis ita quod extractus a mente videbatur’. The Royal MS seems to suggest that the onset was in the middle of the night. Bale’s Chronicle (Six Town Chronicles, 140) says that he was already indisposed at Clarendon when he ‘suddenly was taken and smitten with a frenzy and his wit and reason withdrawn’. Clearly there is no eye-witness account of the onset of the illness.

  15 A. Coville in Cambridge Medieval History, VII, 372–3.

  16 P.P.C., VI, 166–7.

  17 Foedera, XI, 366.

  18 R.P., V, 241–2.

  19 Registrant, I, 163.

  20 Paston Letters, I, 263–4.

  21 P.R.O., E.28/84/20. This petition for payment of their wages, 22 May 1454, states that this was so.

  22 P.P.C., VI, 211; R.P., V, 31; Paston Letters, I, 303. The eye witness William Paston mentioned, but did not specify, the nature of the ‘demeaning’ between them. He also referred to the bishop of Ely doing his fealty on 6 September, the date of the letter, by which time there was great pestilence in the city which he was about to leave in haste.

  23 Davies’s Chronicle, 70.

  24 Paston Letters, 1, 315–16.

  25 P.P.C., VI, 146–57.

  26 This Percy-Nevill dispute has been exhaustively examined, chiefly from King’s Bench indictments of May to August 1454 (K.B.9/148 and K.B.9/149), by R. A. Griffiths, ‘Local rivalries and national politics: the Percies, the Nevilles and the duke of Exeter, 1452–55’, Speculum, XLIII (1968), 589–632.

  27 Griffiths, op. cit., 606–8; Benet’s Chronicle, 210; Paston Letters, I, 264.

  28 P.P.C., VI, 160–4.

  29 Paston Letters, I, 259–61 (Norfolk’s indictment of Somerset); Benet’s Chronicle, 210, dates York’s entry into the council and Norfolk’s indictment both to 12 November.

  30 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 143–4; Paston Letters, I, 403–6.

  31 A. R. Myers, ‘The Household of Queen Margaret of Anjou’, B.J.R.L., XL (1957–8), 418.

  32 Benet’s Chronicle, 211.

  33 R.P,, V, 249.

  34 Paston Letters, I, 263–8.

  35 Benet’s Chronicle, an.

  36 P.R.O., C.81/1546/66.

  37 P.R.O., E.28/84/1; C.81/1546/65. Parliament had already been prorogued by the chancellor on 12 November to 11 February 1454, acting on a council decision of 6 November.

  38 C.P.R., 1452–1461, 202, 311 (York’s ratification dated 1 December 1454 and renewal dated 6 March 1457); 82 (Wiltshire’s grant from 6 March 1453 and appointment of deputy 25 June 1453).

  39 P.R.O., C.81/1546/68. York naturally did not sign. E.28/81/1 and C.81/1546/65 show that he was present that day.

  40 P.R.O., C.81/1546/71, livery clause of 12 March with 20 signatures.

  41 J. S. Roskell, ‘The Problem of the Attendance of the Lords in Medieval Parliaments’, B.I.H.R., XXIX (1956), 189–92; R.P., V, 248.

  42 P.R.O., E.28/85/1, 73; P-P-C, VI, 216–17.

  43 Roskell, op. cit., 193; P.P.C., VI, 233.

  44 P.R.O., C.81/1546/72. cf. P.P.C., VI, 166–74.

  45 R.P.,V, 238–41.

  46 Ibid., 241–2 and see above, pp. 272–3.

  47 See above, p.33.

  48 R.P., V, 242–4, including enrolment of concurrent letters patent dated 3 April.

  49 Foedera, XI, 344; R.P., V, 244–7, 254–6, 266–7; PPC, VI, 199–206, P.R.O., E.28/84/59.

  50 Shortly before Easter (21 April).

  51 Griffiths in Speculum, XLIII, 612ff.

  52 P.R.O., K.B.9/149; Paston Letters, I, 290.

  53 Alfonso of Portugal being the grandson of Philippa, John of Gaunt’s elder daughter.

  54 R. A. Griffiths, op. cit., 612ff., using K.B.9/149, K.B.27/778 Rex m.3d and P.P.C., VI, 189–90, 195–7.

  55 Griffiths, op. cit., 620, 622; Benet’s Chronicle, 212; Giles’s Chronicle, 45–6.

  56 P.R.O., E.28/85/62.

  57 P.P.C, VI, 209–14.

  58 P.P.C, VI, 209–10; P.R.O., E.28/85/58.

  59 P.P.C, VI, 220–33.

  60 See above, p. 98.

  61 P.P.C., VI, 206–7; P.R.O., E.28/85/49 (18 July).

  62 P.P.C, VI, 218–19; P.R.O., E.28/85/59 (23 July); P.P.C., VI, 216–17 and P.R.O., E.28/85/73 shows that those who had failed to appear for the 25 June great council had been ordered on 24 July to do so for the new one for 21 October.

  63 J. L. Kirby, ‘The Financing of Calais under Henry V, B.I.H.R., XXIII (1950), 166–8 (£11,000-£12,000 in peacetime, £19,000 in war). See G. L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais, An Aspect of the Rivalry between Lancaster and York’, E.H.R., LXXV (1960), 30–53 for what follows.

  64 P.R.O., C.18/1546/84a.

  65 PRO., E.28/86/1; P.P.C., VI, 234.

  66 The chronology of these changes has been elucidated by R. L. Griffiths in Speculum, XLIII (1968), 624–5; cf. C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans, 1455’, B.I.H.R., XXXIII (1960), 8–9.

  67 Giles’s Chronicle, 47.

  Part V

  CIVIL WAR

  Chapter 15

  THE FIRST BATTLE OF ST ALBANS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

  Whatever York, as Protector, had done in his own interests his protectorate had undoubtedly maintained and enhanced the royal power. But his imprisonment of Somerset and attempt to secure the office of Captain of Calais for himself had meant undoing decisions which had been Henry’s own. Henry thus quite fittingly marked his resumption of royal power by taking this disputed office into his own hands, releasing Somerset and declaring him innocent of the charges against him. Forthwith restoring him to the Calais command was equally an act of legitimate royal authority, though perhaps an unwise one. The release of the militant duke of Exeter, Percy ally and proven Nevill enemy, was mindless and foolish, for it made clear Henry’s personal belief that York, as Protector, had been bent on usurping the royal power in his own interest; that he regarded the rebellious Holand duke as loyal to the Lancastrian throne and acting merely against Plantagenet pretensions. It convinced the Nevills that Henry’s restoration to health, if such it was, meant that their achievements in their struggle with the Percys were now all at risk. Acceptance of Salisbury’s resignation from the chancellorship, or his actual dismissal to facilitate a return to the high ecclesiastical tradition of the office which Henry himself had hitherto maintained, was equally unwise. ‘The steryng or moevyng of the male journey of Seynt Albones’1 arose directly out of these royal decisions. It has now been thoroughly reinvestigated by C. A. J. Armstrong, mainly relying not, as hitherto, on the well-known but partisan Yorkist account in English used by John Stow, but on two other little-known and neutral accounts in French, the ‘Dijon Relation’ and the ‘Fastolf Relation’.2 The indecisive, ambivalent actions which were characteristic of the king before the onset of his madness were now increasingly obvious and rapidly led to an armed clash and politically motivated assassinations in the main street of St Albans on 22 May 1455. This marked the beginning of the longest period of intermittent civil war in English history which, for want of a better title, and by long-established convention, we call the Wars of the Roses.

  If Henry did fully recover his wits in the New Year 1455, his political judgement was still as weak as it had been. His restoration of Somerset and Exeter to favour caused York, Salisbury and Warwick to flee the court early in March, resolved to form an alliance and, if necessary, to impose their will on him by force of arms. The king’s reaction, to some extent, followed the lines of his moves to meet York’s similar threat of 1451–2, but this time it was dilatory and lethargic, in contrast to the timely and successful counter-measures which had led to York’s humiliation at Dartford. On 21 April 1455 a great council was summoned to assemble at Leicester for 21 May. According to York and his allies its declared purpose, as stated in the writs of summons to it, was to provide for the threatened safety
of the king. This they took to be directed against themselves. Precisely what was intended cannot be ascertained. Imposition of the arbitration between York and Somerset, which Henry had ordered to be prepared by certain lords, was due by 20 June. Behind Somerset were both the king and the queen and the declaration of this award was probably intended to be made the occasion of some exemplary humiliation of York at the hands of the establishment, reminiscent of his public submission and oath-taking at the high altar of St Paul’s after his failure to secure the dismissal of Somerset in 1452. Whatever was intended was to be staged in a hand-picked assembly in the queen’s castle, town and honour of Leicester in the heart of the Lancastrian homelands. The writs, sent out on 21 April by special messengers to selected individuals in the shires, were designed to produce a nominated assembly of lords, knights and esquires, after the manner of a parliament, but with no burgesses and with no elections.3 York and his friends must have recalled with apprehension the sinister precedent at Bury St Edmunds in 1447, when Duke Humphrey had been arrested, dutifully obeying a summons to a specially staged parliament. Although some bows and guns were ordered for what the exchequer later called the king’s ‘parliamentary journey’ of May 14554 timely, efficient preparations and precautions for it on the pattern of 1447 and 1452 were unaccountably not repeated. It seems that Henry, possibly relying on York’s earlier solemn public undertaking never again to attempt anything by way of force, at first considered that no show of military power would be necessary. Urgent messages requiring troops from the city of Coventry were not sent out until 18 May.5 Similar, last-minute, military summonses to various lords, rather than reluctance of the nobility to support the king, probably explains the late arrival at St Albans, after the battle, of a number of magnate contingents. The need to meet at Leicester was itself an admission of weakness, only partially due to Somerset’s unpopularity in London, and to the queen’s dominance of Henry, since it repeated Henry’s own reaction both to the impeachment of Suffolk and to the Cade rebels in 1450. It foreshadowed the semi-permanent withdrawal of the king and court to areas assumed to have the greatest loyalty in the few remaining years of his dynasty from August 1456.

  The decision to hold this punitive assembly had been taken at an earlier, select great council meeting, to which York and the Nevills had not been summoned, held at Westminster in April, round about the date when the writs were sent out for the Leicester assembly. This later drew justifiable protests from them at the ‘jelosy had ayenst us’. Preparing their army in the north, they were made exactly aware of the king’s intended movements by the writs of summons which they did receive to the proposed Leicester assembly. Accordingly they planned to intercept Henry at St Albans on his way to Leicester. As in February 1452, Henry followed up the writs to the dissident lords with personal emissaries, one of whom was Salisbury’s son-in-law, the ex-treasurer of the protectorate, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, to persuade them to attend peaceably at Leicester. York detained these envoys until his forces were well on their way towards the king, to preserve secrecy about his movements. Finally, on 19 May, the new chancellor was ordered to prepare letters under the great seal to York, Norfolk, Salisbury and Warwick warning them that they would be treated as traitors and public enemies if they did not disband almost all their followers. York could keep 200 and the others 160 each.

  Henry did not leave Westminster for Leicester until 21 May, the appointed day of assembly. He was overtaken at 10 a.m. at Kilburn, some four miles on his way, by a messenger from the chancellor, forwarding a petitionary letter which he had received from York and the Nevills, probably their reply to his threat to treat them as traitors. It had been signed and sealed by them at Royston in Hertfordshire the day before. In it they complained of their omission from the Westminster council of the previous month and the consequent, invidious nature of the proposed Leicester assembly. They demanded on behalf of their followers that the chancellor should publicly excommunicate the traitors about the king and, as head of justice in the land, summon a truly representative council. On these conditions they would lay down their arms. That day they advanced to Ware, only fifteen miles from St Albans, and from there York sent his confessor, William Willeflete, with a second letter, direct to Henry, reaffirming their loyalty, asserting that they were only coming to protect him from his enemies and enclosing a copy of their previous letter to the chancellor. Willeflete reached the royal quarters at Watford, seven miles south of St Albans, at 2 a.m. on Thursday 22 May, and handed his communication to the earl of Devon.

  Soon after the king and his company left Watford, en route for St Albans, where he intended to have his dinner that day, they were halted by another messenger who informed them that York and his associates were already close at hand, with forces superior to his own. They had in fact taken up positions in the countryside about St Albans at 7 o’clock that morning. Divided counsels now ensued in the royal company. Prudent advice, presumably Somerset’s, to stand and fortify themselves where they were, was rejected. Henry, with his customary waywardness, now summarily removed the duke of Somerset from the office of constable and put the temporizing duke of Buckingham in charge of the whole army. This meant accepting Buckingham’s contrary advice to proceed to St Albans as intended. The new constable was confident that York and his associates would not fight, and would be willing to negotiate with him and certain bishops who had been summoned to the royal host, but had not yet arrived. Henry, it appears, had set out with only one senior ecclesiastic in his company, the Percy bishop of Carlisle, hardly likely to be a mediator acceptable to his family’s Nevill adversaries. When Henry arrived at St Albans, probably about 9 o’clock, he certainly had with him the more distinguished part of the nobility – two dukes and their heirs, four earls and six barons, together with his normal household establishment – but the ensuing conflict suggests that some of these were lukewarm for a fight. York, with only his thirteen-year-old son, the earl of March, the two Nevill earls, Salisbury and Warwick, Henry, Viscount Bourchier, and his son Humphrey, the later Lord Cromwell, nevertheless had the greater and superior fighting force.

  It must be assumed that Henry, in spite of having accepted Buckingham’s assurances that negotiations not hostilities would ensue, was nevertheless prepared for a fight when he reached St Albans, since he did not make for his usual quarters in the abbey but took up a position and raised his banner in the centre of the town, at Goslaw in St Peter’s Street, the better to direct operations. After a provocative and futile defiance, sent to York by Somerset through the duke of Exeter’s pursuivant Lesparre, threatening forfeiture if he and his fellowship did not depart, courteous and elaborate negotiations did indeed follow. They were conducted through Buckingham herald on the one part and Mowbray herald on the other, although Mowbray’s master, the duke of Norfolk, was not himself present in the Yorkist host. By that time York and his allies were assembled on the Kay field, situated within crossbow range, to the east of the town. There can be no certainty that all the messages which York now sent to Henry did reach him; the blatant official exoneration and justification of their treasonable acts, which York and his supporters forced upon the ensuing July parliament, baldly laid the blame for everything on three individuals, Somerset, Thomas Thorpe and William Joseph, who, it was claimed, intercepted and concealed vital communications. But negotiations clearly failed because of stubbornness on both sides. York would not accept Buckingham’s fundamental proposal to retire for a night to Barnet or Hatfield and to appoint at least one noble plenipotentiary to talk on his behalf. On the other hand Mowbray herald, who did reach the royal presence, still found that this availed him nothing, because Henry simply referred him back to the duke of Buckingham. In the final resort Buckingham himself could only reply to York’s increasingly pressing demands for a reply from Henry’s own lips that the king was not disposed to give him any answer. According to the Yorkist ‘Stow Relation’, York’s demands included the delivery to him of ‘such as we wol accuse’ and Henry sent back
the answer that, rather than deliver any lord present with him, he would live or die for their sakes in that quarrel, that day. This is clearly a speech made up by the ‘relator’, but the king’s well-attested silence in effect did mean no more and no less than that.6

  The first battle of St Albans is remembered as a short, sharp ‘affray in a street’, St Peter’s Street, and the central market place, perhaps of no more than half an hour’s duration, once the insurgents had broken through the barriers set up around the unwalled town in three or four different places. The preliminary assault lasted perhaps an hour or so. Scattered fighting and much looting continued possibly for one or two hours after the main engagement. The defeated were despoiled of all their possessions and ransomed like Frenchmen, but for the principals the fight was over when Somerset, who had taken refuge in a house, was deliberately cut down as he tried to make a fighting exit. As soon as possible York secured the king’s person and removed him to the safety of the abbey. The slaying of the earl of Northumberland and the aggressive Lord Clifford may have been deliberate Nevill action, but equally may have been accidental. Henry himself, standing almost alone by his overturned banner, by chance received a slight flesh wound in the shoulder or neck. Hardly more than forty were slain, among whom were a high proportion of household men, which tends to disprove the charge of cowardice levied against those around the king. Many of these received wounds on the face, neck, arm and hand, suggesting that, as one contemporary account relates, the king’s entourage did not fully arm themselves until the attackers burst in upon them. The general Lancastrian incompetence in the conduct of the fight must be laid on Henry’s own shoulders, but perhaps also, some of them were indeed lukewarm about fighting at all, for the earl of Devon and Lord Fauconberg, and a number of other former associates of York, present in the royal company, may not have been enthusiastic in defending Somerset. Only the wounded Buckingham and the earl of Wiltshire among the great, both of whom took refuge in the abbey, were pursued by York. Wiltshire escaped in disguise, but the arrogant York compelled Henry to order Buckingham’s surrender, under threat of violation of sanctuary.