Edward IV

by Charles Ross

  Redesdale’s rebellion has generally been seen as essentially a movement inspired by the Nevills, and consisting largely of Nevill retainers, tenants and well-wishers.5 Certainly it had strong Nevill connections, especially among the leaders. Robin himself was probably Sir John Conyers of Hornby in north Yorkshire, Warwick’s cousin by marriage; and amongst those afterwards killed in the battle of Edgecote on 26 July were his nephew, Sir Henry FitzHugh, son of Lord FitzHugh, another cousin, Sir Henry Nevill, son of George Nevill, Lord Latimer, and a son of Lord Dudley, who had married Latimer’s daughter.1 But contemporaries also speak of the rebellion as a large-scale popular rising, ‘a whirlwind from the north … a mighty insurrection of the commons’, as one chronicler put it.2 Although it would be naive to deny its Nevill inspiration, the rebellion probably drew upon popular disillusionment, and attracted support on a scale not even the mighty Warwick influence could have commanded alone (for no other magnate openly lent his backing). Like the well-supported rising of the Bastard of Fauconberg in Kent in 1471, men probably joined it from a variety of motives, whatever its overall political complexion.3

  The government was slow to react to the dangers from the north, and slower still to link them with Nevill treason. Warwick had so far done nothing to show his hand. He seems to have received some sort of naval command, and threw himself with energy into preparations for the war at sea which might be expected to follow upon the previous autumn’s breach with the Hanseatic League.4 After attending a Garter ceremony at Windsor on 13 May, when the order was conferred on Duke Charles of Burgundy, he went to Sandwich to supervise the fitting-out of his great ship, the Trinity, in harbour there. He was still being appointed to important commissions, including an exceptionally strong commission of oyer and terminer issued on 22 May 1469 for the counties of York, Westmorland and Cumberland, which seems to have been the government’s first official reaction to the disturbances in the north.5 Clearly Edward did not yet suspect treason.

  Early in June the king set out on a pilgrimage to Bury St Edmunds and Walsingham in East Anglia, in company with Gloucester, Rivers, Scales and other Woodvilles. By 18 June he had decided to go to the north and deal with the disorders in person, for from Norwich he ordered the royal wardrobe to supply banners, standards, coat-armour, forty jackets of velvet and damask with roses, and a thousand jackets in the York colours of murrey and blue, ‘together with such other stuff for the field as must needs be had at this time’.1 But even then his preparations lacked any urgency. Joined now by the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, he eventually made his leisurely way to Fotheringhay Castle, where, at the end of the month, he rested for a week or so, and awaited the arrival of more troops and war material. Continuing north, he reached Stamford on 5 July and Grantham two days later, and thence, by way of Nottingham, to Newark.2 Here reports from further north became suddenly menacing. Robin of Redesdale was said to have three times as many men as the king disposed of, and the common people were not coming in to Edward as quickly as he had hoped. The urgent demands for men which follow reflect his sudden alarm. On 5 July he had already written to the city of Coventry asking for a hundred archers; now from Newark (on 10 July) came another demand for these troops, ‘with more if ye godly may’, to be despatched at once, ‘without failing, all expenses laid apart, upon the faith and ligeance ye owe unto us’.3 Meanwhile, Edward hastily turned back to Nottingham to wait for more men, especially the Welsh and West-Country forces which he had called upon William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and Humphrey Stafford, the new earl of Devon, to collect. For safety’s sake, the unpopular Woodvilles were now sent away, Rivers and his younger son, Sir John, to Wales, and Scales to Norfolk.4 By now the rebels were dangerously close, and preparing to outflank the king by slipping south towards Coventry. By now, too, he could no longer ignore the growing rumours of treason surrounding Warwick, Clarence and the archbishop of York; and on 9 July he wrote hopefully to each of them, calling upon them to show that they were not ‘of any such disposition towards us, as the rumour here runneth’.5

  Warwick’s plans were now nearing completion. With his brother George and Clarence already in his company, he wrote from London on 28 June to his supporters in Coventry, announcing the duke’s forthcoming marriage to his daughter, Isabel, and it was probably this news which had reached the king at Nottingham. The three were joined at Sandwich on 4 July by Warwick’s brother-in-law, John, earl of Oxford, and then crossed to Calais. On 11 July the archbishop performed the wedding ceremony in the presence of a considerable company.1 Immediately after, they abandoned all pretence of loyalty, and directly associated themselves with the northern rebels. From Calais on 12 July they issued a manifesto in the form of an open letter attached to a copy of the rebels’ petition.2 After setting forth certain general grievances, this document then specially emphasized the exclusion of the princes of the blood royal from the king’s secret council in favour of ‘the disceivable covetous rule and guiding of certain seducious persons’. These were named as Earl Rivers and his wife, Scales, Sir John Woodville and his brothers, the earls of Pembroke and Devon, Lord Audley and Sir John Fogge, which persons, they claimed, ‘have caused our said sovereign lord and his realm to fall in great poverty of misery, disturbing the ministration of the laws, only intending to their own promotion and enriching’. But the most original feature of their proclamation was the ominous analogy drawn between the misdeeds of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI, which had cost these kings their thrones, and the mistaken policies of Edward himself. Finally, they announced their intention to lay their proposals for ’a remedy and reformation’ before the king, and called upon all their supporters to join them in arms at Canterbury on 16 July.

  The rebels were well received on their landing in Kent, and left Canterbury about 18 July to march on London with a growing force. The city government found itself in a dilemma. Self-interest capitalized in extensive royal debts, and perhaps the fear of later retribution, may have inclined it towards the distant king, but the mayor and council had to reckon with Warwick’s popularity among the common people and the danger of pillage and bloodshed if they resisted him. In the event they would not take the risk. The rebels were admitted to the city, and even supplied with a modest loan of £1,000. They soon set off towards Coventry to join the forces under Robin of Redesdale, now threatened by the advance of the royalists under Pembroke and Devon.3

  The military manoeuvres leading to the battle of Edgecote on 26 July 1469 caused total confusion amongst contemporary chroniclers, and are certainly far from clear today.4 It is hard to find any sensible explanation for the total inactivity of the king. Perhaps he still accepted Warwick’s protestations of innocence, and could not believe that his own brother, Clarence, could have risen against him, for such family disloyalty, even in this ruthless age, was quite exceptional.1 Perhaps, cut off by the rebels to the south from his own supporters, he had no up-to-date information, and too readily took no news for good news. At all events, he sat idle at Nottingham until it was too late. Meanwhile, Pembroke, with a powerful force of Welshmen, and Devon, with his followers from the west, were marching together towards Northampton.2 On 25 July, when near Banbury, they seem to have quarrelled about billeting arrangements in the town. As a result, they made separate camps, with Devon, who had most of the archers with him, several miles away from Pembroke at Edgecote. Early the next day the rebels fell suddenly upon the Welshmen, who were hampered by lack of archers but put up a brave fight. The heavy casualties amongst the rebel leaders bear witness to a fierce struggle. Devon’s troops either arrived too late to turn the tide of battle or were never fully committed. The royalists seem to have been finally demoralized by the appearance of a small force under one of Warwick’s supporters, John Clapham, which they mistook for the vanguard of a separate enemy army under the earl’s command. The Welshmen were finally overwhelmed. Devon escaped, but Pembroke and his brother, Sir Richard, were taken prisoner, and carried off to Northampton, where Warwick had them beheaded on the fo
llowing day. For this he had no legal justification, for they had not been in arms against a king whom Warwick himself recognized; and (like the execution of Rivers and Sir John Woodville soon after) it was an act of private revenge against men who had come to supplant the earl in royal favour and had thwarted his ambitions in South Wales.

  The defeat of the royalist earls need not have been decisive for Edward’s fortunes if he himself had remained at liberty, but the rebel triumph was soon completed by his capture. Still apparently unaware of the fate of Pembroke and Devon, the king left Nottingham on 29 July, heading south to Northampton to meet them. Nearing the city, he heard news of the battle, and was thereupon deserted by almost all his men.1 At Olney, on the road to London, he fell into the hands of Archbishop Nevill, who had been sent to take him as soon as Warwick learnt of his whereabouts. Although treated with formal respect, he was now a prisoner, and was sent to Warwick Castle for safe-keeping. The ruin of Warwick’s enemies was now quickly completed. Rivers and Sir John Woodville were captured beyond the Severn and executed outside Coventry on 12 August. Sir Thomas Herbert was beheaded in Bristol, and on 17 August the earl of Devon was taken and executed by the common people of Bridgwater in Somerset.2 By mid-August Warwick was fully in control both of the king’s person and the government of the realm.

  King Edward was himself largely to blame for the humiliating débâcle of July 1469. A mixture of complacency and inactivity characterizes his behaviour, in marked contrast to the vigour and decision he was to display in the spring of 1470 and the summer of 1471. Throughout he seems to have underestimated the extent to which he had lost popular sympathy and was loath to accept the fact of treachery within his own family circle. His reaction to the news from the north was tardy and half-hearted. No general commissions of array seem ever to have been issued, and most of his supporters amongst the magnates were not summoned to his side.3 He relied too heavily and exclusively on the ability of Pembroke and Devon alone to crush the northern rebels. Bad intelligence can only be a partial explanation for his hopeful loitering at Nottingham for almost three weeks between 10 and 29 July, whilst the rebel plans came to completion, and he finally blundered into a captivity he might have avoided. Above all he failed to appreciate how little his government had succeeded in winning popular support when confronted by a rival with Warwick’s reputation. The earl’s success is the more remarkable because, in spite of his skill in exploiting the discontent of the commons, he had no significant support amongst the baronage. The significance of this political isolation soon became apparent.

  Lack of committed support from his fellow-magnates severely limited Warwick’s freedom of action from the start. Though he speedily helped himself to the earl of Pembroke’s vacant offices of chief justice and chamberlain of South Wales (17 August), and tried to win over his brother-in-law, William, Lord Hastings, by appointing him chamberlain of North Wales (12 August), he did not attempt to dispose of many other offices and wardships formerly held by Pembroke, Devon and Rivers, nor to grant out custody of their estates to his supporters, as Edward was able to do when he recovered power.1 Hence Warwick had no fund of patronage at his disposal. There were no rewards for Clarence, Oxford or the archbishop of York. Of offices of state, only the treasurership vacated by Rivers had to be filled, and this was given on 16 August to Warwick’s supporter, Sir John Langstrother, Prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England. The other ministers and members of Edward’s council continued to serve, including such strong royalists as Lord Ferrers and Sir John Howard.2 But Warwick needed more backing for his illegal usurpation of authority than a reluctant council could provide. Following the precedents of the Yorkists in 1455 and 1460, he hastily sent out writs (on 10 August) for a parliament to assemble on 22 September at York, near the strongholds of Nevill power and away from a London which was proving highly troublesome. Whether he intended to get the assent of parliament for Edward’s replacement by Clarence remains uncertain, though on 8 August the Milanese ambassador in France reported that he planned to have Edward declared a bastard and give the crown to Clarence instead.3

  Nothing better illustrates the limitations of Warwick’s authority than his difficulties in keeping order. In London the populace regarded Warwick’s triumph as a licence for violence: there was serious rioting and pillaging, held in check only by the combined efforts of the king’s council and the city authorities, backed by the duke of Burgundy’s ambassadors, who published a message from their master promising his goodwill if the citizens remained loyal to Edward and the Burgundian alliance.1 Some of the nobility also saw their chance to pursue their private quarrels without official interference. In August the duke of Norfolk tried to take the castle of Caister by force from the Paston family. Efforts by Clarence, Archbishop George Nevill, and the lords of the council, to reach a compromise were rejected by the duke, and it is significant that Sir John Paston then tried in vain to get a writ from the king in person, as the only authority whom Norfolk might respect. After a regular siege of more than five weeks, the little Paston garrison, ‘for lack of victuals, gunpowder, men’s hearts, lack of surety of rescue’, was driven to surrender on 26 September.2 In Gloucestershire there was trouble between the Berkeley and Talbot families, and in Lancashire between the Stanleys and the Harringtons, and in Yorkshire a quarrel between Thomas, Lord Stanley, and Richard, duke of Gloucester, led to outbreaks of violence before March 1470.3 The government also feared a Lancastrian incursion or rebellion in South Wales.4

  The danger that Yorkist dissensions might encourage unregenerate Lancastrians was more clearly revealed in August, when Sir Humphrey Nevill of Brancepeth and his brother, Charles, suddenly raised the standard of revolt on behalf of Henry VI along the northern border. Though his cause apparently attracted little support, Warwick judged the situation serious enough to countermand the summoning of parliament on grounds of the ‘great troubles in divers parts of this our land not yet appeased’, and so that he might take personal command of operations in the north. But he discovered that he could get no response to proclamations calling for troops to be raised so long as the people believed the king to be a prisoner.5 Clearly the common people in the north who had supported Redesdale’s rebellion were bewildered by Warwick’s policy. The unpopular favourites against whom they had campaigned were dead or out of power, and they were suspicious of the continued restrictions on the liberty of the king. Only the moral authority of the king in person could now command their obedience. Earl Richard now had no choice but to release Edward from his confinement in Middleham Castle in Yorkshire (where he had been taken from Warwick Castle late in August). He appeared in public and apparently his own master soon after 10 September at York.1 With the king’s help, Warwick raised the troops he needed, and put down the northern rising without difficulty. Humphrey and Charles Nevill were taken and executed at York on 29 September, in the king’s presence.2

  But this episode gave Edward his chance. From York or nearby Pontefract he seems to have summoned his brother, Gloucester, and his brother-in-law, Suffolk, together with the earls of Arundel, Northumberland, and Essex, Hastings, Mountjoy, and other members of the council then in London to come north and join him. Once surrounded by his own men, he announced his intention to return to his capital. By mid-October he was approaching London in full state, with his lords in attendance, to be met by the mayor and aldermen in scarlet, and two hundred men of the city crafts in blue. Warwick’s attempt to repeat the Yorkist tactic of 1460 and rule through a captive king was at an end.3

  ‘The King himself,’ wrote Sir John Paston on Edward’s return to London, ‘hath good language of the Lords of Clarence, of Warwick, and of my Lords of York and Oxford, saying they be his best friends’, but, he added ominously, ‘his household men have other language’.4 Certainly, Warwick’s ruthless revenge upon his enemies, and the humiliations he had imposed upon Edward himself, had made a lasting reconciliation with the earl and his friends seem unlikely. Yet, in public at least, the king s
eemed bent on reconciliation, as Polydore Vergil remarked:5

  He regarded nothing more than to win again the friendship of such noble men as were now alienated from him, to confirm the goodwill of them that were hovering and inconstant, and to reduce the mind of the multitude, being brought by these innovations into a murmuring and doubtfulness what to do, unto their late obedience, affection and goodwill towards him.

  He was careful to take no punitive action against Warwick. The replacement of his minion, Langstrother, as treasurer by William Grey, bishop of Ely, on 25 October, was to be expected; so too was the transfer to Duke Richard of Gloucester in February 1470 of the Welsh offices which Warwick had granted to himself in the previous summer. The exclusion of Warwick and Clarence from commissions of array issued on 29 October for twenty-six English counties was probably also to be expected. When Edward restored Henry Percy to the earldom of Northumberland, Warwick, along with Clarence and John Nevill, had to surrender the Percy estates he had held, but otherwise his private gains of earlier years were respected.1 The king even took the initiative in a programme of formal pacification. Warwick and Clarence were prevailed upon to attend a series of meetings of the Great Council which began in London in November and lasted until mid-February 1470, where all parties agreed to ‘peace and entire oblivion of all grievances upon both sides’. He also arranged the betrothal of his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to John Nevill’s son, George, who, on 5 January 1470, was elevated to the dukedom of Bedford, a substantial peace-offering to Nevill pride.2