by Ed West
Just as the Starks had their northern rivals, the Boltons, so the Percys had the upstart Nevilles. In 1415, while King Henry V was fighting at Agincourt, the northern baron Ralph Neville was defeating a much larger Scots force at Yeavering, close to the border. It marked yet another personal victory for this prolific head of an ascendent family, who had risen to become Earl of Westmorland, Warden of the West March, and the most powerful lord of the north.
Ralph Neville had an enormous number of children, at least twenty-two by two wives, and went to enormous lengths to get them all good matches. His first wife, Margaret Stafford, descended from the Mortimer clan, produced eight children; his second, John of Gaunt’s daughter Joan Beaufort, gave him another fourteen, nine of them sons.
Neville was able to advance his children through ruthless matchmaking, or “matrimonial larceny” in the words of one historian.1 Richard, his eldest son by his second marriage, married Alice Montacute, who as daughter of the Earl of Salisbury passed on to her husband her father’s great wealth and title. His younger brothers William, George, and Edward became respectively through marriage barons of Fauconberg, Latimer, and Bergavenny. Many of Ralph Neville’s daughters married well, too, to the dukes of York and Norfolk and the earls of Stafford and Northumberland, so that most of the participants in the War of the Roses were descended from him as a result. Only one of his children did not marry, seventh son Robert, who thanks to his father’s connections became Bishop of Salisbury aged just twelve in 1427.
Ralph Neville’s second wife Joan was considerably more well-connected than his first, and after her daughter Eleanor Neville had been married to the son of Harry Hotspur, she had used her influence to have the Percys restored to their titles and land in 1416. In theory, the two families should have been joined in alliance, as they had once been when fighting the Scots, but it did not turn out that way.
Richard Neville’s match to the Salisbury heiress was the most lucrative of all, especially after Thomas Montagu’s face was blown off at Orléans. Joan and Ralph’s eldest son also inherited from his father large estates across Yorkshire and Westmorland, as well as Essex in the south, and on top of this the wardenship of West March, giving him control of much of the border too. Yet there was a sting in the tail. Much of the fighting in this conflict involved disputes over inheritance, and Neville’s second wife had used her hold over her husband to favor her children at the expense of those from the first marriage. As a result, the two branches of the House of Neville fell into increased hostility.
Joan had also used her influence in the royal council to marry her youngest child, Cecily, to the most expensive and most eligble child bachelor in the realm.
Richard, Duke of York, was a second cousin of Henry V and great-grandson of Edward III through two different lines. His mother having died giving birth to him, Richard of York was only three when his father was executed, and spent the next eight years in the custody of Robert Waterton at the behest of Henry V. Waterton had been one of the men involved in the murder of Richard II and had a very sinister air, and these formative years must have done much to form his cold character. Although King Henry eventually gave York his ancestral lands on account of his uncle’s sacrifice at Agincourt, in 1423 the royal council sold York’s wardship for three thousand marks (some $1.5 million in today’s money) to the Nevilles.
The House of York, despite the name, had their base in the English midlands, at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire, “a mass of stone battlements and towers rising, in the shape of a fetterlock, the family badge,2 protected by a river and moat.
Northamptonshire is on the border of the major dialect regions of England, the small village of Watford traditionally the point at which the South ends. It lies on the linguistic fault line, or “isogloss,” of the three main dialect divisions in English, and to the south and east is the region around London where Received Pronouncation, or the Queen’s English, later developed; here people pronounce bath as barrth, while to the north and west the word was spoken as baaath. (Today, “north of Watford” is used to denote northern England, and in particular England beyond London, although confusingly Watford is also the name of a large town just north of the capital).
Fotheringhay Castle had been built in 1100 by Simon de Senlis, a Norman baron who had married the daughter of William the Conqueror’s niece Judith. The castle had fallen into disrepair in the fourteenth century before being handed to Edward III’s fourth surviving son Edmund of Langley, who was made Duke of York for taking part in an “ineffectual invasion of Scotland.”3 Langley had rebuilt the castle, which by this stage had been surrounded by a large keep nicknamed the Fetterlock because it resembled a type of latch used for horses. Langley had little interest in politics, was regarded as dim-witted and so had been handed rather minor duties, among them Master of the Royal Mews and Falcons. And so, the emblem of the House of York from 1402 onwards was the Falcon and Fetterlock, and which his grandson Richard of York wore with pride. It was here at Fotheringhay, at the Church of St Mary and All Saints, that the family crypt held their ancestors, as well as the memorial to Edward of Norwich, killed at Agincourt.
Richard of York was just thirteen when, as an orphan, he became attached to the Neville family. The following year Ralph died, his children’s inheritance all secure. Soon after this York’s childless maternal uncle Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who some had hoped to make king in 1415, also passed away, without issue, leaving York yet more wealth and another major title. Aged just twenty-four, York replaced Bedford as regent of France, despite very little experience, and although he had a number of successes the English position in France was unsustainable, the army and crown too stretched in terms of money and men. Richard and Cecily did not have children for another fifteen years, by which time she was twenty-four, a relatively late time to begin a family—yet they went on to have thirteen boys and girls.
During his time in Normandy York had fallen out with one of the Beauforts, John, Duke of Somerset, who had been favored by the king with positions and men and could offer only military failure in his attempt to relieve Gascony. Despite Beaufort’s suicide in 1444, the feud with York was inherited by his brother Edmund; this deadly rivaly would intensify as the king’s mental condition became more apparent.
York’s first son, Henry, had died in infancy but was followed soon after by another, born in Rouen in 1441 and christened Edward; York’s friend Baron Scales, a marshal of Normandy, stood as godfather. Another five of their children would die in infancy, but many more of their descendants would perish in fratricidal fighting over the next seventy years. There were later question marks over the legitimacy of Edward, born in Normandy at a time when York was often away from his wife and when she was alone and vulnerable, mourning the death of her first son. York was a distant figure and it was later said that a tall archer called Blaybourne may have comforted Cecily, and York was apparently cold toward Edward compared to his second son Edmund; and yet it was spoken of only by political rivals, and certainly Cecily Neville was also famed for her piety. Aristocratic women could always expect their name to be blackened.
Although York was married to a Neville his natural allies should have been the Percys, now hereditary enemies of the House of Lancaster. Despite losing land after their rebellion, the Percys still owned much of Northumberland as well as territory in Cumberland, Yorkshire, and Lancashire, while the Nevilles held most of County Durham and a slice of Yorkshire.
The Percys and the Nevilles were not the only families heading into conflict. A great feud in the south-west between the Courtenays and Bonvilles had accelerated after Henry VI had handed the stewardship of the duchy of Cornwall to two men at the same time. The Courtenay family had a private army of eight hundred horsemen and four thousand foot soldiers. The Beauforts were also a power in the south-west, while in East Anglia the de la Pole family had developed a rivalry with the Mowbrays, Dukes of Norfolk.
Elsewhere there was the Holland family, descended from Richa
rd II’s violent half-brother; one of their number, John Holland was in January 1444 made Duke of Exeter. Then there were the Staffords, descended from Richard II’s uncle Thomas of Woodstock; in 1444 Humphrey Stafford, its most senior member, became Duke of Buckingham and in 1447 he joined the leading ranks of the dukes.
These conflicts were further worsened by disaster abroad. Provoked by piracy from English sailors, in July 1449 Charles VII renewed hostilities and invaded Normandy; Rouen fell to the French in October and Edmund, Duke of Somerset, fled under safe conduct from the French, agreeing to pay for his safe passage, an unchivalrous act in many people’s eyes. York was furious, but as he was already proving himself to be an irritant to the king’s circle at court, he had been sent away to Ireland as lieutenant in 1447.
War was changing. Chateau Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart’s great Norman fortress captured by the French through its latrines, had held off the armies of Henry V for a year in 1419. In 1449, when the English possessed it once again, the French simply battered it to the ground with artillery and it was never rebuilt. New and far more destructive technology was now in men’s hands and the devastating results would soon be seen by all.
After the Normandy disaster London was flooded with refugees, English and French, collaborators who could never return home, and numerous former soldiers, which led to an alarming rise in crime. The crown was now hopelessly in debt, by almost £400,000, and unable to reimburse the House of York, Richard having spent £20,000 of his own money funding the conflict. War was hugely expensive, and the realm could not afford it while it was being ruled by a clique of the king’s corrupt friends—or at least that is what York felt.
In January 1450, violence exploded around the country. Soldiers in Portsmouth rioted and murdered Bishop Adam Moleyns, who for fifteen years had been an ambassador and clerk of the privy council, and a close friend of the king. Now came the turn of Suffolk, blamed for the hated peace treaty and even blamed for Humphrey’s death. On February 7, the Commons had him formally impeached of “high, great, heinious and horrible treasons” and accused of inviting the French to invade England. It was only through the king’s intervention that this was reduced to a lesser charge and a reduced sentence of banishment for five years. Chased out of London by an angry mob, Suffolk went to Ipswich and set sail for Calais, swearing as he left that he was innocent; however, as his boat reached the Channel they were intercepted by a ship, the Nicholas of the Tower, and Suffolk was crudely beheaded by the crew.
Suffolk’s death looked like piracy, yet the Nicholas belonged to the royal fleet. Among his many roles Suffolk had been in charge of the Court of Admiralty, having replaced John Holland, second Duke of Exeter in 1447. Holland was the son of Richard II’s half-brother John Holland, who had seduced and impregnated his wealthy cousin Elizabeth, forcing the dissolution of her previous marriage. Brutal violence ran in the family, as did venality, and the role of Lord Admiral was well known to offer great opportunities for enrichment, bribery, and theft, “which made him, in practice, pirate-in-chief.”4 John’s son Henry, the third duke, had been Constable at the Tower of London and was so famous for his cruelty that the rack there was nicknamed the “Duke of Exeter’s Daughter.” Exeter was also, since 1447, York’s son-in-law, married to his eldest child Anne, and Suffolk’s political downfall had been led by Lord Cromwell, also one of York’s men. And so, Suffolk’s death was at least good fortune for young Henry Holland, who afterwards was made Lord Admiral.
In April 1450, the English were driven out of Normandy and the following month the county of Kent erupted into rebellion, spurred by a fear of French invasion, rumors of conscription, and the loss of trade caused by the collapse of the wine trade.
By June 6, while Parliament was in Leicester, armed men were assembling around the Kentish town of Ashford, and had elected as their captain one Jack Cade, who claimed to be a cousin of the Duke of York, although he was probably a low born Sussex man and little is known of him. By June 11, the rebels were at Blackheath, and Buckingham’s kinsmen, William and Sir Humphrey Stafford, were sent with four hundred men to crush the Kentishmen. They were both killed, and their army destroyed.
On June 19, rioting erupted in London and the king allowed for the unpopular James Fiennes, also known as Lord Saye, to be arrested as a traitor and put in the Tower, despite their friendship. Violence further erupted across the country; another of the king’s close friends, Bishop Aiscough, was chased by a mob in Wiltshire, his crime being to have married the king and Margaret of Anjou, and the mob caught up with him in Dorset where he was hacked to death.
The king, unnerved by rioting and by a lightening strike on his palace at Eltham, ran off to Leicester, along with his council, while the queen remained in Greenwich, just outside London; on the way to the safety of the midlands, a madman was arrested for trying to whip the ground in front of the king’s horse, screaming that York should take charge. His nerves began to fray.
The rebellion descended into further carnage. At Guildhall, Cade set up a court for traitors, with twenty prisoners beheaded, among them James Fiennes; Fiennes’s son-in-law William Crowmer was then hacked to death, and the two heads were made to kiss.
From Greenwich the Queen had advised the rebels to take offers of pardon and head home, which some did. The others were driven out of London and Cade was chased down to Lewes in Sussex and fatally wounded. His followers met with bloody retribution, the villages of Kent filled with the hanging corpses of rebels. Unnerved by the behaviour of the mob and the chaos his friend’s discontent was causing, York’s ally Lord Scales went over to Somerset’s party, the proto-Lancastrians.
ROSES RED AND WHITE
Into this power vacuum Richard of York returned from Ireland in September, marching on Westminster with five thousand men in a show of force, amidst rumors he would be arrested. He sent the king two open letters complaining that he had been treated like a criminal, and despite attempts to delay York, he arrived in London on the twenty-seventh, where the king listened to his complaints but did not act on his implied demands that he wanted Somerset removed.
In London, tension between supporters and opponents of York led to punches been thrown in Parliament, but by November York had left London for his estates in the Midlands and Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was back from Normandy. Somerset had been put in charge of breaking the resistance in Kent and then made constable, the highest military post in the country. He had also received a vast sum from the council in compensation for the loss of Maine, while York got nothing.
After the War of the Roses, Henry VII symbolized the end of the conflict by having a new emblem intertwining the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York, that of his wife, Richard’s granddaughter Elizabeth. Although it later became known as the Quarrel of the Warring Roses and later War of the Two Roses, the House of York’s symbol of the white rose and Lancaster’s of red were rarely used.
“The War of the Roses” was first used either by Sir Walter Scott or another nineteenth century writer, Lady Maria Callcott, but the idea of the war being associated with these flowers went back to the fifteenth century, if not the exact wording.5 However, it was powerfully represented by a scene in which William Shakespeare portrayed the point of breakdown. Here, in Henry VI, Somerset and York are depicted in the gardens of the Temple Church in Holborn where various noblemen pick red and white roses to show which side they are on.
Although this event didn’t happen, roses have long had associations with blood, death, and lust. As far back as the fourteenth century, Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio used red and white roses in his collection of stories, Decameron, to symbolize love and death, while a white rose appears in Botticelli’s famous artwork The Birth of Venus for the same reason. Likewise, in Westeros, Eddard Starks recalls his sister’s deathbed screams and the falling of rose petals in a dream; he talks of the room where his sister died smelling of “blood and roses.” Or as famous Dutch twentieth century hi
storian Johan Huizinga wrote of the late medieval period: “So violent and motley was life that it bore the mixed smell of blood and roses.”6
On December 1, 1450 a Yorkist mob tried to kill Somerset at Blackfriars, west of the city. Richard rode in the following day and restored order, but his reputation was damaged by the blatant thuggery and lawlessness of his supporters. Somerset was placed in protective custody in the Tower while York was in charge of the city, but he had to be released early in the new year.
Richard then used a client to petition Parliament in May 1451 demanding that he be made heir presumptive and sent letters to the towns of southern England calling on them to march to the capital and remove Somerset. In revenge, in June Somerset had Yorkists such as Thomas Young put in the Tower and then the following month another of his allies, William Oldhall, was locked up; several men from Standon, a Hertfordshire manor held by Oldhall were also taken away, and when Oldhall fled to sanctuary the Earls of Salisbury, Wiltshire, and Worcester broke in and dragged him out.
It came to a head in February 1452 when York marched on London, hoping to be added to the royal council; Somerset brought the king and his army to meet him, as well as the dukes of Exeter, Buckingham, and Norfolk. The royal force was camped at Blackheath, south-east of the capital with the Yorkists at Dartford a few miles downstream, and one of their boats equipped with cannon. But it was a trap, and the Great Chronicle of London recalled that York was taken “lyke a prisoner” until rumors—that his son Edward, Earl of March, was approaching with ten thousand men—forced Somerset to release him. Although Edward was now just ten, and it would have been extremely unlikely he had raised an army, it was possible that York’s followers had gathered a force and put his son at the front as a figurehead.
Two weeks later at St Paul’s, York was forced to swear a humiliating oath of allegiance to the crown, made to kneel before the king. York was excluded from government, going back to his estates near Ludlow, marcher territory he had inherited through his mother’s Mortimer family. However, Somerset’s forces then arrived in the town and so York fled east to Fotheringhay; many of York’s tenants were convicted of treason and then told afterwards that they had been pardoned, “a demeaning trick to play on men who had no choice but to obey their lord’s summons, and done to demonstrate York’s powerlessness.”7 A partisan record states that when Somerset went to Ludlow in July 1452, York’s tenants of “divers of the duke of York’s townships . . . compelled to come naked with choking cords about their necks in the direst frost and snow” before being told they were to live.
