The War of the Roses

by Timothy Venning

  York had shown one serious miscalculation in claiming the throne as opposed to merely another Protectorship in October. He had been implacable towards Somerset’s father in having him thrown in the Tower of London while he was ‘Protector’ in 1453–4, thereby showing his attitude to compromise. His death at Wakefield was due to another miscalculation, and although his cause in the north needed urgent reinforcement in December he could easily have sent the veteran Salisbury (a local Neville) and his son Thomas on their own. Alternatively, as holding out at Sandal would expose him to a siege when the Queen’s army arrived, he had the option of withdrawing south and evading battle. He could then have linked up with Warwick in time to meet the Queen and Somerset at a more evenly-matched battle as they marched south in February. Edward would still have been preoccupied with the Tudor army (which he defeated on 2/3 February at Mortimer’s Cross).

  Despite the fear aroused by the plundering carried out across the East Midlands by the undisciplined Scots, York would have had the advantage of Warwick’s force of Burgundian cannoneers and crossbowmen to pit against the ferocious but probably ill-armed Scots and the professional soldiers from Calais that Lord Trollope had brought over to the Queen. He would also have had the extra legal ‘boost’ for Yorkist claims to the throne that his heir was to use in March to justify usurping the throne–Henry had sworn oaths of protection to the Yorkist leadership in October but the treacherous attack at Sandal had broken these so he could be deposed. Unlike in autumn 1460, there was now direct evidence of Henry’s ‘treachery’ to his kin to cite as an excuse for deposing him–and it echoed the similar untrustworthiness of Richard II in promising to pardon the ‘Lords Appellant’ for their actions in 1387–8 and then systematically murdering or exiling them in 1397–9.

  Henry was not physically in arms against York until he was recaptured from Warwick by the Queen’s men at the second battle of St Albans; if York and Warwick had won at that battle they would not have had that excuse for withdrawing allegiance. Ironically, Henry’s rescue from custody may have politically doomed him. Warwick may have miscalculated that parading the King with his army added to his chances of winning as it had done for Margaret at Ludford Bridge in 1459, by showing that the sovereign was on his side and encouraging the ‘moderates’ in the enemy leadership to defect to avoid arrest for treason. He would have done better to keep Henry away from the battlefield, ready to be evacuated to a Yorkist stronghold if Warwick lost the battle. But if Salisbury and his son alone had been killed at Sandal/Wakefield, York’s and his son Edward’s anger could easily have led them to depose Henry once the Queen had been defeated; it was not solely Henry’s recapture that lost him the Crown. The arrival of Edward in London with his Marcher troops (26 February 1461 in real life) would have given York’s army the necessary reinforcement to match the Queen’s Lancastrians had the latter won or been able to withdraw in good order from their first clash with York.

  Outnumbered in Yorkshire, either York or Salisbury could not have held on there in January 1461 as the Scots army arrived even had a lucky or skilful encounter with Somerset’s larger force checkmated the latter. York had campaigned in France in the early 1440s; Somerset was younger and inexperienced. The decisive battle would have come as the Queen marched south, or possibly back in Yorkshire had she had to withdraw in the face of Edward’s joining up with his father’s army after victory in the Welsh Marches. The Yorkists might well have still held possession of King Henry, not losing him to the Queen at St Albans in February, and as the retention of Henry on the throne would have entailed keeping him separate from his belligerent and irreconcilable wife it would be easier to depose him. ‘Richard III’ would have assumed the throne in spring 1461, without his rival being at large in Scotland and the north of England as a focus for resistance until 1465. Queen Margaret would have used the Prince as her rallying-point instead of her increasingly feeble and bewildered husband, until forced to flee to France as in real life.

  No bloodbath at Wakefield: York as king, followed by his son Edward IV?

  It is possible that York, born in 1411, would have lived into his early sixties like his grandfather Edmund and great-grandfather Edward III, i.e. into the 1470s. His mother’s Mortimer ancestors were shorter-lived, but most of the Plantagenet males in Edward III’s immediate family who were not killed lived into their fifties apart from the mysteriously afflicted ‘Black Prince’ and Henry IV (dead at 46 and at 45/6). His eldest son, Edward, would then have succeeded, with the probability that with his father still alive and able to command his adherence he would not have dared to take the controversial step of his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464. He would have been in a weaker position to defy the Council’s expectations of his marital choice as heir rather than king; his father is likely to have been as keen as Warwick was in real life to marry Edward off to a French royal bride to achieve reconciliation with Louis XI.

  The kingship of York as ‘Richard III’ would also have meant a less powerful role for his nephew Warwick, fourteen years older and much more experienced than the real-life King Edward IV but in no such relationship to the older York. Had Salisbury still been killed in the northern campaign of winter 1460–1, Warwick would have had his father’s estates to add to his marital (Beauchamp Earls of Warwick) lands and still been the wealthiest landed magnate at court, adding to his prestige as the victor of Northampton who had restored Yorkist fortunes in 1460. Once Richard died he could be expected to take a leading role at the court of Edward IV as its leading ‘power-broker’, and given his ambition still have tried to marry off his daughters to the King’s brothers.

  If there had been no bloodbath at Wakefield in December 1460 Edward IV’s next brother Edmund, earl of Rutland (born in 1443) would have been next in line if the King had no son or had a ‘dubious’ secret marriage. This would have materially altered the nature of any subsequent struggle for power involving Edward IV’s wife’s family and his brothers, and Duke Richard of Gloucester would have been at a substantial disadvantage. The survival of Rutland would have provided him with the landed estates, probably well-dowered bride, and dynastic claim to stand in the way of both George of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester in their manoeuvrings for power after 1469. Nothing is known of Rutland’s capacity as a leader, but it is unlikely that he would have been as treacherous to Edward IV as Clarence was to be in 1469–71 and 1477–8. He would probably have been married off before Warwick’s elder daughter Isabel (born 1451, so eight years his junior) was available–would this have stymied Warwick’s ambition to marry his daughters off to Edward IV’s heirs at the time when the King had no son, i.e. pre-November 1470? It is likeliest that Rutland would have been married to a foreign princess, possibly in the negotiations with France that were ruined in real life by Edward IV’s secret marriage; but the need for Clarence to secure an heiress and a landed affinity would have still made him keen to secure Warwick’s daughter in the late 1460s. If Rutland had been at Edward’s side loyally in 1469, Warwick would not have had the temptation of deposing the King to place Clarence on the throne as his puppet–so would this have given him second thoughts about seizing the King then? Logically, too, a 27-year-old Rutland in possession of a strong landed base and clientele would have been a major block to Warwick revolting successfully in 1470; without Rutland, Edward was more vulnerable. His main supporter in real-life 1470, his youngest brother Richard, was only 18, new to governance (though titular Lord Admiral since his pre-teen years), and untried as a commander.

  Chapter Three

  The Yorkist Regime, 1461–83: Insecurity and Alternatives

  What if Warwick’s men had managed to catch and kill Edward IV in autumn 1470 as he fled the country–and Henry VI had been restored as nominal ruler without a serious military challenger?

  Edward, the charismatic victor of Mortimer’s Cross and Towton Moor over far more experienced Lancastrian commanders at the age of eighteen in 1461, had unexpectedly saved the ‘Yorkist’ dynasty’s po
sition after his father and uncle’s killing by Margaret of Anjou at Wakefield at the end of 1460. He had rallied the Yorkist supporters in the Welsh Marches–where he had inherited the Mortimer lands and their descent from the royal house of Gwynedd, of which his propagandists made use1–to destroy the local royal forces of the Earl of Wiltshire and Jasper Tudor, then had secured London. Finally, he had destroyed the Queen’s superior forces in a lucky blizzard at Towton on Palm Sunday 1461, in a bloodbath where the Pastons had reckoned that around 28,000 men were killed. (The battle may have served as a model for witness Sir Thomas Malory’s depiction of the bloody final battle between King Arthur and the rebel Modred in his ‘Morte d’Arthur’.2) The excessive loss of local life in the Queen’s army at Towton Moor may well have encouraged anti-Yorkist risings later in the 1460s but was effective in defeating the Queen, who had to flee to Scotland.

  Towton and after: Edward IV’s skills and luck. The Scottish factor The ‘official’ Yorkist version of the events of 1461 may have exaggerated in portraying the Yorkists as having the majority support of the south and east of the country and the ex-King as having the support of the north and west, but the latter provided the backbone of the Lancastrian army that was crushed at Towton. The latter had had the larger army, with the adherence of much of the militarily active nobility (two dukes, four earls, a viscount, and eight barons) and over sixty knights, twenty-five of the latter MPs. Their chances of winning must have seemed high, and the loss of the capital to Edward in March was not decisive and could have been reversed. The northerners were on familiar home ground outside York; the Lancastrian army included many of the northern nobility and gentry who were more used to war (against the Scots) than the southerners and had a more militarily coherent and battle-hardened tenantry. These posed a substantial danger of unrest to the new King, but were destroyed at Towton; the bloodthirsty victor of Wakefield, Lord Clifford, and other senior nobles like the young Earl of Northumberland–head of the most powerful family in the north-east–Lords Dacre and Welles, and the ex-Calais commander Andrew Trollope were killed (Clifford in a pre-battle clash). The effects of the bloodbath were devastating nonetheless, with the King following his father’s and Warwick’s practical ruthlessness in executing the captured Earls of Devon and Wiltshire afterwards.3 (With them eliminated rather than pardoned, their lands in the south-west and Wales could be distributed to Yorkist lords to add to regional security.) The victory was gained by boldness, with the smaller Yorkist force pressing forward aided by a hail of arrows and persevering until the enemy broke, a tactic repeated at Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471 and clearly ordered by the new King not the more cautious Warwick.4 For all his subsequent reputation as the warlord ‘par excellence’ of the 1450s and 1460s, the so-called ‘Kingmaker’ had a limited record for winning battles. His skills seem to have been political and as a publicity-monger rather than as a warrior; he lost control of Henry VI at St Albans in early 1461, although he nearly won at Barnet in March 1471.

  Edward had gained and secured the throne by his own boldness rather than by relying on Warwick, in contrast to the latter’s leading role in the 1460 attack on the south-east. His victory forced the Queen and her surviving noble adherents to retreat to Scotland, where Edward had the bonus that the warlike young pro-Lancastrian King James II had been killed in a cannon-explosion while besieging Roxburgh Castle in July 1460 leaving an eight-year-old son. James II, a ferocious warrior and ruthless political operator known for his harrying of the southern uplands in the 1450s to drive out the rebel Douglas clan, could have been expected to aid the Queen, who had handed over Berwick to him earlier, and thus to require another major English campaign against Scotland. His mother, Joan, had been the sister of the Duke of Somerset killed by York’s men at St Albans in 1455. With his leadership removed the Scottish regents, Queen-Mother Mary of Guelders and Bishop Kennedy, gave their Lancastrian allies little effective help; the latter were only able to hold onto parts of Northumberland, studded with semi-impregnable castles loyal to the late Earl’s Percy family and each requiring a costly siege to reduce. The geography and local partisanship by the tenants of the defeated Lancastrian nobility enabled the area to hold out for Henry VI into 1462, as did north and south-west Wales under Owen Tudor’s son Jasper (Earl of Pembroke to 1461 and from an Anglesey dynasty). Edward had killed Jasper’s father at Hereford after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, and now confiscated the Earldom of Pembroke and Jasper’s estates. Warwick’s murder of the Duke of Buckingham, lord of Brecon and the other principal magnate besides himself in south-east Wales, after the battle of Northampton in 1460, had left the Buckingham title and estates to a minor, Duke Henry. Warwick was duly granted their wardship, but was soon eclipsed as the King’s main lieutenant in South Wales by a ‘new man’, Sir William Herbert (who later replaced Jasper Tudor as Earl of Pembroke). Herbert had been the lowly Sheriff of Glamorgan under Warwick’s command in the 1450s, and the acquisitive Earl seems to have fiercely resented his rise; at the first opportunity he was to arrest and murder Herbert too (1469).5 Edward, in contrast to Warwick, was able to show a degree of reconciliation; of the fourteen peers attainted by the 1461 Parliament seven were already dead and six others still defying him in arms.6 His future wife Elizabeth Woodville’s father, Lord Rivers, and brother Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, had both fought for Henry VI at Towton but were pardoned, as were the new Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Grey of Codnor, and others.

  Neither 1461 ‘rebellion’ against Edward IV was a major danger, although it took until September for Edward’s local lieutenant Sir William Herbert to reduce Pembroke Castle and for Warwick, now lieutenant of the east and west Scottish Marches, to reduce Alnwick and Dunstanburgh Castles. The latter was riskily left to its ex-Lancastrian commander, Sir Ralph Percy, whose father and brother had both been killed by the Yorkists; his adherence was thus dubious but his family needed to be won over so the risk was taken. Herbert defeated Jasper Tudor outside and reduced Caernarfon in October, leaving the Tudor forces in possession of strongly fortified and isolated Carreg Cennen (reduced 1462) and Harlech (reduced 1468); Herbert now took over the pro-Lancastrian Tudors’ role as the King’s lieutenant in Wales. Warwick commanded the north of England, based on his inheritance of part of the Neville dynasty’s lands and the support of the senior branch of the family, the Earls of Westmorland–though the necessary reliance on the Nevilles, Edward’s maternal kin, risked the further enmity of the Percies. (The confiscated Percy title of Earl of Northumberland was not given to a Yorkist, Warwick’s brother John, until 1469–a sign of hope for the Percies’ submission?) The removal of Queen Margaret to France to seek aid and Yorkist-aided revolt against the Scots regency brought the latter to terms in summer 1462, although Margaret’s return with a small French force under the veteran mercenary commander Pierre de Brezé in the autumn led to the garrisons of Bamburgh, Alnwick, and Dunstanburgh all deserting to them. The fact that the French-born Margaret relied on help from her homeland was useful in alienating people from her–and in 1461 she had offered the Channel Islands to France, leading to de Brezé invading Jersey.

  This rebellion led to another northern campaign by the King, who was held up by measles at York while Warwick took over the sieges. Once Margaret and Henry VI fled to Scotland the rebel castles could be invested without fear of relief. The Yorkist triumph seemed decisive enough for the young Duke Henry of Somerset, son of the late Duke of York’s foe and victim Duke Edmund, to surrender to Edward.

  Signs of Edward IV’s weakness? The mid-late 1460s

  Edward was clearly willing to pardon all but the most senior Lancastrian partisans in order to secure his kingdom with a maximized degree of unity. He had kept on the locally influential Sir Ralph Percy at Dunstanburgh Castle after his surrender, only to see him revolt again, and the defeat of the autumn 1462 revolt left Percy submissive–and pardoned–for a second time. He was not even removed from or forced to share Dunstanburgh’s command, which would have been wise. Predictably, he ab
used Edward’s trust and/or need of his support and revolted a third time as soon as Queen Margaret and a Scottish army reappeared in Northumberland in spring 1463. The Scots besieged Norham Castle, only to retreat after a large-scale raid into their country by Warwick and his brother John, Lord Montague; Edward promised to come to the Nevilles’ aid and raised a large sum from Parliament to fund an army but for some reason his attack on Scotland never materialized. The immediate danger over, he remained in the Midlands amidst considerable criticism in contemporary chronicles of his laziness.7 A truce was secured with France in October 1463, ending aid from Louis XI to Margaret who finally gave up her efforts and sailed from Scotland to exile in France; Henry remained in the ever more precarious area holding out for him in northern Northumberland until the imminent fall of its castles led to him going into hiding. From his subsequent adventures and capture it appears that he was protected by the gentry of the Lake District in 1463–5. Their steadfast loyalty to their king was a tragic reminder of the wasted opportunities the Lancastrians had had in the 1450s to retain the goodwill that their dynasty had built up since 1399–even in October 1460 a majority of peers had baulked at allowing York to depose the already mentally feeble Henry.