The War of the Roses

by Timothy Venning

  Sir Ralph Percy had already abused Edward’s pardon, and now in winter 1463–4 it was Somerset’s turn to betray him. Already the object of hostility as undeserving of Edward’s notable favour in London in 1463,8 he had been sent to North Wales out of the way. But he used his isolated location–and lack of supervision–to send letters to Henry promising support and plotted to raise a Welsh revolt on his behalf; when this was betrayed to the King he fled to northern England to join his real sovereign. Intending to raise some of his ex-soldiers who were part of the Newcastle garrison to declare for Henry, he was spotted and nearly captured at Durham and fled to Bamburgh to join Henry instead; the rebellion was thus restricted in location to the remote north beyond the Tyne. Hemmed in by the advancing Yorkists, Somerset and Sir Ralph Percy ambushed Edward’s commander Montague on Hedgely Moor in April but were routed; Percy was killed and Somerset was taken prisoner at a second encounter at Hexham in May and was belatedly executed. He and Percy were not the only ex-rebels pardoned by Edward in the ranks of the 1464 revolt, Sir Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth also taking part. Notably, it was Warwick not Edward who organized the series of executions of captured rebels after the defeat of the revolt, which literally decapitated dissent in the north for a few years–a sign of greater Neville realism and ruthlessness? The King had to build a consensus and thus take the risk of pardoning rebel leaders, particularly those with local support in the hostile north, but overall Edward gave an impression of weakness in 1461–4, which encouraged further revolt.

  The question remains of why Edward had trusted Somerset in the first place, or at least–given his importance as the lynch-pin of a possible reconciliation with the Beauforts–why he had been allowed to go to North Wales in 1463, not kept under surveillance in southern England. Edward’s failure to go north on campaign in 1463 was probably partly due to lack of ready money for an advance into Scotland, but he could easily have shown his face in the far north without moving on to invade Scotland. Instead, all the action of the sieges was left to Warwick and Montague. Coupled with his excessive trust in a major Lancastrian partisan, these actions indicated a lack of energy or ruthlessness by the young king and can be seen as early signs of his well-recorded laziness in later years. It would have been more politic to show his eagerness for a Scots war in 1463, given that a major criticism of Henry VI had been the latter’s failure to fight the national enemy (then France).

  Denied long-term support from Scotland or France and with his senior local partisans now executed or killed in battle, Henry’s ‘mini-state’ on the Borders now collapsed. He lost his final castles in northern Northumberland in 1464, went into hiding with loyal local gentry, and was captured wandering around Lancashire in 1465. He was placed securely in the Tower of London. The ex-Prince of Wales and his mother remained at large in France, with Louis XI willing to use them for an invasion when needed, but by 1465 the charismatic young ‘Sun of York’ had seemed to have secured the crown permanently for his family. The local disturbances that marred the 1460s, as reflected in the Paston Letters,9 were more a case of the unruliness and defiance of authority endemic to a time of weak central control with disbanded fighting-men on the loose (c.f. the 1260s, 1320s, and 1450s) than of a serious threat. Edward had done his best to suppress such local violence in the early 1460s,10 though the East Midlands risings of 1468–9 assumed a wider and more worrying dimension–probably due to encouragement by disaffected senior lords, principally Warwick.

  Edward’s reign suffered major problems in 1468–70, which were clearly unanticipated in the hopeful mood of 1461. There was a young and vigorous king who already had a military reputation as of his accession, like Henry V, a sharp contrast to Henry VI. So how did he come to face two major revolts –both successful–after a mere eight years of rule? The blame cannot be placed solely on Warwick, despite the latter’s leadership of both revolts; Jean de Wauvrin’s well-informed chronicle and other sources make it clear that there was not exactly a popular rush to volunteer for Edward’s army during the revolt of 1469. He was reliant on an army of Welshmen and West Countrymen raised by his local supporters (Sir William Herbert, now Earl of Pembroke, and Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon) to save him from Warwick on that occasion, and was helpless when they were defeated.11 Nor did he have popular support as the banished Warwick returned in arms in 1470; if anything, men flocked to the rebel’s standard.12 This cannot be written off as fear or a prudent desire to back the winner. And were all the apparently large rebel Yorkshire host of ‘captain of the commons’ ‘Robin of Redesdale’ in 1469 bribed Neville tenants gathered by Warwick’s men?13 It appears that Warwick was able to use a sense of disillusionment with Edward in 1469 and 1470, even if fear of being caught on the losing side inhibited men from backing the King against his militarily experienced, immensely powerful, and skilful challenger. He was also known for his lavish generosity –useful in gaining recruits.

  Edward’s unexpected and initially secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville (see next section) in May 1464 had been symptomatic of or had actively caused his rift with his most powerful vassal, his cousin Warwick. The latter, boundlessly acquisitive, was probably bound to be frustrated at Edward limiting his acquisitions of land and office at some point in any case, particularly as Edward built up Herbert’s power in Wales at Warwick’s expense, removed his brother George Neville from the Chancellorship (1467), and failed to follow his desire for alliance with France. The latter was connected to the occasion for the first open conflict of interest between King and Earl, when Edward failed to inform Warwick that he could not marry the French princess who Warwick was negotiating for as he had already married in secret (summer–autumn 1464). The loss of ‘face’ for Warwick, shown up to the French negotiators as he did not know his king’s plans about matrimony, no doubt exacerbated his grudges–though it is questionable how much this affected his attitude to Edward as well as to the new Queen, whose family Warwick already despised.14 But what was Edward doing by not announcing his betrothal, let alone his marriage? We do not even know the date or location for certain, though circumstantial evidence backs the traditional legend that the date was 1 May 1464 and the location a chapel near Elizabeth Woodville’s manor-house at Grafton Regis. The witnesses were apparently limited to a few members of her family, led by her mother the Dowager Duchess of Bedford (later accused of masterminding the event, and of using witchcraft to ensnare Edward); no courtiers appear to have been present, and possibly Elizabeth’s father was not.15 The hurried nature of the event and the lack of witnesses was connected to Edward’s current journey north with a small entourage to commence a campaign against the latest rebellion in Northumberland–according to Robert Fabyan, writing decades later, he pretended to be going hunting for a few hours and slipped away from his companions.16 The marriage was not revealed until a ‘Great Council’ was held at Reading in September to plan the forthcoming Anglo-French ‘summit’ at St Omer, where Warwick intended to finalize the marriage of Edward to Louis XI’s sister-in-law Bona of Savoy.17

  The very fact of a secret marriage was unprecedented for the post-Conquest kings, and its existence could be queried as there were so few witnesses; it was not revealed for four or five months and then by the King. The fact of the ceremony could not be certified by reliable witnesses–and it may not have been only fear of the Nevilles’ reaction that caused Edward to keep it secret. Did he always intend to honour it, or did he think of denying it if necessary? The legend that Edward, recorded around 1510 by Sir Thomas More (who had access to Edwardian court veterans such as Bishop John Morton) as a notorious rake in his youth, tried to force himself on Elizabeth at dagger-point but that she held out for marriage may reflect the ‘truth’ that she was more interested in marriage than he was.18 The stock ‘Woodville legend’ (fostered by Warwick and by Richard III) accuses her entire family of being greedy social climbers, intent on leeching off the King, but it is possible that Edward’s secrecy was not only due to fear of what Warwick would make of the
‘mis-match’. There is the unresolved issue of his other mistreatment of vulnerable young women–his alleged devious avoidance of carrying out (legally valid) ‘pre-contracts’ to marry Eleanor Butler, a young widow from the aristocratic Butler dynasty (daughter of the late Earl of Shrewsbury), and Elizabeth Lucy. More is the only person to name Elizabeth Lucy, who is known to have been the mother of Edward’s bastard son Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle.19 But did he mix Elizabeth and Eleanor up, intentionally or accidentally? The dates for these incidents–two separate occasions, which have been confused as one, or only one with the female participant confused?–seem to be 1462–4, so did the more worldly Elizabeth Woodville insist on a marriage instead of a betrothal-ceremony? (Both were seen as equally legal in the fifteenth century; a century previously the Church had ruled that Richard II’s mother Joan had been ‘married’ to a man she had been betrothed to and could not marry again in his lifetime.20)The Butler/Lucy case was only revealed in 1483 so some historians claim Richard III invented it.21 Elizabeth Woodville, ‘unsuitable’ or not from her gentry background, was six years or so older then Edward and was of a lower social status than most royal brides, although her mother was the royal Duke of Bedford’s high-born Continental widow Jacquetta of St Pol. Her father, Sir Richard Woodville, Bedford’s ex-steward, had already been publicly abused by Warwick and his kin for his insolence in marrying above himself;22 this was more important than Woodville, his son Anthony, and Elizabeth’s late husband, Lord Grey, having fought for Lancaster. (Grey had been killed at Towton.)

  Warwick, his plans for a Continental marriage-alliance with the still hostile France undermined behind his back by his sovereign and at odds with the new Queen’s acquisitive family, exploited tension at court, rising faction, and civil unrest to suddenly revolt and capture Edward in 1469. As with the treachery of Henry Beaufort in 1464, it appears that Edward was slow to listen to rumours of his intentions and did nothing to pre-empt his rebellion by raising troops–indeed, he did not even hurry north as the ‘Robin of Redesdale’ rebels advanced on Nottingham. Warwick was able to slip away to Calais to marry his elder daughter, Isabel, to Edward’s next brother (and current male heir) George of Clarence, a match that Edward was refusing to allow, and then to march on London proclaiming his intention to ‘rescue’ Edward from his ‘low-born’ councillors (Herbert, the Woodvilles, and others named). The peers of royal blood had been excluded from their ‘rightful’ places around the King by these ‘arrivistes’, and now sought to reassert their ‘rights’ by force. The terminology used in Warwick’s proclamation was that used by the–successful–rebels against the then King’s unpopular councillors in 1326, 1387, and 1399, a fact that would have been apparent to all parties and a warning of what fate Edward could face.23 The fact that Clarence was with Warwick, and married to his daughter, implied that Warwick had a replacement king ready to hand if he wanted to depose Edward, though in the event he did not carry out his implied threats.24

  Ironically, the Duke of Bedford’s early death in 1435 contributed to the breakdown of trust within the Yorkist regime in the mid-late 1460s, as his widow, Jacquetta, was able to re-marry and produce Edward IV’s future wife and her brood of acquisitive siblings. This was an example of unexpected long-term political consequences from a seemingly remote event–and arguably it even affected the stability of the young Edward V’s regime and contributed to the Tudor success in seizing the throne in 1485. If Bedford had lived longer, his widow would not have been free to marry Sir Richard Woodville–though Edward could still have married a ‘low-born’ bride instead of Bona of Savoy. Whether or not the ‘Kingmaker’ ever intended to depose the King, he made the most of his opportunity to kill the Queen’s father and one of her brothers and Edward’s powerful supporter, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, brutally restoring his pre-eminence at court. But Warwick’s military abilities may have been exaggerated as the cause of his success in July 1469, although his advancing rebel army was able to secure London and reach the Midlands unopposed. Edward still had a large army of Welshmen and West Countrymen advancing to assist him at this point, though peculiarly he made no move to join them. Warwick’s successful attack on Herbert’s army at Edgecote Field in July 1469 was due to the Welsh and West Countrymen quarrelling over billeting and having to be quartered separately, miles apart, thus enabling Warwick to attack the Welsh on 25 July while most of the archers were with Herbert miles away. But for this he could well have faced a dangerous royal army, and been defeated; Herbert, an ex-official of his, would have known how best to fight him. Instead, he was able to destroy the royal forces, capture and execute Herbert, and then advance to capture the powerless King.25 As in 1461, Edward showed what speed and decisiveness in action he was capable of in a crisis after a sluggish response to the 1469 revolt. Having been caught out by Warwick whose secret encouragement to the 1469 Midlands rebels clearly surprised him, he made no attempt to evade the Earl’s forces and relied on his supporters to put pressure on Warwick to free him. It is possible that the Parliament that Warwick initially announced was intended to replace Edward with Clarence, but if so the Earl lost his nerve.26 There was no purge of Edward’s Council or senior office-holders beyond Herbert and the Woodvilles–indeed, a wider move would only have raised the probability of revolt by well-armed magnates. Warwick could not raise troops to face another Lancastrian revolt in the north (by two minor Nevilles, ironically) without the King’s legal authority, and he did not have the option of getting supportive Councillors to declare him governor or ‘Protector’ of the realm with the King adult and in full command of his senses. In September he gave in and allowed Edward to leave custody at Middleham Castle for York to raise peers and soldiers for the northern campaign, and the King then summoned the Councillors (plus their armed entourages) from London to join him as he advanced on his capital. For the moment, Warwick escaped with the loss of some of the offices he had seized from his victims–most of his Welsh acquisitions went to Edward’s youngest brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who Edward now built up as a counter-weight to the unreliable Clarence. Officially, Edward proclaimed reconciliation with Warwick, though according to the Paston Letters his supporters were more hostile.27 But the effective truce was unlikely to last, although there is controversy over Warwick’s responsibility for the next ‘popular’ revolt in spring 1470, which escalated into the decisive King vs Warwick confrontation. This rising broke out in a pro-Lancastrian area, Lincolnshire, and was led by the Lancastrian sympathizer Lord Welles. Having indulged in a relatively commonplace ‘private war’ against Edward’s local stalwart Sir Thomas Burgh and sacking his manor-house, he reacted to the rumour that Edward was about to launch a personal judicial ‘purge’ of local rebels by proclaiming himself as ‘captain of the commons’ and summoning local support to resist the King. This escalated the disturbances into a direct challenge to Edward, as the 1469 revolt of ‘Robin’, though without implicit threats to depose Edward. His confession after capture that Warwick had put him up to it has been excused by pro-Warwick historians as forced by Edward IV in order to incriminate the Earl and excuse his banishment.28 The official version of the royal attack on the rebels at ‘Lose-Coat Field’–where the lack of rebel preparedness and their easy rout argues for their spontaneity–put it out that the rebels had worn Warwick and Clarence’s livery and shouted their names. Contemporaries with no apparent ulterior motives asserted that Warwick and Clarence were involved in the revolt, and there were other risings in areas of the north and the West Country where they were the leading magnates.29 The fact that ex-Lancastrians joined in may be opportunism or part of that unlikely Warwick-Lancastrian alliance that was to emerge that autumn. At the least, the two leaders failed to obey Edward’s orders to join him in repressing the revolts, even after the Lincolnshire rising had failed when it was clear that refusal would mean a royal attack on them next. The majority of peers backed Edward, although Warwick seems to have had a solid base of support among minor gentry, and as the King�
��s army advanced Warwick and Clarence failed to secure support from close allies such as Lord Stanley in Lancashire (or even Warwick’s younger brother, Lord Montague).Facing defeat and arrest for treason, they fled abroad to France and in May 1470 a bizarre and no doubt reluctant reconciliation between Warwick and Queen Margaret was staged at Amboise by their mutual ally, Louis XI. Warwick’s younger daughter Anne Neville, aged fourteen, was now married off to Margaret’s son Prince Edward, who Warwick had been instrumental in disinheriting as a bastard.30 In reply to the threat of Warwick linking up with the Lancastrians, Edward now reinstated the Percy heir, son and grandson of the two Earls of Northumberland killed by the Yorkists in 1455 and 1461, as Earl after five years in the Tower of London. He was now meant to bring the Percy lands and tenantry into the Yorkist ‘fold’, though the reconciliation meant stripping the earldom from Warwick’s brother John Neville who was compensated with the Marquisate of Montague but was reported by the chronicler John Warkworth to be furious with the King.

  Edward’s flight and return, 1470–1. Some elements of the 1399 invasion repeated?

  Edward had to flee for his life from the East Midlands in October 1470 as Warwick, invading from exile, received the support of the Yorkist commander in the north, his younger brother John Neville, Marquis of Montague. The King had gone north in July to deal with a local rising by Warwick’s brother-in-law Lord Fitzhugh, despite the possibility that Warwick’s French-backed fleet would land in the south (e.g. notoriously turbulent Kent where he had landed in 1460 and 1469). His personal presence there was logical, given that Montague–soon to defect–was of dubious loyalty and the new Earl of Northumberland was young and inexperienced. But the Pastons reckoned it unwise for him to go north at all, given the invasion-threat, and he had not returned weeks after the rebels had been dispersed. According to Edward’s own correspondence, as of 7 September he expected Warwick to land in Kent, where the royal fleet was patrolling the Channel waiting for him.31 However, when a storm dispersed the King’s ships on 9 September and Warwick was able to sail from France the Earl headed for Devon instead. Possibly, Warwick incited his relative Sir Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth to revolt to lure Edward up to the Borders and intended to mislead him about landing in Kent, and if so it worked. As in July 1469, Edward’s inactivity is puzzling; it gave Warwick his chance. In mid-September the Earl and Clarence landed in Devon and moved north-east into the Midlands, being joined by Lord Stanley (his brother-in-law) en route.