Edward was thus able to pick off the various Lancastrian armies one by one and kill off almost all their leadership from March to May 1471, securing the Yorkist cause for another fourteen years. But he could easily have been trapped and defeated or killed during the first weeks of his invasion, failed to win over Clarence, lost at Barnet, or faced a more dangerous combination of Warwick and the Beauforts or Queen Margaret and Jasper Tudor. Not all invasions of an area safely remote from London succeeded in the mid-fifteenth century civil wars; Henry Tudor (later Henry VII), not a crowned king like Edward IV but facing a controversial usurper and allied to the partisans of the deposed Edward V in autumn 1483, was forced to abandon his landing in the south-west. Edward IV owed his success to the fatal ‘fault-line’ in the unwieldy alliance of Nevilles and Lancastrians, as personally exemplified by Clarence, and the unwillingness of two men who he had helped generously in the past–Montague and the fourth Earl of Northumberland–to confront him in arms in early-mid March 1471. But the number of peers who refrained from either boycotting the ‘Readeption’ of Henry VI or from aiding Edward as he landed showed that politics were now so unstable that many senior figures preferred to stand back and wait for a clear victor to emerge before committing themselves. That phenomenon was to reappear in 1485 and 1487, as the number of magnates fighting for or against their king during an invasion was notably small–and the confused state of rightful possession of the Crown after three reversals of occupation hardly gave confidence in any particular possessor of power.
The roles of Edward’s brothers had he been killed in 1470–1
Edward’s still-loyal brother Richard (later Richard III) was only eighteen in October 1470. If he had escaped alone, was he willing to take the risk of returning to claim the Duchy of York as his hereditary right in 1471 without nominally threatening the Crown at first, as Edward did? The technical heir to the Duchy of York had Edward been dead would have been his infant son, hidden in sanctuary at Westminster and no doubt barred from the claim, and after him Clarence–but giving the York lands to Clarence would have made him nearly as powerful a magnate as Warwick so Queen Margaret is likely to have blocked it. (Her men killed Clarence’s father and brother Edmund in 1460; she had no reason to trust this rival to her son as Henry VI’s heir.) The York lands were likely to have been a bone of contention between the rival factions at a Lancastrian court in 1471,and perhaps to have been divided up among several leading magnates. But would Richard have won enough adherents in invading, especially Clarence, and have won at Barnet without the military experience that Edward had? Edward nearly lost to Warwick at Barnet, until the latter’s troops got muddled in the fog and fired on each other. If Edward had been killed in flight or in prison in 1470, Clarence would have been the Yorkist heir and may well have been trying to secure the Duchy of York for himself from Henry VI’s ministers as Richard was landing. If the Lancastrian leadership had refused to grant Clarence what he wanted, he would have been likely to join Richard–but the question of the York lands may well not have been settled by the time Richard invaded, with Margaret not yet landed. Thus Clarence would not yet have been finally alienated from Lancaster. Would Richard have risked an invasion in order to muster troops before Margaret returned as Edward did? It is more likely that Richard, an untried youth of eighteen, would have waited until a breach between Clarence and Henry VI over the succession to the throne (and/or the Duchy of York) and then aided his brother in revolt. Thus even if Edward had been killed in autumn 1470, a split among the Lancastrian ranks could have led to Richard invading in 1472 or 1473.
If Richard had been killed too in 1470, would the unlikely alliance of the triumphant Warwick as Henry’s restorer and Queen Margaret of Anjou–who had murdered Warwick’s father in 1460–have been likely to last? Margaret’s son Edward was rumoured by the Yorkists not to be Henry’s as he was incapable of siring a son, so his succession to the mentally feeble Henry would have been controversial. Margaret had every reason to fear Warwick as much as she had done York in the1450s–not least as he had married his elder daughter to Clarence, her son’s rival. Besides that, Clarence may have been endeavouring to secure a promise of the heirship to Henry in return for his allegiance to the rebels and was apparently accepted as the heir after Prince Edward. Margaret’s Beaufort allies would not have allowed that to continue once the Lancastrians did not need Warwick’s immediate support against a Yorkist invasion.
Edward IV, if still alive and in exile after 1470, could be written off by Lancastrian propaganda as a claimant with the story that his mother had committed adultery with the archer Blaybourne so he was not the son of the Duke of York and thus Clarence was the legitimate heir. This story first surfaced in 1483, or possibly in 1478 when Edward’s mother, Duchess Cecily, was furious at Edward killing Clarence, but may have been current earlier as gossip. Margaret would have defended the rights of her son as Henry’s heir and sought to oust Clarence, and a clash between her and Warwick would have followed with a vicious court struggle between their partisans over control of the supine Henry. The Beauforts and Jasper Tudor would have been likelier to back Margaret than Warwick on account of the ‘blood-feuds’ between Warwick and their families (Warwick had been involved in the death of the Duke of Somerset’s father at St Albans in 1455, and the Yorkists had executed Jasper’s father, Owen, at Hereford in 1461).
Clarence or Prince Edward of Lancaster as the next king after Henry?
Clarence would presumably have insisted on receiving all the York family estates as his right and would have been a formidable foe if refused. In due course, at the latest at Henry’s death (in the mid- or later 1470s if he had lived to something like his Valois grandfather’s age of fifty-four), Margaret–or Prince Edward and Somerset on her behalf–and Warwick/ Clarence would probably have come to blows on the battlefield or engineered a sudden arrest or murder. As a senior peer resident in England who had spent the 1460s building up a vast northern lordship and an experienced commander, Warwick–aided by Clarence–would have had massive resources of men and arms and been more likely to win than Margaret and her Beaufort/ Tudor allies. The final coup of the ‘Kingmaker’ could have been to secure his elder daughter, Isabel’s, husband Clarence’s succession to Henry VI–though as he had married his younger daughter, Anne, to Prince Edward she would have been the latter’s queen. The marriage of Edward and Anne had, however, been the idea of Warwick and Margaret’s mutual patron in exile in 1470, Louis XI of France, and Warwick is more likely to have backed his elder son-in-law Clarence. Prince Edward, apparently a vindictive young man from the little evidence we have of him, would have been less likely than Clarence to accept his father-in-law’s direction due to Warwick’s past role as arch-enemy of Lancaster. At the least, his determined character would not make him an easily controlled or trustable son-in-law as king; his accession would pose dangers to Warwick that Clarence’s accession did not.
Whichever of the contenders won, Warwick would have been the King’s father-in-law and potential grandfather to a king. His rivalry with Margaret leaves it open to doubt if he could trust the latter and her son ‘Edward V’ not to turn on him once Henry was dead. The death of Henry VI, probably by 1480, might thus have seen Warwick install ‘King George’ and ‘Queen Isabel’ (if the latter had still been alive), and the Yorkist line returning to the throne. If the possibly tubercular Isabel had died in 1476 as in real life, Clarence would have been available for the prestigious foreign marriage that he then sought–though not to Mary, heiress of Burgundy, as the union of England with the latter would have been commercially problematic. (Clarence could seek her hand in real life as he was not sovereign or heir to the throne, though Edward IV still vetoed the idea.) But if Warwick had managed to remove Prince Edward and his mother to secure Clarence’s accession, this would have left Anne Neville–divorced or widowed–free to remarry. On or before Warwick’s death there would have been a major struggle for the hand of Anne Neville and her half of the Warwick inheritan
ce. Indeed, it is not impossible that if Richard of Gloucester–brought up as Warwick’s protégé at Middleham Castle in the 1460s–was alive in exile Warwick might even have called him back to England once he had disposed of Prince/King Edward and Queen Margaret.
Richard would make a capable new husband for Anne and co-heir to the Neville inheritance, provided that Clarence–now king–could be persuaded to accept his brother’s return. Richard could also be a valuable ally for the diminished Yorkist dynasty in their relations with the Beaufort and Tudor families, who would have received an access of lands and power under Henry VI’s regime from 1471 and would have been probable backers of Prince Edward in a power-struggle. The amount of confiscations and exiles among the pro-Yorkist peers in autumn 1470 had been very small so there would still have been a substantial number of landowners loyal to Edward in the 1460s available to back Clarence in a ‘showdown’ with the Queen and Prince, to add to Warwick’s own clientele. But a regime with a narrow base of support was at risk of serious revolt, as Richard was to find in 1483–5, so Clarence would have needed as wide a range of support among the peers as possible to survive. The recall of his brother Richard would add to his trustable supporters and diminish the need for gaining the backing of Lancastrian peers.
Thus Clarence, as king after Henry following the elimination of Prince Edward and Queen Margaret by himself or Warwick, could have recalled Richard. It is possible that Clarence’s son Edward, born in 1475, was feeble-minded and so a dubious heir–though his apparent limitations in real life in 1499 may have been due to his years isolated in the Tower of London. If he had succeeded to the English throne as an under-age ruler or as one with limited political capability, there was potential for new strife or even a coup by Richard. Clarence’s death in this case would have seen a brief reign by ‘Edward V’–Clarence’s young son, the Earl of Warwick–and a coup by Richard, ruling as in real life as ‘Richard III’. It would be crucial whether at this point, possibly the 1490s, the ‘Kingmaker’ (born in 1428) was still alive and who he backed–and if he were dead whether Clarence had secured all his vast estates and military affinity for the Crown or had allowed part of them to go to Richard. Richard was a natural choice as the next husband for the younger daughter, Anne, of the ‘Kingmaker’ after Prince Edward had been eliminated, and the claims of Edward IV’s disinherited son Edward would have been unlikely to meet much support. The ‘usurpation’ of Richard III over a genealogically senior candidate, in this scenario not occurring until Clarence had died naturally, would have been likelier in the 1490s or even 1500s than in the 1480s.
Given that the main Lancastrian line would now be extinct, the chief dynastic rivals to Richard would have been the Beauforts (assuming that Edmund, Duke of Somerset, had not been killed as Warwick defeated Margaret and Prince Edward).The senior Beaufort line, though of female descent, was represented not by the Dukes of Somerset but by Henry Tudor, son of Duke Edmund’s cousin Margaret Beaufort. (Edmund had inherited the Somerset title from his brother Henry, killed in 1464 for revolting against Edward IV, and his father Duke Edmund, killed in 1455 at St Albans; the latter’s elder brother John, d. 1444, had been Margaret Beaufort’s father.) As a stalwart of the Lancastrian cause since 1461, Henry’s uncle Jasper Tudor would have been loaded with lands and titles by Margaret after 1471 and presumably been the regime’s leading supporter in Wales; Henry himself would probably have regained his father’s Earldom of Richmond. As long as the Tudors had avoided being brought down with Margaret and Prince Edward in a confrontation between the latter and Warwick, Henry Tudor would have been in a good position to become a major player at court. If Clarence (born in 1449) had been succeeded in the 1490s or 1500s by his son who then proved an inadequate ruler, the House of Tudor would have stood a chance of aiming for the throne in competition with that of York.
Another possibility–what if the Yorkist leadership had not fractured in 1468–70? Was the quarrel of Edward IV and Warwick inevitable?
Given the senior political and military position and personal dominance of Warwick in 1461, Edward’s maternal cousin (fourteen years his senior) was clearly going to play a powerful role under the new King. His role in 1459–61 as commander of Calais, an important source of trained professional soldiers at a time of armies made up of noblemen’s personal retinues (usually part-time soldiers, their tenants), made him a vital captain. This was added to by his role as head of the junior branch of the Nevilles when his father, Salisbury, was killed at Wakefield, which added Salisbury’s landed and military affinity to his own marital Warwick one. These earldoms had been occupied by Henry V’s top commanders, who died in 1428 and 1439, before coming into Neville hands–their tenantry thus had a usefully long military tradition. His prestige had suffered from his losing the second battle of St Albans to Margaret–with possession of Henry VI–but his political ‘weight’ and his seniority to the nineteen-year-old Edward quickly restored his position and he became the new King’s chief adviser and military commander, with his brother George Neville (Archbishop of York) as Chancellor. His landed base and control of leading castles in the Yorkshire region (based on Middleham, later his son-in-law Richard III’s home, and Sheriff Hutton) made him as dominant in the north as Richard was later to be. This was inevitable, given the debt that Edward owed to him and his father–the closest landed allies of York in 1455–61–and the Lancastrian allegiance of the only rival power in the north, the Percies (whose current head fell fighting for Queen Margaret at Towton in March 1461). One junior Percy, Sir Ralph, who was allowed to keep his castle (Dunstanburgh), on surrendering, promptly defected to the Queen in 1462. The Percies’ hostility was a major factor in enabling Lancaster to hold onto the north-east of Northumberland in 1461–4, with local castles that had surrendered to the new King promptly revolting whenever Queen Margaret and/or a French force were in the vicinity. To do him credit, Edward risked trusting Sir Ralph –several times–and in 1470 was to endeavour to return the confiscated Percy Earldom of Northumberland from its new holder, his cousin John Neville, to the rightful heir.
The Percy Earldom of Northumberland was granted in 1461 to Warwick’s younger brother, John Neville, a capable commander who defeated the rebel risings in Northumberland in 1463 and 1464, and with their brother George as archbishop the Neville brothers dominated the north. In military terms, their firm control was needed to combat the Queen and her adherents who were at large in Scotland and in control of the northernmost castles in Northumberland in 1461–2. Some royal reaction from this position was inevitable when Edward became older and more confident, and the apparent arrogance, intense family pride, and prickly nature of Warwick made it probable that he would take it badly. But could he have been credibly expected to go to the lengths of arresting and threatening to depose Edward? Edward did not rely entirely on the Nevilles–the Lancastrian Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, a major court magnate of 1455–60 following his father’s death at York’s hands at St Albans, was rehabilitated and trusted on his surrender. He betrayed the King’s trust and in 1464 treacherously joined the Lancastrian rebels in the north-east; on their defeat John Neville executed him. Edward was necessarily generous to those Lancastrian magnates who surrendered, having had a relatively small number of peers in his camp when he took the throne in March 1461 and needing to acquire solid support from the nobility. Indeed, his future wife, Elizabeth Woodville, had a Lancastrian husband, Sir John Grey, killed at Towton, with the confiscation of his estates allegedly the reason for her first seeking out the King;52 her father, Sir Richard Woodville, had fought for Henry VI, as befitted his former role as the ex-King’s uncle Bedford’s retainer. Luckily, the chances of foreign meddling to aid the Queen’s party was reduced by the deaths of the Lancastrian allies James II of Scotland (in a cannon-explosion while besieging Roxburgh Castle) in 1460 and Charles VII of France in 1461.
The War of the Roses Page 11
