For all his undoubted loyalty, Edward understood, tolerated even, Richard’s own independence, however violent. Even though the king must have known that once again history seemed to be repeating itself, with Richard transforming himself into yet another over-mighty subject like Warwick, this time with the entire north at his command, Edward considered it the lesser of two evils. As warden of the West March, combined with his vested self-interests in protecting his own landed hegemony, Richard’s ambitions could be aligned with the royal policy of having a strong, outward-facing nobleman to defend the border with Scotland.
In contrast to the king, Richard, ever the hawk rather than the dove, craved military action. The taste for battle that he had acquired on the fields of Barnet and Tewkesbury had remained undiminished; consequently, the duke opposed and attempted to frustrate the peace that his brother had brokered with Scotland in 1474. When he was given the task as Admiral of investigating the looting of the Scottish ship Le Salvator, which had been wrecked off the coast of Bamburgh earlier in the year, nothing came of it, and in July 1474 the matter was removed from Richard’s responsibility and instead handed to the charge of the ambassadors negotiating the Treaty of Edinburgh with James III. After the treaty was signed, Richard continued to frustrate the new concord by failing to hold the promised commissions or ‘march days’ on the borders to resolve disputes and order restitution for acts of piracy against Scottish ships. This left Edward IV suitably embarrassed, sending his chaplain and almoner, Alexander Lee, on an embassy in March 1475 to apologise to the Scottish king for the delay. On his journey north, Lee was instructed to ‘take his way’ to remind Richard ‘of the king’s pleasure in this party’. Clear instructions were sent to the duke, setting out the responsibilities that his brother expected him to fulfil. Additional instructions ‘that toucheth the sea’ ordered that ‘bills of complaint’ from Scots whose ships had been badly affected by English piracy be heard in front of Richard’s lieutenants and deputies ‘and there to have a full reformation and redress’. The final point, almost as a postscript, highlights Edward’s simmering frustration at his brother’s behaviour, knowing that Richard had himself been behind some of the wrecking of the Scottish ships himself: ‘Item, where the king of Scots wrote to the king for restitution of the despoil of two ships whereof the one was robbed by the Mary flower etc, the king will that my lord of Gloucester be spoken with in that party, considering that the said ship was his at that time.’ 10 Subsequently, Edward would not be prepared to allow his brother entirely free rein and control of border fortifications such as Carlisle, appointing his own stewards to maintain order and good government.
Tensions between Richard and longstanding northern noblemen, such as Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, whose family had traditionally ruled much of the north-east for generations, would soon spill out into conflict. In 1473, Richard began to seek recruits to his retinue, this time from further afield, in Percy territory. In April, Richard managed to retain Richard Knaresborough, a local tenant of the duchy of Lancaster. In doing so, Richard brought himself into direct confrontation with Percy; the earl was the principal landowner in the Honour of Knaresborough. Matters came to a head on 12 May 1473, when the king’s intervention was needed in order for Richard and Northumberland to strike an agreement. Northumberland was forced to capitulate, accepting Richard’s supremacy. He would become ‘his faithful servant, the said duke being his good and faithful lord, and the said Earl to do service unto the said duke at all times lawful and convenient when he thereunto by the said duke shall be lawfully required’. Richard, for his part, now promised to be Northumberland’s ‘good and faithful lord at all times, and to sustain him in his rights afore all other persons’. Further agreement was struck that Richard would no longer attempt to poach any of Northumberland’s men, thereby allowing the earl to maintain his independence without getting entirely subsumed into Richard’s orbit. The deal may have suited Northumberland, who understood there could be no fair bargain with the brother of a king, but it marked the stage where Richard was now to be accepted as the true lord of the north.11
Like any coalition, Northumberland’s support was a vital component of the settlement that bound northern society together, with Richard as its figurehead. Largely the two men worked harmoniously; Richard and Northumberland began to work closely together on local arbitration, while of the twelve men who served as sheriffs for Yorkshire between 1470 and 1483, six were retainers of Richard, while four were Northumberland’s.12 With Northumberland’s loyalty confirmed, other members of the northern gentry sought to offer up their service to their new overlord. By extending his lordship and favour to those in need, Richard was determined to extend his power not just by accumulating land, but also a growing affinity of men, his retainers, to whom he paid fees from his northern estates. Many had served under the earl of Warwick, but Richard went much further. Creating a powerful connection of men who would serve his needs only helped to extend his authority even further into lands across the north.
Richard’s lordship was an attractive prospect for many northern men seeking to benefit from his influence and power. Richard was a royal prince with access to royal favour. Men like Gerard Salvan from Durham would later petition the ‘right high and mighty prince’ to intervene on their behalf, asking the duke to send commandment to the sheriff of the bishopric to apprehend one Thomas Fishburn, whom Salvan accused of entering his home at Croxdale ‘with force and arms … and there break and entered, and the same your orator would have feloniously murdered, and he might have had his purpose, which by the hand of God was laid apart’. Salvan requested that the duke arbitrate the case himself, while at the same time offering himself into the duke’s service: ‘I am a poor gentleman at my liberty, standing to take a master where I will and please, and I love none so well as you under God and the King. Wherefore I offer my service to your Lordship; and if ye will please to take me ye shall fine me true and at your pleasure, considering my true intent and service that I intend to do towards your good Grace, it shall please you to grant me a fee yearly; and your orator shall pray continually for the preservation of your princely estate.’13 Sir John Henningham petitioned ‘the right high and mighty prince my right and gracious lord the Duke of Gloucester’ for permission and licence to obtain his wife’s lands, ‘in consideration of the true and faithful service … to the king and your good lordship done of your good grace, charity and right wiseness’ for which John was willing to ‘pray God for the confirmation of your good and gracious lordship long to endure’.14 In his will, drawn up in June 1478, Sir John Pilkington requested that his son Edward ‘be had to my lord of Gloucester and my lord Chamberlain [William, Lord Hastings] heartily beseeching them as they will in my name beseech the king his good grace that mine executors may have the wardship and marriage of my said son and my land, paying to the king 500 marks’; appointing Richard and Hastings as his executors, Pilkington further requested that ‘I will that my lord of Gloucester have an emerald set in gold, for which my said lord would have given me 100 marks’.15
Members of the northern nobility also sought to join Richard’s wider affinity, increasing his power and influence even further. Ralph, Lord Neville, the nephew and heir of the earl of Westmorland, was the son of John, Lord Neville, who had been killed at Towton, and had later been attainted and had his lands confiscated. The attainder was reversed in October 1472, and Ralph was restored to his father’s title and lands. In April 1475, Ralph was knighted, and subsequently entered Richard’s service: Richard himself later wrote calling on Ralph to ‘do me now good service, as ye have always before done’.16 In Easter 1477, Ralph quit his claim to his family’s Yorkshire estates that his uncle had lost back in 1440 and were now held by Richard. The ageing earl of Westmorland, at some point between July 1477 and January 1479, then vested his lordship of Raby and a group of manors in south-east Durham in his infant great-nephew, Lord Neville’s son, and a panel of feoffees, most of whom were Richard’s councillors,
effectively placing the duke in control of the Westmorland inheritance.17 Richard was to be a frequent presence at the impressive castle at Raby from November 1478, and used it as an official meeting place for his ducal counsel in the summer of 1480, meeting also with Bishop Dudley there twice in the winter of 1480–81. Ralph Neville was not the only northern noble that Richard managed to bring into his affinity. In June 1476, Richard signed an indenture with the widowed Lady Scrope of Masham, who entrusted the care of her sixteen-year-old son, Thomas, Lord Scrope, to Richard, to ‘wholly be at his rule and guiding’. John, Lord Scrope of Bolton, Humphrey, Lord Dacre of Gilsland, Ralph, Lord Greystoke, and Henry, Lord Fitzhugh of Ravensworth, all came into Richard’s affinity, either voluntarily or, realising that the king’s brother would always have the upper hand in the region, chose to resign themselves to their fates.
Richard had desperately hoped for military success in France in 1475. The duke’s intention of winning martial glory on the continent is highlighted by his adoption of the white boar, or sanglier, a highly dangerous wild beast, whose ferocity and power made it one of the most difficult animals to hunt, as the insignia for his troops. When his father and brother Edmund were ceremonially reinterred at Fotheringhay in July 1476, Richard acted as chief mourner, overseeing the funeral arrangements for the cortège as it passed southwards from Pontefract. Mindful of his father’s own military success in France during the Hundred Years War, he remembered in an epitaph laid at his father’s new grave how in 1441 he had besieged Pontoise ‘and drove away the French king’. The duke was desperate to emulate his father’s glory. Two years later, in 1477, there seemed a brief opportunity for Richard to provide aid to his sister, Margaret of Burgundy, against the French, following the death of Charles the Bold; Richard sent men in support of his sister, while William, Lord Hastings, led an expedition of troops across the border from Calais. Yet Edward was unprepared to intervene and break the wealthy peace that he had signed with the French king, much to the disgust of many in the Yorkist establishment who considered his sister’s honour and defence to be a chivalric imperative.
Instead, Scotland would become the arena for Richard’s war. For several years, since the breakdown in a truce between the two countries in 1480, the duke had waited in anticipation of a Scottish invasion. As early as September 1480, Richard had expected to ‘resist their malice’, preparing troops for an invasion at the same time as paying for the defences of the West March out of his own pocket, repairing the city walls of Carlisle, and equipping the city with his own personal arsenal of cannon and crossbows. But the invasion never materialised. Edward continued to prevaricate over leading the invasion in person, raising a substantial subsidy from Parliament for the proposed invasion in the winter of 1480; as late as January 1482, the king was still purchasing armour from France for his own personal use. For Richard, the delays were punishing, both financially and on the morale of his troops. Without the king’s presence, Richard knew that the southern lords and their retinues, those closely linked to the royal household, were unlikely to travel north. Supplies were running low, forcing Richard to make his own arrangements to purchase wheat, rye, peas and beans for basic subsistence in February 1482.18 In the absence of war, Richard chose to lead raids across the border, laying occasional siege to Berwick: in August 1481, he had knighted several men at Hutton Field by Berwick for their bravery.
Richard’s perseverance had come not without cost, both financially and personally. By 1480, he was already owed over £3,000 by the king in arrears for his salary as warden of the West March; when his commission was renewed for another ten years, he found the salary cut by over half, down from £2,500 to £1,000.19 Richard also had to tolerate his wages being paid piecemeal; but by 9 March 1482 Richard was still owed 2,000 marks, which Edward agreed would be paid ‘at the feast of St John the Baptist next coming’. Rather than make full payment to his brother, however, the king ordered that the cost of a thousand bows sent to the duke from the artillery in the Tower of London be taken from the amount, ordering the Exchequer to ‘retain in your hands of the said 2000 marks such and as much money as the said bows in gross shall amount to’.20 Several weeks later, Edward deducted the cost of 500 sheaves of arrows from the final total, again ordering the Exchequer to ‘retain in your hands of the two thousand marks foresaid such and as much money as the … said arrows shall amount to’.21
Richard was feeling the cost of his Scottish incursions and the siege at Berwick physically too. William Hobbes, the king’s physician and surgeon, was sent with eight surgeons, at a cost of £13 6s, ‘to attend upon the Duke of Gloucester, in the King’s service against the Scotch’. John Clerk the king’s apothecary, was paid £13 16s 9½d for ‘divers medicines’ to be delivered to Richard ‘of the king’s gift, for the use of the said Duke in his service against the Scotch’.22
Once again, it seemed that the prospect of war with Scotland had ground to a stalemate, disappointing Richard’s martial ambitions once more. Then a breakthrough finally came in April 1482, with the surprise arrival at Southampton of Alexander, duke of Albany, the exiled brother of the Scottish king, James III. Albany appealed to the king for English assistance to depose his brother. This presented a lasting solution to Edward’s Scottish problem: regime change would allow him to place a pliant ruler on the throne. This could be achieved, Edward hoped, by a short and precise military campaign, rather than a drawn-out and costly war between two nations. The English war effort was immediately revitalised.
In June the treaty of Fotheringhay was concluded with Albany. Edward would recognise the duke as King Alexander and help place him on the throne. In return, once he had been established as king, Albany was to return Berwick to England, along with several other marcher castles. The duke was to do homage and fealty to Edward as his feudal overlord, end all Scottish alliances with France, and, in order to seal the agreement, marry Edward’s daughter Cecily.23
There would not be enough time for the king to lead the invasion in person. If Albany’s cause was to attract support, an invasion would need to be organised immediately. Richard would have to lead the English army on behalf of the king. On 12 June, only a day after the treaty had been signed, Richard was once again appointed as lieutenant-general in the north, and the campaign placed entirely in the duke’s hands. The royal army under Richard’s leadership marched immediately northwards, reaching York on 18 June. Preparations were now made for war. In total, Richard had been granted around £15,000, enough money to keep an army of 20,000 men in the field for twenty-eight days.24 The war was to be fought at sea as well as on land, with £133 6s 8d being spent ‘to pay the wages of divers fighting men upon the western sea, proceeding against the Scotch, according to the discretion of the said Duke’.
Scotland was to finally provide the nobility with the war that they had been denied in France; Richard’s army was drawn from the retinues of noblemen across the country: the marquess of Dorset brought 600 archers from Warwickshire, Thomas, Lord Stanley, brought 3,000 archers and Lord Rivers promised 1,000 men.25 The English army also contained a large number of mercenaries, with at least 1,800 Burgundian, German and Swiss troops travelling to the East March, led to the region by grooms and yeomen of the royal household.
The payments for a four-week campaign suggest that Edward had a clear objective and time scale by which to overturn James’s rule. Richard arrived with his massive army at Berwick at the end of the third week of July. Facing them, the Scots had just 600 men garrisoning six towers on the borders. The Scottish king, attempting to assemble a force at Lauder, realised that he was hopelessly outnumbered. The town of Berwick swiftly surrendered, though the castle was prepared to continue to hold out for a siege.
Richard had a choice: to sit out the siege until Berwick fell, or to attempt the far grander plan of placing Albany on the throne. Then news reached him that the hapless James III had been arrested by his own Stuart half-uncles at Lauder, and forcibly taken back to Edinburgh. It seemed to Richard that
he now had no option but to press his advantage: he would march to Edinburgh to place Albany on the throne.
On 24 July, Richard made knights or bannerets of forty-nine men; all but four of them northerners.26 Then, leaving a small force behind surrounding Berwick Castle, Richard gave orders for the army to proceed straight to Edinburgh. After a march of thirty miles, Richard’s forces entered the city unopposed. There they found the castle doors bolted shut; inside, James III was being guarded by the earls of Atholl and Buchan, who had possession of the royal seals. The earls flatly refused to negotiate. Instead, they were prepared to withstand a siege if necessary. Richard was in a dangerous position. Having marched thirty miles across the border into Edinburgh, he now risked being cut off and surrounded, vulnerable to attack from James’s loyalists in the region. Albany’s behaviour was equally worrying; when the duke announced that he would be prepared to enter into negotiations not for the throne but merely to secure the restoration of all his lands and offices that he had held before his flight in 1479, Richard ‘suspected treason, not without cause’.27 There was no other choice but to open up peace talks, which hurriedly took place within three days. While James III’s councillors were prepared to offer Albany a full pardon for ‘aspiring and tending to the throne’, as well as confirming the restoration of his lands by an Act of Parliament, they were in no real position to honour the agreement, and, without access to the king, could hardly speak for James III himself. The chronicler Edward Hall later claimed that Albany swore to Richard in secret that in spite of any agreements that were reached with the Scottish lords, he would still promise to observe the terms of the treaty that had been signed at Fotheringhay in June.28 Negotiations continued for the next two days, with Richard pressing for further concessions from the citizens, who were eager to be rid of the menacing English troops on their doorstep.
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