Reconciliation and Civil War

But though the personal influence of the king was doubtless great and beneficial within his own immediate vicinity, it could do little for the good order and protection of the country generally. Distrust, exclusiveness, and a bankrupt exchequer were not likely to obtain for the king willing and hearty service. Notwithstanding the commissions issued to keep watch upon the coasts, the French managed to surprise and plunder Sandwich.The French attack Sandwich.On Sunday, the 28th August, a large force under the command of Pierre de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy, landed not far from the town, which they took and kept possession of during the entire day. A number of the inhabitants, on the first alarm, retreated on board some ships lying in the harbour, from whence they began presently to shoot at the enemy. But de Brézé having warned them that if they continued he would burn their ships, they found it prudent to leave off. Having killed the bailiffs and principal officers, the Frenchmen carried off a number of wealthy persons as prisoners, and returned to their ships in the evening, laden with valuable spoils from the town and neighbourhood.174.3The disaster must have been keenly felt; but if Englishmen had known the whole truth, it would have been felt more keenly still. Our own old historians were not aware of the175fact, but an early French chronicler who lived at the time assures us that the attack had been purposely invited by Margaret of Anjou out of hatred to the Duke of York, in order to make a diversion, while the Scots should ravage England!175.1It was well for her that the truth was not suspected.157.1No. 270.157.2Ibid.158.1Rymer, xi. 361.158.2Ibid.362, 363.159.1Rymer, xi. 363.159.2Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 234-8.159.3On thePatent Roll, 33. Hen.VI.p. 19d., is a commission dated 5th May, for keeping watch on the coast of Kent against invasion.159.4Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.160.1Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.160.2No. 282.161.1No. 283.Rolls of Parl.v. 281-2.162.1John Crane, writing from Lambeth on Whitsunday, three days after the battle, says, ‘at most six score.’ No. 285. Another authority says, ‘60 persons of gentlemen and other.’English Chronicle, ed. Davies, p. 72.162.2Nos. 283, 284, 285.162.3No. 284.162.4No. 283.162.5No. 285.163.1No. 299.164.1No. 288.164.2Nos. 294, 295.164.3No. 291.164.4No. 295.165.1SeeRymer, xi. 366.165.2No. 287.165.3No. 303.165.4No. 303.Seealso a brief account of the same affair in W. Worcester’sItinerary, p. 114.165.5Jenkins’sHistory of Exeter, p. 78.166.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285. It may be observed that the bishopric was at this time vacant, and the dean, whose name was John Hals, had received a papal provision to be the new bishop, but was forced to relinquish it in favour of George Nevill, son of the Earl of Salisbury, a young man of only three-and-twenty years of age. Godwinde Præsulibus. Le Neve’sFasti. Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 265.166.2Rolls of Parl.v. 285.166.3Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 262.167.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285-7.167.2Ibid.v. 288-90.167.3Ibid.321.167.4No. 322.168.1No. 322.168.2Rolls of Parl.v. 321.168.3Ibid.300. A more sweeping bill for this purpose, which was rejected by the Lords, states that the revenue was so encumbered ‘that the charge of every sheriff in substance exceedeth so far the receipt of the revenues thereof due and leviable to you (i.e.the king), that no person of goodwill dare take upon him to be sheriff in any shire, for the most party, in this land.’Ibid.328. Additional illustrations of this fact will be found in Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 263-4, 272-3, and Preface lxxv-vi.168.4Nos. 334, 345, 348.169.1Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 287.169.2Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70 (edited by me for the Camden Society):Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 248-9.169.3LambethMS.211, f. 146 b.170.1LambethMS.211, f. 147. Rymer, xi. 383.170.2LambethMS.211, f. 148. This letter is dated 24th August 1456.170.3Rymer, xi. 383.171.1Nos. 330, 331.171.2No. 334.171.3No. 331.171.4No. 348.171.5Tutbury was one of the possessions given to her for her dower.Rolls of Parl.vi. 118.172.1Fabyan.172.2No. 345.173.1No. 348.173.2Accounts of the pageants shown before Queen Margaret at Coventry are noticed as contained in the earliest Leet Book of the City. SeeHistoricalMSS.Commission ReportI., 100.173.3Privy Seals in Public Record Office.173.4No. 356.173.5Patent Roll, 35 Hen.VI.p. 1 m. 16d.(26 Nov.); m. 7d.(19 May).173.6Ibid.p. 2 m. 5d.(29 Aug.).173.7Ibid.(18 July).174.1No. 356. There are Privy Seals dated at Hereford between the 1st and the 23rd of April.174.2No. 356. By the 4th of May the king had left Hereford and gone to Worcester, from which he proceeded to Winchcombe on the 10th and Kenilworth on the 13th. (Privy Seal dates.)174.3English Chronicle(Davies), 74.Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70, 71, 152-3.Contin. of Monstrelet, 70, 71.175.1De Coussy, 209.Earl of Warwick severely wounded.171.3text has superfluous close quoteReconciliation and Civil WarAt length, it would seem, the Court found it no longer possible to remain at a distance from the metropolis. In October the king had removed to Chertsey,175.2and soon after we find him presiding at a Great Council, which had been summoned to meet in his palace at Westminster in consequence of the urgent state of affairs. Though attended not only by the Duke of York, but by a large number of the principal lords on both sides, the meeting does not appear to have led to any very satisfactory results. All that we know of its proceedings is that some of them, at least, were of a stormy character,—one point on which all parties were agreed being the exclusion from the council chamber of Pecock,Bishop Pecock.Bishop of Chichester, an ardent and honest-minded prelate, who, having laboured hard to reconcile the Lollards to the authority of the Church by arguments of common sense instead of persecution, was at this time stigmatised as a heretic and sedition-monger, and very soon after was deprived of his bishopric. It augured little good for that union of parties which was now felt to be necessary for the public weal, that the first act on which men generally could be got to agree was the persecution of sense and reason. There were other matters before the council on which they were unable to come to a conclusion, and they broke up on the 29th November, with a resolution to meet again on the 27th January; for which meeting summonses were at once sent out, notifying that on that day not one of the lords would be excused attendance.175.3It was, indeed, particularly important that this meeting176should be a full one, and that every lord should be compelled to take his share of the responsibility for its decisions. The principal aim was expressly stated to be a general reconciliation and adjustment of private controversies176.1—an object to which it was impossible to offer direct opposition. But whether it was really distasteful to a number of the peers, or obstacles started up in individual cases, there were certainly several who had not arrived in town by the day appointed for the meeting.A.D.1458.The Earl of Salisbury’s excuse, dated at Sheriff Hutton on the 24th of January,176.2does not refer to this, for it appears certainly to be of a different year. Fabyan says that he had already arrived in London on the 15th January. He made his appearance there at the head of 400 horse, with eighty knights and squires in his company. The Duke of York also came, though he arrived only on the 26th, ‘with his own household only, to the number of 140 horse.’ But the Duke of Somerset only arrived on the last day of the month with 200 horse; the Duke of Exeter delayed his coming till the first week of February; and the Earl of Warwick, who had to come from Calais, was detained by contrary winds. Thus, although the king had come up to Westminster by the time prefixed, a full Council could not be had for at least some days after; and even on the 14th of February there was one absentee, the Earl of Arundel, who had to be written to by letters of Privy Seal.176.3A Great Council in London.But by the 14th Warwick had arrived in London with a body of 600 men, ‘all apparelled in red jackets, with white ragged staves.’176.4The town was now full of the retinues of the different noblemen, and the mayor and sheriffs trembled for the peace of the city. A very special watch was instituted. ‘The mayor,’ says Fabyan, ‘for so long as the king and the lords lay thus in the city, had daily in harness 5000 citizens, and rode daily about the city and suburbs of the same, to see that the king’s peace were kept; and nightly he provided for 3000 men in harness to give attendance upon177three aldermen, and they to keep the night-watch till 7 of the clock upon the morrow, till the day-watch were assembled.’ If peace was to be the result of all this concourse, the settlement evidently could not bear to be protracted. The Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick had taken up their quarters within the city itself; but the young lords whose fathers had been slain at St. Albans—the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and his brother, Lord Egremont, and the Lord Clifford—were believed to be bent upon revenge, and the civic authorities refused them entrance within their bounds.177.1Thus the lords within the town and those without belonged to the two opposite parties respectively; and in consequence of their mutual jealousies, conferences had to be arranged between them in the morning at the Black Friars, and in the afternoon at the White Friars, in Fleet Street.177.2The king, for his part, having opened the proceedings with some very earnest exhortations addressed to both parties, withdrew himself and retired to Berkhampstead.177.3The Duke of Somerset and others went to and fro to consult with him during the deliberations. Meanwhile the necessity of some practical arrangement for government must have been felt more urgent every day. Sixty sail of Frenchmen were seen off the coast of Sussex; and though Lord Falconbridge was at Southampton in command of some vessels (probably on his own responsibility), there was a general feeling of insecurity among the merchants and among dwellers by the sea-coast. Botoner had heard privately from Calais that the French meditated a descent upon Norfolk at Cromer and Blakeney.177.4And the news shortly afterwards received from the district showed that his information was not far wrong.177.5Terms of agreement.At last it was agreed on both sides that old animosities should be laid aside, and that some reparation should be made by the Yorkists to the sons and widows of the lords who had fallen on the king’s side at St. Albans. The exact amount of this reparation was left to the award of Henry, who decided that it should consist of an endowment of £45 a year to the178Monastery of St. Albans, to be employed in masses for the slain, and of certain money payments, or assignments out of moneys due to them by the Crown, to be made by York, Warwick, and Salisbury, to Eleanor, Duchess Dowager of Somerset and to her son, Duke Henry, to Lord Clifford, and others, in lieu of all claims and actions which the latter parties might have against the former.178.1With what cordiality this arrangement was accepted on either side we do not presume to say. Historians universally speak of it as a hollow concord, unreal from the first. But it at least preserved the kingdom in something like peace for about a twelvemonth. It was celebrated by a great procession to St. Paul’s on Lady Day, which must have been an imposing spectacle. The king marched in royal habit with the crown upon his head, York and the queen followed, arm in arm, and the principal rivals led the way, walking hand in hand.178.2A sea fight.The keeping of the sea was now intrusted to the Earl of Warwick, and it was not long before he distinguished himself by an action which probably relieved the English coasts for some time from any immediate danger of being attacked by the enemy. On the morning of Trinity Sunday word was brought to him at Calais of a fleet of 28 Spaniards, of which 16 were described as ‘great ships of forecastle.’ Immediately he manned such vessels as he had in readiness, and went out to seek the enemy. The force at his command was only five ships of forecastle, three carvels, and four pinnaces; but with these he did not hesitate to come to an engagement. At four o’clock on Monday morning the battle began, and it continued till ten, when the English obtained a hard-won victory. ‘As men say,’ wrote one of the combatants, ‘there was not so great a battle upon the sea this forty winter; and forsooth, we were well and truly beat.’ Nevertheless, six of the enemy’s ships were taken, and the rest were put to flight, not without very considerable slaughter on either side.178.3179A.D.1459.In the year following, the fire that had for some time smouldered, burst once more into a flame. About Candlemas, according to Fabyan—but an older authority says specifically on the 9th November preceding179.1—a fray occurred between one of the king’s servants and one of the Earl of Warwick’s, as the earl, who had been attending the Council at Westminster, was proceeding to his barge. The king’s servant being wounded, the other made his escape; but a host of retainers attached to the royal household rushed out upon the earl and his attendants, and wounded several of them before they could embark. With hard rowing they got beyond the power of their assailants and made their way into the city; but the queen and her friends insisted on imputing the outrage to the earl himself, and demanded his arrest. The earl found it politic to retire to Warwick, and afterwards to his former post at Calais. On this the queen and her council turned their machinations against his father, the Earl of Salisbury, whom Lord Audley was commissioned to arrest and bring prisoner to London. Audley accordingly took with him a large body of men, and hearing that the earl was on his way from Middleham in Yorkshire, journeying either towards Salisbury or London, he hastened to intercept him.Civil war renewed.The earl, however, had received notice of what was intended, and having gathered about him a sufficient band of followers, defeated Lord Audley in a regular pitched battle at Bloreheath in Staffordshire, where he attempted to stop his way, on Sunday the 23rd of September.179.2The old elements of confusion were now again let loose. Commissions to raise men were issued in the king’s name, and the Duke of York and all his friends were denounced as180a confederacy of traitors. They, for their parts, gathered together the men of the Marches in self-defence. At Ludlow, the duke was joined by the Earl of Salisbury, and also by the Earl of Warwick, who had come over again from Calais.The king takes the field.On the other hand, the king himself entered into the strife in a way he had not done hitherto. He not only took the field in person against the rebellious lords, but exhibited a spirit in the endurance of fatigue and discomfort which seems to have commanded general admiration. Even at the time of Lord Audley’s overthrow, it would appear that he was leading forward a reserve. For about a month he kept continually camping out, never resting at night, except on Sundays, in the same place he had occupied the night before, and sometimes, in spite of cold, rough weather, bivouacking for two nights successively on the bare field. After the battle of Bloreheath, he could only regard Salisbury as an overt enemy of his crown. At the same time he despatched heralds to the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick, with proclamations of free and perfect pardon to themselves and all but a few of the leaders at Bloreheath, on condition of their submitting to him within six days.180.1To Garter King of Arms, one of the messengers by whom these offers were conveyed, the confederate lords made answer, and also delivered a written reply to be conveyed to the king, declaring the perfect loyalty of their intentions, which they would have been glad to prove in the king’s presence if it had been only possible for them to go to him with safety. They had already endeavoured to testify their unshaken fidelity to Henry by an indenture drawn up and signed by them in Worcester Cathedral. This instrument they had forwarded to the king by a deputation of churchmen, headed by the prior of that cathedral, and including among others Dr. William Lynwoode,180.2who administered to them the sacrament on the occasion. Again, after Garter left, they wrote from181Ludlow on the 10th of October, protesting that their actions had been misconstrued, and their tenants subjected to wrong and violence, while they themselves lay under unjust suspicion. Their enemies, they said, thirsted for the possession of their lands, and hoped to obtain them by their influence with the king. For their own part they had hitherto avoided a conflict, not from any fear of the power of their enemies, but only for dread of God and of his Highness, and they meant to persevere in this peaceful course, until driven by necessity to self-defence.181.1These earnest, solemn, and repeated expressions of loyalty have scarcely, I think, received from historians the attention to which they are entitled.181.2Of their sincerity, of course, men may form different opinions; but it is right to note that the confederate lords had done all that was in their power by three several and distinct protests to induce the king to think more favourably of their intentions. It is, moreover, to be observed that they remained at this time in an attitude strictly defensive. But the king and his forces still approaching, they drew themselves up in battle array at Ludford, in the immediate vicinity of the town of Ludlow. Here, as they were posted on Friday the 12th October, it would almost seem that the lords were not without apprehension of the defection of some of their followers. A report was spread through the camp that the king was suddenly deceased, witnesses were brought in who swore to the fact, and mass was said for the repose of his soul. But that very evening, Henry, at the head of his army, arrived within half a mile of their position. The state of the country, flooded by recent rains, had alone prevented him from coming upon them sooner. Before nightfall a few volleys of artillery were discharged against the royal army, and a regular engagement was expected next day. But, meanwhile, the royal proclamation of pardon seems to have had its effect. One Andrew Trollope, who had come over with the Earl of Warwick from182Calais, withdrew at dead of night and carried over a considerable body of men to the service of the king, to whom he communicated the secrets of the camp. The blow was absolutely fatal.The Yorkists disperse.The lords at once abandoned all thought of further resistance. Leaving their banners in the field, they withdrew at midnight. York and his second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, fled into Wales, from whence they sailed into Ireland. His eldest, Edward, Earl of March, accompanied by the two other earls, Warwick and Salisbury, and by Sir John Wenlock, made his way into Devonshire. There by the friendly aid of one John Dynham, afterwards Lord Dynham, and Lord High Treasurer to HenryVII., they bought a ship at Exmouth and sailed to Guernsey. At last, on Friday the 2nd of November, they landed at Calais, where they met with a most cordial reception from the inhabitants.182.1They are attainted.Then followed in November the Parliament of Coventry, and the attainder of the Duke of York and all his party. The queen and her friends at last had it all their own way, at least in England. It was otherwise doubtless in Ireland, where the Duke of York remained for nearly a twelvemonth after his flight from Ludlow. It was otherwise too at Calais, where Warwick was all-powerful, and whither discontented Yorkists began to flock from England. It was otherwise, moreover, at sea, where the same Warwick still retained the command of the fleet, and could not be dispossessed, except on parchment. On parchment, however, he was presently superseded in both of his important offices. The Duke of Exeter was intrusted with the keeping of the sea, which even at the time of the great reconciliation of parties he had been displeased that Warwick was allowed to retain.182.2The young Duke of Somerset was appointed Captain of Calais, but was unable to take possession of his post. Accompanied by Lord Roos and Lord Audley, and fortified by the king’s letters-patent, he crossed the sea, but was refused admittance into the town. Apparently he had put off too long before going183over,183.1and he found the three earls in possession of the place before him; so that he was obliged to land at a place called Scales’ Cliff and go to Guisnes.183.2But a worse humiliation still awaited him on landing; for of the very sailors that had brought him over, a number conveyed their ships into Calais harbour, offered their services to the Earl of Warwick, and placed in his hands as prisoners certain persons who had taken part against him. They were shortly after beheaded in Calais.183.3It would seem, in short, that ever since his great naval victory in 1458, Warwick was so highly popular with all the sailors of England, that it was quite as hopeless for the Duke of Exeter to contest his supremacy at sea as for Somerset to think of winning Calais out of his hands. Friends still came flocking over from England to join the three earls at Calais;A.D.1460.and though in London in the February following nine men were hanged, drawn, and beheaded for attempting to do so,183.4the cause of the Yorkists remained as popular as ever. In vain were letters written to foreign parts, ‘that no relief be ministered to the traitor who kept Calais.’183.5In vain the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes endeavoured to contest his right to the government of that important town. All that Somerset could do was to waste his strength in fruitless skirmishes, until on St. George’s Day he suffered such a severe defeat and loss of men at Newnham Bridge, that he was at length forced to abandon all idea of dispossessing the Earl of Warwick.183.6Not only were the three earls secure in their position at Calais, but there was every reason to believe that they had a large amount of sympathy in Kent, and would meet with a very cordial reception whenever they crossed the sea. To184avert the danger of any such attempt, and also, it would appear, with some design of reinforcing the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes, Lord Rivers and his son Sir Anthony Wydevile were sent to Sandwich about the beginning of the year, with a body of 400 men. Besides the command of the town, they were commissioned to take possession of certain ships which belonged to the Earl of Warwick, and lay quietly at anchor in the harbour.184.1Lord Rivers at Sandwich.But the issue of their exploit was such as to provoke universal ridicule. ‘As to tidings here,’ wrote Botoner from London to John Berney at Caister, ‘I send some offhand, written to you and others, how the Lord Rivers, Sir Anthony his son, and othershave won Calaisby a feeble assault at Sandwich made by John Denham, Esq., with the number of 800 men, on Tuesday between four and five o’clock in the morning.’184.2The exact mode in which Rivers and his son ‘won Calais’ seems to have been described in a separate paper. The truth was that a small force under the command of John Denham (or Dynham) was despatched across the sea by Warwick, and landing at Sandwich during the night, contrived not only to seize the ships in the harbour, but even to surprise the earl and his son in their beds, and bring them over as prisoners to the other side of the Channel.184.3The victors did not fail to turn the incident to account by exhibiting as much contempt as possible for their unfortunate prisoners. ‘My Lord Rivers,’ writes William Paston, ‘was brought to Calais, and before the lords with eight score torches, and there my lord of Salisbury rated him, calling him knave’s son, that he should be so rude to call him and those other lords traitors; for they should be found the king’s true liegemen when he should be found a traitor. And my Lord of Warwick rated him and said that his father was but a squire, and brought up with King HenryV., and since made himself by marriage, and also made a lord; and that it was not his part to have such language of lords, being of the king’s blood. And my Lord of March rated him in like wise. And Sir Anthony was rated for his185language of all the three lords in like wise.’185.1It must have been a curious reflection to the Earl of March when in after years, as King EdwardIV., he married the daughter of this same Lord Rivers, that he had taken part in this vituperation of his future father-in-law!By and by it became sufficiently evident that unless he was considerably reinforced, the Duke of Somerset could do no good at Guisnes. Instead of attempting to maintain a footing beside Calais, the queen’s Government would have enough to do to keep the rebels out of England. The capture of Rivers had excited the most serious alarm, and the landing of Warwick himself upon the eastern coast was looked upon as not improbable.185.2A new force of 500 men was accordingly sent to Sandwich under the command of one Osbert Mountford or Mundeford,185.3an old officer of Calais. His instructions were to go from Sandwich to Guisnes, either in aid of the Duke of Somerset, as intimated in Worcester’sAnnals, or, according to another contemporary authority,185.4to bring him over to England. But while he waited for a wind to sail, John Dynham again crossed the sea, attacked the force under the command of Mundeford, and after a little skirmishing, in which he himself was wounded, succeeded in carrying him off to Calais, as he had before done Lord Rivers. Mundeford’s treatment, however, was not so lenient as that of the more noble captive. On the 25th of June he was beheaded at the Tower of Rysebank, which stood near the town, on the opposite side of the harbour.185.5Meanwhile the Earl of Warwick did not remain at Calais. He scoured the seas with his fleet and sailed into Ireland. Sir Baldwin Fulford, a knight of Devonshire, promised the king, on pain of losing his head, to destroy Warwick’s fleet;186but having exhausted the sum of 1000 marks which was allowed him for his expenses, he returned home without having attained his object.186.1On the 16th of March, Warwick having met with the Duke of York in Ireland, the two noblemen entered the harbour of Waterford with a fleet of six-and-twenty ships well manned; and on the following day, being St. Patrick’s Day, they landed and were ceremoniously received by the mayor and burgesses.186.2Warwick seems to have remained in Ireland more than two months, concerting with the Duke of York plans for future action. About Whitsunday, which in this year fell on the 1st of June, his fleet was observed by the Duke of Exeter off the coast of Cornwall, on its return to Calais. Exeter’s squadron was superior in strength, and an engagement might have been expected; but the duke was not sure that he could trust his own sailors, and he allowed the earl to pass unmolested.186.3The Legate Coppini.About this time there arrived at Calais a papal nuncio, by name Francesco Coppini, Bishop of Terni, returning from England to Rome. He had been sent by the new pope, PiusII., the ablest that had for a long time filled the pontifical chair, to urge Henry to send an ambassador to a congress at Mantua, in which measures were to be concerted for the union and defence of Christendom against the Turks. This was in the beginning of the preceding year,186.4and, as he himself states, he remained nearly a year and a half in England.186.5But the incapacity of the king, and the dissensions that prevailed among the lords, rendered his mission a total failure. Henry, indeed, who was never wanting in reverence for the Holy See, named a certain number of bishops and lords to go upon this mission, but they one and all refused. He accordingly sent two priests of little name, with an informal commission to excuse a greater embassy. England was thus discredited at the papal court, and the nuncio, finding his mission fruitless, at last crossed the sea to return home. At Calais, however,187he was persuaded by Warwick to remain. The earl himself was about to return to England, and if the legate would come back in his company he might use the influence of his sacred office to heal the wounds of a divided kingdom.187.1The nuncio had doubtless seen enough of the deplorable condition of England to be convinced that peace was impossible, so long as the lords most fit to govern were banished and proclaimed rebels by the queen and her favourites.187.2He was, moreover, furnished with powers, by which—the main object of his mission being the union of Christendom—he was authorised to make some efforts to compose the dissensions of England.187.3But he certainly overstrained them, and allowed himself to become a partisan. Flattered by the attentions shown him by Warwick, he acceded to his suggestion, and when, on the 26th of June,187.4the day after Mundeford was beheaded at Calais, the confederate lords crossed the Channel, the nuncio was in their company, bearing the standard of the Church. Archbishop Bourchier, too, met them at Sandwich, where they landed, with a great multitude of people; and with his cross borne before him, the Primate of England conducted the three earls and their followers, who increased in number as they went along, until they reached the capital. After a very brief opposition on the part of some of the citizens, the city opened its gates to them. They entered London on the 2nd of July.187.5The Earls of March, Warwick, and Salisbury.Before they crossed the sea, the three earls had sent over a set of articles addressed to the archbishop and the commons of England in the name of themselves and the Duke of York, declaring how they had sued in vain to be admitted to the188king’s presence to set forth certain matters that concerned the common weal of all the land. Foremost among these was the oppression of the Church, a charge based, seemingly, on facts with which we are unacquainted, and which, if known, might shed a clearer light upon the conduct of the legate and Archbishop Bourchier. Secondly, they complained of the crying evil that the king had given away to favourites all the revenues of his crown, so that his household was supported by acts of rapine and extortion on the part of his purveyors. Thirdly, the laws were administered with great partiality, and justice was not to be obtained. Grievous taxes, moreover, were levied upon the commons, while the destroyers of the land were living upon the patrimony of the crown. And now a heavier charge than ever was imposed upon the inhabitants; for the king, borrowing an idea from the new system of military service in France, had commanded every township to furnish at its own cost a certain number of men for the royal army; ‘which imposition and talliage,’ wrote the lords in this manifesto, ‘if it be continued to their heirs and successors, will be the heaviest charge and worst example that ever grew in England, and the foresaid subjects and the said heirs and successors in such bondage as their ancestors were never charged with.’188.1Besides these evils, the infatuated policy into which the king had been led by his ill-advisers, threatened to lose Ireland and Calais to the crown, as France had been lost already; for in the former country letters had been sent under the Privy Seal to the chieftains who had hitherto resisted the king’s authority, actually encouraging them to attempt the conquest of the land, while in regard to Calais the king had been induced to write letters to his enemies not to show that town any favour, and thus had given them the greatest possible189inducement to attempt its capture. Meanwhile the Earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire and Viscount Beaumont, who directed everything, kept the king himself, in some things, from the exercise of his own free will, and had caused him to assemble the Parliament of Coventry for the express purpose of ruining the Duke of York and his friends, whose domains they had everywhere pillaged and taken to their own use.189.1It was impossible, in the nature of things, that evils such as these could be allowed to continue long, and the day of reckoning was now at hand. Of the great events that followed, it will be sufficient here to note the sequence in the briefest possible words.The battle of Northampton.On the 10th July the king was taken prisoner at the battle of Northampton, and was brought to London by the confederate lords. The government, of course, came thus entirely into their hands. Young George Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, was made Chancellor of England, Lord Bourchier was appointed Lord Treasurer, and a Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster for the purpose of reversing the attainders passed in the Parliament of Coventry. Of the elections for this Parliament we have some interesting notices in Letter 415, from which we may see how the new turn in affairs had affected the politics of the county of Norfolk. From the first it was feared that after the three earls had got the king into their hands, the old intriguers, Tuddenham and Heydon, would be busy to secure favour, or at all events indulgence, from the party now in the ascendant. But letters-missive were obtained from the three earls, directed to all mayors and other officers in Norfolk, commanding in the king’s name that no one should do them injury, and intimating that the earls did not mean to show them any favour if any person proposed to sue them at law.189.2Heydon, however, did not choose to remain in Norfolk. He was presently heard of from Berkshire, for which county he had found interest to get himself returned in the new Parliament.John Paston in Parliament.John Paston also was returned to this Parliament as one of the representatives of his own county of Norfolk. His190sympathies were entirely with the new state of things. And his friend and correspondent, Friar Brackley, who felt with him that the wellbeing of the whole land depended entirely on the Earl of Warwick, sent him exhortations out of Scripture to encourage him in the performance of his political duties.190.1But what would be the effect of the coming over from Ireland of the Duke of York, who had by this time landed at Chester, and would now take the chief direction of affairs?190.2Perhaps the chief fear was that he would be too indulgent to political antagonists. Moreover, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk had contrived to marry her son to one of York’s daughters, and it was apprehended her influence would be considerable. ‘The Lady of Suffolk,’ wrote Friar Brackley to Paston, ‘hath sent up her son and his wife to my Lord of York to ask grace for a sheriff the next year, Stapleton, Boleyn, or Tyrell,qui absit!God send you Poynings, W. Paston, W. Rokewood, or Arblaster. Ye have much to do, Jesus speed you! Ye have many good prayers, what of the convent, city, and country.’190.3Such was the state of hope, fear, and expectation which the new turn of affairs awakened in some, and particularly in the friends of John Paston. The next great move in the political game perhaps exceeded the anticipations even of Friar Brackley.York challenges the Crown.Yet though the step was undoubtedly a bold one, never, perhaps, was a high course of action more strongly suggested by the results of past experience. After ten miserable years of fluctuating policy, the attainted Yorkists were now for the fourth time in possession of power; but who could tell that they would not be a fourth time set aside and proclaimed as traitors? For yet a fourth time since the fall of Suffolk, England might be subjected to the odious rule of favourites under a well-intentioned king, whose word was not to be relied on. To the commonweal the prospect was serious enough; to the Duke of York and his friends it was absolute and hopeless ruin. But York had now determined what to do. On the 10th of October, the third day of the Parliament, he came to Westminster with a body of 500 armed men, and took up quarters for himself within the royal palace. On the19116th he entered the House of Lords, and having sat down in the king’s throne, he delivered to the Lord Chancellor a writing in which he distinctly claimed that he, and not Henry, was by inheritance rightful king of England.191.1The reader is of course aware of the fact on which this claim was based, namely, that York, through the female line, was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of EdwardIII., while King Henry, his father, and his grandfather had all derived their rights from John of Gaunt, who was Lionel’s younger brother. HenryIV.indeed was an undoubted usurper; but to set aside his family after they had been in possession of the throne for three generations must have seemed a very questionable proceeding. Very few of the lords at first appeared to regard it with favour. The greater number stayed away from the House.191.2But the duke’s counsel insisting upon an answer, the House represented the matter to the king, desiring to know what he could allege in opposition to the claim of York. The king, however, left the lords to inquire into it themselves; and as it was one of the gravest questions of law, the lords consulted the justices. But the justices declined the responsibility of advising in a matter of so high a nature. They were the king’s justices, and could not be of counsel where the king himself was a party. The king’s serjeants and attorney were then applied to, but were equally unwilling to commit themselves; so that the lords themselves brought forward and discussed of their own accord a number of objections to the Duke of York’s claim. At length it was declared as the opinion of the whole body of the peers that his title could not be defeated, but a compromise was suggested and mutually agreed to that the king should be allowed to retain his crown for life, the succession reverting to the duke and his heirs immediately after Henry’s death.191.3So the matter was settled by a great and solemn act of state. But even a parliamentary settlement, produced by a display of armed force, will scarcely command the respect that it ought192to do if there is armed force to overthrow it. The king himself, it is true, appears to have been treated with respect, and with no more abridgment of personal liberty than was natural to the situation.192.1Nor could it be said that the peers were insensible of the responsibility they incurred in a grave constitutional crisis. But respect for constitutional safeguards had been severely shaken, and no securities now could bridle the spirit of faction: suspicion also of itself produced new dangers. The Duke of York, after all the willingness he had shown in Parliament to accept a compromise, seems to have been accused of violating the settlement as soon as it was made; for on that very night on which it was arranged (31st October), we are told by a contemporary writer that ‘the king removed unto London against his will to the bishop’s palace, and the Duke of York came unto him that same night by torchlight and took upon him as king, and said in many places that “This is ours by right.”’192.2Perhaps the facts looked worse than they were really; for it had been agreed in Parliament, though not formally expressed in the Accord, that the duke should be once more Protector and have the actual government.192.3But it is not surprising that Margaret and her friends would recognise nothing of what had been done in Parliament. Since the battle of Northampton she had been separated from her husband. She fled with her son first into Cheshire, afterwards into Wales, to Harlech Castle, and then to Denbigh, which Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, had just won for the House of Lancaster.192.4Her flight had been attended with difficulties, especially near Malpas, where she was robbed by a servant of her own, who met her and put her in fear of the lives of herself and her child.192.5In Wales she was joined by the Duke of Exeter, who was with her in October.192.6From thence she sailed to Scotland, where the193enemies of the Duke of York were specially welcome. For JamesII., profiting, as might be expected, by the dissensions of England, a month after the battle of Northampton, had laid siege to Roxburgh, where he was killed by the bursting of a cannon. Margaret, with her son, arrived at Dumfries in January 1461, and met his widow, Mary of Gueldres, at Lincluden Abbey.193.1Meanwhile her adherents in the North of England held a council at York, and the Earl of Northumberland, with Lords Clifford, Dacres, and Nevill, ravaged the lands of the duke and of the Earl of Salisbury. The duke on this dissolved Parliament after obtaining from it powers to put down the rebellion,193.2and marched northwards with the Earl of Salisbury. A few days before Christmas they reached the duke’s castle of Sandal, where they kept the festival, the enemy being not far off at Pomfret.193.3On the 30th December was fought the disastrous battle of Wakefield,The battle of Wakefield.when the Yorkists were defeated, the duke and the Earl of Salisbury being slain in the field, and the duke’s son, the Earl of Rutland, ruthlessly murdered by Lord Clifford after the battle.The story of poor young Rutland’s butchery is graphically described by an historian of the succeeding age who, though perhaps with some inaccuracies of detail as to fact, is a witness to the strong impression left by this beginning of barbarities. The account of it given by Hall, the chronicler, is as follows:—‘While this battle was in fighting, a priest called Sir Robert Aspall, chaplain and schoolmaster to the young Earl of Rutland, second son to the above-named Duke of York, scarce of the age of twelve years [he was really in his eighteenth year], a fair gentleman and a maiden-like person, perceiving that flight was more safeguard than tarrying, both for him and his master, secretly conveyed the Earl out of the field by the Lord Clifford’s band towards the town. But or he could enter into a house, he was by the said Lord Clifford espied, followed, and taken, and, by reason of his apparel, demanded what he was. The young gentleman, dismayed, had not a word to speak, but kneeled on his knees, imploring mercy and desiring grace, both with194holding up his hands and making dolorous countenance, for his speech was gone for fear. “Save him,” said his chaplain, “for he is a prince’s son, and peradventure may do you good hereafter.” With that word, the Lord Clifford marked him and said—“By God’s blood, thy father slew mine; and so will I do thee and all thy kin”; and with that word stack the Earl to the heart with his dagger, and bade his chaplain bear the Earl’s mother word what he had done and said.’Another illustration which the chronicler goes on to give of Clifford’s bloodthirsty spirit may be true in fact, but is certainly wrong as regards time. For he represents Queen Margaret as ‘not far from the field’ when the battle had been fought, and says that Clifford having caused the duke’s head to be cut off and crowned in derision with a paper crown, presented the ghastly object to her upon a pole with the words:—‘Madam, your war is done; here is your king’s ransom.’ Margaret, as we have seen, was really in Scotland at the time, where she negotiated an alliance with the Scots, to whom she agreed to deliver up Berwick for aid to her husband’s cause. But soon afterwards she came to York, where, at a council of war, she and her adherents determined to march on London. So it may have been a fact that Clifford presented to her the head of York upon a pole with the words recorded. But never was prophecy more unhappy; for instead of the war being ended, or the king being ransomed, there cannot be a doubt these deeds of wickedness imparted a new ferocity to the strife and hastened on the termination of Henry’s imbecile, unhappy reign. Within little more than two months after the battle of Wakefield the son of the murdered Duke of York was proclaimed king in London, by the title of EdwardIV., and at the end of the third month the bloody victory of Towton almost destroyed, for a long time, the hopes of the House of Lancaster. From that day Henry led a wretched existence, now as an exile, now as a prisoner, for eleven unhappy years, saving only a few months’ interval, during which he was made king again by the Earl of Warwick, without the reality of power, and finally fell a victim, as was generally believed, to political assassination. As for Margaret, she survived her husband, but she also survived her son, and the cause for195which she had fought with so much pertinacity was lost to her for ever.And now we must halt in our political survey. Henceforth, though public affairs must still require attention, we shall scarcely require to follow them with quite so great minuteness. We here take leave, for the most part, of matters, both public and private, contained in the Letters during the reign of HenryVI.But one event which affected greatly the domestic history of the Pastons in the succeeding reign, must be mentioned before we go further. It was not long after the commencement of those later troubles—more precisely, it was on the 5th November 1459, six weeks after the battle of Bloreheath, and little more than three after the dispersion of the Yorkists at Ludlow—that the aged Sir John Fastolf breathed his last, within the walls of that castle which it had been his pride to rear and to occupy in the place of his birth.Death of Sir John Fastolf.By his will, of which, as will be seen, no less than three different instruments were drawn up, he bequeathed to John Paston and his chaplain, Sir Thomas Howes, all his lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, for the purpose of founding that college or religious community at Caister, on the erection of which he had bestowed latterly so much thought. The manner in which this bequest affected the fortunes of the Paston family has now to be considered.

But though the personal influence of the king was doubtless great and beneficial within his own immediate vicinity, it could do little for the good order and protection of the country generally. Distrust, exclusiveness, and a bankrupt exchequer were not likely to obtain for the king willing and hearty service. Notwithstanding the commissions issued to keep watch upon the coasts, the French managed to surprise and plunder Sandwich.The French attack Sandwich.On Sunday, the 28th August, a large force under the command of Pierre de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy, landed not far from the town, which they took and kept possession of during the entire day. A number of the inhabitants, on the first alarm, retreated on board some ships lying in the harbour, from whence they began presently to shoot at the enemy. But de Brézé having warned them that if they continued he would burn their ships, they found it prudent to leave off. Having killed the bailiffs and principal officers, the Frenchmen carried off a number of wealthy persons as prisoners, and returned to their ships in the evening, laden with valuable spoils from the town and neighbourhood.174.3The disaster must have been keenly felt; but if Englishmen had known the whole truth, it would have been felt more keenly still. Our own old historians were not aware of the175fact, but an early French chronicler who lived at the time assures us that the attack had been purposely invited by Margaret of Anjou out of hatred to the Duke of York, in order to make a diversion, while the Scots should ravage England!175.1It was well for her that the truth was not suspected.157.1No. 270.157.2Ibid.158.1Rymer, xi. 361.158.2Ibid.362, 363.159.1Rymer, xi. 363.159.2Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 234-8.159.3On thePatent Roll, 33. Hen.VI.p. 19d., is a commission dated 5th May, for keeping watch on the coast of Kent against invasion.159.4Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.160.1Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.160.2No. 282.161.1No. 283.Rolls of Parl.v. 281-2.162.1John Crane, writing from Lambeth on Whitsunday, three days after the battle, says, ‘at most six score.’ No. 285. Another authority says, ‘60 persons of gentlemen and other.’English Chronicle, ed. Davies, p. 72.162.2Nos. 283, 284, 285.162.3No. 284.162.4No. 283.162.5No. 285.163.1No. 299.164.1No. 288.164.2Nos. 294, 295.164.3No. 291.164.4No. 295.165.1SeeRymer, xi. 366.165.2No. 287.165.3No. 303.165.4No. 303.Seealso a brief account of the same affair in W. Worcester’sItinerary, p. 114.165.5Jenkins’sHistory of Exeter, p. 78.166.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285. It may be observed that the bishopric was at this time vacant, and the dean, whose name was John Hals, had received a papal provision to be the new bishop, but was forced to relinquish it in favour of George Nevill, son of the Earl of Salisbury, a young man of only three-and-twenty years of age. Godwinde Præsulibus. Le Neve’sFasti. Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 265.166.2Rolls of Parl.v. 285.166.3Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 262.167.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285-7.167.2Ibid.v. 288-90.167.3Ibid.321.167.4No. 322.168.1No. 322.168.2Rolls of Parl.v. 321.168.3Ibid.300. A more sweeping bill for this purpose, which was rejected by the Lords, states that the revenue was so encumbered ‘that the charge of every sheriff in substance exceedeth so far the receipt of the revenues thereof due and leviable to you (i.e.the king), that no person of goodwill dare take upon him to be sheriff in any shire, for the most party, in this land.’Ibid.328. Additional illustrations of this fact will be found in Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 263-4, 272-3, and Preface lxxv-vi.168.4Nos. 334, 345, 348.169.1Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 287.169.2Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70 (edited by me for the Camden Society):Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 248-9.169.3LambethMS.211, f. 146 b.170.1LambethMS.211, f. 147. Rymer, xi. 383.170.2LambethMS.211, f. 148. This letter is dated 24th August 1456.170.3Rymer, xi. 383.171.1Nos. 330, 331.171.2No. 334.171.3No. 331.171.4No. 348.171.5Tutbury was one of the possessions given to her for her dower.Rolls of Parl.vi. 118.172.1Fabyan.172.2No. 345.173.1No. 348.173.2Accounts of the pageants shown before Queen Margaret at Coventry are noticed as contained in the earliest Leet Book of the City. SeeHistoricalMSS.Commission ReportI., 100.173.3Privy Seals in Public Record Office.173.4No. 356.173.5Patent Roll, 35 Hen.VI.p. 1 m. 16d.(26 Nov.); m. 7d.(19 May).173.6Ibid.p. 2 m. 5d.(29 Aug.).173.7Ibid.(18 July).174.1No. 356. There are Privy Seals dated at Hereford between the 1st and the 23rd of April.174.2No. 356. By the 4th of May the king had left Hereford and gone to Worcester, from which he proceeded to Winchcombe on the 10th and Kenilworth on the 13th. (Privy Seal dates.)174.3English Chronicle(Davies), 74.Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70, 71, 152-3.Contin. of Monstrelet, 70, 71.175.1De Coussy, 209.Earl of Warwick severely wounded.171.3text has superfluous close quoteReconciliation and Civil WarAt length, it would seem, the Court found it no longer possible to remain at a distance from the metropolis. In October the king had removed to Chertsey,175.2and soon after we find him presiding at a Great Council, which had been summoned to meet in his palace at Westminster in consequence of the urgent state of affairs. Though attended not only by the Duke of York, but by a large number of the principal lords on both sides, the meeting does not appear to have led to any very satisfactory results. All that we know of its proceedings is that some of them, at least, were of a stormy character,—one point on which all parties were agreed being the exclusion from the council chamber of Pecock,Bishop Pecock.Bishop of Chichester, an ardent and honest-minded prelate, who, having laboured hard to reconcile the Lollards to the authority of the Church by arguments of common sense instead of persecution, was at this time stigmatised as a heretic and sedition-monger, and very soon after was deprived of his bishopric. It augured little good for that union of parties which was now felt to be necessary for the public weal, that the first act on which men generally could be got to agree was the persecution of sense and reason. There were other matters before the council on which they were unable to come to a conclusion, and they broke up on the 29th November, with a resolution to meet again on the 27th January; for which meeting summonses were at once sent out, notifying that on that day not one of the lords would be excused attendance.175.3It was, indeed, particularly important that this meeting176should be a full one, and that every lord should be compelled to take his share of the responsibility for its decisions. The principal aim was expressly stated to be a general reconciliation and adjustment of private controversies176.1—an object to which it was impossible to offer direct opposition. But whether it was really distasteful to a number of the peers, or obstacles started up in individual cases, there were certainly several who had not arrived in town by the day appointed for the meeting.A.D.1458.The Earl of Salisbury’s excuse, dated at Sheriff Hutton on the 24th of January,176.2does not refer to this, for it appears certainly to be of a different year. Fabyan says that he had already arrived in London on the 15th January. He made his appearance there at the head of 400 horse, with eighty knights and squires in his company. The Duke of York also came, though he arrived only on the 26th, ‘with his own household only, to the number of 140 horse.’ But the Duke of Somerset only arrived on the last day of the month with 200 horse; the Duke of Exeter delayed his coming till the first week of February; and the Earl of Warwick, who had to come from Calais, was detained by contrary winds. Thus, although the king had come up to Westminster by the time prefixed, a full Council could not be had for at least some days after; and even on the 14th of February there was one absentee, the Earl of Arundel, who had to be written to by letters of Privy Seal.176.3A Great Council in London.But by the 14th Warwick had arrived in London with a body of 600 men, ‘all apparelled in red jackets, with white ragged staves.’176.4The town was now full of the retinues of the different noblemen, and the mayor and sheriffs trembled for the peace of the city. A very special watch was instituted. ‘The mayor,’ says Fabyan, ‘for so long as the king and the lords lay thus in the city, had daily in harness 5000 citizens, and rode daily about the city and suburbs of the same, to see that the king’s peace were kept; and nightly he provided for 3000 men in harness to give attendance upon177three aldermen, and they to keep the night-watch till 7 of the clock upon the morrow, till the day-watch were assembled.’ If peace was to be the result of all this concourse, the settlement evidently could not bear to be protracted. The Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick had taken up their quarters within the city itself; but the young lords whose fathers had been slain at St. Albans—the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and his brother, Lord Egremont, and the Lord Clifford—were believed to be bent upon revenge, and the civic authorities refused them entrance within their bounds.177.1Thus the lords within the town and those without belonged to the two opposite parties respectively; and in consequence of their mutual jealousies, conferences had to be arranged between them in the morning at the Black Friars, and in the afternoon at the White Friars, in Fleet Street.177.2The king, for his part, having opened the proceedings with some very earnest exhortations addressed to both parties, withdrew himself and retired to Berkhampstead.177.3The Duke of Somerset and others went to and fro to consult with him during the deliberations. Meanwhile the necessity of some practical arrangement for government must have been felt more urgent every day. Sixty sail of Frenchmen were seen off the coast of Sussex; and though Lord Falconbridge was at Southampton in command of some vessels (probably on his own responsibility), there was a general feeling of insecurity among the merchants and among dwellers by the sea-coast. Botoner had heard privately from Calais that the French meditated a descent upon Norfolk at Cromer and Blakeney.177.4And the news shortly afterwards received from the district showed that his information was not far wrong.177.5Terms of agreement.At last it was agreed on both sides that old animosities should be laid aside, and that some reparation should be made by the Yorkists to the sons and widows of the lords who had fallen on the king’s side at St. Albans. The exact amount of this reparation was left to the award of Henry, who decided that it should consist of an endowment of £45 a year to the178Monastery of St. Albans, to be employed in masses for the slain, and of certain money payments, or assignments out of moneys due to them by the Crown, to be made by York, Warwick, and Salisbury, to Eleanor, Duchess Dowager of Somerset and to her son, Duke Henry, to Lord Clifford, and others, in lieu of all claims and actions which the latter parties might have against the former.178.1With what cordiality this arrangement was accepted on either side we do not presume to say. Historians universally speak of it as a hollow concord, unreal from the first. But it at least preserved the kingdom in something like peace for about a twelvemonth. It was celebrated by a great procession to St. Paul’s on Lady Day, which must have been an imposing spectacle. The king marched in royal habit with the crown upon his head, York and the queen followed, arm in arm, and the principal rivals led the way, walking hand in hand.178.2A sea fight.The keeping of the sea was now intrusted to the Earl of Warwick, and it was not long before he distinguished himself by an action which probably relieved the English coasts for some time from any immediate danger of being attacked by the enemy. On the morning of Trinity Sunday word was brought to him at Calais of a fleet of 28 Spaniards, of which 16 were described as ‘great ships of forecastle.’ Immediately he manned such vessels as he had in readiness, and went out to seek the enemy. The force at his command was only five ships of forecastle, three carvels, and four pinnaces; but with these he did not hesitate to come to an engagement. At four o’clock on Monday morning the battle began, and it continued till ten, when the English obtained a hard-won victory. ‘As men say,’ wrote one of the combatants, ‘there was not so great a battle upon the sea this forty winter; and forsooth, we were well and truly beat.’ Nevertheless, six of the enemy’s ships were taken, and the rest were put to flight, not without very considerable slaughter on either side.178.3179A.D.1459.In the year following, the fire that had for some time smouldered, burst once more into a flame. About Candlemas, according to Fabyan—but an older authority says specifically on the 9th November preceding179.1—a fray occurred between one of the king’s servants and one of the Earl of Warwick’s, as the earl, who had been attending the Council at Westminster, was proceeding to his barge. The king’s servant being wounded, the other made his escape; but a host of retainers attached to the royal household rushed out upon the earl and his attendants, and wounded several of them before they could embark. With hard rowing they got beyond the power of their assailants and made their way into the city; but the queen and her friends insisted on imputing the outrage to the earl himself, and demanded his arrest. The earl found it politic to retire to Warwick, and afterwards to his former post at Calais. On this the queen and her council turned their machinations against his father, the Earl of Salisbury, whom Lord Audley was commissioned to arrest and bring prisoner to London. Audley accordingly took with him a large body of men, and hearing that the earl was on his way from Middleham in Yorkshire, journeying either towards Salisbury or London, he hastened to intercept him.Civil war renewed.The earl, however, had received notice of what was intended, and having gathered about him a sufficient band of followers, defeated Lord Audley in a regular pitched battle at Bloreheath in Staffordshire, where he attempted to stop his way, on Sunday the 23rd of September.179.2The old elements of confusion were now again let loose. Commissions to raise men were issued in the king’s name, and the Duke of York and all his friends were denounced as180a confederacy of traitors. They, for their parts, gathered together the men of the Marches in self-defence. At Ludlow, the duke was joined by the Earl of Salisbury, and also by the Earl of Warwick, who had come over again from Calais.The king takes the field.On the other hand, the king himself entered into the strife in a way he had not done hitherto. He not only took the field in person against the rebellious lords, but exhibited a spirit in the endurance of fatigue and discomfort which seems to have commanded general admiration. Even at the time of Lord Audley’s overthrow, it would appear that he was leading forward a reserve. For about a month he kept continually camping out, never resting at night, except on Sundays, in the same place he had occupied the night before, and sometimes, in spite of cold, rough weather, bivouacking for two nights successively on the bare field. After the battle of Bloreheath, he could only regard Salisbury as an overt enemy of his crown. At the same time he despatched heralds to the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick, with proclamations of free and perfect pardon to themselves and all but a few of the leaders at Bloreheath, on condition of their submitting to him within six days.180.1To Garter King of Arms, one of the messengers by whom these offers were conveyed, the confederate lords made answer, and also delivered a written reply to be conveyed to the king, declaring the perfect loyalty of their intentions, which they would have been glad to prove in the king’s presence if it had been only possible for them to go to him with safety. They had already endeavoured to testify their unshaken fidelity to Henry by an indenture drawn up and signed by them in Worcester Cathedral. This instrument they had forwarded to the king by a deputation of churchmen, headed by the prior of that cathedral, and including among others Dr. William Lynwoode,180.2who administered to them the sacrament on the occasion. Again, after Garter left, they wrote from181Ludlow on the 10th of October, protesting that their actions had been misconstrued, and their tenants subjected to wrong and violence, while they themselves lay under unjust suspicion. Their enemies, they said, thirsted for the possession of their lands, and hoped to obtain them by their influence with the king. For their own part they had hitherto avoided a conflict, not from any fear of the power of their enemies, but only for dread of God and of his Highness, and they meant to persevere in this peaceful course, until driven by necessity to self-defence.181.1These earnest, solemn, and repeated expressions of loyalty have scarcely, I think, received from historians the attention to which they are entitled.181.2Of their sincerity, of course, men may form different opinions; but it is right to note that the confederate lords had done all that was in their power by three several and distinct protests to induce the king to think more favourably of their intentions. It is, moreover, to be observed that they remained at this time in an attitude strictly defensive. But the king and his forces still approaching, they drew themselves up in battle array at Ludford, in the immediate vicinity of the town of Ludlow. Here, as they were posted on Friday the 12th October, it would almost seem that the lords were not without apprehension of the defection of some of their followers. A report was spread through the camp that the king was suddenly deceased, witnesses were brought in who swore to the fact, and mass was said for the repose of his soul. But that very evening, Henry, at the head of his army, arrived within half a mile of their position. The state of the country, flooded by recent rains, had alone prevented him from coming upon them sooner. Before nightfall a few volleys of artillery were discharged against the royal army, and a regular engagement was expected next day. But, meanwhile, the royal proclamation of pardon seems to have had its effect. One Andrew Trollope, who had come over with the Earl of Warwick from182Calais, withdrew at dead of night and carried over a considerable body of men to the service of the king, to whom he communicated the secrets of the camp. The blow was absolutely fatal.The Yorkists disperse.The lords at once abandoned all thought of further resistance. Leaving their banners in the field, they withdrew at midnight. York and his second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, fled into Wales, from whence they sailed into Ireland. His eldest, Edward, Earl of March, accompanied by the two other earls, Warwick and Salisbury, and by Sir John Wenlock, made his way into Devonshire. There by the friendly aid of one John Dynham, afterwards Lord Dynham, and Lord High Treasurer to HenryVII., they bought a ship at Exmouth and sailed to Guernsey. At last, on Friday the 2nd of November, they landed at Calais, where they met with a most cordial reception from the inhabitants.182.1They are attainted.Then followed in November the Parliament of Coventry, and the attainder of the Duke of York and all his party. The queen and her friends at last had it all their own way, at least in England. It was otherwise doubtless in Ireland, where the Duke of York remained for nearly a twelvemonth after his flight from Ludlow. It was otherwise too at Calais, where Warwick was all-powerful, and whither discontented Yorkists began to flock from England. It was otherwise, moreover, at sea, where the same Warwick still retained the command of the fleet, and could not be dispossessed, except on parchment. On parchment, however, he was presently superseded in both of his important offices. The Duke of Exeter was intrusted with the keeping of the sea, which even at the time of the great reconciliation of parties he had been displeased that Warwick was allowed to retain.182.2The young Duke of Somerset was appointed Captain of Calais, but was unable to take possession of his post. Accompanied by Lord Roos and Lord Audley, and fortified by the king’s letters-patent, he crossed the sea, but was refused admittance into the town. Apparently he had put off too long before going183over,183.1and he found the three earls in possession of the place before him; so that he was obliged to land at a place called Scales’ Cliff and go to Guisnes.183.2But a worse humiliation still awaited him on landing; for of the very sailors that had brought him over, a number conveyed their ships into Calais harbour, offered their services to the Earl of Warwick, and placed in his hands as prisoners certain persons who had taken part against him. They were shortly after beheaded in Calais.183.3It would seem, in short, that ever since his great naval victory in 1458, Warwick was so highly popular with all the sailors of England, that it was quite as hopeless for the Duke of Exeter to contest his supremacy at sea as for Somerset to think of winning Calais out of his hands. Friends still came flocking over from England to join the three earls at Calais;A.D.1460.and though in London in the February following nine men were hanged, drawn, and beheaded for attempting to do so,183.4the cause of the Yorkists remained as popular as ever. In vain were letters written to foreign parts, ‘that no relief be ministered to the traitor who kept Calais.’183.5In vain the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes endeavoured to contest his right to the government of that important town. All that Somerset could do was to waste his strength in fruitless skirmishes, until on St. George’s Day he suffered such a severe defeat and loss of men at Newnham Bridge, that he was at length forced to abandon all idea of dispossessing the Earl of Warwick.183.6Not only were the three earls secure in their position at Calais, but there was every reason to believe that they had a large amount of sympathy in Kent, and would meet with a very cordial reception whenever they crossed the sea. To184avert the danger of any such attempt, and also, it would appear, with some design of reinforcing the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes, Lord Rivers and his son Sir Anthony Wydevile were sent to Sandwich about the beginning of the year, with a body of 400 men. Besides the command of the town, they were commissioned to take possession of certain ships which belonged to the Earl of Warwick, and lay quietly at anchor in the harbour.184.1Lord Rivers at Sandwich.But the issue of their exploit was such as to provoke universal ridicule. ‘As to tidings here,’ wrote Botoner from London to John Berney at Caister, ‘I send some offhand, written to you and others, how the Lord Rivers, Sir Anthony his son, and othershave won Calaisby a feeble assault at Sandwich made by John Denham, Esq., with the number of 800 men, on Tuesday between four and five o’clock in the morning.’184.2The exact mode in which Rivers and his son ‘won Calais’ seems to have been described in a separate paper. The truth was that a small force under the command of John Denham (or Dynham) was despatched across the sea by Warwick, and landing at Sandwich during the night, contrived not only to seize the ships in the harbour, but even to surprise the earl and his son in their beds, and bring them over as prisoners to the other side of the Channel.184.3The victors did not fail to turn the incident to account by exhibiting as much contempt as possible for their unfortunate prisoners. ‘My Lord Rivers,’ writes William Paston, ‘was brought to Calais, and before the lords with eight score torches, and there my lord of Salisbury rated him, calling him knave’s son, that he should be so rude to call him and those other lords traitors; for they should be found the king’s true liegemen when he should be found a traitor. And my Lord of Warwick rated him and said that his father was but a squire, and brought up with King HenryV., and since made himself by marriage, and also made a lord; and that it was not his part to have such language of lords, being of the king’s blood. And my Lord of March rated him in like wise. And Sir Anthony was rated for his185language of all the three lords in like wise.’185.1It must have been a curious reflection to the Earl of March when in after years, as King EdwardIV., he married the daughter of this same Lord Rivers, that he had taken part in this vituperation of his future father-in-law!By and by it became sufficiently evident that unless he was considerably reinforced, the Duke of Somerset could do no good at Guisnes. Instead of attempting to maintain a footing beside Calais, the queen’s Government would have enough to do to keep the rebels out of England. The capture of Rivers had excited the most serious alarm, and the landing of Warwick himself upon the eastern coast was looked upon as not improbable.185.2A new force of 500 men was accordingly sent to Sandwich under the command of one Osbert Mountford or Mundeford,185.3an old officer of Calais. His instructions were to go from Sandwich to Guisnes, either in aid of the Duke of Somerset, as intimated in Worcester’sAnnals, or, according to another contemporary authority,185.4to bring him over to England. But while he waited for a wind to sail, John Dynham again crossed the sea, attacked the force under the command of Mundeford, and after a little skirmishing, in which he himself was wounded, succeeded in carrying him off to Calais, as he had before done Lord Rivers. Mundeford’s treatment, however, was not so lenient as that of the more noble captive. On the 25th of June he was beheaded at the Tower of Rysebank, which stood near the town, on the opposite side of the harbour.185.5Meanwhile the Earl of Warwick did not remain at Calais. He scoured the seas with his fleet and sailed into Ireland. Sir Baldwin Fulford, a knight of Devonshire, promised the king, on pain of losing his head, to destroy Warwick’s fleet;186but having exhausted the sum of 1000 marks which was allowed him for his expenses, he returned home without having attained his object.186.1On the 16th of March, Warwick having met with the Duke of York in Ireland, the two noblemen entered the harbour of Waterford with a fleet of six-and-twenty ships well manned; and on the following day, being St. Patrick’s Day, they landed and were ceremoniously received by the mayor and burgesses.186.2Warwick seems to have remained in Ireland more than two months, concerting with the Duke of York plans for future action. About Whitsunday, which in this year fell on the 1st of June, his fleet was observed by the Duke of Exeter off the coast of Cornwall, on its return to Calais. Exeter’s squadron was superior in strength, and an engagement might have been expected; but the duke was not sure that he could trust his own sailors, and he allowed the earl to pass unmolested.186.3The Legate Coppini.About this time there arrived at Calais a papal nuncio, by name Francesco Coppini, Bishop of Terni, returning from England to Rome. He had been sent by the new pope, PiusII., the ablest that had for a long time filled the pontifical chair, to urge Henry to send an ambassador to a congress at Mantua, in which measures were to be concerted for the union and defence of Christendom against the Turks. This was in the beginning of the preceding year,186.4and, as he himself states, he remained nearly a year and a half in England.186.5But the incapacity of the king, and the dissensions that prevailed among the lords, rendered his mission a total failure. Henry, indeed, who was never wanting in reverence for the Holy See, named a certain number of bishops and lords to go upon this mission, but they one and all refused. He accordingly sent two priests of little name, with an informal commission to excuse a greater embassy. England was thus discredited at the papal court, and the nuncio, finding his mission fruitless, at last crossed the sea to return home. At Calais, however,187he was persuaded by Warwick to remain. The earl himself was about to return to England, and if the legate would come back in his company he might use the influence of his sacred office to heal the wounds of a divided kingdom.187.1The nuncio had doubtless seen enough of the deplorable condition of England to be convinced that peace was impossible, so long as the lords most fit to govern were banished and proclaimed rebels by the queen and her favourites.187.2He was, moreover, furnished with powers, by which—the main object of his mission being the union of Christendom—he was authorised to make some efforts to compose the dissensions of England.187.3But he certainly overstrained them, and allowed himself to become a partisan. Flattered by the attentions shown him by Warwick, he acceded to his suggestion, and when, on the 26th of June,187.4the day after Mundeford was beheaded at Calais, the confederate lords crossed the Channel, the nuncio was in their company, bearing the standard of the Church. Archbishop Bourchier, too, met them at Sandwich, where they landed, with a great multitude of people; and with his cross borne before him, the Primate of England conducted the three earls and their followers, who increased in number as they went along, until they reached the capital. After a very brief opposition on the part of some of the citizens, the city opened its gates to them. They entered London on the 2nd of July.187.5The Earls of March, Warwick, and Salisbury.Before they crossed the sea, the three earls had sent over a set of articles addressed to the archbishop and the commons of England in the name of themselves and the Duke of York, declaring how they had sued in vain to be admitted to the188king’s presence to set forth certain matters that concerned the common weal of all the land. Foremost among these was the oppression of the Church, a charge based, seemingly, on facts with which we are unacquainted, and which, if known, might shed a clearer light upon the conduct of the legate and Archbishop Bourchier. Secondly, they complained of the crying evil that the king had given away to favourites all the revenues of his crown, so that his household was supported by acts of rapine and extortion on the part of his purveyors. Thirdly, the laws were administered with great partiality, and justice was not to be obtained. Grievous taxes, moreover, were levied upon the commons, while the destroyers of the land were living upon the patrimony of the crown. And now a heavier charge than ever was imposed upon the inhabitants; for the king, borrowing an idea from the new system of military service in France, had commanded every township to furnish at its own cost a certain number of men for the royal army; ‘which imposition and talliage,’ wrote the lords in this manifesto, ‘if it be continued to their heirs and successors, will be the heaviest charge and worst example that ever grew in England, and the foresaid subjects and the said heirs and successors in such bondage as their ancestors were never charged with.’188.1Besides these evils, the infatuated policy into which the king had been led by his ill-advisers, threatened to lose Ireland and Calais to the crown, as France had been lost already; for in the former country letters had been sent under the Privy Seal to the chieftains who had hitherto resisted the king’s authority, actually encouraging them to attempt the conquest of the land, while in regard to Calais the king had been induced to write letters to his enemies not to show that town any favour, and thus had given them the greatest possible189inducement to attempt its capture. Meanwhile the Earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire and Viscount Beaumont, who directed everything, kept the king himself, in some things, from the exercise of his own free will, and had caused him to assemble the Parliament of Coventry for the express purpose of ruining the Duke of York and his friends, whose domains they had everywhere pillaged and taken to their own use.189.1It was impossible, in the nature of things, that evils such as these could be allowed to continue long, and the day of reckoning was now at hand. Of the great events that followed, it will be sufficient here to note the sequence in the briefest possible words.The battle of Northampton.On the 10th July the king was taken prisoner at the battle of Northampton, and was brought to London by the confederate lords. The government, of course, came thus entirely into their hands. Young George Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, was made Chancellor of England, Lord Bourchier was appointed Lord Treasurer, and a Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster for the purpose of reversing the attainders passed in the Parliament of Coventry. Of the elections for this Parliament we have some interesting notices in Letter 415, from which we may see how the new turn in affairs had affected the politics of the county of Norfolk. From the first it was feared that after the three earls had got the king into their hands, the old intriguers, Tuddenham and Heydon, would be busy to secure favour, or at all events indulgence, from the party now in the ascendant. But letters-missive were obtained from the three earls, directed to all mayors and other officers in Norfolk, commanding in the king’s name that no one should do them injury, and intimating that the earls did not mean to show them any favour if any person proposed to sue them at law.189.2Heydon, however, did not choose to remain in Norfolk. He was presently heard of from Berkshire, for which county he had found interest to get himself returned in the new Parliament.John Paston in Parliament.John Paston also was returned to this Parliament as one of the representatives of his own county of Norfolk. His190sympathies were entirely with the new state of things. And his friend and correspondent, Friar Brackley, who felt with him that the wellbeing of the whole land depended entirely on the Earl of Warwick, sent him exhortations out of Scripture to encourage him in the performance of his political duties.190.1But what would be the effect of the coming over from Ireland of the Duke of York, who had by this time landed at Chester, and would now take the chief direction of affairs?190.2Perhaps the chief fear was that he would be too indulgent to political antagonists. Moreover, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk had contrived to marry her son to one of York’s daughters, and it was apprehended her influence would be considerable. ‘The Lady of Suffolk,’ wrote Friar Brackley to Paston, ‘hath sent up her son and his wife to my Lord of York to ask grace for a sheriff the next year, Stapleton, Boleyn, or Tyrell,qui absit!God send you Poynings, W. Paston, W. Rokewood, or Arblaster. Ye have much to do, Jesus speed you! Ye have many good prayers, what of the convent, city, and country.’190.3Such was the state of hope, fear, and expectation which the new turn of affairs awakened in some, and particularly in the friends of John Paston. The next great move in the political game perhaps exceeded the anticipations even of Friar Brackley.York challenges the Crown.Yet though the step was undoubtedly a bold one, never, perhaps, was a high course of action more strongly suggested by the results of past experience. After ten miserable years of fluctuating policy, the attainted Yorkists were now for the fourth time in possession of power; but who could tell that they would not be a fourth time set aside and proclaimed as traitors? For yet a fourth time since the fall of Suffolk, England might be subjected to the odious rule of favourites under a well-intentioned king, whose word was not to be relied on. To the commonweal the prospect was serious enough; to the Duke of York and his friends it was absolute and hopeless ruin. But York had now determined what to do. On the 10th of October, the third day of the Parliament, he came to Westminster with a body of 500 armed men, and took up quarters for himself within the royal palace. On the19116th he entered the House of Lords, and having sat down in the king’s throne, he delivered to the Lord Chancellor a writing in which he distinctly claimed that he, and not Henry, was by inheritance rightful king of England.191.1The reader is of course aware of the fact on which this claim was based, namely, that York, through the female line, was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of EdwardIII., while King Henry, his father, and his grandfather had all derived their rights from John of Gaunt, who was Lionel’s younger brother. HenryIV.indeed was an undoubted usurper; but to set aside his family after they had been in possession of the throne for three generations must have seemed a very questionable proceeding. Very few of the lords at first appeared to regard it with favour. The greater number stayed away from the House.191.2But the duke’s counsel insisting upon an answer, the House represented the matter to the king, desiring to know what he could allege in opposition to the claim of York. The king, however, left the lords to inquire into it themselves; and as it was one of the gravest questions of law, the lords consulted the justices. But the justices declined the responsibility of advising in a matter of so high a nature. They were the king’s justices, and could not be of counsel where the king himself was a party. The king’s serjeants and attorney were then applied to, but were equally unwilling to commit themselves; so that the lords themselves brought forward and discussed of their own accord a number of objections to the Duke of York’s claim. At length it was declared as the opinion of the whole body of the peers that his title could not be defeated, but a compromise was suggested and mutually agreed to that the king should be allowed to retain his crown for life, the succession reverting to the duke and his heirs immediately after Henry’s death.191.3So the matter was settled by a great and solemn act of state. But even a parliamentary settlement, produced by a display of armed force, will scarcely command the respect that it ought192to do if there is armed force to overthrow it. The king himself, it is true, appears to have been treated with respect, and with no more abridgment of personal liberty than was natural to the situation.192.1Nor could it be said that the peers were insensible of the responsibility they incurred in a grave constitutional crisis. But respect for constitutional safeguards had been severely shaken, and no securities now could bridle the spirit of faction: suspicion also of itself produced new dangers. The Duke of York, after all the willingness he had shown in Parliament to accept a compromise, seems to have been accused of violating the settlement as soon as it was made; for on that very night on which it was arranged (31st October), we are told by a contemporary writer that ‘the king removed unto London against his will to the bishop’s palace, and the Duke of York came unto him that same night by torchlight and took upon him as king, and said in many places that “This is ours by right.”’192.2Perhaps the facts looked worse than they were really; for it had been agreed in Parliament, though not formally expressed in the Accord, that the duke should be once more Protector and have the actual government.192.3But it is not surprising that Margaret and her friends would recognise nothing of what had been done in Parliament. Since the battle of Northampton she had been separated from her husband. She fled with her son first into Cheshire, afterwards into Wales, to Harlech Castle, and then to Denbigh, which Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, had just won for the House of Lancaster.192.4Her flight had been attended with difficulties, especially near Malpas, where she was robbed by a servant of her own, who met her and put her in fear of the lives of herself and her child.192.5In Wales she was joined by the Duke of Exeter, who was with her in October.192.6From thence she sailed to Scotland, where the193enemies of the Duke of York were specially welcome. For JamesII., profiting, as might be expected, by the dissensions of England, a month after the battle of Northampton, had laid siege to Roxburgh, where he was killed by the bursting of a cannon. Margaret, with her son, arrived at Dumfries in January 1461, and met his widow, Mary of Gueldres, at Lincluden Abbey.193.1Meanwhile her adherents in the North of England held a council at York, and the Earl of Northumberland, with Lords Clifford, Dacres, and Nevill, ravaged the lands of the duke and of the Earl of Salisbury. The duke on this dissolved Parliament after obtaining from it powers to put down the rebellion,193.2and marched northwards with the Earl of Salisbury. A few days before Christmas they reached the duke’s castle of Sandal, where they kept the festival, the enemy being not far off at Pomfret.193.3On the 30th December was fought the disastrous battle of Wakefield,The battle of Wakefield.when the Yorkists were defeated, the duke and the Earl of Salisbury being slain in the field, and the duke’s son, the Earl of Rutland, ruthlessly murdered by Lord Clifford after the battle.The story of poor young Rutland’s butchery is graphically described by an historian of the succeeding age who, though perhaps with some inaccuracies of detail as to fact, is a witness to the strong impression left by this beginning of barbarities. The account of it given by Hall, the chronicler, is as follows:—‘While this battle was in fighting, a priest called Sir Robert Aspall, chaplain and schoolmaster to the young Earl of Rutland, second son to the above-named Duke of York, scarce of the age of twelve years [he was really in his eighteenth year], a fair gentleman and a maiden-like person, perceiving that flight was more safeguard than tarrying, both for him and his master, secretly conveyed the Earl out of the field by the Lord Clifford’s band towards the town. But or he could enter into a house, he was by the said Lord Clifford espied, followed, and taken, and, by reason of his apparel, demanded what he was. The young gentleman, dismayed, had not a word to speak, but kneeled on his knees, imploring mercy and desiring grace, both with194holding up his hands and making dolorous countenance, for his speech was gone for fear. “Save him,” said his chaplain, “for he is a prince’s son, and peradventure may do you good hereafter.” With that word, the Lord Clifford marked him and said—“By God’s blood, thy father slew mine; and so will I do thee and all thy kin”; and with that word stack the Earl to the heart with his dagger, and bade his chaplain bear the Earl’s mother word what he had done and said.’Another illustration which the chronicler goes on to give of Clifford’s bloodthirsty spirit may be true in fact, but is certainly wrong as regards time. For he represents Queen Margaret as ‘not far from the field’ when the battle had been fought, and says that Clifford having caused the duke’s head to be cut off and crowned in derision with a paper crown, presented the ghastly object to her upon a pole with the words:—‘Madam, your war is done; here is your king’s ransom.’ Margaret, as we have seen, was really in Scotland at the time, where she negotiated an alliance with the Scots, to whom she agreed to deliver up Berwick for aid to her husband’s cause. But soon afterwards she came to York, where, at a council of war, she and her adherents determined to march on London. So it may have been a fact that Clifford presented to her the head of York upon a pole with the words recorded. But never was prophecy more unhappy; for instead of the war being ended, or the king being ransomed, there cannot be a doubt these deeds of wickedness imparted a new ferocity to the strife and hastened on the termination of Henry’s imbecile, unhappy reign. Within little more than two months after the battle of Wakefield the son of the murdered Duke of York was proclaimed king in London, by the title of EdwardIV., and at the end of the third month the bloody victory of Towton almost destroyed, for a long time, the hopes of the House of Lancaster. From that day Henry led a wretched existence, now as an exile, now as a prisoner, for eleven unhappy years, saving only a few months’ interval, during which he was made king again by the Earl of Warwick, without the reality of power, and finally fell a victim, as was generally believed, to political assassination. As for Margaret, she survived her husband, but she also survived her son, and the cause for195which she had fought with so much pertinacity was lost to her for ever.And now we must halt in our political survey. Henceforth, though public affairs must still require attention, we shall scarcely require to follow them with quite so great minuteness. We here take leave, for the most part, of matters, both public and private, contained in the Letters during the reign of HenryVI.But one event which affected greatly the domestic history of the Pastons in the succeeding reign, must be mentioned before we go further. It was not long after the commencement of those later troubles—more precisely, it was on the 5th November 1459, six weeks after the battle of Bloreheath, and little more than three after the dispersion of the Yorkists at Ludlow—that the aged Sir John Fastolf breathed his last, within the walls of that castle which it had been his pride to rear and to occupy in the place of his birth.Death of Sir John Fastolf.By his will, of which, as will be seen, no less than three different instruments were drawn up, he bequeathed to John Paston and his chaplain, Sir Thomas Howes, all his lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, for the purpose of founding that college or religious community at Caister, on the erection of which he had bestowed latterly so much thought. The manner in which this bequest affected the fortunes of the Paston family has now to be considered.

But though the personal influence of the king was doubtless great and beneficial within his own immediate vicinity, it could do little for the good order and protection of the country generally. Distrust, exclusiveness, and a bankrupt exchequer were not likely to obtain for the king willing and hearty service. Notwithstanding the commissions issued to keep watch upon the coasts, the French managed to surprise and plunder Sandwich.The French attack Sandwich.On Sunday, the 28th August, a large force under the command of Pierre de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy, landed not far from the town, which they took and kept possession of during the entire day. A number of the inhabitants, on the first alarm, retreated on board some ships lying in the harbour, from whence they began presently to shoot at the enemy. But de Brézé having warned them that if they continued he would burn their ships, they found it prudent to leave off. Having killed the bailiffs and principal officers, the Frenchmen carried off a number of wealthy persons as prisoners, and returned to their ships in the evening, laden with valuable spoils from the town and neighbourhood.174.3

The disaster must have been keenly felt; but if Englishmen had known the whole truth, it would have been felt more keenly still. Our own old historians were not aware of the175fact, but an early French chronicler who lived at the time assures us that the attack had been purposely invited by Margaret of Anjou out of hatred to the Duke of York, in order to make a diversion, while the Scots should ravage England!175.1It was well for her that the truth was not suspected.

157.1No. 270.157.2Ibid.158.1Rymer, xi. 361.158.2Ibid.362, 363.159.1Rymer, xi. 363.159.2Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 234-8.159.3On thePatent Roll, 33. Hen.VI.p. 19d., is a commission dated 5th May, for keeping watch on the coast of Kent against invasion.159.4Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.160.1Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.160.2No. 282.161.1No. 283.Rolls of Parl.v. 281-2.162.1John Crane, writing from Lambeth on Whitsunday, three days after the battle, says, ‘at most six score.’ No. 285. Another authority says, ‘60 persons of gentlemen and other.’English Chronicle, ed. Davies, p. 72.162.2Nos. 283, 284, 285.162.3No. 284.162.4No. 283.162.5No. 285.163.1No. 299.164.1No. 288.164.2Nos. 294, 295.164.3No. 291.164.4No. 295.165.1SeeRymer, xi. 366.165.2No. 287.165.3No. 303.165.4No. 303.Seealso a brief account of the same affair in W. Worcester’sItinerary, p. 114.165.5Jenkins’sHistory of Exeter, p. 78.166.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285. It may be observed that the bishopric was at this time vacant, and the dean, whose name was John Hals, had received a papal provision to be the new bishop, but was forced to relinquish it in favour of George Nevill, son of the Earl of Salisbury, a young man of only three-and-twenty years of age. Godwinde Præsulibus. Le Neve’sFasti. Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 265.166.2Rolls of Parl.v. 285.166.3Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 262.167.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285-7.167.2Ibid.v. 288-90.167.3Ibid.321.167.4No. 322.168.1No. 322.168.2Rolls of Parl.v. 321.168.3Ibid.300. A more sweeping bill for this purpose, which was rejected by the Lords, states that the revenue was so encumbered ‘that the charge of every sheriff in substance exceedeth so far the receipt of the revenues thereof due and leviable to you (i.e.the king), that no person of goodwill dare take upon him to be sheriff in any shire, for the most party, in this land.’Ibid.328. Additional illustrations of this fact will be found in Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 263-4, 272-3, and Preface lxxv-vi.168.4Nos. 334, 345, 348.169.1Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 287.169.2Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70 (edited by me for the Camden Society):Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 248-9.169.3LambethMS.211, f. 146 b.170.1LambethMS.211, f. 147. Rymer, xi. 383.170.2LambethMS.211, f. 148. This letter is dated 24th August 1456.170.3Rymer, xi. 383.171.1Nos. 330, 331.171.2No. 334.171.3No. 331.171.4No. 348.171.5Tutbury was one of the possessions given to her for her dower.Rolls of Parl.vi. 118.172.1Fabyan.172.2No. 345.173.1No. 348.173.2Accounts of the pageants shown before Queen Margaret at Coventry are noticed as contained in the earliest Leet Book of the City. SeeHistoricalMSS.Commission ReportI., 100.173.3Privy Seals in Public Record Office.173.4No. 356.173.5Patent Roll, 35 Hen.VI.p. 1 m. 16d.(26 Nov.); m. 7d.(19 May).173.6Ibid.p. 2 m. 5d.(29 Aug.).173.7Ibid.(18 July).174.1No. 356. There are Privy Seals dated at Hereford between the 1st and the 23rd of April.174.2No. 356. By the 4th of May the king had left Hereford and gone to Worcester, from which he proceeded to Winchcombe on the 10th and Kenilworth on the 13th. (Privy Seal dates.)174.3English Chronicle(Davies), 74.Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70, 71, 152-3.Contin. of Monstrelet, 70, 71.175.1De Coussy, 209.

157.1No. 270.

157.2Ibid.

158.1Rymer, xi. 361.

158.2Ibid.362, 363.

159.1Rymer, xi. 363.

159.2Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 234-8.

159.3On thePatent Roll, 33. Hen.VI.p. 19d., is a commission dated 5th May, for keeping watch on the coast of Kent against invasion.

159.4Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.

160.1Rolls of Parl.v. 280-1.

160.2No. 282.

161.1No. 283.Rolls of Parl.v. 281-2.

162.1John Crane, writing from Lambeth on Whitsunday, three days after the battle, says, ‘at most six score.’ No. 285. Another authority says, ‘60 persons of gentlemen and other.’English Chronicle, ed. Davies, p. 72.

162.2Nos. 283, 284, 285.

162.3No. 284.

162.4No. 283.

162.5No. 285.

163.1No. 299.

164.1No. 288.

164.2Nos. 294, 295.

164.3No. 291.

164.4No. 295.

165.1SeeRymer, xi. 366.

165.2No. 287.

165.3No. 303.

165.4No. 303.Seealso a brief account of the same affair in W. Worcester’sItinerary, p. 114.

165.5Jenkins’sHistory of Exeter, p. 78.

166.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285. It may be observed that the bishopric was at this time vacant, and the dean, whose name was John Hals, had received a papal provision to be the new bishop, but was forced to relinquish it in favour of George Nevill, son of the Earl of Salisbury, a young man of only three-and-twenty years of age. Godwinde Præsulibus. Le Neve’sFasti. Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 265.

166.2Rolls of Parl.v. 285.

166.3Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 262.

167.1Rolls of Parl.v. 285-7.

167.2Ibid.v. 288-90.

167.3Ibid.321.

167.4No. 322.

168.1No. 322.

168.2Rolls of Parl.v. 321.

168.3Ibid.300. A more sweeping bill for this purpose, which was rejected by the Lords, states that the revenue was so encumbered ‘that the charge of every sheriff in substance exceedeth so far the receipt of the revenues thereof due and leviable to you (i.e.the king), that no person of goodwill dare take upon him to be sheriff in any shire, for the most party, in this land.’Ibid.328. Additional illustrations of this fact will be found in Nicolas’sPrivy Council Proceedings, vi. 263-4, 272-3, and Preface lxxv-vi.

168.4Nos. 334, 345, 348.

169.1Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 287.

169.2Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70 (edited by me for the Camden Society):Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 248-9.

169.3LambethMS.211, f. 146 b.

170.1LambethMS.211, f. 147. Rymer, xi. 383.

170.2LambethMS.211, f. 148. This letter is dated 24th August 1456.

170.3Rymer, xi. 383.

171.1Nos. 330, 331.

171.2No. 334.

171.3No. 331.

171.4No. 348.

171.5Tutbury was one of the possessions given to her for her dower.Rolls of Parl.vi. 118.

172.1Fabyan.

172.2No. 345.

173.1No. 348.

173.2Accounts of the pageants shown before Queen Margaret at Coventry are noticed as contained in the earliest Leet Book of the City. SeeHistoricalMSS.Commission ReportI., 100.

173.3Privy Seals in Public Record Office.

173.4No. 356.

173.5Patent Roll, 35 Hen.VI.p. 1 m. 16d.(26 Nov.); m. 7d.(19 May).

173.6Ibid.p. 2 m. 5d.(29 Aug.).

173.7Ibid.(18 July).

174.1No. 356. There are Privy Seals dated at Hereford between the 1st and the 23rd of April.

174.2No. 356. By the 4th of May the king had left Hereford and gone to Worcester, from which he proceeded to Winchcombe on the 10th and Kenilworth on the 13th. (Privy Seal dates.)

174.3English Chronicle(Davies), 74.Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 70, 71, 152-3.Contin. of Monstrelet, 70, 71.

175.1De Coussy, 209.

Earl of Warwick severely wounded.171.3text has superfluous close quote

At length, it would seem, the Court found it no longer possible to remain at a distance from the metropolis. In October the king had removed to Chertsey,175.2and soon after we find him presiding at a Great Council, which had been summoned to meet in his palace at Westminster in consequence of the urgent state of affairs. Though attended not only by the Duke of York, but by a large number of the principal lords on both sides, the meeting does not appear to have led to any very satisfactory results. All that we know of its proceedings is that some of them, at least, were of a stormy character,—one point on which all parties were agreed being the exclusion from the council chamber of Pecock,Bishop Pecock.Bishop of Chichester, an ardent and honest-minded prelate, who, having laboured hard to reconcile the Lollards to the authority of the Church by arguments of common sense instead of persecution, was at this time stigmatised as a heretic and sedition-monger, and very soon after was deprived of his bishopric. It augured little good for that union of parties which was now felt to be necessary for the public weal, that the first act on which men generally could be got to agree was the persecution of sense and reason. There were other matters before the council on which they were unable to come to a conclusion, and they broke up on the 29th November, with a resolution to meet again on the 27th January; for which meeting summonses were at once sent out, notifying that on that day not one of the lords would be excused attendance.175.3

It was, indeed, particularly important that this meeting176should be a full one, and that every lord should be compelled to take his share of the responsibility for its decisions. The principal aim was expressly stated to be a general reconciliation and adjustment of private controversies176.1—an object to which it was impossible to offer direct opposition. But whether it was really distasteful to a number of the peers, or obstacles started up in individual cases, there were certainly several who had not arrived in town by the day appointed for the meeting.A.D.1458.The Earl of Salisbury’s excuse, dated at Sheriff Hutton on the 24th of January,176.2does not refer to this, for it appears certainly to be of a different year. Fabyan says that he had already arrived in London on the 15th January. He made his appearance there at the head of 400 horse, with eighty knights and squires in his company. The Duke of York also came, though he arrived only on the 26th, ‘with his own household only, to the number of 140 horse.’ But the Duke of Somerset only arrived on the last day of the month with 200 horse; the Duke of Exeter delayed his coming till the first week of February; and the Earl of Warwick, who had to come from Calais, was detained by contrary winds. Thus, although the king had come up to Westminster by the time prefixed, a full Council could not be had for at least some days after; and even on the 14th of February there was one absentee, the Earl of Arundel, who had to be written to by letters of Privy Seal.176.3

A Great Council in London.

But by the 14th Warwick had arrived in London with a body of 600 men, ‘all apparelled in red jackets, with white ragged staves.’176.4The town was now full of the retinues of the different noblemen, and the mayor and sheriffs trembled for the peace of the city. A very special watch was instituted. ‘The mayor,’ says Fabyan, ‘for so long as the king and the lords lay thus in the city, had daily in harness 5000 citizens, and rode daily about the city and suburbs of the same, to see that the king’s peace were kept; and nightly he provided for 3000 men in harness to give attendance upon177three aldermen, and they to keep the night-watch till 7 of the clock upon the morrow, till the day-watch were assembled.’ If peace was to be the result of all this concourse, the settlement evidently could not bear to be protracted. The Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick had taken up their quarters within the city itself; but the young lords whose fathers had been slain at St. Albans—the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and his brother, Lord Egremont, and the Lord Clifford—were believed to be bent upon revenge, and the civic authorities refused them entrance within their bounds.177.1Thus the lords within the town and those without belonged to the two opposite parties respectively; and in consequence of their mutual jealousies, conferences had to be arranged between them in the morning at the Black Friars, and in the afternoon at the White Friars, in Fleet Street.177.2The king, for his part, having opened the proceedings with some very earnest exhortations addressed to both parties, withdrew himself and retired to Berkhampstead.177.3The Duke of Somerset and others went to and fro to consult with him during the deliberations. Meanwhile the necessity of some practical arrangement for government must have been felt more urgent every day. Sixty sail of Frenchmen were seen off the coast of Sussex; and though Lord Falconbridge was at Southampton in command of some vessels (probably on his own responsibility), there was a general feeling of insecurity among the merchants and among dwellers by the sea-coast. Botoner had heard privately from Calais that the French meditated a descent upon Norfolk at Cromer and Blakeney.177.4And the news shortly afterwards received from the district showed that his information was not far wrong.177.5

Terms of agreement.

At last it was agreed on both sides that old animosities should be laid aside, and that some reparation should be made by the Yorkists to the sons and widows of the lords who had fallen on the king’s side at St. Albans. The exact amount of this reparation was left to the award of Henry, who decided that it should consist of an endowment of £45 a year to the178Monastery of St. Albans, to be employed in masses for the slain, and of certain money payments, or assignments out of moneys due to them by the Crown, to be made by York, Warwick, and Salisbury, to Eleanor, Duchess Dowager of Somerset and to her son, Duke Henry, to Lord Clifford, and others, in lieu of all claims and actions which the latter parties might have against the former.178.1With what cordiality this arrangement was accepted on either side we do not presume to say. Historians universally speak of it as a hollow concord, unreal from the first. But it at least preserved the kingdom in something like peace for about a twelvemonth. It was celebrated by a great procession to St. Paul’s on Lady Day, which must have been an imposing spectacle. The king marched in royal habit with the crown upon his head, York and the queen followed, arm in arm, and the principal rivals led the way, walking hand in hand.178.2

A sea fight.

The keeping of the sea was now intrusted to the Earl of Warwick, and it was not long before he distinguished himself by an action which probably relieved the English coasts for some time from any immediate danger of being attacked by the enemy. On the morning of Trinity Sunday word was brought to him at Calais of a fleet of 28 Spaniards, of which 16 were described as ‘great ships of forecastle.’ Immediately he manned such vessels as he had in readiness, and went out to seek the enemy. The force at his command was only five ships of forecastle, three carvels, and four pinnaces; but with these he did not hesitate to come to an engagement. At four o’clock on Monday morning the battle began, and it continued till ten, when the English obtained a hard-won victory. ‘As men say,’ wrote one of the combatants, ‘there was not so great a battle upon the sea this forty winter; and forsooth, we were well and truly beat.’ Nevertheless, six of the enemy’s ships were taken, and the rest were put to flight, not without very considerable slaughter on either side.178.3

A.D.1459.

In the year following, the fire that had for some time smouldered, burst once more into a flame. About Candlemas, according to Fabyan—but an older authority says specifically on the 9th November preceding179.1—a fray occurred between one of the king’s servants and one of the Earl of Warwick’s, as the earl, who had been attending the Council at Westminster, was proceeding to his barge. The king’s servant being wounded, the other made his escape; but a host of retainers attached to the royal household rushed out upon the earl and his attendants, and wounded several of them before they could embark. With hard rowing they got beyond the power of their assailants and made their way into the city; but the queen and her friends insisted on imputing the outrage to the earl himself, and demanded his arrest. The earl found it politic to retire to Warwick, and afterwards to his former post at Calais. On this the queen and her council turned their machinations against his father, the Earl of Salisbury, whom Lord Audley was commissioned to arrest and bring prisoner to London. Audley accordingly took with him a large body of men, and hearing that the earl was on his way from Middleham in Yorkshire, journeying either towards Salisbury or London, he hastened to intercept him.Civil war renewed.The earl, however, had received notice of what was intended, and having gathered about him a sufficient band of followers, defeated Lord Audley in a regular pitched battle at Bloreheath in Staffordshire, where he attempted to stop his way, on Sunday the 23rd of September.179.2

The old elements of confusion were now again let loose. Commissions to raise men were issued in the king’s name, and the Duke of York and all his friends were denounced as180a confederacy of traitors. They, for their parts, gathered together the men of the Marches in self-defence. At Ludlow, the duke was joined by the Earl of Salisbury, and also by the Earl of Warwick, who had come over again from Calais.The king takes the field.On the other hand, the king himself entered into the strife in a way he had not done hitherto. He not only took the field in person against the rebellious lords, but exhibited a spirit in the endurance of fatigue and discomfort which seems to have commanded general admiration. Even at the time of Lord Audley’s overthrow, it would appear that he was leading forward a reserve. For about a month he kept continually camping out, never resting at night, except on Sundays, in the same place he had occupied the night before, and sometimes, in spite of cold, rough weather, bivouacking for two nights successively on the bare field. After the battle of Bloreheath, he could only regard Salisbury as an overt enemy of his crown. At the same time he despatched heralds to the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick, with proclamations of free and perfect pardon to themselves and all but a few of the leaders at Bloreheath, on condition of their submitting to him within six days.180.1

To Garter King of Arms, one of the messengers by whom these offers were conveyed, the confederate lords made answer, and also delivered a written reply to be conveyed to the king, declaring the perfect loyalty of their intentions, which they would have been glad to prove in the king’s presence if it had been only possible for them to go to him with safety. They had already endeavoured to testify their unshaken fidelity to Henry by an indenture drawn up and signed by them in Worcester Cathedral. This instrument they had forwarded to the king by a deputation of churchmen, headed by the prior of that cathedral, and including among others Dr. William Lynwoode,180.2who administered to them the sacrament on the occasion. Again, after Garter left, they wrote from181Ludlow on the 10th of October, protesting that their actions had been misconstrued, and their tenants subjected to wrong and violence, while they themselves lay under unjust suspicion. Their enemies, they said, thirsted for the possession of their lands, and hoped to obtain them by their influence with the king. For their own part they had hitherto avoided a conflict, not from any fear of the power of their enemies, but only for dread of God and of his Highness, and they meant to persevere in this peaceful course, until driven by necessity to self-defence.181.1

These earnest, solemn, and repeated expressions of loyalty have scarcely, I think, received from historians the attention to which they are entitled.181.2Of their sincerity, of course, men may form different opinions; but it is right to note that the confederate lords had done all that was in their power by three several and distinct protests to induce the king to think more favourably of their intentions. It is, moreover, to be observed that they remained at this time in an attitude strictly defensive. But the king and his forces still approaching, they drew themselves up in battle array at Ludford, in the immediate vicinity of the town of Ludlow. Here, as they were posted on Friday the 12th October, it would almost seem that the lords were not without apprehension of the defection of some of their followers. A report was spread through the camp that the king was suddenly deceased, witnesses were brought in who swore to the fact, and mass was said for the repose of his soul. But that very evening, Henry, at the head of his army, arrived within half a mile of their position. The state of the country, flooded by recent rains, had alone prevented him from coming upon them sooner. Before nightfall a few volleys of artillery were discharged against the royal army, and a regular engagement was expected next day. But, meanwhile, the royal proclamation of pardon seems to have had its effect. One Andrew Trollope, who had come over with the Earl of Warwick from182Calais, withdrew at dead of night and carried over a considerable body of men to the service of the king, to whom he communicated the secrets of the camp. The blow was absolutely fatal.The Yorkists disperse.The lords at once abandoned all thought of further resistance. Leaving their banners in the field, they withdrew at midnight. York and his second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, fled into Wales, from whence they sailed into Ireland. His eldest, Edward, Earl of March, accompanied by the two other earls, Warwick and Salisbury, and by Sir John Wenlock, made his way into Devonshire. There by the friendly aid of one John Dynham, afterwards Lord Dynham, and Lord High Treasurer to HenryVII., they bought a ship at Exmouth and sailed to Guernsey. At last, on Friday the 2nd of November, they landed at Calais, where they met with a most cordial reception from the inhabitants.182.1

They are attainted.

Then followed in November the Parliament of Coventry, and the attainder of the Duke of York and all his party. The queen and her friends at last had it all their own way, at least in England. It was otherwise doubtless in Ireland, where the Duke of York remained for nearly a twelvemonth after his flight from Ludlow. It was otherwise too at Calais, where Warwick was all-powerful, and whither discontented Yorkists began to flock from England. It was otherwise, moreover, at sea, where the same Warwick still retained the command of the fleet, and could not be dispossessed, except on parchment. On parchment, however, he was presently superseded in both of his important offices. The Duke of Exeter was intrusted with the keeping of the sea, which even at the time of the great reconciliation of parties he had been displeased that Warwick was allowed to retain.182.2The young Duke of Somerset was appointed Captain of Calais, but was unable to take possession of his post. Accompanied by Lord Roos and Lord Audley, and fortified by the king’s letters-patent, he crossed the sea, but was refused admittance into the town. Apparently he had put off too long before going183over,183.1and he found the three earls in possession of the place before him; so that he was obliged to land at a place called Scales’ Cliff and go to Guisnes.183.2But a worse humiliation still awaited him on landing; for of the very sailors that had brought him over, a number conveyed their ships into Calais harbour, offered their services to the Earl of Warwick, and placed in his hands as prisoners certain persons who had taken part against him. They were shortly after beheaded in Calais.183.3

It would seem, in short, that ever since his great naval victory in 1458, Warwick was so highly popular with all the sailors of England, that it was quite as hopeless for the Duke of Exeter to contest his supremacy at sea as for Somerset to think of winning Calais out of his hands. Friends still came flocking over from England to join the three earls at Calais;A.D.1460.and though in London in the February following nine men were hanged, drawn, and beheaded for attempting to do so,183.4the cause of the Yorkists remained as popular as ever. In vain were letters written to foreign parts, ‘that no relief be ministered to the traitor who kept Calais.’183.5In vain the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes endeavoured to contest his right to the government of that important town. All that Somerset could do was to waste his strength in fruitless skirmishes, until on St. George’s Day he suffered such a severe defeat and loss of men at Newnham Bridge, that he was at length forced to abandon all idea of dispossessing the Earl of Warwick.183.6

Not only were the three earls secure in their position at Calais, but there was every reason to believe that they had a large amount of sympathy in Kent, and would meet with a very cordial reception whenever they crossed the sea. To184avert the danger of any such attempt, and also, it would appear, with some design of reinforcing the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes, Lord Rivers and his son Sir Anthony Wydevile were sent to Sandwich about the beginning of the year, with a body of 400 men. Besides the command of the town, they were commissioned to take possession of certain ships which belonged to the Earl of Warwick, and lay quietly at anchor in the harbour.184.1Lord Rivers at Sandwich.But the issue of their exploit was such as to provoke universal ridicule. ‘As to tidings here,’ wrote Botoner from London to John Berney at Caister, ‘I send some offhand, written to you and others, how the Lord Rivers, Sir Anthony his son, and othershave won Calaisby a feeble assault at Sandwich made by John Denham, Esq., with the number of 800 men, on Tuesday between four and five o’clock in the morning.’184.2

The exact mode in which Rivers and his son ‘won Calais’ seems to have been described in a separate paper. The truth was that a small force under the command of John Denham (or Dynham) was despatched across the sea by Warwick, and landing at Sandwich during the night, contrived not only to seize the ships in the harbour, but even to surprise the earl and his son in their beds, and bring them over as prisoners to the other side of the Channel.184.3The victors did not fail to turn the incident to account by exhibiting as much contempt as possible for their unfortunate prisoners. ‘My Lord Rivers,’ writes William Paston, ‘was brought to Calais, and before the lords with eight score torches, and there my lord of Salisbury rated him, calling him knave’s son, that he should be so rude to call him and those other lords traitors; for they should be found the king’s true liegemen when he should be found a traitor. And my Lord of Warwick rated him and said that his father was but a squire, and brought up with King HenryV., and since made himself by marriage, and also made a lord; and that it was not his part to have such language of lords, being of the king’s blood. And my Lord of March rated him in like wise. And Sir Anthony was rated for his185language of all the three lords in like wise.’185.1It must have been a curious reflection to the Earl of March when in after years, as King EdwardIV., he married the daughter of this same Lord Rivers, that he had taken part in this vituperation of his future father-in-law!

By and by it became sufficiently evident that unless he was considerably reinforced, the Duke of Somerset could do no good at Guisnes. Instead of attempting to maintain a footing beside Calais, the queen’s Government would have enough to do to keep the rebels out of England. The capture of Rivers had excited the most serious alarm, and the landing of Warwick himself upon the eastern coast was looked upon as not improbable.185.2A new force of 500 men was accordingly sent to Sandwich under the command of one Osbert Mountford or Mundeford,185.3an old officer of Calais. His instructions were to go from Sandwich to Guisnes, either in aid of the Duke of Somerset, as intimated in Worcester’sAnnals, or, according to another contemporary authority,185.4to bring him over to England. But while he waited for a wind to sail, John Dynham again crossed the sea, attacked the force under the command of Mundeford, and after a little skirmishing, in which he himself was wounded, succeeded in carrying him off to Calais, as he had before done Lord Rivers. Mundeford’s treatment, however, was not so lenient as that of the more noble captive. On the 25th of June he was beheaded at the Tower of Rysebank, which stood near the town, on the opposite side of the harbour.185.5

Meanwhile the Earl of Warwick did not remain at Calais. He scoured the seas with his fleet and sailed into Ireland. Sir Baldwin Fulford, a knight of Devonshire, promised the king, on pain of losing his head, to destroy Warwick’s fleet;186but having exhausted the sum of 1000 marks which was allowed him for his expenses, he returned home without having attained his object.186.1On the 16th of March, Warwick having met with the Duke of York in Ireland, the two noblemen entered the harbour of Waterford with a fleet of six-and-twenty ships well manned; and on the following day, being St. Patrick’s Day, they landed and were ceremoniously received by the mayor and burgesses.186.2Warwick seems to have remained in Ireland more than two months, concerting with the Duke of York plans for future action. About Whitsunday, which in this year fell on the 1st of June, his fleet was observed by the Duke of Exeter off the coast of Cornwall, on its return to Calais. Exeter’s squadron was superior in strength, and an engagement might have been expected; but the duke was not sure that he could trust his own sailors, and he allowed the earl to pass unmolested.186.3

The Legate Coppini.

About this time there arrived at Calais a papal nuncio, by name Francesco Coppini, Bishop of Terni, returning from England to Rome. He had been sent by the new pope, PiusII., the ablest that had for a long time filled the pontifical chair, to urge Henry to send an ambassador to a congress at Mantua, in which measures were to be concerted for the union and defence of Christendom against the Turks. This was in the beginning of the preceding year,186.4and, as he himself states, he remained nearly a year and a half in England.186.5But the incapacity of the king, and the dissensions that prevailed among the lords, rendered his mission a total failure. Henry, indeed, who was never wanting in reverence for the Holy See, named a certain number of bishops and lords to go upon this mission, but they one and all refused. He accordingly sent two priests of little name, with an informal commission to excuse a greater embassy. England was thus discredited at the papal court, and the nuncio, finding his mission fruitless, at last crossed the sea to return home. At Calais, however,187he was persuaded by Warwick to remain. The earl himself was about to return to England, and if the legate would come back in his company he might use the influence of his sacred office to heal the wounds of a divided kingdom.187.1

The nuncio had doubtless seen enough of the deplorable condition of England to be convinced that peace was impossible, so long as the lords most fit to govern were banished and proclaimed rebels by the queen and her favourites.187.2He was, moreover, furnished with powers, by which—the main object of his mission being the union of Christendom—he was authorised to make some efforts to compose the dissensions of England.187.3But he certainly overstrained them, and allowed himself to become a partisan. Flattered by the attentions shown him by Warwick, he acceded to his suggestion, and when, on the 26th of June,187.4the day after Mundeford was beheaded at Calais, the confederate lords crossed the Channel, the nuncio was in their company, bearing the standard of the Church. Archbishop Bourchier, too, met them at Sandwich, where they landed, with a great multitude of people; and with his cross borne before him, the Primate of England conducted the three earls and their followers, who increased in number as they went along, until they reached the capital. After a very brief opposition on the part of some of the citizens, the city opened its gates to them. They entered London on the 2nd of July.187.5

The Earls of March, Warwick, and Salisbury.

Before they crossed the sea, the three earls had sent over a set of articles addressed to the archbishop and the commons of England in the name of themselves and the Duke of York, declaring how they had sued in vain to be admitted to the188king’s presence to set forth certain matters that concerned the common weal of all the land. Foremost among these was the oppression of the Church, a charge based, seemingly, on facts with which we are unacquainted, and which, if known, might shed a clearer light upon the conduct of the legate and Archbishop Bourchier. Secondly, they complained of the crying evil that the king had given away to favourites all the revenues of his crown, so that his household was supported by acts of rapine and extortion on the part of his purveyors. Thirdly, the laws were administered with great partiality, and justice was not to be obtained. Grievous taxes, moreover, were levied upon the commons, while the destroyers of the land were living upon the patrimony of the crown. And now a heavier charge than ever was imposed upon the inhabitants; for the king, borrowing an idea from the new system of military service in France, had commanded every township to furnish at its own cost a certain number of men for the royal army; ‘which imposition and talliage,’ wrote the lords in this manifesto, ‘if it be continued to their heirs and successors, will be the heaviest charge and worst example that ever grew in England, and the foresaid subjects and the said heirs and successors in such bondage as their ancestors were never charged with.’188.1

Besides these evils, the infatuated policy into which the king had been led by his ill-advisers, threatened to lose Ireland and Calais to the crown, as France had been lost already; for in the former country letters had been sent under the Privy Seal to the chieftains who had hitherto resisted the king’s authority, actually encouraging them to attempt the conquest of the land, while in regard to Calais the king had been induced to write letters to his enemies not to show that town any favour, and thus had given them the greatest possible189inducement to attempt its capture. Meanwhile the Earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire and Viscount Beaumont, who directed everything, kept the king himself, in some things, from the exercise of his own free will, and had caused him to assemble the Parliament of Coventry for the express purpose of ruining the Duke of York and his friends, whose domains they had everywhere pillaged and taken to their own use.189.1

It was impossible, in the nature of things, that evils such as these could be allowed to continue long, and the day of reckoning was now at hand. Of the great events that followed, it will be sufficient here to note the sequence in the briefest possible words.The battle of Northampton.On the 10th July the king was taken prisoner at the battle of Northampton, and was brought to London by the confederate lords. The government, of course, came thus entirely into their hands. Young George Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, was made Chancellor of England, Lord Bourchier was appointed Lord Treasurer, and a Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster for the purpose of reversing the attainders passed in the Parliament of Coventry. Of the elections for this Parliament we have some interesting notices in Letter 415, from which we may see how the new turn in affairs had affected the politics of the county of Norfolk. From the first it was feared that after the three earls had got the king into their hands, the old intriguers, Tuddenham and Heydon, would be busy to secure favour, or at all events indulgence, from the party now in the ascendant. But letters-missive were obtained from the three earls, directed to all mayors and other officers in Norfolk, commanding in the king’s name that no one should do them injury, and intimating that the earls did not mean to show them any favour if any person proposed to sue them at law.189.2Heydon, however, did not choose to remain in Norfolk. He was presently heard of from Berkshire, for which county he had found interest to get himself returned in the new Parliament.

John Paston in Parliament.

John Paston also was returned to this Parliament as one of the representatives of his own county of Norfolk. His190sympathies were entirely with the new state of things. And his friend and correspondent, Friar Brackley, who felt with him that the wellbeing of the whole land depended entirely on the Earl of Warwick, sent him exhortations out of Scripture to encourage him in the performance of his political duties.190.1But what would be the effect of the coming over from Ireland of the Duke of York, who had by this time landed at Chester, and would now take the chief direction of affairs?190.2Perhaps the chief fear was that he would be too indulgent to political antagonists. Moreover, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk had contrived to marry her son to one of York’s daughters, and it was apprehended her influence would be considerable. ‘The Lady of Suffolk,’ wrote Friar Brackley to Paston, ‘hath sent up her son and his wife to my Lord of York to ask grace for a sheriff the next year, Stapleton, Boleyn, or Tyrell,qui absit!God send you Poynings, W. Paston, W. Rokewood, or Arblaster. Ye have much to do, Jesus speed you! Ye have many good prayers, what of the convent, city, and country.’190.3

Such was the state of hope, fear, and expectation which the new turn of affairs awakened in some, and particularly in the friends of John Paston. The next great move in the political game perhaps exceeded the anticipations even of Friar Brackley.York challenges the Crown.Yet though the step was undoubtedly a bold one, never, perhaps, was a high course of action more strongly suggested by the results of past experience. After ten miserable years of fluctuating policy, the attainted Yorkists were now for the fourth time in possession of power; but who could tell that they would not be a fourth time set aside and proclaimed as traitors? For yet a fourth time since the fall of Suffolk, England might be subjected to the odious rule of favourites under a well-intentioned king, whose word was not to be relied on. To the commonweal the prospect was serious enough; to the Duke of York and his friends it was absolute and hopeless ruin. But York had now determined what to do. On the 10th of October, the third day of the Parliament, he came to Westminster with a body of 500 armed men, and took up quarters for himself within the royal palace. On the19116th he entered the House of Lords, and having sat down in the king’s throne, he delivered to the Lord Chancellor a writing in which he distinctly claimed that he, and not Henry, was by inheritance rightful king of England.191.1

The reader is of course aware of the fact on which this claim was based, namely, that York, through the female line, was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of EdwardIII., while King Henry, his father, and his grandfather had all derived their rights from John of Gaunt, who was Lionel’s younger brother. HenryIV.indeed was an undoubted usurper; but to set aside his family after they had been in possession of the throne for three generations must have seemed a very questionable proceeding. Very few of the lords at first appeared to regard it with favour. The greater number stayed away from the House.191.2But the duke’s counsel insisting upon an answer, the House represented the matter to the king, desiring to know what he could allege in opposition to the claim of York. The king, however, left the lords to inquire into it themselves; and as it was one of the gravest questions of law, the lords consulted the justices. But the justices declined the responsibility of advising in a matter of so high a nature. They were the king’s justices, and could not be of counsel where the king himself was a party. The king’s serjeants and attorney were then applied to, but were equally unwilling to commit themselves; so that the lords themselves brought forward and discussed of their own accord a number of objections to the Duke of York’s claim. At length it was declared as the opinion of the whole body of the peers that his title could not be defeated, but a compromise was suggested and mutually agreed to that the king should be allowed to retain his crown for life, the succession reverting to the duke and his heirs immediately after Henry’s death.191.3

So the matter was settled by a great and solemn act of state. But even a parliamentary settlement, produced by a display of armed force, will scarcely command the respect that it ought192to do if there is armed force to overthrow it. The king himself, it is true, appears to have been treated with respect, and with no more abridgment of personal liberty than was natural to the situation.192.1Nor could it be said that the peers were insensible of the responsibility they incurred in a grave constitutional crisis. But respect for constitutional safeguards had been severely shaken, and no securities now could bridle the spirit of faction: suspicion also of itself produced new dangers. The Duke of York, after all the willingness he had shown in Parliament to accept a compromise, seems to have been accused of violating the settlement as soon as it was made; for on that very night on which it was arranged (31st October), we are told by a contemporary writer that ‘the king removed unto London against his will to the bishop’s palace, and the Duke of York came unto him that same night by torchlight and took upon him as king, and said in many places that “This is ours by right.”’192.2Perhaps the facts looked worse than they were really; for it had been agreed in Parliament, though not formally expressed in the Accord, that the duke should be once more Protector and have the actual government.192.3But it is not surprising that Margaret and her friends would recognise nothing of what had been done in Parliament. Since the battle of Northampton she had been separated from her husband. She fled with her son first into Cheshire, afterwards into Wales, to Harlech Castle, and then to Denbigh, which Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, had just won for the House of Lancaster.192.4Her flight had been attended with difficulties, especially near Malpas, where she was robbed by a servant of her own, who met her and put her in fear of the lives of herself and her child.192.5In Wales she was joined by the Duke of Exeter, who was with her in October.192.6From thence she sailed to Scotland, where the193enemies of the Duke of York were specially welcome. For JamesII., profiting, as might be expected, by the dissensions of England, a month after the battle of Northampton, had laid siege to Roxburgh, where he was killed by the bursting of a cannon. Margaret, with her son, arrived at Dumfries in January 1461, and met his widow, Mary of Gueldres, at Lincluden Abbey.193.1Meanwhile her adherents in the North of England held a council at York, and the Earl of Northumberland, with Lords Clifford, Dacres, and Nevill, ravaged the lands of the duke and of the Earl of Salisbury. The duke on this dissolved Parliament after obtaining from it powers to put down the rebellion,193.2and marched northwards with the Earl of Salisbury. A few days before Christmas they reached the duke’s castle of Sandal, where they kept the festival, the enemy being not far off at Pomfret.193.3On the 30th December was fought the disastrous battle of Wakefield,The battle of Wakefield.when the Yorkists were defeated, the duke and the Earl of Salisbury being slain in the field, and the duke’s son, the Earl of Rutland, ruthlessly murdered by Lord Clifford after the battle.

The story of poor young Rutland’s butchery is graphically described by an historian of the succeeding age who, though perhaps with some inaccuracies of detail as to fact, is a witness to the strong impression left by this beginning of barbarities. The account of it given by Hall, the chronicler, is as follows:—

‘While this battle was in fighting, a priest called Sir Robert Aspall, chaplain and schoolmaster to the young Earl of Rutland, second son to the above-named Duke of York, scarce of the age of twelve years [he was really in his eighteenth year], a fair gentleman and a maiden-like person, perceiving that flight was more safeguard than tarrying, both for him and his master, secretly conveyed the Earl out of the field by the Lord Clifford’s band towards the town. But or he could enter into a house, he was by the said Lord Clifford espied, followed, and taken, and, by reason of his apparel, demanded what he was. The young gentleman, dismayed, had not a word to speak, but kneeled on his knees, imploring mercy and desiring grace, both with194holding up his hands and making dolorous countenance, for his speech was gone for fear. “Save him,” said his chaplain, “for he is a prince’s son, and peradventure may do you good hereafter.” With that word, the Lord Clifford marked him and said—“By God’s blood, thy father slew mine; and so will I do thee and all thy kin”; and with that word stack the Earl to the heart with his dagger, and bade his chaplain bear the Earl’s mother word what he had done and said.’

Another illustration which the chronicler goes on to give of Clifford’s bloodthirsty spirit may be true in fact, but is certainly wrong as regards time. For he represents Queen Margaret as ‘not far from the field’ when the battle had been fought, and says that Clifford having caused the duke’s head to be cut off and crowned in derision with a paper crown, presented the ghastly object to her upon a pole with the words:—‘Madam, your war is done; here is your king’s ransom.’ Margaret, as we have seen, was really in Scotland at the time, where she negotiated an alliance with the Scots, to whom she agreed to deliver up Berwick for aid to her husband’s cause. But soon afterwards she came to York, where, at a council of war, she and her adherents determined to march on London. So it may have been a fact that Clifford presented to her the head of York upon a pole with the words recorded. But never was prophecy more unhappy; for instead of the war being ended, or the king being ransomed, there cannot be a doubt these deeds of wickedness imparted a new ferocity to the strife and hastened on the termination of Henry’s imbecile, unhappy reign. Within little more than two months after the battle of Wakefield the son of the murdered Duke of York was proclaimed king in London, by the title of EdwardIV., and at the end of the third month the bloody victory of Towton almost destroyed, for a long time, the hopes of the House of Lancaster. From that day Henry led a wretched existence, now as an exile, now as a prisoner, for eleven unhappy years, saving only a few months’ interval, during which he was made king again by the Earl of Warwick, without the reality of power, and finally fell a victim, as was generally believed, to political assassination. As for Margaret, she survived her husband, but she also survived her son, and the cause for195which she had fought with so much pertinacity was lost to her for ever.

And now we must halt in our political survey. Henceforth, though public affairs must still require attention, we shall scarcely require to follow them with quite so great minuteness. We here take leave, for the most part, of matters, both public and private, contained in the Letters during the reign of HenryVI.But one event which affected greatly the domestic history of the Pastons in the succeeding reign, must be mentioned before we go further. It was not long after the commencement of those later troubles—more precisely, it was on the 5th November 1459, six weeks after the battle of Bloreheath, and little more than three after the dispersion of the Yorkists at Ludlow—that the aged Sir John Fastolf breathed his last, within the walls of that castle which it had been his pride to rear and to occupy in the place of his birth.Death of Sir John Fastolf.By his will, of which, as will be seen, no less than three different instruments were drawn up, he bequeathed to John Paston and his chaplain, Sir Thomas Howes, all his lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, for the purpose of founding that college or religious community at Caister, on the erection of which he had bestowed latterly so much thought. The manner in which this bequest affected the fortunes of the Paston family has now to be considered.

Back to IndexNext