FOOTNOTES[1]Cecily is called Duchess of York in Earl's Ralph's will, so the children must therefore have been already married; but the consummation of the marriage was not till about 1438, when he was twenty-six and she twenty-three years of age.[2]The grandson was Ralph Earl of Westmoreland; the sons, Richard of Salisbury, William of Fauconbridge, and George of Latimer; the sons-in-law, the Dukes of York, Norfolk, and Buckingham, the Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Dacre. Later, Edward Neville Lord Abergavenny, and Roger Lord Scrope, appear; the first a son, the second a grandson.
FOOTNOTES
[1]Cecily is called Duchess of York in Earl's Ralph's will, so the children must therefore have been already married; but the consummation of the marriage was not till about 1438, when he was twenty-six and she twenty-three years of age.
[1]Cecily is called Duchess of York in Earl's Ralph's will, so the children must therefore have been already married; but the consummation of the marriage was not till about 1438, when he was twenty-six and she twenty-three years of age.
[2]The grandson was Ralph Earl of Westmoreland; the sons, Richard of Salisbury, William of Fauconbridge, and George of Latimer; the sons-in-law, the Dukes of York, Norfolk, and Buckingham, the Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Dacre. Later, Edward Neville Lord Abergavenny, and Roger Lord Scrope, appear; the first a son, the second a grandson.
[2]The grandson was Ralph Earl of Westmoreland; the sons, Richard of Salisbury, William of Fauconbridge, and George of Latimer; the sons-in-law, the Dukes of York, Norfolk, and Buckingham, the Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Dacre. Later, Edward Neville Lord Abergavenny, and Roger Lord Scrope, appear; the first a son, the second a grandson.
CHAPTER IV
THE KINGMAKER'S YOUTH
Richard, the second child but eldest son of Richard Neville of Salisbury and Alice Montacute, was born on November 22nd, 1428, just nineteen days after his grandfather had fallen at the siege of Orleans. We know absolutely nothing of his childhood—not even the place of his birth is recorded. We must suppose, but cannot prove, that his earliest days were passed on his mother's lands in Wessex, in moving about between Amesbury, Christchurch, and Ringwood as his parents' household made its periodical peregrinations from manor to manor according to the universal practice of the time. As a boy he must have visited his paternal grandmother, Joan of Beaufort, on her Yorkshire estates, when his father was fixed in the North as Warden of the Scotch Border. There probably he may have imbibed some of the old lady's dislike for her step-sons of the elder branch of the Nevilles, with whom she and his father were now at open variance. A little later he must have spent much time in London, when his father became a member of the Council of Regency, lodged at the "Tenement called the Harbour in the Ward of Dowgate," which his father and grandmother hadreceived by will from his grandfather when the larger London house of the family, "Neville's Inn in Silver Street," passed with the Westmoreland earldom to the elder branch.
The fortunes of the house of Neville, as we have told them hitherto, have consisted of one interminable story of fortunate marriages. The reader must now be asked to concentrate his attention on another group of these alliances, a group which settled the whole history of the Kingmaker, and gave him the title of the earldom by which he is always named.
The Beauchamps of Warwick held one of the oldest English earldoms; they represented in direct descent the Henry of Newburgh to whom William Rufus had granted the county in 1190.[3]Richard Beauchamp, the head of the family at this time, was perhaps the worthiest and the most esteemed of the English nobles of his day. The "gracious Warwick," the "father of courtesy" as the Emperor Sigismund called him, had been through all the wars of Henry the Fifth, and won therein a name only second to that of the King himself. He had seen many cities and men in every land that lay between England and Palestine, and left everywhere behind him a good report. His virtues and accomplishments had caused him to be singled out as tutor and governor to the young King, Henry the Sixth; no better model, as all agreed, could be found for the ruler of England to copy. Nor did Warwick belie his task; he made Henry upright, learned, painstaking, conscientious to a fault. If hecould but have made him as strong in body and spirit as he was morally, he would have given England the best king that ever she possessed.
Richard Beauchamp had married Isabel, heiress of Despenser, and widow of Richard, Lord of Abergavenny. Their family consisted of a son, Henry, a boy of ten, and a daughter, Anne, three years younger. In addition, the Countess of Warwick had an only daughter by her first husband, who was heiress of Abergavenny. Beauchamp and Richard Neville of Salisbury were the best of friends, and had determined to seal their friendship by intermarriage between their families. The alliance was destined to be complicated; each earl married his heir to his friend's daughter. The boy Henry, heir of Warwick, was affianced to Cecily Neville, Salisbury's six-year-old daughter; the boy Richard, heir of Salisbury, to Anne Beauchamp, daughter of Warwick. Nor was this all; the family relations were complicated by the marriage of Warwick's step-daughter Elizabeth, the heiress of Abergavenny, to Edward Neville the younger brother of Salisbury.
The boy Richard Neville received a competent dowry with his wife, but nothing more was expected to follow from the marriage. Fate, however, decreed otherwise.
The old Earl of Warwick died in 1439, full of years and honours. To him succeeded his son Henry, the husband of Cecily Neville, now sixteen years of age, and "a seemly lord of person." He had been brought up with the young King, a lad of his own years, and was Henry of Lancaster's bosom friend. When the King came of age he heaped on the young Beauchamp every honour that his affection could devise. Not onlywas he made Knight of the Garter and a Privy Councillor before he was nineteen, but he was created Duke of Warwick, and invested by the King's own hands with the lordship of the Isle of Wight. If Henry Beauchamp had lived, it would have been he, and not Suffolk and Somerset, who in a few years would have ruled England. But his career was broken in its earliest promise. Ere he had finished his twenty-third year Henry Beauchamp was cut off from the land of the living, and his lands and duchy devolved on his only child, a little girl but four years of age. Her wardship fell to William de la Pole Earl of Suffolk, already the declared adversary of Salisbury and the Neville family.
By the wholly unexpected death of Henry Beauchamp only this one frail life lay between the lad Richard Neville—he was sixteen when his brother-in-law died—and the earldom of Warwick. Nor was that life to continue long. The child Anne Beauchamp survived for three years more, and then died, aged seven, on June 23rd, 1449. She was buried by her grandam Constance, daughter of Edmund Duke of York, before the high altar of Reading Abbey.
The heiress of Warwick was now the elder Anne, Richard Neville's young wife,[4]and in her right Richard received the Beauchamp lands from the unwilling hands of the little countess's guardian, Suffolk. The patent which created him Earl of Warwick, and joined his wife in the grant, was dated July 23rd, 1449.
Thus, in the year in which he reached his twenty-first birthday, the future Kingmaker became "Earl of Warwick, Newburgh, and Aumarle, Premier Earl of England, Baron of Elmley and Hanslape, and Lord of Glamorgan and Morgannoc." He was now a much more important personage than his own father, for the Beauchamp and Despenser manors in the West Midlands and the Welsh Marches were broader by far than the Montacute lands in Wessex, or the Neville holding round Middleham.
A short survey of the items of the Beauchamp heritage is necessary to show how wide-spread was the power which was now placed in the hands of the young Richard Neville. Perhaps the most compact block of his new possessions was the old Despenser holding in South Wales and Herefordshire, which included the castles of Cardiff, Neath, Caerphilly, Llantrussant, Seyntweonard, Ewyas Lacy, Castle-Dinas, Snodhill, Whitchurch, and Maud's Castle. Caerphilly alone was a stronghold fit to resist ten thousand men, with its tremendous rings of concentric fortification; and the massive Norman masonry of Cardiff was still ready for good service. Between Neath and Ewyas Lacy lay no less than fifty manors of the Despenser heritage. In Gloucestershire was another group of estates which the Beauchamps had got from the Despensers—of which the chief were the wide and populous manors of Tewkesbury, Sodbury, Fairford, Whittington, Chedworth, Wickwar, and Lydney. In Worcestershire there was a compact block of land along the Severn and on both its banks; the largest manors included in it were Upton-on-Severn, Hanley Castle, and Bewdley, but there were twenty-four more estates of less importance, together with the Castle of Elmley, which had given the Beauchamps abaron's title. In Warwickshire, beside the fair town and castle which went with the earldom, there were not any very broad tracts of land—only nine manors in all, but one of these was the wealthy manor of Tamworth. Going farther south in the Midlands we find in Oxfordshire five manors and the forest of Wychwood reckoned to the Beauchamps, and in Buckinghamshire the baronial seat of Hanslape and seven manors more. Nor was it only in central England that Richard Neville could count his estates; there were scattered holdings accruing to him in Kent, Hampshire, Sussex, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Northampton, Stafford, Cambridge, Rutland, and Nottingham, amounting in all to forty-eight manors. Even in the distant North one isolated possession fell to him—the castle of Barnard's-Castle on the Tees. If in addition to the manors we began to count up the scattered knights' fees, the advowsons of churches, the chantries, the patronage of abbeys, and the tenements in towns, which formed part of the Beauchamp heritage, we should never be done; but these are all written in the Escheats Roll, whence the antiquary may excavate them at his will.
The year 1449, in which Richard Neville attained his majority and gathered in his wife's heritage, was the turning-point in the reign of Henry the Sixth. No more critical time could have been found in the whole century in which to place power and influence in the hands of a young, able, and ambitious man. For it was in 1449 that the doom of the house of Lancaster was settled by the final collapse of the English domination in France. In March came the fatal attack on Fougères which reopenedthe war, an attack of which it is hard to say whether it was more foolish or wicked. In August, September, and October occurred with bewildering rapidity the fall of the great towns of eastern and central Normandy, ending with the capitulation of Rouen after a siege of only nineteen days.
It was this unparalleled series of disasters which made the existing Lancastrian rule unbearable to the English nation. Suffolk, the minister whose policy had led up to the disaster, and Somerset, the governor whose avarice had depleted the Norman garrisons, and whose rashness and ill faith had precipitated the outbreak of hostilities, were henceforth pursued by the bitter hatred of the majority of Englishmen. When it was found that King Henry identified their cause with his own, he himself—against whom no one had previously breathed a word—found for the first time that the current of public opinion was setting against him.
It was now that the final scission of the two parties that were afterwards to be known as Yorkist and Lancastrian took place. Every man of note in England had now to make his choice whether his personal loyalty to the King should lead him into acquiescing in the continuance in office of the ministers whom Henry openly favoured, or whether he would set himself in opposition to the Court faction, even though he was thereby led into opposition to the King.
From the first moment there was no doubt which of the two courses would be adopted by the two Neville earls of the younger branch. Warwick, now as always, acted in strict union with his father, and Salisbury had never been a friend of Suffolk. Moreover, they wereboth concerned in behalf of their relative the Duke of York, who by Somerset's contrivance had been sent into a kind of honorary exile in Ireland. When the crisis should come, it was already pretty certain that Salisbury and Warwick would be found on the side of York, and not on that of Suffolk and Somerset. But as yet, though men were growing excited and preparing for evil times, no one foresaw the exact shape which the troubles were to take. One thing only was certain, that Suffolk and Somerset were growing so hateful to the nation that an explosion against them would soon take place, and that when the explosion came there would be a large party among the leading men of England who would rejoice in its effects.
The most ominous sign of the times was that the great barons on both sides were already quietly arming, seeing to the numbers of their retainers, and concluding agreements to take their neighbours into their livery if the worst should come to the worst.
Nothing can be a more typical sign of the times than the treaty which Salisbury entered into with a Westmoreland knight, whose lands lay not far from his great holding in the North-Riding, as early as September 1449, the very month when Somerset was losing Normandy.
"This indenture made between Richard Earl of Salisbury, on the one part, and Walter Strykelande knight, on the other, beareth witness that the said Walter is retained and withholded with the said Earl for the term of his life, against all folk, saving his allegiance to the King. And the said Walter shall be well and conveniently horsed, armed, and arrayed, and always ready to bide come and go with to and for the said Earl, at alltimes and places, as well in time of peace as time of war, at the wages of the same Earl." Walter's following was worth having, being "servants, tenants, and inhabitants within the county of Westmoreland; bowmen with horse and harness, sixty-nine; billmen horsed and harnessed, seventy-four; bowmen without horses, seventy-one; billmen without horses, seventy-six"—in fact a little army of two hundred and ninety men. The existence of a few such treaties as this between Salisbury and his northern neighbours shows clearly enough how the Neville power was built up, and how formidable to the public peace it might become. If once such treaties were in existence, how long would it be before the single clause "saving his allegiance" would begin to drop into oblivion?
FOOTNOTES[3]The Beauchamps came into the title in 1268, William de Beauchamp having married the grand-daughter of Henry of Newburgh, whose male issue had died out.[4]Anne was the only heir of the full blood to Henry Duke of Warwick, but he had several half-sisters, to whom the reversion of the title was left by the patent which gave Richard and Anne Neville the earldom.
FOOTNOTES
[3]The Beauchamps came into the title in 1268, William de Beauchamp having married the grand-daughter of Henry of Newburgh, whose male issue had died out.
[3]The Beauchamps came into the title in 1268, William de Beauchamp having married the grand-daughter of Henry of Newburgh, whose male issue had died out.
[4]Anne was the only heir of the full blood to Henry Duke of Warwick, but he had several half-sisters, to whom the reversion of the title was left by the patent which gave Richard and Anne Neville the earldom.
[4]Anne was the only heir of the full blood to Henry Duke of Warwick, but he had several half-sisters, to whom the reversion of the title was left by the patent which gave Richard and Anne Neville the earldom.
CHAPTER V
THE CAUSE OF YORK
If 1449, the year of Warwick's accession to his wife's heritage, was a time of trouble for England, the year which immediately followed was far worse. The loss of the Norman fortresses was followed in a few months by the sporadic outbreaks of popular rage which might have been expected—outbreaks directed against all who could in any way be connected with the evil governance of the realm. Bishop Moleyns, the Keeper of the Privy Seal, was murdered by a mob of mutinous sailors at Portsmouth in January. But this blow was only a premonitory symptom of the storm which was brewing against Suffolk, the head of the Government. Four months later—the fatal battle of Formigny had been fought meanwhile, and the last English foothold in Northern France lost—he was driven from power by an irresistible demonstration of wrath, in which the whole nation, from the House of Lords to the London mob, took its part. Protected from legal punishment by the King's pardon, Suffolk fled over-sea; but some London ships waylaid him in the Straits of Dover, and he was seized and put to death after a mock trial by the captain of theNicholas of the Tower. So well hated was he that his tragic endwas received with exultation instead of remorse, and the political ballad-mongers of the day wrote many an insulting rhyme over his headless corpse.
Instead of mending matters, Suffolk's death was only the signal for worse troubles. Two months after his death came the great rebellion of the Kentishmen under Cade, accompanied by various other outbreaks in the southern counties. The insurgents were inspired by the same impulse which had slain Suffolk; they were set on making an end of all who had been responsible for the late disaster abroad and misgovernment at home. In London, Lord Say the Treasurer was caught and slain; in Wiltshire, Bishop Ayscough was beheaded by a mob of his own tenantry. But the rising, being but a sudden ebullition of rage with no plan or programme of reform, and being headed not by any respectable leader but merely by the disreputable adventurer Cade, died down of its own accord, without leaving any permanent effect on the governance of the realm. To make its power felt, the national discontent had to look for a responsible leader and a definite programme.
Both the Court party and the people knew where that leader might be found. Richard Duke of York, the heir-apparent to the childless King, lay across the sea in Ireland. He was an able soldier, much tried in the French wars, a firm and successful administrator—he had even succeeded in winning popularity in Ireland—and a man of blameless character, who had completely won the nation's confidence. Moreover, he was a man with a grievance; though the first prince of the blood, he was deliberately excluded from all place in the King's councils or share in the administration of the realm.While in the midst of a successful campaign in France he had been superseded by the unlucky Somerset, and sent off to Ireland, apparently in the idea that like most other rulers of that distressful country he would wreck his reputation there. But he had been fortunate, and only increased his fame by the administration of the island. Already the Court party were murmuring against him once more, and the people believed that some other exile would ere long be found for him. As the ballad-monger sang—
The falcon flies and has no restTill he wot where he may build his nest.
Cade's rebels had used the Duke's name largely in their proclamations, but there seems no real ground for supposing that they had held any communication with him. The only evidence against him was that all discontented parties and persons spoke of him as the man that should right them some day. Nevertheless threats were made that he should be indicted for high treason, and action against him was apparently imminent. Then at last York took the initiative. He threw up the government of Ireland, crossed over to Wales, and came up to London with a considerable body of his tenants from the Marches at his back. There he claimed and obtained an interview with the King, in which he declared his loyalty, and received Henry's assurance that no harm was intended against him. This done, he retired to his estates on the Welsh border. But he had now definitely put himself at the head of the opposition to the Court party, whom he had bitterly rated in his remonstrance to the King.
The discontent of England had found its mouthpiece and its leader in this resolute prince, "a man of low stature, with a short square face, and somewhat stout of body," like his uncle Edmund of York, who had fallen at Agincourt rather stifled in his armour than slain by his wounds.
Our whole view of the conduct of Warwick in the ten years between 1450 and 1460 must be determined by our decision as to the designs and conduct of his uncle of York during that period. If we conclude that the Duke was aiming at the crown from the first, then we cannot but believe that his brother-in-law Salisbury and his nephew Warwick must have known or guessed his wishes, and on them must rest almost as great a share of blame for the outbreak of the Civil War as lies on the head of York himself. For the gain of their family we must believe that they sacrificed the peace of their country. This view has been commonly adopted by historians; it was set forth in every Lancastrian manifesto of the time; it was repeated by the historians who wrote under the Tudors, and it still prevails.
Another view, however, was taken by the majority of the English people in York's own day. Wherever in England public spirit ran strong, wherever wealth had accumulated and civilisation had advanced, a sympathy for the Yorkist party manifested itself. Kent, London, and East Anglia were always strongly on the Duke's side. But if York had been an ambitious schemer, deliberately upsetting the peace of the realm for his own ends, we should not expect to find his supporters among those parts of the nation to whom peace and good governance were above all things profitable.
A glance through the pages of the chroniclers who were contemporary with the war, Harding, Gregory, William of Worcester, Whethamsted, the anonymous English chronicler in the Camden Series, shows that to the majority of the English people York passed not as a disturber of the peace, but as a wronged and injured man, goaded into resistance by the machinations of the Court party. In one aspect he was regarded as a great lord of the royal blood excluded from his rightful place at the Council board, and even kept out of the country by his enemies who had the King's ear. In another he was regarded as the leader and mouthpiece of the Opposition of the day, of the old and popular war-party which inherited the traditions of Henry the Fifth and Humphrey of Gloucester—a party, indeed, whose views (as we have said elsewhere) were unwise and even immoral, but one which might reasonably ask to be taken into consideration by those who managed the affairs of the realm. In these days of ours when Ministries prove incapable and grow discredited the Opposition has its turn at the helm in the natural course of things. In the fifteenth century the old methods which had served Simon de Montfort, and the Lords Ordainers of 1322, were still the only ones which could be used against ministers who were out of sympathy with the nation. York was doing at St. Albans much what Earl Simon had done at Lewes.
This too must be said, that if disaster without and disorder within are to be held sufficient to discredit any rule, there had never been a time since the evil days of Bannockburn when England had more right to be discontented with her rulers. Moreover, there was nochance that things would grow better; as long as the Queen and her friends ruled the King, so long would things continue as they were. Men thought at one moment that with the removal of Suffolk the evil times would come to an end. But when an outburst of popular fury swept Suffolk to his end—and be it remembered that there is no evidence to connect York with Suffolk's tragic death—the ascendency of Somerset proved as disastrous and as hopeless as that of his predecessor. And when Somerset fell at St. Albans men hoped once more that matters would right themselves; but the less-known ministers who soon succeeded to the helm—Beaumont and the Earl of Wiltshire—proved quite as unprofitable servants to the nation. As long as the Queen was at the King's side to choose his councillors for him, so long would the discontent of England continue to increase. Margaret's misfortunes make us loath to speak evil of her, but in fairness to the Yorkists it must be remembered that she was the most detestable politician that England had known. It is usual to call the dislike of the nation for her a stupid prejudice against a foreigner; but there was surely some reason for hating the woman who sold Berwick to the Scots and Calais to the French, who reintroduced the hateful practice of sweeping attainders in the Parliament of 1459, who succeeded in turning loyalty into a party-cry by making the King a party-leader. Well might she confess to a foreign friend on one occasion "that if the great lords of her own party knew what she was doing, they would themselves be the first to rise and put her to death," for she it was who committed that foulest treason of all—which consists in sending secretly to tell a foreign enemywhere to strike, in order that by his blow a party-end may be served. In 1457, when the realm was for a moment at peace, she deliberately incited the French admirals to make their great descent on the Kentish coast which ended in the fearful sack of Sandwich, merely because she knew that such a disaster would be counted against her political enemies the Yorkists. There is nothing to be compared to it in English history except the conduct of the arch-traitor Marlborough in 1694 over the affair of Brest.
The English hatred of Queen Margaret was no prejudice, but a wholesome instinct which led the English nation to recognise its enemy. She made herself a party-leader, and as a party-leader she had to be treated. York's ten years' strife with her must be regarded not so much as the rebellion of a subject against his sovereign, but as the struggle of one party-leader against another with the primitive weapons which alone were possible in the constitutional crises of that day. But even if we grant that York had his excuses, and that his general attitude does not stand self-condemned at the first glance, it remains to be seen how far his programme was justifiable, and how far he honestly endeavoured to carry it out to the best of his abilities. That he was an able, self-confident, ambitious man, with the fixed idea that he was the victim of the intrigues of the Court party, and that but for those intrigues he would be able to assume the position in the King's Council to which his birth entitled him, we know well. That when the King remained childless for nine years after his marriage, York could not help dwelling on the near prospect of his accession to the throne, was matter ofnotoriety. When that prospect was suddenly taken from him by the unexpected birth of an heir to the crown, York's spirits were deeply dashed, and his friends murmured in secret about changelings and bastards. But his own attitude and language were still everything that could be required by the most exacting critic; he shared in the rejoicings at the birth of Prince Edward, and joined the Commission which was appointed to confer on the infant the title of Prince of Wales. All his speeches and manifestoes for the next six years were full even to satiety of professions of loyalty to the King, and no claims on his own part were ever made for anything more than that right of access to the King's ear to which he was obviously entitled. The Yorkist declarations are always statements of grievance and demands for reform, set forth on public grounds; they show no traces of dynastic claims. The actions of the party, too, are quite in keeping with their declarations. That they would take the King into their own hands, and not leave him in those of the Somersets or Wiltshire or Beaumont, they had always stated, and they attempted no more when they had the chance. The best criterion of York's honesty is his conduct after the first battle of St. Albans, when the fortune of war had placed the King's person in his power. He then proceeded to give Henry new ministers, but did absolutely nothing more. No word about the succession was breathed, nor was it even attempted to punish those who had previously ruled the kingdom so ill. With a wise moderation all the blame was heaped on Somerset—and Somerset was dead, and could suffer no harm whatever might be laid to his charge.
It may then fairly be argued that Warwick and all those who followed Richard of York in peace and war down to the year 1460 had an honest programme, and could in all sincerity trust their leader, when he assured them that his ends were national and not personal,—the reform of the governance of England, not the establishment of the house of York on the throne. We shall see that when, after enduring and inflicting many evils, York did at last lay claim to the throne, his own party, headed by Warwick, firmly withstood him and compelled him, in adherence to his and their original pledges, to leave King Henry his throne and content himself with the prospect of an ultimate succession.
This being so, it is only just to Warwick and the other Yorkist leaders to give them the benefit of the doubt wherever their conduct admits of an honourable explanation, and not to judge their earlier assertions or claims or complaints in the light of later events. On these lines we shall proceed to describe the young Earl's actions down to the final outbreak of war in 1459.
CHAPTER VI
THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR: ST ALBANS
From the moment when York returned from Ireland without the King's permission, and commenced to expostulate with his royal kinsman against the doings of Somerset and the rest of the Court party, the progress of events was sure and steady. Nothing save some extraordinary chance could have warded off the inevitable Civil War. That it did not break out sooner was only due to the fact that York was as cautious as he was determined, and was content to wait for the crown which the King's sickly constitution and long-barren wedlock promised him. Moreover, the Court party themselves had no desire to push matters to extremities against the man who was in all probability to become their king at no very distant date. For more than four years the struggle between York and Somerset proceeded before swords were actually drawn; they fought by manifestoes and proclamations, by Acts of Parliament, by armed demonstrations, but neither would actually strike the first blow.
The final crisis was brought about by the juxtaposition of two events of very different character. In August 1453 the King fell into a melancholy madness, exactlysimilar to that which had afflicted his unfortunate grandfather Charles the Sixth of France. He sat for days without moving or speaking; whatever was said to him he cast down his eyes and answered nought. The King's insanity was a deadly blow to Somerset, for he was helpless without the royal name to back him. York, on the other hand, with the general consent of the nation, assumed the direction of affairs, and became the King's lieutenant. He was afterwards made Protector of the Realm. This promised a final termination to the civil troubles of the realm.
But a few months after the King had become deranged, the whole face of affairs was changed by the birth of an heir to the crown. The Queen was delivered of a son on October 13th. This unexpected event—for the royal pair had been childless for nine years—was of fatal import to York. It took away the safety that had proceeded from the fact that his enemies believed that he was one day to reign over them, and it made York himself desperate. He came to the conclusion that he must be either regent or nothing; to save his head he must resort to desperate measures, and no more shrink from arms.
It is at this moment that Warwick begins to come to the front. In the earlier phases of York's struggle with Somerset he and his father had avoided committing themselves unreservedly to their kinsman's party; when he made his armed demonstration in 1452 they had not appeared at his side, but had negotiated in his favour with the King. In the Parliament of January 1454 they took part more decidedly in his favour. Mischief was brewing and every peer came up to London withhundreds of retainers in his train. It was then noticed that Warwick "with a goodly fellowship at his back" rode up in company with his uncle of York, and that Salisbury with sevenscore men-at-arms joined him in London.
York's preponderance in the councils of the realm was at once followed by the promotion of his Neville kinsmen. In December Warwick, now aged twenty-five, was made a member of the Privy Council. In April, after York had been made Protector, Salisbury was made Chancellor of the Realm; it was forty-four years since a layman had held the post.
The King was insane for sixteen months, and for that time York governed the realm with discretion and success. His conduct with regard to the question of the succession was scrupulously correct. The infant Prince Edward was acknowledged heir to the throne, and York, Warwick, and Salisbury were all members of the Commission which in April invested him with the title of Prince of Wales. The Court party were treated with leniency; only Somerset, against whom the popular outcry was as loud as ever (he had nearly been torn to pieces by a London mob in 1453), was committed to custody in the Tower, where he lay all the time of the King's madness. The country seemed satisfied and the prospect was fair.
To the Nevilles these two last years of promotion and success had only been clouded by a fierce quarrel with the house of Percy. In 1453 Salisbury had been celebrating the marriage of his fourth son, Thomas, to a niece of Lord Cromwell at Tattershall in Yorkshire. As he left the feast his retainers fell into an affray with some followers of Thomas Percy Lord Egremont, ayounger son of the Earl of Northumberland. Out of this small spark sprung a sudden outbreak of private war all over the counties of York and Northumberland, in which the Nevilles were headed by John, Salisbury's second son, and the Percies by Egremont. The trouble lasted more than a year, and was only ended by York going in person, after he had been made Protector, to pacify the combatants. In this he succeeded, but the Percies maintained that they had been wronged, and were ever afterwards strong supporters of Somerset and the Queen.
In December 1454 King Henry came to his senses, and York resigned the protectorate. The King's recovery was in every way unfortunate; the moment that he was himself again he fell back into the hands of the Court party. His first act was to release Somerset from the Tower, and declare him a true and faithful subject. His next was to dismiss York and Salisbury from all their offices, and with them several other high functionaries who were enemies of Somerset, including Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, the Lord Treasurer. The disgraced peers retired to their estates—York to Sendal, Salisbury to Middleham.
But worse was to come. In May a Council, to which were summoned neither York, Salisbury, Warwick, nor any other of the old councillors who were their friends, met at Westminster. This body summoned a Parliament to meet at Leicester, "for the purpose of providing for the safety of the King's person against his enemies." Who would be declared the enemies York and Salisbury could guess without difficulty; and what would be done with these enemies they knew well enough. Imprisonment would be the least evil to be feared at the hands of Somerset.
The fatal moment had come. York was desperate, and resolved to anticipate the vengeance of his adversaries. The moment that the news came, he called out his Yorkshire retainers, and sent to ask the aid of his friends all over England. Salisbury joined him at once with the Neville tenants from his North-Riding estates, and without a moment's delay York and his brother-in-law marched on London. Warwick fell in with them on the way, but no other friend came to their aid, though the Duke of Norfolk was getting together a considerable force on their behalf in East Anglia.
York's little army marched down the Ermine Street; on May 20th he lay at Royston in Cambridgeshire. Beside the two Nevilles he had only one other peer in his company, Lord Clinton, and the knights present were merely the personal followers of York and Salisbury. Except a few of Warwick's Midland tenants, the whole army was composed of the Yorkshire retainers of York and Salisbury, and the chroniclers speak of the whole army as the Northern Men. More troops could have been had by waiting, but the Duke knew that if he delayed, the enemy would also gain time to muster in strength. At present the lords of the King's Council were quite unprepared for war, and the rapid march of York's little army had not allowed them time for preparation.
On the 21st the Duke felt his way southward along the line of the Ermine Street, and lay at Ware. There he and the two Earls indited a laborious apology for their arrival in arms to "their most redoubtedsovereign Lord the King." They were "coming in grace, as true and humble liegemen, to declare and show at large their loyalty," and sought instant admission to the royal presence that they might convince him of the "sinister, malicious, and fraudulent reports of their enemies."
Somerset read clearly enough the meaning of York's march on London, and even before the Duke's manifesto was received, had stirred up the King to have recourse to arms. Many of the great lords of the King's party were in London, but they were surprised by the sudden approach of the enemy, and had brought few followers with them. Thus it came to pass that although the King marched out of Westminster on the 21st with many of the greatest lords of England at his back, he had less than three thousand combatants in his host. With him went forth his half-brother Jasper of Pembroke, the Dukes of Somerset and Buckingham, the Earls of Northumberland, Devon, Stafford, Wiltshire, and Dorset, and Lords Clifford, Dudley, Berners, and Roos, nearly a quarter of the scanty peerage of England. York's manifesto reached the King as he marched through Kilburn, but Somerset sent it back without allowing it to reach the royal hands. That night the army turned off the Roman road to shelter themselves in the houses of Watford; but next morning very early all were afoot again, and long before seven o'clock King Henry and his host reached St. Albans. The royal banner was pitched in St. Peter's Street, at the northern end of the straggling little town, the outlets of the streets were barricaded, and then the troops dispersed to water their horses and prepare breakfast. An hourlater York and his forces appeared, advancing cautiously from the east along the Hertford Road. Hearing of the King's march on Watford, the Duke had left the direct line of advance on London, and set out to seek his enemies. When St. Albans was found to be strongly held, York, Salisbury, and Warwick drew up their four thousand men in battle array, in a field called Keyfield to the east of the town, and paused before attacking. They were hardly arrived before the Duke of Buckingham was seen emerging with a herald from the barricade which closed the eastern outlet of the town. This elderly nobleman was Salisbury's brother-in-law and Warwick's uncle; he was sure of a fair hearing from the insurgents, for he had never been identified with the party of Suffolk and Somerset, and was in arms out of pure loyalty to the King. Arrived in the presence of the rebel leaders, Humphrey of Buckingham demanded the cause of their coming and the nature of their intentions. The Duke of York replied by charging his master's envoy with a message for the royal ears, which began with all manner of earnest protestations of loyalty, proceeded with a vague declaration that the intent of his coming in arms was righteous and true, and ended with a peremptory demand that it would please the King "to deliver up such persons as he might accuse, to be dealt with like as they have deserved." Buckingham brought the message back and repeated it to the King, as he sat in the house of Westley, the Hundredman of the town of St. Albans, whither he had retired after his arrival. When the Duke's demand was made known, for once in his life the saintly King burst out into a fit of passion. "Now I shallknow," he cried, "what traitors are so bold as to raise a host against me in my own land. And by the faith that I owe to St. Edward and the Crown of England, I will destroy them every mother's son, to have example to all traitors who make such rising of people against their King and Governour. And for a conclusion, say that rather than they shall have any lord here with me at this time, I will this day for his sake and in this quarrel stand myself to live or die."
When this answer came to the Duke of York he made no immediate attack on the town, but turned to harangue his troops. He told them that the King refused all reformation or reparation, that the fate of England lay in their hands, and that at the worst an honourable death in the field was better than the shame of a traitor's end, which awaited them if they lost the day. Then he launched the whole body in three divisions against the barricades which obstructed the northern, southern, and eastern exits of the town.
The hour was half-past eleven o'clock, for the interchange of messages between the King and York had consumed four hours of the morning. The royal troops, seeing Buckingham coming and going between the two armies, had believed that an agreement would be patched up without fighting. Many had left their posts, and some had disarmed themselves. When the Duke's men were seen in motion every man ran to arms, and the bells of the abbey and the churches ringing the alarm set monks and townsmen to prayers, in good hope that the shield of their warrior-patron would be stretched over them to ward off the plundering bands from the North, the
Gens Boreæ, gens perfidiæ, gens prona rapinæ,
whose advent always sent Abbot Whethamsted into an ecstasy of bad Latin verses.
The first rush of the Yorkists was beaten off at all the three points which they attacked. Lord Clifford on the London Road "kept the barriers so strongly that the Duke might not in any wise, for all the power he had, break into the streets." Warwick too, who led the left division of the Yorkist host, was repulsed in his attack on the southern exit of the town. But the Earl's quick military eye, now for the first time exercised, had marked that the Lancastrians, though strong enough to hold the barricades, had not enough men to defend the long straggling line of houses which formed the southern extension of the town. Gathering together his repulsed retainers, he broke into the gardens which lay behind the houses of Holywell Street, and bursting open the back-doors of several dwellings, ran out into the main thoroughfare of the town, "between the sign of the Chequers and the sign of the Key, blowing up his trumpets and shouting with a great voice, A Warwick! A Warwick!"—a cry destined to strike terror into Lancastrian ears on many a future battlefield. Warwick's sudden irruption took the defenders of the barricades in the rear, but they faced about and stood to it manfully in the streets. The Lancastrian line was broken, and the Yorkist centre, where Sir Robert Ogle led on the Duke's own followers from the Northern Marches, now burst into the market-place in the centre of the town to aid Warwick.
For one wild half-hour the arrows flew like sleet up and down St. Peter's Street, and the knights fought hand to hand in the narrow roadway. But the Lancastrians were overmatched. The King received an arrowin the neck, and was led bleeding into the house of a tanner. Somerset, the cause of the battle, was stricken dead on the doorstep of an inn named the Castle. Sir Philip Wentworth, the King's standard-bearer, threw down his banner and fled away. James of Ormond the Irish Earl of Wiltshire, and Thorpe the Speaker of the House of Commons, followed him. But the other leaders of the King's army were less fortunate. The Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford were slain. The Earl of Dorset was desperately wounded, and left for dead in the street. The Duke of Buckingham, with an arrow sticking in his face, took sanctuary in the abbey. The Earls of Stafford and Devon, both wounded, and Lord Dudley, yielded themselves prisoners. Only sixscore men had been slain in the King's army, but the larger part were persons of mark, for, as was often the case in that century, the lightly-equipped archers and billmen could fling down their arms and get away with ease, while the knights and nobles, fighting on foot in their cumbrous armour, could not make speed to fly when the day was lost. So it came to pass that of the one hundred and twenty Lancastrians who fell, only forty-eight were common men, the rest were nobles, knights, and squires, or officers of the King's household. On the next day the victors marched on London, vainly hoping, perhaps, that with the death of Somerset and the capture of the King the days of the weak government of Lancaster were over.
The Duke and his followers thought, as yet, of nothing more than a change of ministry. Their conduct shows that they had nothing more in hand than the replacing of the Court party in the great offices of State by personswho should be more in touch with their own views and the will of the nation. The Chancellorship was left in the hands of Archbishop Bourchier, whom the Yorkists felt that they could trust; but the Earl of Wiltshire was replaced as Treasurer by Lord Bourchier, the Archbishop's brother. The Duke of York became Constable; Warwick superseded the dead Somerset as Captain of Calais; Salisbury was made Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster. A little later Warwick's younger brother George Neville was given the wealthy bishopric of Exeter, though he had only just reached his twenty-sixth year. A Parliament summoned in July ratified these appointments, and chose as its Speaker Sir John Wenlock, of whom we shall frequently hear again as one of Warwick's firmest friends and adherents. A strongly-worded oath of allegiance to King Henry was taken by the Duke of York, and all the House of Lords with him, and the new ministry started on its career with favourable prospects. The only trouble for the moment came from an ill-judged attempt in Parliament to fix the responsibility for the "Ill Day of St. Albans" on definite persons. Warwick named Lord Cromwell as one of those most to blame, and when Cromwell gave an angry reply, there sprang up such an altercation between them that men feared a breach of the peace. That night Cromwell borrowed the Earl of Shrewsbury's men-at-arms to guard his house; but Warwick had cooled down and no more came of the quarrel, for the Parliament very wisely concluded to lay all the responsibility for the Civil War on Somerset, who was dead and could not reply.
York's authority in the kingdom was made moresecure for the moment when King Henry fell once again into one of his fits of melancholy madness in October. The Parliament reassembled and appointed the Duke Regent, but on February 25th Henry came to his senses, and at once relieved York of his office. There followed a time of unrest and rumours of war, but for some months longer the Duke succeeded in maintaining his place at the helm. But trouble was always impending. Warwick, whose trained and paid soldiery in the garrison of Calais were the only permanent military force belonging to the Crown, had to come over on several occasions to back his uncle. At one time we hear that York feared to be waylaid on his way to Parliament, and got Warwick with three hundred men "all in jacks or brigandines" to escort him thither, "saying that if he had not come so strong he would have been distressed, but no man knew by whom, for men think verily that there is no man able to undertake any such enterprise."
York was not wrong, however, in thinking that there were those who were ready to risk much to get him out of power. Since Somerset was dead, the leadership of the Court party had fallen into very firm and determined hands, those of Margaret of Anjou, and the Queen had resolved to exercise the unbounded influence that she enjoyed over her husband to make him evict his Yorkist ministers the moment that it seemed safe so to do. For her resolve she had this much excuse, that the new government was at first no more fortunate than the old in enforcing order in the kingdom, for into the period of York's ascendency fell the worst private war that had been seen for a generation. Courtney Earl of Devon and Lord Bonville fell to blows in the West, andfought a battle outside Exeter with four thousand men a side; the Earl won, and signalised his victory by ransacking the cathedral and carrying off several of the canons as prisoners. Yet he was not brought to justice for this abominable sacrilege, even though he was of the party which was opposed to York. But Margaret was not entitled to blame York for the state of the kingdom, for we find that she deliberately went to work to give the Duke trouble, by stirring up foreign enemies against England. A Scotch raid in the summer of 1456 was more than suspected to be due to her intrigues; and it is certain that while the Duke was officially taking the Scots to task in the King's name, the King was disavowing York's war-like despatches in private letters to James the Second. When we know that a year later Margaret was not above setting on the French to ravage the Kentish sea-ports for her own private purposes, we can understand a little of the hatred with which she was followed by the Commons of the south-eastern counties.
CHAPTER VII
WARWICK CAPTAIN OF CALAIS AND ADMIRAL
It was in the four years which lay between the fight of St. Albans and the second outbreak of the Civil War in 1459 that Warwick made his reputation and won his popularity. Up to 1455 he had been known merely as a capable young nobleman who followed in all things the lead of his father Salisbury. He had not as yet been given any independent command, nor trusted alone in any business of importance, though he was already far beyond the age at which many personages of the fifteenth century began to take a prominent part in politics. He was now twenty-seven years old, eleven years older than Henry the Fifth when he took over the government of Wales, nine years older than Edward the Fourth when he won the fight of Mortimer's Cross. There were no signs in Warwick of that premature development which made so many of his contemporaries grown men at sixteen, and worn-out veterans at forty.
Unlike most of his house, Warwick had not been blessed with a large family. Anne Beauchamp had borne him two daughters only, both of them delicate girls who did not live to see their thirtieth year. No male offspring was ever granted him, and it seemed evidentthat the lands of Warwick and Despenser were destined to pass once more into the female line. But the day was far distant when this was to be, and Richard Neville's sturdy frame and constitution,—hisaltitudo animi cum paribus corporis viribus, to quote Polidore Vergil,—promised many a long year of vigorous manhood.
Warwick had already become a prominent figure in English politics, not so much from the breadth of his lands or from the promise of military prowess that he had shown at St. Albans, as from the almost universal popularity which he enjoyed. He was far from being the haughty noble, the Last of the Barons, whom later writers have drawn for us. His contemporaries speak of him rather as the idol of the Commons and the people's friend: "his words were gentle, and he was affable and familiar with all men, and never spoke of his own advancement, but always of the augmentation and good governance of the realm." There never was any peer who was a better lord to his own retainers, nor was there any who bore himself more kindly towards the Commons; hence he won a personal popularity to which his father Salisbury never attained, and which even his uncle of York could not rival.
As a school for a man of action there could have been no better post than the governorship of Calais. The place had been beset by the French ever since the loss of Normandy in 1450, and was never out of danger of a sudden attack. Three times in the last six years considerable armies had marched against it, and had only been turned away by unexpected events in other quarters. Bickering with the French garrisons ofBoulogne and other neighbouring places never ended, even in times of nominal truce. To cope with the enemy the Captain of Calais had a garrison always insufficient in numbers, and generally in a state of suppressed mutiny; for one of the chief symptoms of the evil rule of Suffolk and Somerset had been the impotence of the central government to find money for the regular war-expenses of the realm. The garrison of Calais was perpetually in arrears of pay, and successive governors are found complaining again and again that they were obliged to empty their own pockets to keep the soldiers to their post. Even the town-walls had been allowed to fall into disrepair for want of money to mend them.
Besides his military duties the Captain of Calais had other difficult functions. He lay on the frontier of Flanders, and a great part of the trade between England and the dominions of the house of Burgundy passed through his town, for Calais was the "staple" for that branch of commerce. Hence he had to keep on good terms with the neighbouring Burgundian governors, and also—what was far more difficult—to endeavour to sweep the Straits of Dover clear of pirates and of French privateers, whenever there was not an English fleet at sea. This was no sinecure, for of late English fleets had been rarely seen, and when they did appear had gone home without effecting anything useful. The man who could with a light heart undertake to assume the post of Captain of Calais must have been both able and self-confident.
Warwick held the place from August 1455 to August 1460, and combined with it the post of "Captain to guardthe Sea" from October 1457 to September 1459. His tenure of office was in every way successful. The garrison was brought up to its full strength, and put in good discipline—largely, we may suspect, at the expense of the Earl's own pocket, for after October 1456, when the Duke of York ceased to be Protector, Warwick got little money or encouragement from England. He raised the strength of his troops to about two thousand men, and was then able to assume the offensive against the neighbouring French garrisons. His greatest success was when, in the spring of the third year of his office, he led a body of eight hundred combatants on a daring raid as far as Étaples, forty miles down the coast of Picardy, and took the town together with a fleet of wine-ships from the south of France, which he put up to ransom, and so raised a sum large enough to pay his men for some months. Falling into a disagreement also with the Burgundian governors in Flanders, he made such havoc in the direction of Gravelines and St. Omer that Duke Philip was obliged to strengthen his garrisons there, and finally was glad to consent to a pacification. The negotiations were held in Calais and came to a successful conclusion, for a commercial treaty was concluded with Flanders as well as a mere suspension of arms.
While Warwick lay at Calais he could not pay very frequent visits to England, for French alarms were always abounding. In June 1456, for example, "men said that the siege should come to Calais, for much people had crossed the water of Somme, and great navies were on the sea." Again, in May 1457, another threatened attack caused the Earl to lay in great stores,for which he had to draw on Kent: "so he had the folks of Canterbury and Sandwich before him, and thanked them for their good hearts in victualling of Calais, and prayed them for continuance therein." That those rumours of coming trouble were not all vain was shown a few months later, for a Norman fleet under Peter de Brézé threw four thousand men ashore near Sandwich in August, and the French stormed the town from the land side, held it for a day, and sacked it from garret to cellar. It was this disaster which England owed to Margaret of Anjou, for she had deliberately suggested the time and place of attack to de Brézé, in order to bring discredit on the government of the Duke of York.
It is curious to note how the work of the day of St. Albans was undone, without any violent shock, during the earlier years of Warwick's rule at Calais. The Queen played her game more cautiously than usual. First, York's protectorate was ended, on the excuse that the King, whose mind had failed him again after St. Albans, was now himself once more. Then, eight months later, a great Council was summoned, not at London, where York was too popular, but at Coventry. The meeting was packed with the men-at-arms of the Queen's adherents, and at it King Henry dismissed the two Bourchier brothers, York's firm supporters, from their offices of Chancellor and Treasurer, and replaced them by the Earl of Shrewsbury, a strong adherent of the Court party, and by Wainfleet Bishop of Winchester. It was widely believed that York, who had come to the Council with no knowledge of the Queen's intendedcoup d'état, would have met with an ill end if his kinsman the Duke of Buckingham had not succeeded in aiding himto escape. Of all the offices bestowed as the result of St. Albans fight, Warwick's post at Calais was the only one which was not now forfeited. Probably the Queen and her friends preferred to keep him over-sea as much as possible.
It is a good testimony to the loyalty of the Duke and his friends that they made no stir on their eviction from office. York retired to Wigmore, and for the next year abode quietly upon his estates. Salisbury went to Middleham and remained in the North. Meanwhile the country showed its discontent with the renewed rule of the Queen. Tumultuous gatherings took place in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and again on the Welsh Border, although no leading Yorkist was implicated in them. The temper of London was so discontented that the Queen would not allow the King to approach it for a whole year.
The ascendency of the Earls of Wiltshire, Beaumont, Shrewsbury, Exeter, and the other lords who ruled in the King's name and by the Queen's guidance, proved as unfortunate and as unpopular as any of the other periods during which Margaret's friends were at the helm. Men felt that civil war was destined to break out once more, as soon as York should be pressed too hard and find his patience at an end. Hence general joy was felt when in January 1458 the King, taking the initiative for once, announced that he was about to reconcile all the private grievances of his lords, and invited York, Salisbury, and Warwick, with the rest of their party, to attend a great Council at Westminster. They came, but fearing some snare of the Queen's, came with a numerous following—York with a hundred and forty horse, Salisbury withfour hundred, Warwick with six hundred men of the Calais garrison all apparelled in red jackets emblazoned with the Beauchamp badge of the ragged staff. There was no snare in the King's invitation, and all precautions were taken to prevent affrays. The Yorkist lords and their retainers were lodged within the city, while the Queen's friends, who appeared in great force—the Earl of Northumberland alone brought three thousand men—were provided for in the suburbs. The Mayor of London—Godfrey Bulleyn, Anne Bulleyn's ancestor—with five thousand citizens arrayed in arms kept the streets, to guard against brawling between the retainers of the two parties.
The King at once set forth his purpose of a general pacification, and found York and his friends very ready to fall in with his views. More trouble was required to induce the sons of those who had fallen at St. Albans—the young Somerset, Clifford, and Northumberland—to pardon those on whose swords was their fathers' blood. But the King's untiring efforts produced the desired result. York, Salisbury, and Warwick promised to endow the Abbey of St. Albans with a sum of £45 a year, to be spent in masses for the souls of the slain, and to make large money payments to their heirs—York gave the young Duke of Somerset and his mother five thousand marks, and Warwick made over one thousand to the young Clifford. After this curious bargain had been made, and a proclamation issued to the effect that both the victors and the vanquished of St. Albans had acted as true liegemen of the King, a solemn ceremony of reconciliation was held. The King walked in state to St. Paul's, behind him came the Queen, led by theDuke of York; then followed Salisbury hand in hand with Somerset, Warwick hand in hand with the Duke of Exeter, and after them their respective adherents two and two. The sight must have gladdened the King's kindly heart, but no one save his own guileless self could have supposed that such a reconciliation was final; almost the whole of his train were destined to die by each other's hands. The Queen and Somerset were one day to behead York and Salisbury; Warwick was destined to slay Exeter's son; and so all down the long procession.
As one of the tokens of reconciliation, Warwick was created "Chief Captain to guard the Sea," a post wherein centred the ambition of his unwilling partner in the great procession, the Duke of Exeter. The office was not one with many attractions. The royal navy comprised no more than theGrace Dieuand two or three more large carracks. When a fleet was required, it was made up by requisitioning hastily-armed merchant-vessels from the maritime towns. Of late years, whenever such an array was mustered, the sailors had gone unpaid, and the command had been entrusted to some unskilled leader from the ranks of the Court party. England had entirely ceased to count as a naval power; her coasts were frequently ravaged by French expeditions, such as that which had burnt Sandwich in 1457, and pirates and privateers of all nations swarmed in the Channel.
In his capacity as Captain of Calais, Warwick had been compelled to learn something of the Channel, but we should never have guessed that he had accumulated enough of the seaman's craft to make him a competent admiral. Nevertheless, his doings during the twentymonths of his command at sea entitle him to a respectable place by the side of Blake and Monk and our other inland-bred naval heroes. He not merely acquired enough skill to take the charge of a fleet in one of the rough and ready sea-fights of the day, but actually became a competent seaman. At a pinch, as he showed a few years later, he could himself take the tiller and pilot his ship for a considerable voyage.
The tale of Warwick's first naval venture has been most fortunately preserved to us by the letter of an actor in it.
On Trinity Sunday (May 28th) in the morning [writes John Jernyngan] came tidings unto my Lord of Warwick that there were twenty-eight sail of Spaniards on the sea, whereof sixteen were great ships of forecastle; and then my Lord went and manned five ships of forecastle and three carvells and four pinnaces, and on the Monday we met together before Calais at four of the clock in the morning, and fought together till ten. And there we took six of their ships, and they slew of our men about fourscore and hurt two hundred of us right sore. And we slew of them about twelvescore, and hurt a five hundred of them. It happed that at the first boarding of them we took a ship of three hundred tons, and I was left therein and twenty-three men with me. And they fought so sore that our men were fain to leave them. Then came they and boarded the ship that I was in, and there was I taken, and was prisoner with them six hours, and was delivered again in return for their men that were taken at the first. As men say, there has not been so great a battle upon the sea these forty winters. And, to say sooth, we were well and truly beaten: so my Lord has sent for more ships, and is like to fight them again in haste.
On Trinity Sunday (May 28th) in the morning [writes John Jernyngan] came tidings unto my Lord of Warwick that there were twenty-eight sail of Spaniards on the sea, whereof sixteen were great ships of forecastle; and then my Lord went and manned five ships of forecastle and three carvells and four pinnaces, and on the Monday we met together before Calais at four of the clock in the morning, and fought together till ten. And there we took six of their ships, and they slew of our men about fourscore and hurt two hundred of us right sore. And we slew of them about twelvescore, and hurt a five hundred of them. It happed that at the first boarding of them we took a ship of three hundred tons, and I was left therein and twenty-three men with me. And they fought so sore that our men were fain to leave them. Then came they and boarded the ship that I was in, and there was I taken, and was prisoner with them six hours, and was delivered again in return for their men that were taken at the first. As men say, there has not been so great a battle upon the sea these forty winters. And, to say sooth, we were well and truly beaten: so my Lord has sent for more ships, and is like to fight them again in haste.
Such a hard-fought struggle against superior numbers was almost as honorable to Warwick's courage andenterprise as a victory, and the indomitable pluck which he displayed seems to have won the hearts of the sailors, who were ever after, down to the day of his death, faithful to his cause. But his later undertakings were fortunate as well as bold.
The best known of them took place in the spring of 1458. Sweeping the Channel with fourteen small vessels, Warwick came on five great ships—"three great Genoese carracks, and two Spaniards far larger and higher than the others." For two days Warwick fought a running fight with the enemy, "hard and long, for he had no vessel that could compare in size with theirs." Finally he took three of the carracks and put the other two to flight. Nearly a thousand Spaniards were slain, and the prisoners were so many that the prisons of Calais could hardly contain them. The prizes were richly laden, and their contents were valued at no less than £10,000. The markets of Calais and Kent were for the moment so charged with Southern goods that a shilling bought that year more than two would have bought the year before.
This fight naturally made Warwick popular with merchants and sailors, but it was less liked at Westminster; for although at odds with the King of Castile, England was not at this moment engaged in hostilities with the Genoese, though there was a dispute in progress about the ill-treatment of some British merchants by them. Another feat of Warwick's, however, was to get him into worse trouble. Early in the autumn of the same year he had an engagement in the Straits of Dover with a great fleet of Hanseatic vessels from Lubeck, who were sailing southward to France. From them he tookfive ships which he brought into Calais. Now England had signed a commercial treaty with the Hansa only two years before, and this engagement was a flagrant violation of it. It led Warwick's enemies on the Continent to call him no better than a pirate. What was his plea of justification we do not know. It may be, as some have alleged, that he mistook the Germans at first for Spaniards or Frenchmen. It may be that he fell out with them on some question as to the rights of the English admiral in the narrow seas, such as gave constant trouble in later centuries, and were the forerunners of the famous quarrels over the "right of search" and "the right of salute."
But about Warwick's capture of the Hanseatic vessels there was no doubt. A month later a board was appointed, consisting of Lord Rivers, Sir Thomas Kyrriel, and seven other members, to investigate the matter.
On November 8th Warwick came over from Calais to lay his defence before the King and Council. Henry received him courteously enough, and there was much sage talk about the marches of Picardy, "but the Earl could judge well enough by the countenances of many who sat in the Council Chamber that they bore him hatred, so that he bethought him of the warnings that his father had lately written him about the Queen's friends."
Next day when Warwick again came into the royal presence, the Council had hardly begun when a great tumult arose in the court, "the noise was heard over the whole palace, and every one was calling for Warwick." What had happened was, that the retainers of Somerset and Wiltshire had fallen on the Earl's attendants andwere making an end of them. Warwick ran down to see what was the matter, but the moment that he appeared in the court he was set on by a score of armed men, and it was only by the merest chance that he was able to cut his way down to the water-stairs, and leap with two of his men into a boat. He escaped with his life to the Surrey side, but his followers were not so lucky; three were slain and many wounded.
Warwick declared that the whole business had been a deliberate plot to murder him, and he was probably right; but the lords of the Queen's party maintained that the affray had been a chance medley between the two bands of retainers, and that the first blow had been struck by one of Warwick's men. But whatever was the truth about the matter, Warwick could not be blamed if he swore never to come to Court again without armed men at his heels. The sequel of the quarrel shows what had really been intended. Next day the Queen and her friends represented to the King that the quarrel had been due to brawling on Warwick's part, and procured an order for committing him to the Tower. Warned of this by a secret friend in the Council, the Earl rode off in haste to Warwick Castle, and sent to his father and the Duke of York. The three held a conference, in which they resolved that at the next hostile move of their enemies they would repeat the line of conduct which had been so successful four years before—they would muster their retainers and deliver the King by force out of the hands of the Court party.
Meanwhile Warwick retired to Calais, where he called together the officers of the garrison, and the Mayor andaldermen, set forth to them the attempt upon his life, and begged them to be true to him and guard him against the machination of his enemies.
The next attack of the Queen on the followers of York was long in coming; nine months elapsed between the affray at Westminster and the final outbreak of Civil War.
Meanwhile [says the chronicler] the realm of England was out of all good governance, as it had been many days before; for the King was simple, and led by covetous counsel, and owed more than he was worth. His debts encreased daily, but payment was there none; for all the manors and lordships that pertained to the Crown the King had given away, so that he had almost nought to live on. And such impositions as were put on the people, as taxes, tallages, and 'fifteenths,' all were spent in vain, for the King held no household and maintained no wars. So for these misgovernances the hearts of the people were turned from them that had the land in governance, and their blessing was turned to cursing. The Queen and her affinity ruled the realm as they liked, gathering riches innumerable. The officers of the realm, and specially the Earl of Wiltshire, the Treasurer, for to enrich themselves pilled the poor people, and disherited rightful heirs, and did many wrongs. The Queen was sore defamed, and many said that he that was called the Prince was not the King's son, but gotten in adultery.
Meanwhile [says the chronicler] the realm of England was out of all good governance, as it had been many days before; for the King was simple, and led by covetous counsel, and owed more than he was worth. His debts encreased daily, but payment was there none; for all the manors and lordships that pertained to the Crown the King had given away, so that he had almost nought to live on. And such impositions as were put on the people, as taxes, tallages, and 'fifteenths,' all were spent in vain, for the King held no household and maintained no wars. So for these misgovernances the hearts of the people were turned from them that had the land in governance, and their blessing was turned to cursing. The Queen and her affinity ruled the realm as they liked, gathering riches innumerable. The officers of the realm, and specially the Earl of Wiltshire, the Treasurer, for to enrich themselves pilled the poor people, and disherited rightful heirs, and did many wrongs. The Queen was sore defamed, and many said that he that was called the Prince was not the King's son, but gotten in adultery.
The name of Wiltshire, "the best-favoured knight in the land, and the most feared of losing his beauty," was united with that of Margaret by many tongues, and the Queen's behaviour was certainly curious; for instead of staying with her husband, she was continually absent from his side, busied in all manner of political intrigues, and only visiting King Henry when some grant or signature had to be wrung out of him.All the summer of 1459 she was in Lancashire and Cheshire "allying to her the knights and squires in those parts for to have their benevolence, and held open household among them, and made her son give a livery blazoned with a swan to all the gentlemen of the country, trusting through their strength to make her son King; for she was making privy means to some lords of England for to stir the King to resign the crown to his son; but she could not bring her purpose about."
The exact details of the outbreak of the war are hard to arrange chronologically. Writs were being sent about by the Queen in the King's name ordering every one to be ready to assemble "with as many men as they might, defensibly arrayed," as early as May. But no such muster seems to have taken place, and it was not till September that a blow was struck. In the middle of that month an army was raised in the Midlands with which the King took the field. A summons was then sent to Salisbury, who lay at Sherif Hoton in his northern lands, bidding him come to London. Remembering what had happened to his son on his last visit to the King, Salisbury went not, but took the summons, combined with the mustering of the King's forces, as an alarm of war. Collecting some three thousand of his Yorkshire tenants, he marched off to seek his brother-in-law York, who was lying at Ludlow. At the same time he sent messengers to his son at Calais, bidding him cross over at once to join him.