The War of the Roses (4 page)

The armed attack on the royal army as it advanced north against the defiant York and his allies on 22 May 1455 turned political confrontation into bloodshed. The King himself seems to have hoped to negotiate a truce with the defiant rebels as in 1452, not least as his army outnumbered theirs, and replaced the confrontational royal commander/ ‘Constable' Somerset with the more conciliatory Duke of Buckingham. It seems to have been Buckingham's advice to move on into St Albans as originally intended–and a herald was then sent to York to order him to withdraw or face forfeiture for treason, which he ignored. The only cleric with the King and so available to launch a mediation-effort was the Bishop of Carlisle, a Percy and ‘court' ally –would Bourchier have been able to calm York down, or was it a hopeless cause with Somerset clearly still in the King's confidence? The talks that followed this failed bluff collapsed, with one source claiming that York demanded the handover of his enemies. The Duke's messages may have been intercepted before they reached Henry, and the subsequent pro-York Parliament blamed Somerset and his ally Thorpe for the battle. But in any case, Henry referred York's envoy (the Duke of Norfolk's official herald) to Buckingham for a reply, rather than mediating himself, and he took up his position in warlike mode by his standard in the town centre.
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York and his brother-in-law the Earl of Salisbury now launched an attack on the King's camp in the centre of St Albans. It was not so much a traditional battle as a series of assaults by York's troops on the barricaded streets around the royal camp, and a succession of skirmishes ended with the principal court lords in flight and Henry, hustled from house to house, being captured. Somerset was deliberately cut down as he tried to hold out at an inn, and the Earl of Northumberland–as the head of the house of Percy, principal northern rival of the Earl of Salisbury's Nevilles–and Lord Clifford were killed in more dubious circumstances. The Duke of Buckingham, who had taken sanctuary in the abbey, was arrested in violation of its right of sanctuary but spared and the Earl of Wiltshire (the new royal appointee as Treasurer) escaped; most of the forty or so royal troops killed were from the King's household and so would have been defending him and his standard. Other royal troops were despoiled by the victors, an example of blatant illegality and disrespect to men who had been defending their sovereign.
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The overall impression given is one of York's arrogance and disregard for politic moderation–a problem for his ‘image', which was to recur in 1460. Henry was now escorted to London, with official honour but effectively as a prisoner, and York resumed his Protectorate as the King had another bout of his illness.
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Bourchier continued as Chancellor, and Wiltshire was replaced as Treasurer by the Chancellor's brother Lord Bourchier (who was to continue off and on in this role under Yorkist regimes to his death in 1483 so was clearly capable and trustable). It was the first time that a king had been made prisoner of a political faction since Richard II had had to surrender the Tower to the ‘Lords Appellant' in 1387; before that Edward II had been captured (not in battle) in 1326 and Henry III had been captured in battle at Lewes in 1264. The personal ‘targeting' of the victors' foes was worse than on either of these occasions; the ‘Appellants' had at least used (rigged) legal procedures. This time the physical incapacity of the sovereign made a formal regency by his captor legally defendable. But how long would this last, and what of the situation if or when Henry recovered? Was his mental condition likelier to save him from deposition (as a useful puppet and guarantor of legality for whoever held real power) or lead to his removal?

 

(ii) After St Albans–1455 to 1460

Henry's reputation as a saintly innocent uninterested in politics and above the sordid magnate struggles only followed his mental illness, appearing in the mid-1450s. He was regarded as being seriously complicit in his senior ministers' abuses of authority by at least some of those involved in the popular uprisings of 1449–50, from the evidence of threats to depose him–particularly for endeavouring to save Suffolk from justice by letting him escape abroad. But after his illness the King's reputation improved, and his decline in health and mental capacity was only sporadic. It appears that he was genuinely ill when the York-organized Parliament that followed his capture at St Albans resumed the ‘Protectorate', rather than being deprived unwillingly of power. The terms of the regency were as they had been during his first illness, and significantly made provision for it continuing until his son was of age; though he was probably not catatonic as reference was made to consulting him about matters touching his person.
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He may have suffered delayed shock after his first exposure to battle in the streets of St Albans, in which he received a minor wound. But he was well enough in February 1456 to be brought into Parliament by various lords who opposed a controversial act of ‘resumption' (cancellation of royal land- grants) put forward by York. This meeting could be seen as being as politically biased as the assembly that the royalists had summoned for May 1455, but in the opposite, ‘Yorkist' cause, as only twenty-seven out of fifty-three peers summoned turned up to the first session of Parliament in July 1455 and forty-five out of a hundred summoned turned up to the second in December. On the second occasion the absentees were sent threats of what would happened if they did not attend the third session in January.
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A substantial part of the political ‘nation' must have seen the meeting as illegal–or regarded their participation as too risky as a restored royalist government could condemn them later for attending. This was a threat to the stability of the new government, though its vigour in setting up committees to take control of various aspects of governance, assert Duke Humphrey's innocence of all charges in 1447, and ‘resume' royal grants of lands to ‘Somerset faction' favourites need not be written off as merely opportunistic.
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The King's absence from Parliament in November was probably due to illness rather than York preventing him from attending, though York secured the useful Parliamentary ordinance that his new, second Protectorate should be terminable by the King and lords in Parliament not by the King alone so he was secure from arbitrary royal displeasure.
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The restriction of financial grants to the Queen and absence of any to the King's half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor (all future arch-foes) were, however, provocative. So was the drastic demand in the second planned Act of ‘resumption' of past royal grants that anyone who accepted a new grant in defiance of it should be indicted for breaching the Statute of Provisors and fined1000 marks.
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Henry was able to use his authority to veto the controversial Act of Resumption and cancel the grant of the Protectorate in a personal appearance in Parliament in February 1456. Apparently, the majority of lords opposed to the Act brought him in to overrule York–a sign of the latter's overweening over-confidence.
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Without this, would the Protectorate have lasted much longer or would York's enemies have been able to undermine it anyway as the King recovered his wits? Although Henry was probably prompted he was clearly seen by all to be capable of a formal role in governance. His physical capacities were probably limited thereafter, however, and he spent long periods of the next few years away from the dangers of unruly London with his Queen taking the lead in building up her clientele in the north Midlands. He spent much of his time visiting monasteries, and significantly it was the Queen (whose castle at Kenilworth was his main secular residence) who took part in a ceremonial ‘entry' to Coventry.
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The withdrawal of the court from the London area was prolonged (three-and- a-half years) and unprecedented for a mediaeval English sovereign resident in England. But was it prompted by a French queen used to Valois practices of long periods of residence at large chateaux away from the capital? Special arrangements were made to provide Westminster ‘central' funds for the court, and more were raised by use (or abuse?) of the Crown's hereditary revenues–as was to be done again in 1629–40 with similar results. There was no Parliament, perhaps due to the use York had made of the one in 1455 and the death of the court's effective ‘Parliamentary manager' Somerset. While the French mounted raids on the Kent coast, as in 1377, the government made no effective response–despite the levying of archers for war in 1453. There were apparently paid troops in existence in 1457, as after 1459 the Yorkists were to allege they had been raised to terrorize the King's subjects.
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But no more was heard of endeavouring to regain the King's French dominions, even in Bordeaux. Possibly, the main royalist military preoccupation was fear of another rising by York as in 1452 and 1455–particularly after the blatant dispossession of Carmarthen Castle and imprisonment of the King's local lieutenant, Edmund Tudor (the new Earl of Richmond), by York's allies Sir Walter Devereux and Sir William Herbert in August 1456.
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This incident led to Edmund's death–the removal of one major future ‘prop' of the House of Lancaster and the resulting fatherless upbringing of his son Henry (VII), with possible long-term psychological effects on the ultra-‘insecure' founder of the House of Tudor. The semi-mutinous Yorkist allies in the southern Welsh Marches could easily form the nucleus of a new rebel army. However, at first York was still recognized as the King's principal councillor and military ‘stand-in', in which capacity he was able to take a royal expedition north to Yorkshire in summer 1456 to force the invading James II of Scotland to withdraw from Northumberland. Also, his wife's nephew Warwick was now finally admitted to his governorship at Calais by the mutinous garrison, by royal command.
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The eventual dismissal of Lord Chancellor Archbishop Bourchier, half-brother of the relatively conciliatory court magnate Buckingham, and other York-appointed ministers was apparently the work of the Queen.
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She was also accused of wanting to deal with York at the Council meeting of October 1456 and being stopped by Buckingham. The meeting of a ‘great council' at Coventry in 1457 may have seen another requirement of York to swear an oath of loyalty and an appeal from Buckingham to make this the last time York would be pardoned for his part in unnamed disturbances, though this is uncertain.
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Parliament did not have to meet for over three years due to the customs and subsidies having been given to Henry for life. Possibly this abeyance was used by the Queen's faction as a means to avoid having to summon York's allies to any potentially problematic mass-meeting, and hence the French naval raid on Sandwich in August 1457 did not lead to a response. Only court-allied magnates were allowed onto a Commission of ‘oyer and terminer' into the Devereux-Herbert activities in South Wales during Henry's progress to Hereford in summer 1457.
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In this atmosphere, is it any wonder that York chose to defy the court's moves to arraign him in 1459? The King's only personal intervention in the rising ill-trust was the well-intentioned but politically naïve ‘Love-Day' he organized at St Paul's Cathedral in March 1458. This followed a potentially dangerous meeting of the great lords in London, which saw York's faction assembled at Blackfriars, near his residence at Baynard's Castle, and Somerset's son and successor Earl Henry and the heirs of the similarly murdered Northumberland and Clifford encamped at the White Friars in Fleet Street while mediators shuttled between them.
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There was an evident danger of a brawl between their followers turning to something worse, with the Somerset faction seeking revenge for the killings at St Albans. Persuading the principal political rivals to attend the church service together and hold hands in public was, as might have been expected, a polite gesture of goodwill to the King by his reluctant senior subjects, which solved nothing. In practical terms, local land-disputes (such as that between the Earl of Warwick, York's nephew, and the Beauforts over the lordship of Glamorgan and the Courtenay vs Bonville feud in the West Country) continued unabated.
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Disarming the rival magnates in the counties required a bolder king than Henry–who had no personal army anyway except the garrison at Calais.

Nor did Henry manage to secure an even nominally stable government involving men from both factions, with a division of patronage that might have temporarily bought off the great lords. Given his mental weakness, he would have needed a determined and non-partisan queen to effect this–if it was possible at all. If a ‘centre party' existed its logical leader was the Church under the new Lord Chancellor installed by York in 1455, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier–closely related to both York and the Beauforts. The distribution of senior offices to pro-York figures in 1455 was not immediately reversed after Henry resumed his powers in February 1456; nor was York's faction removed from the Council. This opened an opportunity for mediation, not to settlement–the blood-grudges from St Albans were probably too deeply felt for that. Even if the Queen was cautious for a year or so, the well-armed northern heirs of York's principal 1455 victims (the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford) would seek revenge. Crucially, the combination of personal revenge and defending their estates from local pro-York rivals provided them as a ready-made nucleus for a royalist ‘ultra' faction. But Henry did nothing to prevent the subsequent deposition of the pro-York Chancellor Bourchier, and other ministers in favour of more ‘reliable' figures, and his only possible political initiatives were connected to the abortive Anglo-French peace-embassies. He was still supposed to be furious with the ‘treacherous' Duke Philip of Burgundy for violating his oath to him in defecting to Charles VII in 1435; thus a French defector, the Duke of Alençon, received no royal support when he arrived at court in 1456 to ask for aid against Charles VII. Instead, Henry complained that both kings' vassals were too treacherous.
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Had any expedition been planned against either Charles or Duke Philip, York was the obvious leader –Somerset was too young–but the (French) Queen would not exactly support this boost for his position. However, the story that Margaret encouraged the French attack on Sandwich, by her 1460–1 ally Admiral Pierre de Brezé, to embarrass York is probably incorrect.
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