Wars of the Roses (61 page)

Louis XI had been quick to take advantage of the political confusion in England, and had made public his intention of allying himself to the House of Lancaster. In December, in response to his invitation, Margaret left Bar and travelled to Tours to see him. At the French court she had an emotional reunion with her father, and Louis himself extended a warm welcome to her, assuring her that the restoration of Henry VI would be one of his prime concerns.

News of events in France prompted unfounded rumours in England that the Queen was at Harfleur with an invasion fleet, ready to set sail. In fact, she was still at Tours, discussing strategies with Louis and her relatives. Soon, she was writing to her supporters in England that they should hold themselves in readiness to rise against the Yorkists, for the time was fast approaching when King Henry would come into his own again.

B
y February 1470 it was clear to Warwick that the King would do nothing to redress his grievances, and the Earl was growing desperate. Again, he began to intrigue with Clarence, both of them resolving that this time they would not be satisfied with anything less than the deposition of the King and the elevation of Clarence to the throne. Warwick must have realised that Clarence was unstable and could not be counted upon to restore him to his former power, but the only alternative was Henry VI, and Warwick still had no wish to ally himself with Margaret of Anjou, even if she were willing: she was even less likely to allow him to enjoy his former dominance at court once her husband had been restored.

Warwick’s strategy would be to instigate a rebellion against the King. Then, while Edward was preoccupied with suppressing it, he would enlist the help of King Louis to depose him. He hoped the rebellion would lead to an armed confrontation in which the King would be defeated and easily overthrown, or even killed.

No sooner was the plan conceived than Warwick began to put it into action, using all the resources at his disposal – wealth, territorial influence and the weight of his formidable personality. Again, he used the old tactic of exploiting the grievances of the commons to effect a popular rising, targeting the lower orders and the gentry, who had always supported him, rather than the nobility, who had not. Predictably, it was the commons who responded to his propaganda.

By late February, as Edward IV worked conscientiously to re-establish himself, Warwick and Clarence had become involved with certain disaffected gentlemen of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, men of Lancastrian sympathies who heartily resented the Yorkist king and his onerous taxes. The chief of these was Robert, Lord Welles and
Willoughby. Warwick did not find it difficult to encourage these men and their tenants to rise on the basis of their local grievances and with the aim of restoring Henry VI to the throne, nor did Welles and other leaders have any trouble in getting others to join them.

However, early in March the King summoned Lord Welles, his brother-in-law, Thomas de la Lande, and Sir Thomas Dymoke to London to receive pardons for their part in the previous uprising. Fearing Edward’s displeasure, they all obeyed his summons. In the meantime, Clarence arranged that Sir Robert Welles, the son of Lord Welles, should lead the rebels in his father’s absence, then himself rode to London, saying that he would speak in Lord Welles’s favour and prevent the King from marching north to confront Sir Robert. Yet when Clarence arrived in London on 4 March he did neither of these things.

On that day Sir Robert Welles arranged for a summons to arms, signed by Warwick and Clarence, to be posted on church doors in the county of Lincoln. All able-bodied men were commanded to attend Sir Robert, fully armed, on Ranby Hawe, seven miles north of Horncastle, on 7 March in order to resist the King who, it was alleged, would be coming north to punish the commons for their involvement in riots the previous year.

As soon as Lord Welles had departed for London, a Yorkist knight, Sir Thomas Burgh, had destroyed his house and taken all his goods and livestock. This incensed Lancastrian sympathisers in the region, and 30,000 of them answered Sir Robert’s summons, crying, ‘King Henry!’ and shouting derision at King Edward. At the same time, Sir John Conyers, Lord Scrope of Bolton and Lord FitzWalter were orchestrating a rising in Yorkshire, ostensibly in protest at the King’s failure to restore Henry Percy to the earldom of Northumberland.

On 6 March the King left London and went to Waltham Abbey in Essex, where the next day he was informed of Sir Robert’s proclamation and told that a great army was assembling in Lincolnshire for the purpose of restoring Henry VI. Edward summoned his captains and told them to begin recruiting, then he sent for Lord Welles and Dymoke to join him. He did not send for Clarence because he had not yet learned that the Duke was one of the prime movers in the rebellion.

On the 8th the King arrived at Royston, whence he issued commissions of array to Clarence and Warwick, who had both written to offer their help in suppressing the revolt. The next day Edward was in Huntingdon, raising an army which was to muster at Grantham on the 12th. Clearly, he was expecting a French invasion:
‘We be ascertained’, he wrote, ‘that our rebels and outward enemies intend in haste to arrive in this our realm.’ Then he rode towards Lincolnshire, ordering Lord Welles to write to his son and his tenants saying that they should surrender to the King as their sovereign lord, or else the King had vowed that Welles should lose his head.

With the King on the march, displaying no trace of the lethargy that had proved so damaging before Edgecote, very few people joined the rebels; even supporters of Warwick and Clarence refrained. On the nth the King came to Fotheringhay, whence he issued more commissions of array, commanding that his lieges rendezvous at Stamford. Soon afterwards his scouts reported that the rebels had passed Grantham and were forty miles off, moving towards Leicester where Warwick had promised to meet them with 20,000 men. The Earl would then wait with them in the hope that the King would move north, in which case the Yorkshire rebels would advance on him, while Warwick and Sir Robert would close in from behind in a pincer movement, thus blocking Edward’s retreat south.

The King had no intention of moving any further north. Instead, at dawn on the 12th he led his own force to join up with the greater one awaiting him at Stamford. Here he learned that Sir Robert’s army was five miles west of the town, at Empingham in Rutland, and ordered his vanguard to advance on them, taking their artillery.

Just then, a messenger arrived with a letter from Warwick and Clarence, promising that they would bring reinforcements and join the King at Leicester that evening. This was obviously a trap: the reinforcements were for Sir Robert, and Edward resolved to march west to do battle with Welles at once. Before he went, however, in order to forestall any desertions, his lords advised him to show the world what happened to those who committed treason against their king. Edward ordered that Lord Welles be summarily decapitated, which was done before the incredulous eyes of the waiting soldiers. Then a herald was dispatched to Sir Robert Welles to inform him of his father’s execution and offer him the King’s mercy if he would submit. Sir Robert, horrified at the news, refused.

The King’s army confronted the rebels in a field at Empingham and struck so swiftly that Warwick and Clarence had no time to bring reinforcements. Edward had with him an impressive array of artillery, and when he used the full force of it upon the rebels, the casualties were such that the peasants in Sir Robert’s army panicked and fled. Some left the field in such haste that they threw off their surcoats as they ran, which led to the battle being named ‘Losecoat Field’. The rebels had had no chance against the King’s seasoned and
well-armed troops and the magnates’ experienced retainers. Although many of the rebels were wearing Clarence’s livery, some were so bewildered that they were uncertain as to whom they were fighting for, and in the heat of the battle cried, ‘King Henry!’ instead of ‘Warwick!’ or ‘Clarence!’ Waurin says that most of the fleeing men would have been slaughtered in the rout had not the King ordered his men to stop the pursuit. Sir Robert Welles, Sir Thomas de la Lande and other rebel captains were captured. Meanwhile, among the corpses that littered the battlefield was found one that was identified as a servant of Clarence, and on the body were discovered letters from the Duke and Warwick confirming their part in the rebellion.

Later that day Edward rode in triumph back to Stamford. His victory ensured that he remained in control of London, East Anglia and the East Midlands, while in Yorkshire Sir John Conyers’s uprising had collapsed in the wake of the royal victory. On 13 March, prompted by his knowledge of Warwick’s true intentions, the King issued a proclamation forbidding any of his lieges to array their men.

When he arrived in Grantham the next day, the captured rebel leaders were brought before him and publicly confessed their faults. They also revealed that Warwick and Clarence had initiated the rising and promised to aid them against him. Sir Robert Welles kept repeating that they had told him several times that they meant to make Clarence king. All three were condemned to be beheaded: de la Lande and Dymoke were executed on the 15th at Grantham, Welles on the 19th at Doncaster. The King ordered an official account of the rebellion and a transcript of Sir Robert’s confession to be distributed and read throughout his kingdom.

On 13 March the King issued an urgent summons to Warwick and Clarence to present themselves before him ‘in humble wise’ with only a few retainers to answer grave charges of treason. Warwick and Clarence ignored his summons and, having recruited more men at Coventry, marched north via Burton-on-Trent, Derby and Chesterfield, which they reached on the 18th, intending to orchestrate another rebellion. As they rode, they sent ahead messengers with proclamations demanding that the men of Yorkshire rise in arms and join them on pain of death.

The King, too, rode north, having sent a further abortive summons to Warwick and Clarence from Newark. In Doncaster, he received a message from them demanding his assurance of their safety should they come into his presence; angrily, he refused to give it. Two days later, he drew up his army in battle order; according to the Paston Letters, ‘it was said that there were never seen in England
so many goodly men, and so well arrayed’. The royal army marched south towards Chesterfield, then discovered that Warwick had sent his scouts ahead to secure lodgings for the night at Rotherham, so the King advanced there, only to find the place deserted. He guessed that the Earl had deliberately lured him there, and later discovered that Yorkshire rebels under Sir John Conyers and Lord Scrope had planned an ambush in the vicinity, but had not arrived in time. Warwick, meanwhile, had swung west towards Manchester, hoping to enlist the aid of Lord Stanley and his Lancashire levies and so march with them to join the Yorkshire rebels. Stanley, however, refused to commit himself.

Warwick was in favour of turning back at night and marching east to confront the King in battle, but the Earl of Shrewsbury, one of his captains, suddenly deserted with a large force, and left the Earl with no alternative but flight. Shrewsbury’s reinforcements joined Edward, who temporarily abandoned his pursuit of Warwick and Clarence and rode into York to ‘refresh and victual’ his men and receive the submission of Scrope and other rebels, who all confirmed that Warwick and Clarence had been behind the northern rebellions.

Edward was worried that the powerful John Neville, Earl of Northumberland, who had hitherto remained loyal, would desert him for his brother, Warwick, and on 25 March he deprived him of the earldom of Northumberland and restored it to young Henry Percy, whose father had fallen at Towton. This found favour with the people of the north, and was plainly intended to counterbalance the power of the Nevilles, who were the Percies’ greatest rivals in the region. The King created John Neville Marquess of Montague to compensate him for the loss of the earldom, but failed to endow him with any lands, leaving him unable to support the dignities of his new rank. Angrily he complained that Edward had given him ‘a magpie’s nest’, and even the creation of his son George as Duke of Bedford did not mollify him.

Edward had made a grave misjudgement, but matters were seemingly put right when he offered the hand of his eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, for Bedford, knowing that if anything should happen to him Montague would then ensure that Elizabeth’s right to succeed him would be upheld. The King was determined at all costs to prevent Clarence and Warwick’s daughter Isabel from being crowned, and knew he could rely not just on Montague’s loyalty but also on his self-interest, for what man could resist the prospect of his son becoming a king?

On 24 March, the King issued a proclamation denouncing both Warwick and Clarence as traitors and ‘great rebels’ and putting a
price on their heads. He then issued a further summons ordering them to appear before him by 28 March at the latest or be dealt with as traitors. On the 27th he left York with his host to hunt them down, marching south via Nottingham and Coventry.

Warwick knew he was in too weak a position to oppose the King. He and Clarence rode hastily to Warwick Castle, collected the Countess of Warwick and her daughter Anne and left, making as much speed as they could for the south. On 18 March, Isabel of Clarence had gone to Exeter and lodged in the bishop’s palace, and Warwick planned that they should join her there and then flee to Calais, which he hoped would have remained loyal to him, and where he might be able to raise support. First, however, they went to Southampton, where one of Warwick’s great ships, the
Trinity
, was expected to dock shortly. However, the King had anticipated their arrival, and had sent ahead Lords Rivers and Howard, who captured not only the
Trinity
but also every other ship owned by Warwick that was in port, along with all their crews. Warwick and Clarence were forced to continue on to Exeter by land, where they were reunited with the Duchess Isabel, then nine months pregnant, commandeered a ship and on 3 April put to sea.