Wars of the Roses (65 page)

The Parliament roll for this assembly no longer survives, yet its business is recorded in other contemporary documents. The Great Chronicle of London states that ‘King Edward was disinherited with all his children, and proclaimed throughout the city as usurper of the crown. Gloucester, his younger brother, was pronounced a traitor, and both were attainted.’ The attainders passed since 1461 on Lancastrian nobles were reversed. Jasper Tudor was formally restored to the earldom of Pembroke and was given back his property as well as being handsomely rewarded by the King with other estates, including the substantial lands formerly owned by Lord Herbert in South Wales and the Welsh Marches. Other Lancastrian nobles who were restored ‘in blood’ to their inheritance included Exeter, Somerset and Ormonde. Parliament recognised Warwick as Lieutenant and Protector of the Realm and the King, with Clarence as his associate, and dismantled much of the machinery of Yorkist government. Lord Montague received a royal
pardon for his earlier loyalty to Edward IV after protesting that it was prompted by fear.

Clarence had gained very little so far from supporting the readeption of Henry VI; no doubt he had believed he would enjoy more political power with Warwick holding the reins of government, but there had been little sign of that as yet. Nor did he have much hope of ever succeeding to the throne. Now he also stood to lose some of his estates as a result of the reversal of attainders on Lancastrian peers, and while Warwick had promised to compensate him for their loss, Clarence was realist enough to wonder whether the Earl would be able to keep that promise.

On 3 December, in a great assembly at Tours, Louis XI formally repudiated his treaty of friendship with Burgundy, denouncing it as void by virtue of Charles’s alliance with Edward IV. This hostile move heralded the commencement of war between Louis and his powerful vassal, which was what Louis had been intending all along. His aim now was to crush Burgundy with England’s help, and he wasted no time in ordering his armies to advance into Burgundian territory. Only then did he send his ambassador to discuss what form England’s aid would take, thus presenting Warwick with a
fait accompli
.

Before the French ambassadors embarked for England, they had an audience with the Prince of Wales, who agreed to affix his seal to an indenture whereby he agreed to make war on Burgundy until every last part of the Duke’s territories were conquered, and to persuade his father the King to ratify this undertaking.

Once in England, the ambassadors began pressing Warwick to fulfil his part of the agreement with Louis, offering him Burgundy’s counties of Holland and Zeeland as bait; Louis knew that Warwick wanted a principality of his own so desperately that, against this, the objections of others could not prevail. Both the ambassadors and the Earl, though, had great difficulty in persuading the English magnates and merchants that an alliance with France would be more advantageous than the one Edward IV had already made with Burgundy. No ships were leaving the Port of London or docking there, and English goods could not be exported abroad. The last thing the London merchants wanted at this time was an alliance with France. Nor did the common people, for the treaty with Burgundy had brought new prosperity to England and provided her with a lucrative market for her goods. They saw no reason to jeopardise it. If, then, Warwick was determined to honour his agreement with
Louis he would have to dissociate himself from the interests of the English people.

Until now, Charles the Bold had shown himself cordial to the restored Henry VI, but news of Louis’s repudiation of their alliance made him reconsider his position and wonder if it would be more profitable to support the Yorkists, who had always shown themselves friendly towards him.

The Pope had still not granted a dispensation for the marriage of Prince Edward and Anne Neville; Louis’s patience had long since been exhausted, and in desperation he had sent the Grand Vicar of Bayeux to procure one from the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. This arrived early in December, at which time the King moved to Amboise where the wedding would take place. On 13 December, the Prince was married to Anne Neville by the Grand Vicar of Bayeux in a sumptuous ceremony in the palace chapel which was attended by a host of members of the royal houses of France and Anjou, as well as the Duke of Clarence.

There is good reason to believe that Queen Margaret had forbidden her son to consummate the marriage. Should Warwick be toppled – and his position in England was by no means secure – Anne Neville would no longer be a fit wife for the heir to Lancaster, and if the union had not been consummated an annulment could easily be obtained, leaving the Prince free to marry a more suitable bride. In 1472, Anne was described by Croyland as a ‘maiden’ or ‘damsel’, terms normally used to describe an unmarried virgin.

Reports received by King Louis from his ambassadors in London had convinced him and Queen Margaret that it was now safe for her to return to England. On the day after the wedding, the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Countess of Warwick left Amboise on the first stage of their journey home, being escorted by a guard of honour formed by the Counts of Eu, Vendôme, Dunois and Châtillon. Shortly afterwards they made a ceremonial entry into Paris, being received outside the city gates by the chief officers of the university, the Parliament and the Châtelet, as well as the civic authorities, all wearing their finest robes. These gentlemen conducted the Queen and her party into a city made festive with tapestries and gaily coloured painted cloths hung from windows and balconies, and with streets thronged with cheering citizens. At the same time, in England, King Henry was instructing his Exchequer to pay £2000 to enable Warwick to cross to France with an army of ships and men ‘for the bringing home of our most dear and entirely beloved wife, the Queen, and our son, the Prince’.

Margaret remained in Paris over Christmas, and was preparing to
leave for England when she learned that, on 5 January 1471, Charles of Burgundy and Edward IV had had a meeting near St Omer. This unnerved her somewhat, yet she was reassured by reports sent to King Louis by the French ambassadors in London that the political situation there was stable and that it would be quite safe for her and her son to return. The Queen therefore left Paris and travelled to Rouen to await the arrival of Warwick, who was to escort her to England.

Warwick never came. Most of his annual income, which cannot have exceeded £15,000, had been spent in financing his large retinue, his military operations of the previous autumn, and the maintenance of his estates. Short of funds, he had spent the money granted for his journey on other, more pressing, things, and could not now afford to go to France to collect the Queen. Not knowing of this, Margaret refused to consider leaving until Warwick had actually arrived at a French port. While she waited at Rouen, the Earl waited for her at Dover, confident that she would have sailed without him. Soon, though, pressing matters of state obliged him to return to London.

At last Margaret was forced to accept that Warwick was not coming, and went to Dieppe, intending to embark for England without further delay. Even though the masters of her ships warned her that the weather was not favourable, she refused to listen. Three times her fleet put to sea, and each time it was hurled back upon the coast of Normandy, driven by rough winds and storm-tossed waves. Some ships were badly damaged and had to be repaired, and the more superstitious among the Queen’s men said that the tempest had been conjured up by sorcerers employed by the Yorkists; others perceived the hand of God at work. There was to be no break in the weather for some time, and she had no choice but to wait, fuming in frustration at the interminable delay.

Back in England, Warwick was desperately trying to consolidate his position. He was concerned about the loyalty of the King’s subjects in the counties of Gloucester and Hereford, and granted Pembroke – who was already responsible for keeping the peace in south Wales and the Marcher lordships – wide military and administrative powers in the Severn Valley. At the same time, Clarence, still outwardly loyal to Warwick but perhaps working for his own ends, was planting his spies in the houses of several noblemen suspected of secret sympathies with Edward IV, among them Northumberland, Shrewsbury and Stanley. Unbeknown to the lords in question, the spies were to monitor all conversations and comings and goings, in order to detect any weakening in their loyalty to the government.
The Duke placed two spies in each household, so that one would always be there while the other was reporting back to him.

Early in February, Parliament considered Warwick’s demand that England be joined in an offensive alliance with France against Burgundy in fulfilment of his promise to Louis XI. The Lords and Commons debated the matter, but would agree only to a ten-year truce, not a formal alliance. Nor, knowing the temper of the people, would they sanction a declaration of war on Burgundy.

Warwick, however, told Louis’s envoys that England would help their master and that he had already begun recruiting an army and would send it to France as soon as possible. On 12 February, on his instructions, the garrison at Calais prepared to attack Burgundy’s lands in northern France, and the next day, Warwick himself wrote to Louis:

The London merchants were furious when Warwick dragged England into a war against Burgundy without Parliament’s consent, knowing that this would be potentially highly injurious to the city’s economic prosperity, and they refused to lend any more money to the readeption government. As for Charles the Bold, the actions of the Calais garrison drove him straight into an alliance with Edward IV, knowing it was now vital to his interests to see the House of York restored to the English throne. The deposition of Henry VI would deprive Louis XI of his principal ally, and so remove the threat of war from Burgundy. With this in mind, Charles agreed to help Edward IV recover his kingdom and gave him 50,000 crowns. Burgundy’s assistance made a Yorkist invasion a realistic possibility.

When Charles made his decision to support the Yorkists, the self-styled Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, who were still refugees at his court because they did not trust Warwick, begged the Duke not to do anything that would prejudice Henry VI’s tenure of the throne. Charles suggested that they might like to return to England and take up arms against Warwick in the cause of Lancaster, since this, in his
view, could only benefit King Edward. Exeter and Somerset returned to England, where they found public opinion united against the French alliance. By his pursuit of it, Warwick had effectively alienated much of the Lancastrian establishment, and Somerset and Exeter had no difficulty in enlisting support for a renewal of the alliance with Burgundy.

They had hoped that this would leave Edward IV in political isolation, but, with the help of his sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, Edward was already pushing ahead with his plans, and by late February had raised an army of 1000–1500 Englishmen and 300 Flemish mercenaries armed with handguns, according to Warkworth. One London chronicler, however, stated he had 500 Englishmen and 500 Flemings. He had also obtained, through the good offices of the Hanseatic League, a fleet of ships which awaited the order to depart in Flushing harbour. Now Edward, like Queen Margaret in Dieppe, was obliged to wait for a break in the weather.

I
n England, Edward’s invasion had been expected for some time, and contingency plans to deal with it had been made back in January, when commissions of array were sent to Wales and the Marches. In the north, Montague was mustering an army at Pontefract; Oxford was guarding the coast of East Anglia, Pembroke was preparing to defend Wales, Clarence was in Bristol, guarding the West Country, and the Bastard of Fauconberg had been placed in command of the royal fleet, which was stationed on alert in the English Channel.

Yet, despite these defence strategies, Warwick’s authority was crumbling, especially in London, where his retainers were now regarded as little better than hooligans – men who ‘would have been right glad of a common robbery’. He had alienated not only the middle and lower classes, but also the lords, who increasingly resented his self-aggrandisement. Neither Lancastrians nor Yorkists trusted him, and his legendary popularity was fast fading. Neville supremacy in the north had declined since Percy’s restoration to the earldom of Northumberland and the removal of Montague from that sphere of influence. It was Percy who now held sway in the north, particularly in Yorkshire, and Warwick knew for a certainty that Percy would not support him. Nor did the Queen’s imminent return bode well for the future prosperity of Warwick, or of England for that matter, for it was unlikely that Margaret and the Earl would remain in concord for long.

On 2 March, King Edward boarded his flagship, the
Anthony
, at Flushing, ‘with the intention to re-enter and recover his realm’, but before his fleet of thirty-six ships could sail the wind turned against him. He would not go back on land, and was obliged to remain in the harbour for nine days until the 11th, when good weather returned
and the ships were able to head straight for the Norfolk coast. On the evening of Tuesday, 12 March, they appeared before Cromer, but since Oxford’s men were waiting for them there, it was impossible to land. Edward decided instead to sail north for the Humber estuary, and his fleet cast anchor late that night. Clarence, anticipating that his brother might land in the north, had already planted spies in Yorkshire in order to discover Edward’s movements.

While at sea, the King’s ships were caught in a violent storm and separated. There was no sign of the others when, on the 14th, Edward landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire – at the same spot where Henry of Bolingbroke had landed seventy-two years earlier – a long way from the south where most of his support was concentrated. As the King and his party were mustering their men on the beach, they saw the glint of the sun on steel on a hill in the distance and, thinking it was the enemy, seized their weapons. The ‘hostile’ force turned out to be Gloucester and his men, whose ship had landed five miles along the coast. Later, Rivers and his troops joined the King at Ravenspur, having landed fourteen miles away at Paull.