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During the first days of August 1453, it became clear that Henry VI was unwell. He had been under severe strain in recent months and this was beginning to take its toll. On 15 August the King was at his hunting lodge at Clarendon, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, when he complained of feeling unnaturally sleepy at dinner. The next morning, he appeared to have completely lost his senses: his head was lolling, and he was unable to move or communicate with anyone. He had, state the Paston Letters, taken a ‘sudden and thoughtless fright’ that utterly baffled his contemporaries. It is possible that the immediate contributory factor was the shocking news of the defeat of Castillon.
The Queen and Council were extremely alarmed by this turn of events, especially as Henry’s condition showed no signs of improvement as days, and then weeks, went past. Margaret took him back to Westminster and made every effort to conceal his incapacity from his subjects for as long as possible. If York, in particular, were to hear of it, she feared he would almost certainly try to seize power.
Margaret now found herself, at seven months pregnant, completely responsible for the government of England. At first she hoped to remain with her husband at Westminster, but it soon became clear that his illness could only be concealed by removing him to Windsor.
What Henry VI suffered in 1453 was a complete mental breakdown, which is hardly surprising given his character and the stress engendered by the catastrophes and tensions of his reign. Whethamstead says that ‘a disease and disorder of such a sort overcame the King that he lost his wits and memory for a time, and nearly all his body was so unco-ordinated and out of control that he could neither walk nor hold his head up, nor easily move from where he sat’. Henry later said that he had been totally unaware of what was going on around him, and that all his senses were in a state of prolonged suspension. He was ‘as mute as a calf’, spending his days in a chair, looked after by attendants. Some medical historians have diagnosed his condition, on the evidence available, as catatonic schizophrenia – complete mental withdrawal from normal life. Other modern experts have described the illness as a depressive stupor. Henry’s contemporaries had only one word for it: madness.
The genetic components that predisposed to Henry VI’s mental instability were almost certainly transmitted through his mother, Katherine of Valois. Her father, Charles VI of France, had been insane for most of his adult life, and there were parallels between Henry VI’s life and Charles VI’s. Both had become king in childhood, both had been dominated by powerful uncles, and both grew up to be weak and indecisive. Charles had suddenly become insane in 1392 when, during an attack of raging mania, he had run beserk with a lance and killed four people before being overcome by his attendants. His madness had taken a different form from Henry’s, for he had been continually subject to violent fits and delusions, sometimes believing he was made of glass and would shatter if touched; at other times he announced that his name was George, and seemed unable to recognise his wife and children.
Charles’s illness was spasmodic, and he did have periods of lucidity. But when he was in the grip of insanity he foamed at the mouth, refused to wash, and quickly became filthy, infested with vermin and covered in sores. Like a dog, he would eat his food from the floor, using his hands and teeth. Walsingham says he ‘never recovered completely, for he suffered fits of madness which recurred every year at the same season’. His illness had led directly to civil war between the factions at his court, and clearly there were fears that this would happen in England in 1453 as a result of Henry VI’s insanity.
An anxious Council wasted no time in summoning a whole host of doctors. Henry’s chief physician, John Arundel, was a specialist in mental illness, being Warden of the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem (later known as ‘Bedlam’) in Bishopsgate, an asylum in which nearly half the inmates were ‘out of their senses’, and which, by this period, was specialising in treating the insane. Mediaeval doctors understood very little about mental illness, but they did distinguish five types: phrenitis (acute inflammation of the brain), delirium (abnormal behaviour accompanied by fever), mania (violent behaviour), melancholia (depression and loss of interest in life), and amentia (loss of mental faculties). Madness was believed to result from an excess of black bile, one of the four humours that mediaeval doctors believed governed the body, an imbalance of which led to illness. Diagnosis was based on observation of the external symptoms. However, having diagnosed what was wrong with the patient, doctors were often at a loss to know what to do for him. Mad people who were not violent were usually left at liberty within the community, often the butt of cruel taunts or ridicule; violent patients were locked up. Legally, the King had custody of all mad persons. Now he was apparently one himself.
The King’s doctors tried everything within their limited power: bleeding, head purges, ointments, syrup cordials, suppositories, removing the King’s haemorrhoids, gargles, laxatives, baths, special waters, electuaries – medicinal powders mixed with honey or syrup – and even cautery. None of these often painful processes had any effect. Henry was described by the physicians as being non compos mentis, a term applied when the onset of mental illness took place sometime after birth. But there was every hope, they assured the Queen and Council, of his temporary or permanent recovery. Perhaps, they suggested, the King was possessed by devils. Accordingly priests were called in to exorcise any evil spirits that might have taken possession of the royal mind, but to no avail. After all the treatments had failed, the Council authorised the King’s doctors to bleed him as often as they thought necessary in order to let the evil humours out of his body, and apply various head poultices or any other remedy that occurred to them or seemed appropriate.
Henry VI’s illness was to prove calamitous in several ways. It put an end to all hopes of unity between the opposing factions in government. It brought the Queen, with her poor understanding of English politics, prejudices and customs, to the forefront of power. It deprived the country of its head of state, however ineffectual. It removed, for a time, the last check on the rapaciousness of the court party and on feuding magnates in other parts of the country. Finally, it plunged England into a national crisis at a time when the political situation could not have been much worse.
In October, weighed down with anxiety over the King, Queen Margaret withdrew to her apartments in the Palace of Westminster to await the birth of her child. A screen was placed in the Queen’s oratory, blocking the door to her bedchamber. It would not be removed until she had been churched and purified after the birth. Nor were any men allowed to go beyond the screen; for the duration of her confinement the posts of her household officers were filled temporarily by gentlewomen. Margaret’s Wardrobe Book records that money was kept in her bedchamber so that she could make offerings during services conducted by her chaplain in the oratory beyond the screen.
At ten o’clock in the morning of 13 October 1453, the Queen produced the long-awaited Lancastrian heir, a healthy boy who was called Edward. The Queen had him named after Henry VI’s favourite saint, Edward the Confessor, on whose feast day the child had been born, and after Edward III and the Black Prince, both of whom epitomised the heroic ideals of knighthood. The infant prince bore the title Duke of Cornwall from birth.
Immediately following the birth, letters conveying the glad tidings were sent out to all parts of the kingdom. One such was displayed on 14 October in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral, where – as in churches all over the land – the congregation stood as the Te Deum was sung. Church bells rang out proclaiming the joyful news, and there was general rejoicing. But at Windsor, the prince’s father was still in a stupor, and did not even know he had a son.
The birth of a healthy boy to the Queen resolved the long-standing problem of the succession and also put paid to any hopes York had entertained of being named heir presumptive or even inheriting the crown. Overnight, his status had been diminished, as hadthat of his rival, Somerset, who had himself expected to be acknowledged as the King’s heir.
The same month the prince was baptised by Bishop Wayneflete of Winchester in a splendid ceremony in Westminster Abbey. The Queen chose as sponsors the Duke of Somerset, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Anne, Duchess of Buckingham. The baby, wrapped in an embroidered chrysom cloth, was borne in to the church in a procession led by monks carrying lighted tapers, to a font swathed in twenty yards of russet cloth-of-gold. The Queen had paid £554.16s.8d. (£554.83p) for both cloth and christening robe. After the ceremony the prince was admitted to the Order of the Garter. The King, of course, had been unable to attend the christening; nor did the Queen, by custom, attend, for she was not supposed to appear in public until she had been churched.
The choice of Somerset as sponsor infuriated York, and it was not long before some of his supporters vindictively spread a rumour that Edmund Beaufort was the prince’s real father. There is no evidence that York himself was the originator of such a slander, nor that it was true, but he nevertheless did nothing to contradict it.
By now, it was clear that the King was not going to make a quick recovery, and the Queen and her advisers realised that they could not conceal his illness indefinitely. Margaret considered the possibility of Henry abdicating in favour of his son; she may have anticipated that, even if he did recover, he would not be able to cope with the stresses of kingship. But there were other considerations: with the infant prince elevated to the throne, Margaret could look forward to fifteen years in power as regent. The lords of the Council, however, when the Queen sounded them out on this idea, were unenthusiastic; most of them expected Henry to recover.
There yet remained the urgent problem of how England was to be governed during the King’s incapacity. It was now clear that arrangements must be made soon for some kind of regency. The birth of a son and heir to the monarch necessitated the summoning of a great council of magnates, in order that the prince could be formally acknowledged as heir apparent to the throne. On 24 October, Somerset, in the Queen’s name, summoned such a council. The fact that York’s name was omitted from the list of those chosen to attend drew angry protests, especially from Norfolk, and Somerset was obliged to invite him after all, to ‘set rest and union between the lords of the land’. But when York finally arrived, he wasted no time in gathering support against Somerset and the court party. He had now, at last, acquired powerful allies among the magnates.
In the north of England, the feud between the Percies and the Nevilles was a long-standing problem that had recently escalated. In July 1453, the Council was so alarmed by reports that the two families had mustered 5000 armed men between them that it issued directives to all concerned, commanding them to keep the King’s peace. But by August the tension in the north had erupted into violence. On the 24th, members of the Neville family had been travelling to a family wedding at Sheriff Hutton Castle, near York, but had been ambushed on the way by Lord Egremont, the brother of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and a band of retainers and thugs from the city of York. The Nevilles gave a good account of themselves and repelled the attackers without any fatalities occurring on either side, but the skirmish, described by contemporaries as the Battle of Heworth Moor, was regarded in retrospect as ‘the beginning of sorrows’ and the first military action of the Wars of the Roses. This was because it drove the Nevilles to seek the powerful protection of York.
It was natural for them to do so. Since early 1453, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, had been involved in a bitter dispute with Somerset over the ownership of substantial lands in Wales that had formerly belonged to the Beauchamp family, in particular the lordship of Glamorgan. Warwick had held this lordship since 1450 and had administered it well, but early in 1453 the King, with his usual bungling ineptitude, had granted it to Somerset. An enraged Warwick prepared to hold on to the lordship, even if it meant an armed struggle against the King. It was not long before he began to realise what York had had to contend with and to sympathise with him. The Nevilles had hitherto been Lancastrian supporters, due to family ties, but York was Warwick’s uncle by marriage, as well as being the most important magnate in England, and although Warwick had until now remained neutral in the conflict between York and the court party, the King’s treatment of him over the matter of Glamorgan had had the effect of permanently alienating him from the House of Lancaster and driving him to take sides. And whither Warwick led, many other members of the powerful Neville clan would follow.
From 1453, therefore, York was to enjoy the influential support of Warwick, one of the richest and most powerful noblemen in England, and his father, Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, whose sister Cecily was York’s duchess. This formidable alliance, which would influence the history of England for the next two decades, posed the greatest threat so far to the House of Lancaster and made York a force to be reckoned with. Commines, the French historian, looking back on that fateful friendship, believed it would have been better for the Queen if she ‘had acted more prudently in endeavouring to have adjusted the dispute’ between the Nevilles and Somerset ‘than to have said, “I am of Somerset’s party. I will maintain it.”’ The alliance with York also created divisions within the Neville family itself, and some junior branches of it remained firmly Lancastrian. Matters were further complicated by the fact that prominent Lancastrians such as the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Dacre were related to the Yorkist Nevilles by marriage, though split family loyalties were to become a common feature of English aristocratic life during the Wars of the Roses.
The Nevilles were descended from Geoffrey FitzRobert, who inherited Brancepeth and Sheriff Hutton from his mother, the heiress of Geoffrey de Neville, in the thirteenth century, and adopted his mother’s surname. Geoffrey’s grandson married another rich heiress and added large tracts of land in Yorkshire, as well as the great lordship of Middleham in Wensleydale to the family estates. Military success on the Scottish border in the fourteenth century had brought the Nevilles to prominence, and the disgrace of the Percies after the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 had served them well, allowing them to establish their supremacy in the north where their territorial influence stretched from Yorkshire to the Scottish border.
The Nevilles had gained political prominence with the marriages of Ralph Neville, who was created Earl of Westmorland by Richard II, much to the chagrin of the Percies. Ralph married first Katherine Stafford, and then Joan Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. Between them, his wives had presented him with twenty-four children. Several sons married heiresses; Joan’s eldest boy, Richard Neville, born around 1400, married in 1421 Alice, the heiress of the Montacute earls of Salisbury, became Earl of Salisbury in right of his wife, fathered ten children, and had a distinguished military career in France. His younger brothers, William, George and Edward, acquired the powerful baronies of Fauconberg, Latimer and Bergavenny, all by marriage. Some of Westmorland’s daughters became the wives of great magnates, such as the dukes of York and Norfolk and the earls of Stafford and, indeed, Northumberland. Through these, and other connections, the influence of the Nevilles was extended and consolidated, and they were now one of the most powerful families in England. Shrewd and pragmatic, they did not shrink from dabbling in commercial enterprises, and grew ever more prosperous.
Ralph Neville, realising that his children by Joan Beaufort were of far greater dynastic importance than those born to his first wife, left only the earldom of Westmorland to his eldest son, arranging for the bulk of his lands to pass to Joan’s son, Salisbury. These included the lordships and castles of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, both enlarged and modernised by Earl Ralph, Raby Castle in County Durham, and estates in Westmorland and Essex.
The most brilliant marriage of all was that made by Salisbury’s son, another Richard Neville, who was born on 22 November 1428. In 1439, Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, died, and was succeeded in the title by his son Henry. Henry died young in 1446, and his infant daughter and heiress, Anne, Countess of Warwick, followed him to the grave in 1449. Her heir was her aunt, another Anne de Beauchamp, Earl Richard’s only daughter, who had been born in 1429, and was now the wife of Richard Neville. On the young countess’s death in July 1449, the great Beauchamp inheritance and the earldom of Warwick passed to Richard Neville, who became, literally overnight, one of the greatest landed magnates in the country.
Warwick was the archetypal English magnate, whose chief motivation was the enrichment and promotion of himself and his family. He was power-hungry, acquisitive and arrogant, like most of his caste. Nevertheless, he had great abilities, being a man of considerable courage and a fearless fighter and renowned naval commander. He had been born to govern, hence he could also be ruthless and unscrupulous, thinking nothing of resorting to violence, and even murder, when he considered it expedient. He was a clever propagandist, forceful, persuasive and manipulative, full of energy and tenacity. He was not greatly interested in aesthetic things such as art, literature or architecture, nor was he more than conventionally pious. He used his wealth to buy the support and friendship of influential men and so built up his own power and military strength.
Warwick’s personality was more charismatic by far than York’s. While people might sympathise with York’s grievances, their imagination was stirred by Warwick, who came to enjoy far more influence with all ranks of society because he had the common touch, coupled with lavish, open-handed hospitality and a ready wit.
No portrait or effigy survives to show us what Warwick looked like, nor do the contemporary sources contain any descriptions of his appearance. He appears in the Rous Roll in full armour, but bears a marked resemblance to all the other armoured males in the work: Rous made no attempt at portraiture, even though he knew and admired Warwick.
By 1453, ‘there was none in England of the half possessions that he had’. Warwick owned land in eighteen counties and more than a score of magnificent castles, his main seat being at Warwick Castle, a massive fortress that had been rebuilt by the Beauchamps with a splendid new tower. The Earl also held hundreds of manors, and his territorial influence stretched from Cornwall to the mighty lordship of Castle Barnard in Yorkshire, while the greatest concentration of his lands lay in the west Midlands and south Wales. From these properties Warwick drew a huge income, and could also call upon formidable reserves of fighting men if need be. Indeed, his possessions were so extensive that he was regarded as of greater political importance than his own father, Salisbury, and was thought to be richer even than York. The splendour and extravagance of his household was already renowned, while his huge army of retainers and men of his affinity displayed on their livery of bright scarlet surcoats his personal badge of a white, muzzled bear and a ragged staff, a device inherited from the earls of Warwick.
This was the man who now became York’s principal ally.
The great council assembled, and York, whose supporters had expressed doubts about the Prince’s paternity, now argued that the Queen’s child could not be recognised as the heir to England unless he was first acknowledged by the King and then presented by him to the nobility as his heir, according to ancient custom. A delegation of twelve lords, spiritual and temporal, therefore took the prince to visit his father at Windsor in the hope that the sight of the child would arouse Henry from his stupor. But although they made several attempts to make him acknowledge and bless the baby, he remained impervious to what was going on around him, appearing ‘uncurious and unconscious’.
The council was faced with a problem. Until the King had acknowledged his son, Parliament could not pass legislation confirming the child’s right to the royal succession or make provision for him as heir. This situation only served to fuel the rumours that flourished during the winter of 1453-4, that the prince was a bastard, that he was not the King’s son, and possibly not even the Queen’s. It was alleged that he was either a changeling, smuggled into the Queen’s bed after her own child had died, or the result of an affair between Margaret and Somerset. This was all too believable, given Henry VI’s vaunted views on marital sex and the fact that the Queen had not conceived once during the first seven years of her marriage. The rumours were also given credibility by the factthat the people were not aware of the King’s condition, and placed their own interpretation on why he had not recognised the child as his heir.
Warwick even went so far as publicly to refer to the prince as the offspring of adultery or fraud in front of a packed assembly of the magnates at Paul’s Cross in London. The King, he said, had not acknowledged him as his son and never would. Margaret never forgave Warwick for this insult which was to prove so damaging to her honour. York prudently kept silent, but of course he had everything to gain from the rumours and the defamation of the Queen.
On 18 November Margaret was churched at Westminster, wearing a robe trimmed with 540 sables, and attended by the duchesses of York, Bedford, Norfolk, Somerset, Exeter and Suffolk, eight countesses including the Countess of Warwick, and seven baronesses. Then she returned with great determination to the political scene.
The birth of a son had consolidated the Queen’s power and her standing in the country. Despite the rumours, she had no doubt that the King would eventually acknowledge the child, and as the mother of the heir apparent she meant to dominate the government and rule with the help of the court party. Motherhood had transformed her into a doting parent, fiercely protective of her son’s rights, which she was determined to safeguard by any means in her power, and it was now that she emerged as the most bitter enemy of York and as the driving force behind Somerset. Her greatest ambition was to crush the House of York, which she regarded as the chief threat to her husband’s throne and her son’s succession. From this time on, therefore, the conflict between Lancaster and York was not so much a power struggle between Henry VI and York, but a contest for political supremacy between York and Margaret of Anjou, who was to prove the backbone of the Lancastrian cause.
York in turn was poised for a return to the centre stage of politics, and was courting support for a bid to become regent during the King’s illness. The King’s half-brothers, Richmond and Pembroke, concerned about the extent of the court party’s influence over the King, supported his candidature, while the court party took every opportunity of advancing the claim of the Queen to be regent, though here Margaret’s sex was against her since most of the magnates found the prospect of petticoat government repugnant and improper.
Because York had, by January 1454, won the support of several influential magnates, the court party made a final attempt to rouse the King. On 19 January the prince was again taken to Windsor, and when he arrived, according to the Paston Letters, ‘the Duke of Buckingham took him in his arms and presented him to the King in goodly wise, beseeching the King to bless him; and the King gave no manner answer. Nevertheless, the Duke abode still with the prince by the King, and when he could no manner answer have, the Queen came in and took the prince in her arms and presented him in like form as the Duke had done, desiring that he should bless it, but all their labour was in vain, for they departed thence without any answer or countenance, saying only that once he looked on the prince and cast down his eyen again, without any more.’
Later that month, the Queen, ‘being a manly woman, using to rule and not be ruled’, made a determined bid for the regency. The Paston Letters record that she ‘hath made a bill of five articles, desiring those articles to be granted: the first is that she desireth to have the whole rule of this land; the second is that she may make [i.e. appoint] the Chancellor, the Treasurer, the Privy Seal and all other officers of this land; the third is that she may give all the bishoprics of this land and all other benefices belonging to the King’s gift; the fourth is that she may have sufficient livelode assigned her for the King, the prince and herself. But as for the fifth article,’ the writer did not know what it contained.
Margaret was well aware of the fact that many magnates were hesitating, reluctant to associate themselves with York in case it appeared that they were in treasonable opposition to the King, and she tried to capitalise on this, cultivating the support of York’s enemies. However, her arrogant and peremptory bid to assume virtually sovereign power and exercise the royal prerogative offended and alienated many of them; nor did the common people wish to be ruled by their haughty, unpopular French queen, and they made this very clear. It was at this stage that many lords, who might not otherwise have done so, first began to support York’s bid for the regency.
In the capital the political atmosphere was tense, as if a major conflict was about to erupt: the Archbishop of Canterbury took the precaution of issuing weapons to all the male members of his household at Lambeth Palace, and told them to hold themselves in readiness to safeguard his person. Somerset’s ally, the Earl of Wiltshire, was preparing to attend Parliament at the head of a large army of retainers, as were several other lords including Somerset himself: his billeting officer had secured for his armed supporters every lodging in Thames Street and the vicinity of the Tower. Warwick sent 1000 armed retainers ahead into London to ensure his safety; then, at the head of another private army, he escorted York into the city. The Duke was accompanied by his household and a large retinue, and also by his son, March, and the earls of Richmond and Pembroke, each with a military following.
Somerset’s spies had not been idle, for they were ‘going into every lord’s house of this land’, some disguised as friars, others as sailors on leave, their brief being to discover how much support the Duke and his rival York would be able to command in the coming Parliament. Rumours of the activities of Somerset’s spies gave rise to some alarm among those who secretly supported York but were waiting to see how matters turned out before committing themselves.
When Parliament did actually assemble, so few lords turned up that fines were imposed on the absentees for non-attendance – the only occasion on which this penalty was used in the Middle Ages. Undoubtedly some had been intimidated, while others had preferred to remain neutral. Parliament met on 14 February, and though some of York’s supporters attempted to raise the sensitive question of the prince’s paternity, the Lords refused to listen to them, and confirmed the infant’s title and status as heir apparent. York, like the other magnates, was required to acknowledge him as heir to the throne, but it was noticed that he did so with ill-concealed chagrin. Indeed, Thomas Daniel and John Trevelyan and other members of the court party were so concerned about York’s true intentions that they submitted to the Lords a bill providing for the safeguarding of the King and the prince. On 15 March 1454 Edward of Lancaster was formally created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, and made a Knight of the Garter; on 13 April, an annual income of £2000 was settled on him, and in June he was invested as Prince of Wales at Windsor.
It was March before the regency question was settled. In that month, Cardinal Kempe, one of the chief mainstays of the court party, died. His death made the election of a regent even more pressing, since his successor to the See of Canterbury could only be chosen by the authority of the King.
York now had the backing of a substantial number of peers who were anxious to prevent the Queen or Somerset (which amounted to the same thing) from seizing power. He had also neutralised one of the Queen’s chief supporters, the parliamentary Speaker, Thomas Thorpe, against whom the Duke had brought a charge of trespass. Thorpe had been sent to the Tower and fined £1000.
Before reaching a decision, the lords of the Council made one further visit to the King to see if he showed any signs of recovery, but there were none. Says Benet: ‘The King’s Council perceived that, if the King did not recover, England would soon be ruined under the government of the Duke of Somerset, so the noblemen of the kingdom sent for the Duke of York.’
On 27 March the Lords in Parliament nominated York as regent under the title Protector of the Realm. He was to be chief of the King’s Council, but would not have the title of ‘tutor, lieutenant, governor or regent, nor no name that shall impart authority of government of the land, but the name of Protector and Defender, which importeth a personal duty of intendance to the actual defence of this land, as well against the enemies outward as against rebels inward, during the King’s pleasure, and so that it be not prejudice to my lord Prince’. York was to enjoy the same title and powers that Gloucester had enjoyed during Henry VI’s minority, with the same limits on his authority.
Parliament further provided that, if the King did not recover sufficiently to reassume control of the government, the office of Protector should devolve upon Prince Edward when he attained his majority. As this would not happen for at least fourteen years, the lords had demonstrated singular confidence in York by entrusting to him the governance of the realm for so long.
After his nomination had been approved, York asked the Lords for their help and support in the task that lay ahead, saying, ‘I shall employ my person with you.’ Parliament then drafted an Act formalising his appointment.
Almost the first thing he did after his nomination was to depose Somerset from all the offices he had held from the King and order his arrest. Somerset was in the Queen’s apartments when the guard came to take him to the Tower, and this time Margaret was powerless to save him. Nevertheless, she defiantly visited him in prison and assured him of her continuing favour. Parliament would not agree to Somerset being brought to trial, which York had wanted, but the Protector was not a vindictive man, and now that Somerset had been removed from the political arena, he left him unmolested in the Tower.
On 3 April York was formally appointed Protector in a short ceremony during which he formally reaffirmed the oath of allegiance he had made to Henry VI at the latter’s coronation, and signed the deed that named him Protector. This provided that, should he break his oath, he was to be dismissed from office. On the 10th, he appointed his ally Salisbury as Chancellor of England.
Shortly afterwards, York ordered the Queen to remove to Windsor to be with her husband, making it clear that her influence was to be confined solely to the domestic sphere; nor was the furious Margaret allowed to leave Windsor once she had got there. Her worst fears had been realised and, angry and frustrated at being deprived of the regency, she chose to believe that the magnates had chosen York as Protector because they were really aiming to make him king, and was convinced that it was only a matter of time before he made a bid for the crown. Her very helplessness added to her fears for her husband and son.
Although he was extremely busy at this time, York remembered to send Easter gifts of green gowns to his eldest sons, March, now twelve, and Rutland, aged eleven, who were then being schooled by their tutor, Richard Croft, at Ludlow. Edward wrote back to his father, congratulating him on his recent victory in Parliament, and thanking ‘your noblesse and good fatherhood of our green gowns, now late sent unto us to our good comfort’. He asked if they might ‘have some fine bonnets sent unto us by the next sure messenger, for necessity so requireth. And where ye command us by your said letters to attend specially to our learning in our young age, that should cause us to grow in honour and worship in our old age, and please it your Highness to wit that we have attended to our learning since we came hither, and shall hereafter.’ Nevertheless, the boy ended with a complaint about ‘the odious rule and demeaning’ of Master Croft. We do not know whether his father took any notice of it.
On 28 July, York appointed himself Captain of Calais in Somerset’s place in an attempt to establish control of the English Channel in the face of attacks on English shipping by French pirates. He also sought to protect England’s western shores and regions by asking Parliament to confirm his appointment as Lieutenant of Ireland. This time, however, his duties in Dublin were carried out by a deputy.
York proved to be a conscientious and able Protector. He made a vigorous effort to restore good government, and carried out the duties of his office efficiently and with integrity. His opponents had expected him to exact revenge upon them for all the years he had been slighted and excluded from government, but he behaved towards them with moderation, trying to work with them in the Council for the benefit of the realm. He was ably supported by Salisbury and Warwick, the three of them making a formidable and seemingly invincible triumvirate, representing between them the larger part of the landed wealth and territorial influence of the aristocracy. Warwick’s younger brother, George Neville, aged only twenty, was already embarked upon a meteoric career in the Church. As secular appointments became vacant, York tried to consolidate his position by filling them with men of his affinity, and he also raised his kinsman Thomas Bourchier to be Archbishop of Canterbury.
One of York’s main concerns was to restore order, especially in the north, where the Percies and Nevilles were still ‘breaching the King’s peace’. In May, he visited the area to curb the quarrelsome tendencies of the Percies. However, says Benet, they fled at his approach. He was also concerned about rumbling Lancastrian disaffection in the north and west, and in July he ordered that the pro-Lancastrian Duke of Exeter be held at Pontefract Castle as a hostage for the good behaviour of his affinity.
York made some headway in restoring the authority of the Council, signing warrants issued by it as ‘R. York’. He attempted to sort out the Crown’s finances, so that adequate provision could be made for the King’s household without incurring further debts or draining the Exchequer. In November he had the Council draw up ordinances for the reduction and reform of the household, in the interests of economy and cost efficiency. Even Henry’s Tudor half-brothers found their establishments reduced, each being allowed only a chaplain, two esquires, two yeomen and two chamberlains, an entourage equal to that of the King’s confessor. Nevertheless Richmond and Pembroke supported the reforms because they realised that they could only be in the King’s interests. In fact, these household reforms were aimed primarily at the Queen, being an attempt to deprive her of the means with which to reward her favourites if she returned to power. Her household was reduced to 120 persons, and the Prince of Wales’s to 38, which gave her further reason to hate York. Despite his efforts as Protector, York still failed to win over a majority of the peers. Some were suspicious of his motives and unwilling to trust him, and many still resented his manner.
On Christmas Day 1454, just as York was making some headway with the task of reforming the administration, ‘by the grace of God the King recovered his health’, emerging after sixteen and a half months from his stupor ‘as a man who wakes after a long dream’. He had no memory of what had happened to him during his illness, and told his courtiers that ‘he never knew till that time, nor wist what was said to him, nor wit not where he had to be whilst he had been sick, till now’. As soon as he could speak, he ordered that a mass of thanksgiving be celebrated in St George’s Chapel, and requested that prayers be offered night and day for his complete recovery. On 27 December, he commanded his almoner to ride to Canterbury with an offering, and commanded his secretary to offer at the shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
On the next day, in the afternoon, according to the Paston Letters,
the Queen came to him and brought my lord Prince with her. And then he asked what the Prince’s name was, and the Queen told him Edward, and then he held up his hands and thanked God therefor. And he asked who were the godfathers, and the Queen told him, and he was well pleased. And she told him that the Cardinal was dead, and he said that he never knew of it till then.
According to one account, Henry said that the Prince ‘must be the son of the Holy Spirit’, which led to some ribald conclusions on the part of York’s followers. But there is no doubt that Henry accepted the Prince as his own child without hesitation. He had, after all, known of the Queen’s pregnancy for some time before his illness and had not entertained any suspicions then as to the child’s paternity, so there was no reason for him to do so now. He would prove a consistently kind and loving father.
‘Blessed be God,’ wrote Edmund Clere, an esquire of the King’s household, to John Paston on 9 January 1455, ‘the King is well-amended and hath been since Christmas.’ The Bishop of Winchester and the Prior of St John’s, Clerkenwell, had spoken to him two days earlier, ‘and he spoke to them as well as he ever did, and when they came out they wept for joy. And he says that he is in charity with all the world, and he would that all the lords were so. And now he says Matins and Evensong, and hears his mass very devoutly.’
Nevertheless, the Croyland Chronicle makes it clear that Henry’s mental health remained impaired for some years after his recovery, and there is other evidence that he never fully recovered from his first breakdown. He would, as the years passed, suffer short recurrences of it throughout his life. In 1461, Croyland wrote, ‘The King, for many years, suffered an infirmity of mind; this mental weakness lasted for a long time.’ His illness changed him. He became more unworldly and introspective, and turned to religion for consolation; it also left him at the mercy of his domineering wife and factious nobles. The royal authority would from now on be in the hands not just of a weak king, but a king debilitated by a long mental illness that might recur at any time.