14
In February 1456 Henry VI appeared in Parliament and revoked York’s appointment as Protector. Benet wrote: ‘In front of the King the Duke resigned his office and left Parliament before the session was over,’ although Henry, anxious to avoid a rift, had insisted that his cousin retain his place on the Council.
The King then reasserted his authority and ordered substantial alterations to York’s Act of Resumption, adding to it a long list of exemptions. Many members of his household were relieved to learn that grants made to them over the years were not to be withdrawn after all. Although York could not approve of this, Lancastrians and Yorkists nevertheless co-operated in Council and Parliament during the next few months, and the Yorkists for a time retained a fair degree of influence, with York himself remaining the dominant voice on the Council. An uneasy peace would prevail for the next two years, thanks in no small measure to the moderating influence of the Duke of Buckingham.
London was no longer sympathetic towards the House of Lancaster; the merchants in the city had had enough of Henry VI’s misrule and Queen Margaret’s interference with their traditional privileges, and had come out strongly in support of York. When a riot occurred in London, the Queen, ignoring the fact that the city lay within the Lord Mayor’s jurisdiction, sent in troops under Buckingham and Exeter, who were armed with a royal commission enabling them to try the ringleaders. The citizens were incensed by this usurpation of their rights and forcibly prevented the dukes from setting up their court. Bitter criticisms were levelled at the Queen, who had dared to challenge their fiercely protected privileges.
In the spring of 1456 Margaret, whose dislike of the hostile Londoners equalled theirs of her, left London with the Prince. In April she stayed at Tutbury, and was in Chester by the end of May. She then took up residence at Kenilworth, all the time canvassing support for her husband against the Yorkists. During the spring and early summer Henry remained in the south in the company of Pembroke – in June, Pembroke was the only lord in attendance on the King at Sheen. Henry had come to rely heavily on his half-brother and to value his unquestioned loyalty.
With the Queen away, the King was also much under the influence of York at this time. On 20 April Henry appointed Warwick Captain of Calais, an office described by Commines as ‘Christendom’s finest captaincy’, and it would be in this capacity that the Earl would gain his heroic reputation as a fine and dashing commander. York was behind the appointment; for he had long wished to reward Warwick for his crucial support at St Albans, and although the court party had tried to secure the post for their candidate, young Somerset, York had pre-empted them.
Securing Calais was a great achievement for the Yorkists. The Captain, or Governor, was the King’s representative in the town. His was basically a military appointment, but he also enjoyed considerable judicial authority. The captaincy of Calais was the most important military command in the King’s gift, and of such strategic importance that one is tempted to wonder why Henry VI allowed himself to be persuaded to bestow it on Warwick. Calais, in the years to come, would provide the Yorkists with a foreign base and a substantial garrison, whose loyalties were first and foremost to Warwick. Calais was also excellently placed for invading England or policing the Channel, and under Yorkist rule it would effectively become the seat of the opposition. Initially, Warwick had to win the confidence of the powerful Merchants of the Staple, who dominated the town and its wool trade, but by using financial inducements he achieved this with little effort, aided by the fact that those same merchants were heartily relieved that it was Warwick, and notSomerset, who had been placed in command.
After Warwick had left for Warwick Castle to prepare for his new duties, York rode north to Sandal Castle. It was now time for Henry VI to set out on his progress, and he and the Queen were reunited at Chester. In August they began a leisurely tour of the Midlands, ending up at the beginning of September at Coventry, where the King was accorded a warm welcome, with pageants mounted in honour of him and the Queen, who was lauded as the mother of England’s heir. With Henry successfully wrested from York’s clutches, Margaret had no intention of allowing the King to return to London, and had already persuaded him to remove his court to the Midlands, the Lancastrian heartlands.
Thus Coventry became the seat of government for a time, and its castle the premier residence of the sovereign. Here, Margaret would create a centre of patronage, surrounding herself with artists, musicians and scholars in an attempt to recreate the splendours of former courts based in the palaces of the Thames valley. The citizens of Coventry, proud to be so honoured, were generous with gifts; on one occasion the mayor presented the Queen with oranges especially imported from Italy, a rare delicacy. Although Coventry Castle was the King’s official residence, he himself preferred to stay in a nearby priory, while the Queen often lodged at the house of Richard Woods, a rich merchant. The royal couple may also have stayed at the manor of Cheylesmore, once owned by the Black Prince. Moving the seat of government caused endless administrative problems, since most of the great departments of state were based in London, but it served Margaret’s purpose; on 24 September her chancellor, Laurence Booth, was entrusted by the King with the privy seal, thus allowing the Queen complete power over the administrative machinery of government.
Throughout the summer York waited to see what her next move would be, ‘and she waited on him’. While York held back and the Queen played for time and moved her pawns, England went more or less ungoverned. London was the scene of riots and violence, particularly against Italian merchants who had been given preferential treatment and privileges by the court party. Trade suffered, there was a further deterioration of law and order in the shires, and French raids on the south coast of England.
In London the tension was palpable, and there were unfounded rumours that another battle had taken place, resulting in Warwick being ‘sore hurt’ and a thousand men slain. Placards were pinned to church doors bearing ballads that savagely attacked the government. According to ‘Gregory’s Chronicle’, ‘some said that the Duke of York had great wrong, but what wrong there was no man dared say’. York himself had realised by now that he had a new rival, the young Duke of Somerset, who was much favoured by the Queen and being groomed to fill his father’s shoes.
The Queen was also cultivating the support of members of the royal household, and soliciting the favour of the people by promoting trade and industry, founding hospitals and schools, and displaying her young son in public wherever she went, earning herself unwonted popularity in the process. She made it a priority to win over with promises of future rewards the known enemies of the Yorkist lords, especially in Cheshire and Lancashire, and she was even intriguing with England’s enemies, the Scots. Rumour had it that she had offered them the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Durham in return for aid against York and his allies, and although there may have been no truth in this, it shows what many people believed the Queen capable of. Her negotiations with the Scots dragged on fruitlessly for two years; in 1457 she attempted to arrange marriages for Somerset and his brother with two Scottish princesses, but without success. Indeed, her concentration on building up her party, to the exclusion of all else, took precedence over the government of the country, which suffered accordingly.
Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, had for several months been protecting King Henry’s interests in Wales. For generations the Tudors and the House of Mortimer had been sworn enemies due to territorial rivalries in the principality. Nevertheless, Richmond had given his support to York because he believed that the latter’s reforms could only benefit the King. But York was heir to the Mortimers, and his affinity in South Wales had recently taken it upon themselves to reassert his authority there. In the spring of 1456 the Queen had ordered Richmond to move against them.
Initially, the Earl enjoyed some success against the rebel Gruffydd ap Nicholas, who had now allied himself with York’s supporters and seized and garrisoned several royal castles. Richmond wrested Carmarthen Castle from him and restored the authority of the King to the surrounding region. However, York himself was constable of Carmarthen Castle, and may well have resented Richmond’s occupation of it, for in the summer of 1456, the Duke’s adherents, Sir William Herbert, Sir Walter Devereux, and men of the Vaughan family, marched on Carmarthen, seized the castle, and took Richmond prisoner.
At this time, however, the King had good reason to be grateful to York, for on 15 August the King of Scots, taking advantage of the political situation, had invaded England with – according to Benet – ‘100,000 men, and burned twenty villages, but he was routed by the Duke of York’. Soon afterwards the King sent for York and Warwick to join him on his progress, and Benet says they ‘were received most graciously’ by Henry, ‘though the Queen loathed them both’. Margaret was about to prove to York that she held the upper hand.
Once the King and Queen had settled at Coventry they summoned a great council of nobles to meet there. All the Yorkist lords were invited but, mistrustful of the Queen, having presented themselves in council, they withdrew and left Coventry without delay, ‘in right good conceit with the King, but not in great conceit with the Queen’. York went to Ludlow, Salisbury to Middleham, and Warwick to Calais.
Margaret now persuaded Henry to dismiss York’s partisans from office and replace them with men of her own party. On 5 October Henry Bourchier, York’s brother-in-law, was replaced as Treasurer by Shrewsbury, who had recently quarrelled with Warwick and made an enemy of him. On the 11th Archbishop Bourchier was dismissed from the chancellorship, which was given to William Wayneflete, Bishop of Winchester, a prominent member of the court faction. News of these changes must have angered the Yorkists and aroused their anxieties, though the Queen as yet had made no move against her real adversaries. At his wife’s behest, Henry VI summoned Parliament to meet at Coventry, so that the measures planned by the Queen’s party could be implemented, a reassertion of the authority of the Crown as exercised by Margaret of Anjou.
That autumn, Richmond was released from captivity in Carmarthen Castle, although he remained in the castle, free to come and go. But he did not long enjoy his liberty. On 1 November he died, aged only twenty-six, probably of natural causes and possibly in an epidemic, although he may have succumbed to the effects of wounds received earlier in the year. There were even whispers of murder at the time, but no evidence exists to substantiate such claims, nor were any charges laid by the Lancastrians at the trials of Herbert, Devereux or the Vaughans, which took place some months later. Richmond was buried in the nearby church of the Grey Friars at Carmarthen; in 1536, in the reign of his grandson, Henry VIII, his remains and monument were removed to St David’s Cathedral. Today, the shields, brass and inscription on the tomb are nineteenth-century replacements of the originals.
Pembroke was at court when he learned of his brother’s death, and he immediately left for Wales to take his place and set his affairs in order. Edmund’s death meant that all the properties jointly owned by the brothers came to Jasper, whose annual income was now increased to perhaps as much as £1500. Jasper was an honourable man, one of the King’s most trusted counsellors, and he now realised he could no longer support York and remain loyal to the King. He therefore took steps to dissociate himself from the Duke, for the rest of his life devoting his services to upholding the right and authority of the House of Lancaster in Wales.
Pembroke was concerned about Richmond’s thirteen-year-old widow. The late earl had not scrupled to consummate his marriage to one so young, and Margaret Beaufort was now six months pregnant. Jasper offered her a safe refuge at Pembroke Castle, and would be a tower of strength to her and her child for the next half century.
Both the Tudor brothers were held in great affection by the Welsh, and their deeds were commemorated in song by the bards, who sang of how a grief-stricken Jasper had taken Edmund’s widow and unborn child under his protection and how he healed the terrible wounds, both emotional and political, that Edmund’s untimely demise had caused. They voiced the feelings of their people when they compared Wales, bereft of Edmund, to a land without a ruler, a house without a bed, a church without a priest. The Welsh had great hopes of Jasper; he was never to let them down.
On 28 January 1457, Margaret Beaufort gave birth to her ‘only beloved son’ at Pembroke Castle. As his father’s posthumous child, the infant was styled Earl of Richmond from birth. According to Welsh tradition, Jasper wanted him christened Owen after his grandfather, but the Countess insisted that he was to be named Henry after the King. No one dreamed that this obscure scion of the royal house would one day become the founder monarch of the magnificent Tudor dynasty.
Margaret was still only thirteen at the time of Henry Tudor’s birth ‘and of very small stature’, according to her funeral sermon, delivered by Dr John Fisher. ‘It seemed a miracle that of so little a personage anyone should have been born at all.’ The baby was sickly and his survival of infancy was due only to his mother’s diligent care. For the first five years of his life, he would live at Pembroke Castle in the care of his devoted parent and his uncle Jasper.
Early in 1457 Pembroke cultivated a friendship with Buckingham, both men uniting to defend their Marcher properties, and in particular the lordships of Newport and Brecon, from the depredations of men of York’s affinity. In March, Pembroke and MargaretBeaufort were Buckingham’s guests at his manor of Greenfield, near Newport, and it was probably on this occasion that plans were formulated for Margaret to marry Buckingham’s younger son, Henry Stafford. This marriage, which took place about two years later, would cement the friendship between the two families and provide a secure home for the young widow, while Pembroke continued his efforts to establish a lasting peace in south Wales.
Meanwhile, disorder in England was escalating. The great magnates had now taken to paying pirates to plunder foreign shipping. The pirates – and the magnates – got away with it, but the English merchants suffered as a result because many foreign traders refused to send goods to England or charged more for them. In London, there were further riots against Lombard merchants, and many had their houses sacked or burned down.
Yet still the court remained in the Midlands. The Queen was more preoccupied with consolidating her power than with ruling England. In January she had ordered a vast stock of arms and ammunition to be delivered to the royal castle at Kenilworth, and she had also replaced Shrewsbury as Treasurer with Wiltshire, while the notorious Thomas Tuddenham had been made treasurer of the royal household. The household itself had now extended its web of corruption to the shrievalty of England. No less than sixteen sheriffs were in its pay, receiving regular wages as if they were on the royal pay-roll. In return they were expected to favour those who supported the Queen’s party. Other sheriffs found themselves faced with demands for money in a kind of royal protection racket.
In April, Pembroke was appointed constable of the castles of Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Carreg Cennen, in place of York. He carried out his new duties with diligence and success, even bringing to heel his old adversary, Gruffydd ap Nicholas, who would now remain faithful to the House of Lancaster for the remaining three years of his life.
Throughout the early months of 1457 the Queen’s agents were busy hunting for Sir William Herbert, who had dared to seize Carmarthen and imprison Richmond the previous year. Herbert had remained at large throughout the winter, harrying the countryside of south-east Wales and undermining the King’s authority. When he was at last captured, the Queen had him cast into the Tower of London. She wanted him executed, and York too, for she believed that Herbert had been acting on York’s orders, although there was no proof of this. Buckingham, ever the peacemaker, dissuaded her, and York was sent back to Dublin to resume his duties as Lieutenant of Ireland.
At the end of March 1457, Herbert and his accomplices stood trial at Hereford in the presence of the King, the Queen, Buckingham, Shrewsbury and, possibly, Pembroke. Although all were found guilty and sentenced to be attainted for treason, Herbert received a royal pardon in June and the other attainders were reversed in February 1458. Herbert’s pardon was enough to make him turn his coat, and for a time he and his brother Richard offered their loyalty to the Queen. His position was not easy, for most of his neighbours in south-east Wales were Yorkists, but he managed to balance the interests of all the parties, retaining the friendship and trust of the Queen as well as that of his former allies.
Warwick, meanwhile, had established himself in Calais, and had been made aware of the problems of piracy in the Channel, and its effect on the London merchants. He had also found out that these problems were unlikely to be dealt with by the King since Henry’s navy comprised at that time just one ship. Warwick owned about ten ships, which he was soon using to good effect against French and Burgundian pirates; he also destroyed a hostile Spanish fleet.
Warwick was sensitive to the Londoners’ feelings about the Italian aliens in their midst, and when he learned that three Italian ships had been granted a special royal licence to load their vessels at Tilbury with unlimited English wool and woollen cloth, he sent a small flotilla across the Channel and up the Thames estuary to capture them. His deeds were regarded by the Londoners as nothing less than heroic, and won him tremendous popularity. Here, at last, was someone ready to champion the cause of the merchants, who were the source of much of England’s wealth yet were ignored and slighted by the Lancastrian government.
The Earl, who now spent much of his time travelling back and forth across the Channel, was at present building up a lavish establishment in London, where he kept open house, his aim being to court popularity by dispensing extravagant hospitality. When he wasin residence there, six oxen were roasted every day at breakfast ‘and every tavern was full of his meat, for whoever had any acquaintance in his household could have as much roast as he might carry upon a large dagger’. Waurin says that Warwick
had in great measure the voice of the people because he knew how to persuade them with beautiful soft speeches. He was conversible and talked familiarly with them – subtle, as it were, in order to gain his ends. He gave them to understand that he would promote the prosperity of the kingdom and defend the interests of the people with all his power, and that as long as he lived he would never do otherwise. Thus he acquired the goodwill of the people of England to such an extent that he was the prince whom they held in the highest esteem and on whom they placed the greatest faith and reliance.
Warwick was the popular and charismatic face of the Yorkist party, having the dash and common touch that York lacked, and it was largely thanks to Warwick – and to Lancastrian misrule – that the Yorkist party increased its following during these years. The Earl’s use of his great wealth to win it support was, naturally, not without self-interest, for he always had a sharp eye to his own self-aggrandisement.
Just how far Warwick was prepared to go to discredit the Lancastrians became apparent in August 1457. At that time the Queen was hoping to arrange a new peace treaty with France, so that she could call on her uncle, Charles VII, for military aid if necessary. As her go-between, she used one Dolcereau, who was the agent of her former admirer, Pierre de Brézé, now Grand Seneschal of Anjou, Poitou and Normandy, to carry highly sensitive communications to Richard de Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, England’s ambassador in France.
But that month Brézé himself landed a French fleet on the Kent coast, plundering and burning the town of Sandwich, which was almost destroyed. What made the raid so provocative was that the victorious French had been seen afterwards playing tennis in the smoking ruins of the town, before being eventually driven away by Sir Thomas Kyriell. The only comfort the townsfolk had was the satisfaction of knowing later that many Frenchmen drowned in the Channel, thanks to turbulent seas on the journey home.
The raid unnerved the English, who were alarmed at the government’s inability to prevent it, and the Queen was the target of furious criticism. In an attempt to deflect public anger from herself she tried to pin the blame for the raid on Exeter, who had been Lord High Admiral for the past ten years. No one was fooled by her excuses, and the Yorkists immediately spread word that the Queen had actually invited Brézé to raid the English coast in order to discredit the exploits of Warwick. No one thought to criticise Warwick, who had not lifted a finger against the French, and had indeed decided not to intercept them knowing that anything they might do would stir up feeling against the Lancastrians.
This wave of criticism of the Queen gave rise to a fresh crop of rumours about the supposed paternity of the Prince of Wales which named the late Duke of Somerset or the Queen’s current favourite, Wiltshire, as the child’s father. Margaret herself told Chastellain later that her son was branded a ‘false heir’ born in ‘false wedlock’.
Margaret incurred more opprobrium in September when she defied the King over the appointment of a new Bishop of Durham. She wanted her chancellor, Laurence Booth, to be preferred, while the King had nominated another candidate. Margaret secretly put considerable pressure on the Pope, and Booth was elected on 15 September.
At Michaelmas 1457 the court left Coventry. It had proved impossible for the administration to function effectively away from London, and reluctantly the Queen departed from her ‘safe harbour’ and returned south. She had rid herself of the Yorkists for the moment, but with Warwick in Calais and York in Dublin she did not feel safe. It was imperative that she be able to call upon an armed force if either of them threatened her position, yet such was the reputation of the government that she doubted if she could raise enough men to support her. There was only one solution to this problem, and the fact that she embraced it proves just how desperately insecure she felt.
The Queen introduced conscription, a measure hitherto employed in Western Europe only by the kings of France. That December she dispatched commissions of array to every shire, empowering the sheriffs to demand that every village, township and hamlet, according to its population and wealth, and as soon as she gave the command, provide the King with a number of able-bodied men and archers at its own expense, in order to defend the realm against the Yorkists. At the same time it was publicly proclaimed that Henry VI had written a letter to his Anglo-Irish subjects in Ireland, encouraging them to conquer that land (and hopefully kill York in battle in the process).
Henry VI was aware of the growing tensions at court and throughout his realm, but far from wishing to muster support for a new conflict he was determined to foster peace between the opposing factions. Whethamstead says he was fond of quoting St Matthew and saying that ‘every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation’. In January 1458 he commanded that the magnates attend a peace conference at Westminster. It lasted for two months, but achieved only superficial success. One face was missing. One of the Queen’s most valued supporters, the Earl of Devon, had died – some said by poison – at Abingdon Abbey in January, with Margaret at his side.
The fragile concord of the peace congress was brutally disrupted in February when the vengeful Lord Clifford arrived at the head of a large army at Temple Bar in the company of his cousin, the young Earl of Northumberland, and his kinsman, the Duke of Somerset. All three were demanding compensation for the deaths of their fathers at St Albans. So intimidated was the King that he had no choice but to agree. He commanded that York, Salisbury and Warwick collaborate to found and endow a chantry at St Albans, in which masses for the souls of the three dead lords and others killed in the battle could be sung in perpetuity. He also ordered the Yorkist lords to pay Clifford, Northumberland and Somerset a ‘notable sum of money’, which they did. York paid Somerset’s widow 5000 marks, while Warwick paid the Clifford family 1000 marks. The chantry was duly founded the following March, and a proclamation was issued informing the people of what had been done.
The peace conference resulted in a staged public display of amity between the two warring factions. On 24 March 1458, which was Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation, there was an official ceremony of reconciliation between the King and Queen and the Yorkist lords which was afterwards referred to as the ‘Loveday’. The King, followed by the Queen and York, walking hand in hand, the leaders of both factions, the Nevilles, the Percies and other lords, went in procession through the streets of London to St Paul’s Cathedral, where a service of reconciliation was held. ‘There was between them a lovely countenance’, and they ‘spared right nought in sight of the commonalty, in token that love was in heart and thought’.
The King and Archbishop Bourchier had laboured to bring about this reconciliation, and Henry was overjoyed that his initiative had produced such a visible result. ‘Rejoice, England, in concord and unity!’ exclaimed a popular ballad commemorating the occasion, and his subjects were only too glad to do so, hoping that this was a complete and final reconciliation. But Robert Fabyan, the Tudor chronicler, was nearer the truth when he referred to the event as ‘this dissimulated Loveday’, for lining the streets had been the retainers and supporters of the rival parties, many of them heavily armed, and most of them regarding each other with ill-concealed animosity.
Three days after the Loveday Henry and Margaret made a state entry into London and took up residence in the bishop’s palace. York returned to Ludlow, Salisbury to Middleham and Warwick to Calais, and everyone waited to see what would happen next. The King, happily believing that his factious nobles were at peace with each other, kept Easter alone at St Albans Abbey. He was becoming more absorbed in his devotions and his foundations, retreating from political life, and leaving most executive decisions to the Queen.
When he arrived at Calais, Warwick began courting the friendship of Philip of Burgundy, whose ships he had recently so cheerfully plundered. The merchants of Calais and those in England were anxious to preserve the important trade links between England and Burgundy, and this was Warwick’s response. By the summer of 1458 he had reached an understanding with Duke Philip and had dispatched Sir John Wenlock, now serving under him at Calais, to the Duke to negotiate on the King’s behalf – without consulting Henry – a marriage between the Prince of Wales and a Burgundian princess. Afterwards, Wenlock went to France on Queen Margaret’s behalf to open negotiations with Charles VII for the Prince’s marriage to a French princess. Not surprisingly these negotiations were complicated and long drawn out, but they did have the advantage of keeping both France and Burgundy well disposed towards England for the time being.
For some time now Warwick had engaged in acts of piracy, on one notorious occasion ordering his ships out of Calais to plunder the fleet of the German merchants of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. This attack violated a truce between the League and the English government, and the Germans had protested strongly to Henry VI about Warwick’s behaviour. The Queen, who wished to oust the Earl from the captaincy of Calais, now saw her chance to get rid of him. She summoned him to London and ordered him to explain his actions before the Council.
Warwick responded to her summons by arriving in London at the head of 600 armed retainers, all wearing his livery. Margaret demanded of the Council that he stand trial for his crimes. On 31 July 1458 the Council instituted an enquiry, but after the first day Warwick publicly protested that the interrogation he had been made to undergo had been unduly rigorous, and that he believed there was a plot to discredit him. The Queen, he complained, had been acting insincerely on the Loveday, and had no regard for the glory of England’s achievement on the high seas.
The next day, incited by Warwick’s protests, his supporters – and there were many in London, including a number of aldermen – ran riot, demonstrating against the Queen and the authorities. In the confusion the Attorney General was murdered. The Queen commanded that pikemen be sent into the city to restore order, and when this had been done, those aldermen and citizens who had taken part in the riot were thrown into gaol. The outcome of the Council’s enquiry is not recorded, but there was no doubt that the Queen’s attempt to eliminate Warwick from the political scene had failed.
In the autumn Warwick again visited the court at Westminster. As he was passing through the royal kitchens, one of the King’s scullions nearly impaled him on a spit. It was an accident, but Warwick and the retainers with him chose to believe that the scullion had been instructed by the Queen to murder him. A fight broke out between the Earl’s followers and the royal servants, who rushed to defend the scullion. During the scuffle Warwick was set upon by the royal guard, though his men soon gained the upper hand, and the unfortunate scullion was seized by them and hauled before the Queen. Margaret knew that if she defended the man Warwick would accuse her of murder, so she ordered his execution. However, he was allowed to escape and flee to Yorkshire, while the Queen announced defiantly that the fight had been caused by Warwick’s supporters at his instigation. Fabyan asserts that she then persuaded the Council to draw up an order for the Earl’s arrest and committal to the Tower.
As soon as he heard that there was a warrant out for his arrest, Warwick left London and travelled at speed to Warwick Castle, and thence to the safety of Calais, where he would be protected by the garrison. In November, the Queen and Council, incensed at his escape, demanded that he surrender his post to Somerset. At this, Warwick boldly returned to London and stood defiantly before the Council, stating that Parliament had appointed him to his post, and therefore Parliament was the only authority that could revoke the appointment. Tempers were running high, and as he left the Council chamber he was attacked by retainers of Somerset and Wiltshire and only narrowly escaped. This time his claim that the Queen had tried to have him killed was almost certainly justified.
Warwick knew it was not safe for him to remain in England, and after a hurried consultation with his father, Salisbury, he returned to Calais, where he defiantly continued his attacks on the Lübeck fleet. It was probably this that drove the conciliatory Buckingham off the political fence and firmly into the camp of the Queen’s party.
Margaret now knew she had to take decisive action against the Yorkists, and Warwick in particular. Late in 1458 she left London and during the following months travelled through Cheshire and Lancashire, cultivating support among the nobility and gentry and recruiting men. Davies’ Chronicle claims she was prompted by her dread that the Prince ‘should not succeed his father’, and states that she ‘allied unto her all the knights and squires of Cheshire, and held open household among them’.
It now seemed that a further confrontation between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists was inevitable.