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In 1467 Queen Elizabeth bore another daughter, Mary, who was sent to Greenwich Palace to be brought up with her sister Elizabeth under the care of a governess, Margaret, Lady Berners. In October, the Queen was assigned £400 a year for the maintenance of her daughters.
The King kept Christmas at Coventry, where it was noted that the Duke of Clarence ‘behaved in a friendly way’. Soon after Epiphany, ‘by means of secret friends’, Archbishop Neville persuaded Warwick to attend a council at Coventry, where he and the King were ostensibly reconciled. But nothing had changed. Negotiations between England and Burgundy were now moving towards a successful conclusion, and in February 1468 Edward and Charles signed the treaty providing for the latter’s marriage to Margaret of York. The treaty dashed the hopes of Louis XI and Warwick, and Warwick did all he could to undermine it. He again urged Edward to abandon Burgundy, even now, and when Edward made it clear that that was out of the question, he set his retainers to incite the London artisans, warning them they would not profit by the alliance. Many believed the Earl’s propaganda, and some went so far as to plan an attack on Flemish merchants living in Southwark. However, as soon as they boarded their boats to cross the river, the city authorities, who had been warned that trouble was likely, prevented them from going any further. A bloodbath, however, had only narrowly been averted. Undeterred, in the spring Edward IV concluded an alliance with Brittany, another thorn in Louis’s side.
Even now, Lancastrian supporters were still working secretly to restore Henry VI, despite the harsh penalties lying in wait for those who were caught. At Whitsuntide, according to William Worcester, ‘a certain Cornelius, a shoemaker serving Robert Whittingham, who was with Queen Margaret, was captured [while] secretly bringing divers letters into England from Queen Margaret’s party, [and] was tortured until he confessed. He then accused many of the receipt of letters from Queen Margaret.’ Another Lancastrian agent, one Hawkins, was also tortured. The two men were then tried by Chief Justice Markham, a just and fair man who refused to admit the Crown’s evidence as it had been obtained under torture; Lord Rivers suggested to the King that Markham be removed from his office, to which Edward agreed. The unfortunate Cornelius was again put to the question, having his flesh torn from his body with red-hot pincers, but died without having disclosed any further names of those with whom the Queen had corresponded.
Between June and November 1468, the government acted to hunt out all those suspected of being Lancastrian adherents, and many arrests were made. Several lords whose families had supported Henry VI came under suspicion, and in the autumn Devon’s brother Henry Courtenay was apprehended, along with Thomas, son of Lord Hungerford, and John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. All were suspected of organising a new conspiracy to restore Henry VI, but as there was very little evidence to go on Oxford was soon released while the rest were detained.
In 1468 there occurred the fall of Sir Thomas Cook, which illustrated just how powerful the Wydvilles had become. Cook was a rich London merchant and former Lord Mayor, an articulate and clever man who was respected by his colleagues and favoured by the King. Margaret of Anjou had once tried to borrow money from him, and he had refused her. Nevertheless, the Wydvilles suspected him of harbouring Lancastrian sympathies; the agent Hawkins had spoken his name under torture, claiming that he had tried to borrow money on Margaret’s behalf from him; Cook had again refused to lend any, but that did not save him from the Wydvilles’ wrath, nor the trap they set for him.
Cook had in his house a beautiful tapestry, much admired by the Duchess of Bedford, mother of the Queen. The Duchess demanded that Cook sell it to her at a price far less than the £800 he had paid for it, and he refused. The Wydvilles retaliated by accusing him of secretly working for the Lancastrians, reiterating what Hawkins had said, and Rivers sent his retainers to sack Cook’s houses in London and in the country. Then, in his capacity as Constable of England, he convicted Cook of misprision of treason for not having disclosed his dealings with Queen Margaret’s agent, and fined him the huge sum of £8000, which effectively ruined him. Queen Elizabeth, determined to take her cut, claimed an ancient privilege called Queen’s Gold, which entitled her to claim a further sum, in this case 800 marks, from the convicted man’s estate. After this harsh treatment Cook did defect to the Lancastrians, but he never again prospered and died a relatively poor man.
On 3 July 1468 Margaret of York was married to Charles the Bold at Damme in Flanders. ‘At this marriage the Earl of Warwick conceived great indignation,’ wrote Croyland, ‘it being much against his will that the views of Burgundy should in any way be promoted by means of an alliance with England. The fact is that he pursued that man [Burgundy] with a most deadly hatred.’ Five days after the wedding the self-styled Duke of Somerset, who had been a fugitive in Bruges, left the city before the new duchess arrived and travelled to Queen Margaret at Bar.
Louis XI, meanwhile, was determined to undermine Edward’s new alliance by aiding the Lancastrians, and had provided Pembroke with money, ships and men. Early in July the Earl landed in Wales in the Dyfi estuary near Harlech and marched east, inciting rebellion against the Yorkists. This prompted Lord Herbert to launch a new onslaught on Harlech Castle, which he had been besieging for four years without success. Herbert raised a force of 7-10,000 men on the Welsh border, then split them into two divisions, attacking Harlech by a pincer movement from both east and south. Pembroke, meanwhile, was sweeping all before him and holding many sessions of assizes, all in Henry VI’s name. News of his astonishing success spread rapidly to France, and Queen Margaret prepared to go to Paris to ask Louis to send reinforcements to aid him. Her elation was premature. On 14 August, after making only token resistance, Harlech surrendered, and the last bastion of the Lancastrians fell into Yorkist hands. When they entered the fortress, Herbert’s men found many incriminating letters from the Queen, which were at once dispatched to King Edward.
Pembroke was devastated by the fall of Harlech. He marched on Denbigh, burned the town and occupied the castle, but was pursued and driven out by Herbert and his brother Sir Richard. He was then obliged to dismiss his men and go into hiding, disguising himself as a peasant with a bale of straw on his back. Thus he made his way to the coast, where he boarded a ship bound for Brittany; the crew was inexperienced and he was obliged to steer the ship himself and navigate it as well. On 8 September, to complete Jasper Tudor’s humiliation, his earldom of Pembroke was bestowed on Herbert by a grateful Edward IV as a reward for taking Harlech.
Tudor was not alone in being angered by Herbert’s promotion, however: Warwick resented the new Earl’s prominence at court and was jealous of the high favour shown him by the King. His links with the Wydvilles were already enough to damn him in Warwick’s eyes, but so also were his plans to take possession of lands confiscated from the Percies and Tudors, and now held by Warwick and Clarence, in order to provide handsome dowries for his daughters and so increase his influence by allying himself to other great magnates. Warwick feared very much that Edward would agree to Herbert’s schemes, given the bad feeling between himself and the King and the Wydvilles’ apparent determination to slight him. Thus the rivalry between Warwick and Herbert grew daily, and may possibly have been the final straw that prompted Warwick’s defection from the Yorkist cause.
Between autumn 1468 and spring 1469, according to the Great Chronicle of London, ‘many rumoured tales ran in the city of conflict atween the Earl of Warwick and the Queen’s blood, the which Earl was ever had in great favour of the commons of this land,’ who were also hostile to the Wydvilles and frequently complained about ‘the great rule which the Lord Rivers and his blood bare that time within the realm’. Warwick made no secret of his grievances, complaining that the King ‘resolutely maketh more honourable account of new upstart gentlemen than of the ancient houses of nobility’.
Warwick was still in touch with King Louis through his agent, William Moneypenny, but he was alarmed by Edward’s growing hostility to France, which had recently prompted Parliament to vote £62,000 for an invasion of that country. This was the last thing Warwick wanted, and all his hopes now rested on Louis. He must have been aware that Louis was intriguing to reconcile him to Margaret of Anjou, and was probably considering whether or not to throw in his lot with the Lancastrians. What he really wanted, however, was to be in control of King Edward and rule through him: he would need to be desperate before he agreed to ally himself with Margaret.
Warwick was also renewing his efforts to obtain a papal dispensation for Isabel’s marriage to Clarence, but came up against a reluctant Pope, who had already assured Edward IV’s envoys that such a dispensation would not be granted. Undeterred, Warwick began to negotiate a price.
Warwick had given up much of his life and much of his wealth to supporting the House of York, and his father and brother had died for it. Yet the Burgundian alliance, the King’s ban on Isabel’s marriage to Clarence, the promotion of the Wydvilles, Herbert’s supremacy in Wales, the demotion of George Neville and Edward’s relegation of Warwick to a subordinate role had all combined to change Warwick’s loyalty into hatred, and his alienation from Edward was now complete. According to Croyland, it was the alliance with Burgundy which rankled most.
Warwick now spent most of his time sulking on his estates in the north, and refused to obey two summons to court. The King, alarmed, spent £2000 on strengthening England’s defences. Then Archbishop Neville stepped in again and persuaded Warwick that he should make his peace with the Wydvilles. A superficial ceremony of reconciliation between Warwick and the King and Warwick and Rivers followed, but it changed nothing. However, while he was at court, Warwick discovered that Clarence was also highly dissatisfied with his lot, being jealous of his brother and frustrated because Edward would not allow him any position of power. Both men were angry with the King for forbidding the marriage with Isabel, and Clarence also hated the Wydvilles, believing that it was they who were preventing him from enjoying his supposed ‘rights’ as the King’s brother.
Clarence fell prey to Warwick’s charisma, and throughout that winter and spring they laid their plans to fuel the people’s hatred of the Wydvilles and to undermine Edward’s authority, though, unlike Warwick, Clarence’s aim was not to control the King but to depose him and set himself up in his place. There is no proof that Warwick and Clarence incited the minor riots and disturbances that took place in the north of England at this time, but Warwick’s ally in Redesdale, Sir John Conyers, was certainly ready to take up arms on the Earl’s behalf. Warwick, however, preferred to wait until he was in a position to ensure the success of any uprising against the King. ‘Go home,’ he told Conyers, ‘it is not yet time to be stirring.’
At the beginning of Edward IV’s reign, his subjects had looked forward to prosperity and peace; instead, they had witnessed – and paid for – ‘one battle after another and much trouble and great loss of goods among the common people’. The dominance of the Nevilles and the resurgence of factions at court had helped to convince Edward’s subjects that he, like Henry VI, was unable to control his magnates. Some had never been won over, being jealous of the power enjoyed by Warwick and the Nevilles, or resentful of the men of better brains but lesser degree whom the King favoured.
The country at large was still subject to disorder and lawlessness, two problems that Edward had as yet been unable to tackle effectively. In many areas travel was dangerous and few people dared venture out at night. The late 1460s saw an alarming decline in law and order, due largely to the corrupt practices of the Yorkist magnates in their own territory; feuds between these peers inevitably led to outbreaks of violence. Discontent was especially rife in the north, where it was exacerbated by disaffected magnates such as Warwick. This posed as serious a threat to Edward IV as had the Lancastrian rebellions of the early 1460s. Lancastrian chroniclers claim that by 1469 the people of England had become disillusioned with Yorkist rule because Edward had not been able to fulfil the promises made at his accession, having been too preoccupied with foreign policy and crushing Lancastrian resistance. Warkworth says that the fifteenth taxation granted by Parliament in 1469 ‘annoyed the people’ because the King had promised not to tax them too heavily, and they had already been overburdened with taxes to pay for military campaigns.
There is no evidence that the King himself was unpopular; the fact remained, however, that Warwick was more popular than the King and had now set about exploiting that popularity and fuelling public discontent to further his own interests. Hitherto Edward had depended on the Nevilles to hold the north safely for him, but Warwick’s disaffection undermined this security. It was easy for the Earl to resurrect the slumbering grievances of the northerners, and not long before the north became a hotbed of anti-Yorkist feeling, so much so that England seemed to be on the brink of another civil war.
Edward’s position might have been more secure had he had a son to succeed him, but in March 1469 the Queen gave birth to yet another daughter, Cecily. Although the infant was ‘very handsome’ and her arrival ‘rejoiced the King and all the nobles exceedingly’, they would have preferred a son. The King’s lack of a male heir was becoming a matter of concern to everyone.
Government agents were still seeking out and arresting Lancastrian activists who were working on behalf of Margaret of Anjou, conveying letters and co-ordinating plans for a future Lancastrian invasion. Those who were taken were tortured in order to make them reveal the names of other traitors. Some accused seemingly reputable merchants and citizens, and more arrests and executions followed. In January 1469 Henry Courtenay and Thomas Hungerford were tried and found guilty of treason, and suffered the full horrors of a traitor’s death. Sir Richard Roos, who had been imprisoned at Windsor since his arrest after Towton in 1461, risked his life by sending a poem, written in double acrostic anagrams, to the Earl of Oxford. The poem contained a coded appeal to all supporters of Henry VI to rise and support Warwick against Edward IV, and Oxford disseminated the message among his contacts. It was now only a matter of time before Edward’s enemies united in opposition against him.
By the spring of 1469 Warwick was secretly in league with Louis XI, who had promised to give him the principalities of Holland and Zeeland if he could bring about the overthrow of King Edward. Warwick may not have intended to go so far, but he was certainly scheming actively to curb Edward and set himself up as the power behind the throne. Clarence, however, enthusiastically supported Louis’s plan, for his main objective was the throne, and at this time he was attempting to undermine Edward’s position by spreading an unfounded rumour that the King was not the son of Richard, Duke of York, but the bastard son of Duchess Cecily by an archer of Calais called Blaybourne. This tale quickly gained currency in Europe, where it was gleefully repeated by both Louis XI and Charles of Burgundy, and it would be used again in 1483 in England by the Duke of Gloucester to suit his own purposes. Neither Clarence nor, later, Gloucester, scrupled to cast such a slur on their mother’s honour, and she, outraged, emphatically denied the story.
In the spring of 1469, Warwick and his wife and daughters returned to Calais for a time, so that Warwick could fulfil his duties as Captain. The northerners, their prejudices, grievances and fears heightened by the Earl’s inflammatory propaganda, were now restive and complaining that they were sorely oppressed by high taxes, for which they blamed the Wydvilles. There was unrest throughout the region, and that spring several unco-ordinated risings took place. Warwick, from his base at Calais, had been in touch by letter and through his agents with disaffected northern lords and gentry, and had masterminded a full-scale revolt against the King, which would be led by Sir John Conyers, Warwick’s cousin by marriage and one of his most loyal adherents. The plan was that Conyers and Warwick’s relatives – including Archbishop Neville – and their allies would raise their tenantry and affinities to crush the Wydvilles, restore Neville influence at court, and seize control of the King. Around 28 May they answered the call to arms, rioting and inciting the people to rebellion
At the same time another revolt broke out in the East Riding of Yorkshire. This was led by the mysterious ‘Robin of Holderness’, whose identity has never been discovered. It was an entirely separate movement from that led by Conyers, its objective being the restoration of Henry Percy to the earldom of Northumberland. Its leaders were therefore no friends to the Nevilles, and Warwick’s brother, John Neville, who held the earldom, marched into Yorkshire with an armed force and made the rebels disperse.
News of the northern uprisings had not reached the King when he set out on 1 June on a pilgrimage through East Anglia to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, accompanied by Gloucester, Scales and Sir John Wydville, but it must have caught up with him soon afterwards. Yet for more than two weeks he did nothing. Only on the 18th did he finally bestir himself to devise a strategy for dealing with the rebels and begin recruiting men.
Warwick, meanwhile, had returned to England and on 28 June issued a summons to his ‘servants and well-wishers’ to arm themselves and march with him against the northern rebels, as the King had commanded. In fact, Warwick intended to join those same rebels, but his recruits knew nothing of this. The King, however, was suspicious, and issued an order prohibiting his subjects from forming assemblies unless he himself authorised them to do so.
At the end of June Edward arrived at Croyland Abbey in Lincolnshire, where he stayed a night, and then proceeded by boat along the River Nene to Fotheringhay Castle. He stayed there a week with the Queen, and on 5 July marched to Stamford while Elizabeth returned to London. At Stamford the King wrote to the mayors of various towns, commanding them to furnish him with contingents of soldiers arrayed for war. Five days later, from Newark, he was issuing similar letters, couched in more urgent tones, ordering the levies to muster there. However, says Croyland, ‘the common people came to him more slowly than he had anticipated’, and there were barely enough of them: judging by alarming reports he had received from the north, he had one man to every three rebels. Knowing he could not hope to prevail, he reluctantly marched his army south to Nottingham, there to summon and await reinforcements from the west.
Warwick had now managed to purchase a dispensation from the Pope for the marriage of Isabel to Clarence, and this arrived in early July. Armed with it, the Earl left England on 4 July and sailed to Calais with Clarence, Archbishop Neville and the Earl of Oxford. He was planning a coup that would entail the renewal of civil war in England. The Duchess of York had found out what was going on and had travelled to Canterbury to try to dissuade Clarence from playing any part in it, but to no avail. Clarence had too much to gain to back out now.
When he and Warwick arrived in Calais they were ‘solemnly received and joyously entertained’ by the Countess of Warwick and her two daughters. On 11 July, Clarence and Isabel were married at the Church of Our Lady in the castle of Calais, with Archbishop Neville officiating. Waurin says there were ‘very few guests and the celebrations only lasted two days, for Clarence was married on a Tuesday, and on the following Sunday he returned to England’. The marriage served to bind the Duke more closely to Warwick and identify him with the Earl’s interests.
In the second week of July, records Warkworth, Sir John Conyers marched south through Yorkshire, leading ‘many knights, squires and commons, numbering 20,000 men in all’. Conyers ‘called himself Robin of Redesdale’, a persona based on Robin Hood, the people’s hero. Croyland claims that the rebel army was 60,000 strong: it was certainly impressive, because reports of its advance caused panic in the south,
The rebels were to join up with Warwick’s affinity in the Midlands, and the leaders were careful throughout to avoid any attack on the King himself, skirting Nottingham on their way. Edward was slow to react to this new threat, and wasted much valuable time in summoning Warwick from Calais to assist him and then, when Warwick failed to obey, waiting for Herbert of Pembroke to arrive. Herbert was bringing with him 43,000 Welshmen, and in the west Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, had mustered 7000 archers. In the meantime, the King had ordered the Wydvilles to seek refuge in castles in East Anglia and Wales, but Rivers and his son Sir John Wydville, who had been lodging in Herbert’s castle at Chepstow, joined Edward on his march north to intercept the rebels. In Yorkshire, Northumberland forced Redesdale’s men to disperse, but they merely crossed the border into Lancashire and regrouped.
From Calais, on 12 July, Warwick issued a manifesto proclaiming that he and Archbishop Neville had been urged by the King’s true subjects to save his Grace from the ‘deceivable and covetous rule and guiding of certain seditious persons’. He then went on to list all-too-familiar grievances, such as ‘lack of governance’, ‘great impositions and inordinate charges’ and the corruption of justice. He promised the people that he would petition the King to remove his evil counsellors, the Wydvilles and Pembroke, cut taxation, and pay heed in future to the true lords of his blood – in other words, Warwick and Clarence. If the King did not meet these demands, he would deserve the same fate as Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI – deposition. The manifesto ended with a plea for armed support from all true subjects of the King and a promise that Warwick would be in Canterbury in three days. Already, his agents were in Kent enlisting men.
On 16 July, later than planned, Warwick and Archbishop Neville returned to England unopposed and received a heartening welcome in Kent. At Canterbury crowds of armed men flocked to join them, and the common people hailed Warwick as their deliverer. On the 18th he left Canterbury and marched on London at the head of a now substantial army; two days later the Lord Mayor permitted him to march through the city on his way north, in the belief that the Earl was taking reinforcements to the King. Crowds cheered him as he went.
Pembroke, meanwhile, was hastening to join the King with his Welsh reinforcements, having joined up with Devon and his force. But on the evening of the 24th, when they came to Banbury, the two earls quarrelled over who should have the best lodgings at the inn. Pembroke, as the senior commander, insisted that he should occupy them, but Devon, who had arrived first, protested that they had earlier agreed to take lodgings on a first come, first served basis. Pembroke peremptorily ordered Devon out of the rooms, and Devon, put out because he had just seduced the innkeeper’s daughter, marched off in a rage with all his men.
The next morning, Pembroke rode back to where his army was encamped by Edgecote Hill, six miles north-east of Banbury. The camp was on the western bank of a tributary of the River Cherwell, in the valley of Danes Moor. The next day, long before he had expected to do so, Pembroke sighted Robin of Redesdale’s northern army, which caught him unprepared for battle. Even though Devon and his archers had now rejoined him, his army was still considerably smaller than that of the rebels, who were drawn up in battle order on Blackbird Hill, to the north-east of Danes Moor.
The Battle of Edgecote began at dawn on 26 July 1469, when both sides advanced to a crossing place on the river and tried to take it, Pembroke going ahead with a troop of horsemen and defending himself manfully against a savage northern onslaught. Despite the odds, he managed to secure the crossing and hold on to it, while the northern army withdrew to await reinforcements from Warwick. While they were waiting, they regrouped into battle order. Pembroke, meanwhile, had been joined by Sir William Parr and Sir Geoffrey Gate with fresh troops, but was still outnumbered.
Then there appeared in the distance a force of 15,000 men of Kent and soldiers of the Calais garrison, who had been sent ahead by Warwick; at the sight, Devon and his archers fled, believing that this was Warwick’s entire army. After Devon had withdrawn, Pembroke found it impossible to maintain a continuous battle line, but he nevertheless led a ferocious charge and forced the rebels to fall back. His brother, Sir Richard Herbert, fought heroically, twice crossing the enemy line, swinging his poleaxe, ‘without any mortal wound returned’. Victory was almost within the Yorkists’ grasp when a second force of 500 rebel reinforcements came thundering downhill behind them: it was Warwick’s advance guard, and its banners bore his device of the bear and ragged staff. This was enough to strike terror into the hearts of Pembroke’s Welshmen, who fled the field in disarray, many wading across the river. Casualties were high on both sides, but Pembroke’s Welshmen suffered the worst losses, with 2-4000 men dead.
The rebels – and the Nevilles – had scored a resounding victory. Pembroke was taken prisoner along with his brother, the craven Devon fled into Somerset, and Rivers and Sir John Wydville went into hiding, knowing that Warwick would try to hunt them down.
After the battle, the Herbert brothers were brought before Warwick and Clarence at their headquarters at Northampton, where Warwick had no compunction in condemning them as traitors and ordering their executions. There was no legal justification for his action, since neither Herbert nor his confederates had committed treason against their lawful sovereign, nor were they guilty of any crime. Nevertheless, both were beheaded on 27 July. Herbert’s wife had once promised him that if anything should happen to him she would take a vow of perpetual widowed chastity. Before he was led out to die, he wrote her a last letter: ‘Pray for me, and take the said order that ye promised me, as ye had in my life my heart and love.’
People were shocked at Herbert’s execution: he had been one of the chief mainstays of Edward IV’s throne. His death meant that the earldom of Pembroke was once more vacant and that Jasper Tudor would almost certainly try to reclaim it. It also meant that nothing now stood between Warwick and his ambitions in Wales.
The loss of his powerful guardian left young Henry Tudor without a protector, but the widowed Countess of Pembroke took him to live with her at Weobley in Herefordshire. His mother, Margaret Beaufort, tried at this time to regain custody of him, but without success.
After Edgecote, Conyers and his northerners returned home; there is no record of Conyers receiving any reward for the sterling service he had done Warwick, yet he remained loyal to the Earl. On 17 August, the fugitive Earl of Devon was captured by the common people of Somerset at Bridgewater, where, says Hall, he was ‘cut shorter by the head’.
Meanwhile, on the 29th the King had decided it was unsafe to remain at Nottingham waiting for Pembroke, and had ridden south. At the village of Olney, near Coventry, he learned of the Earl’s crushing defeat at Edgecote, news which prompted many of the nobles with him to desert, leaving him isolated and vulnerable. He now had no choice but to dismiss those lords who were still in attendance, and leave himself at the mercy of his enemies. Only Gloucester and Hastings remained with him.
Archbishop Neville soon found out that the King was at Olney ‘and that all the men he had raised had fled from him, so, on the advice of the Earl of Warwick, he went with a few horsemen’ to seize him. At midnight, the King was awoken by the sound of many horses’ hooves and men shouting outside his window. Looking out, he saw in the street below a troop of soldiers wearing Warwick’s livery. Then there was a sharp knock on the door. The King’s attendants opened it to reveal Archbishop Neville, fully armed, standing in the antechamber. The Archbishop offered a courteous greeting to the King and bade him dress at once. Edward refused, saying he was tired and had not had sufficient rest. But the Archbishop was firm – this was no social call. ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘you must rise and come to see my brother of Warwick, nor do I think that you can refuse.’ Edward meekly did as he was told, as Gloucester and Hastings, roused from sleep, looked on helplessly. Presently the King was ready, and rode with the Archbishop and his soldiers to confront a triumphant Warwick and Clarence. The Nevilles were now in control.
On 2 August, Edward was brought before Warwick and Clarence at Coventry. He greeted them amiably and made no protest at their treatment of him. For Warwick, the capture of the King was in some respects an anti-climax. Now that he had him, what was he to do with him? He himself had no royal authority, he and Clarence were not in a strong enough position to indict and execute Edward without fear of reprisals, nor had they gathered enough support to depose him and set Clarence on the throne in his place. In fact, by deferring to Edward as king while holding him in captivity they had placed themselves in an invidious position, for it was no light matter to imprison one’s anointed sovereign. Moreover, without the King at the helm much of the business of government must be held in suspension.
Warwick and Clarence tried to resolve their dilemma by placing Edward in honourable confinement in Warwick Castle and attempting to rule England in his name. Warwick, using the Great Seal, issued writs summoning Parliament to meet at York on 22 September, since some cloak of legality had to be given to the present r gime. But the King’s subjects remained staunchly loyal to him, and the magnates were determined to curb Warwick’s power rather than help extend it. Without their support, the Earl found that ruling England was impossible. Unlike the King, he had no means of dispensing patronage with which to buy noble loyalties, and even his Neville kinsfolk were pointing out the dangers inherent in what he had done. There was a general feeling that, this time, Warwick had gone too far.
Edward, meanwhile, cheerfully acted like a well-behaved puppet, doing as he was told, signing everything that Warwick put before him, and comporting himself with unfailing courtesy and good humour. He was well aware that Warwick could not hope to maintain the status quo, but enough of a realist to know that no one would attempt to liberate him at present. Nevertheless, Warwick was nervous that a rescue attempt might be made, and had the King moved at the dead of night to Middleham Castle in Yorkshire.
Queen Elizabeth had been lodging in the royal apartments of the Tower of London when Edward IV was taken into captivity, and Warwick allowed her to remain there, insisting only that she kept ‘scant state’. But he was determined to have his revenge on the other Wydvilles. One of his agents tracked down and apprehended Lord Rivers and Sir John Wydville in the Forest of Dean, and brought them to Coventry, where they were condemned to death on the orders of Warwick and Clarence. Both were beheaded on 12 August at Gosford Green outside the city walls. Rivers’s body was carried to Kent and buried in All Saints’ Church in Maidstone, where an indent remains to show where his brass lay. His son Anthony now became Earl Rivers, and his office of Treasurer of England was given to a former Lancastrian, Sir John Langstrother. When Queen Elizabeth learned the fate of her father and brother, she vowed vengeance on those who had perpetrated the deed.
Warwick’s hatred of the Wydvilles extended also to Rivers’s widow, the Duchess of Bedford. Shortly after the Earl’s execution, she was arrested on a charge of witchcraft. Two men had been paid by Warwick to give evidence that she had made obscene leaden images of Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydville and had practised her black arts upon them to bring about her daughter’s marriage to the King. It was also alleged that she had cast another image to bring about Warwick’s death. The Duchess, mindful of the fate of Eleanor Cobham thirty years earlier, immediately wrote to the Lord Mayor of London soliciting his protection. The mayor forwarded the letter to Clarence, but then remembered how the Duchess had tried to save London from the savagery of Margaret of Anjou’s northern army in 1461, and forcefully interceded on her behalf with the Council. Further investigation proved that the evidence against her was deeply suspect. Witnesses had been bribed to make them testify against her, but when it came to it and they would not take the oath in court, the prosecution’s case collapsed and the Duchess was freed. In February 1470 she was officially declared innocent of all the charges by Edward IV.
By the end of August 1469 Warwick’s authority was crumbling and the government beginning to descend into anarchy. Many lords were taking advantage of Edward’s captivity to settle old feuds or pervert justice in their localities. The people were angry with Warwick for imprisoning the King and were attributing all their ills to this. In London angry mobs were gathering, threatening violence, while Clarence and Archbishop Neville vainly strove to maintain a semblance of normality at Westminster. Warwick himself issued several proclamations in the King’s name demanding civil obedience, but the people ignored them. The situation was getting out of control, and Warwick was obliged to issue a further writ cancelling the Parliament at York.
At that moment, Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth, who had been in hiding near Derwentwater since Hexham, raised Henry VI’s standard and incited his northern compatriots to rebellion. He had a strong following and large numbers of men came in at his summons. Warwick rode north with an army to suppress the rising, but was unable to do so, for his men threatened to desert unless they were assured of Edward IV’s health and safety. Nor would the magnates support Warwick, though they would undoubtedly obey a summons from the King. Warwick therefore had no choice but to invoke Edward’s authority, and Archbishop Neville asked Edward if, in return for a degree of liberty, he would support Warwick against the rebels. The King, who had been kept secretly informed by his own supporters and Burgundian agents as to what was happening, declared himself willing to co-operate, telling the Archbishop that he harboured no ill-will against the Nevilles. He was then taken to York, where his entry to the city was marked by fanfares and ceremony, while crowds turned out to cheer him, and lords thronged round him, eager to renew their vows of homage. When, at Warwick’s request, the King summoned his lieges to arms such was his authority that there was an enthusiastic response. The royal army, commanded by Warwick, then marched north and crushed Humphrey Neville’s rebellion almost effortlessly. Neville himself was captured by Warwick and brought back to York where, on 29 September, he was beheaded in the presence of the King.
Warwick had no choice but to keep his promise and allow Edward more freedom. It was clear to both him and to Clarence that their victory had been a hollow one that had gained them precisely nothing. Now they had to retrieve the situation without bringing down charges of treason upon their heads. In fact, there was no way of holding Edward. The King had secretly summoned his loyal lords and supporters – Gloucester, Hastings, Buckingham, Essex, Arundel, Northumberland (who had not supported his brother’srebellion), Howard, Dynham and Mountjoy – who all rode at speed to join him. Early in October, with Warwick’s blessing, Edward rode out of York to Pontefract and freedom.
Surrounded now by his loyal lords, the King informed Warwick that he was returning to London. He arrived in triumph in his capital, followed by 1000 mounted men, and received a tumultuous reception from the citizens, being formally welcomed back by the Lord Mayor and aldermen in their scarlet robes and 200 prominent citizens clad in blue. Archbishop Neville and the Earl of Oxford had been waiting at the Archbishop’s residence called The More in Hertfordshire to follow the King into London and so present themselves as his loyal supporters, but he forbade them to approach the city.
Edward immediately set to work to re-establish his authority, adopting a conciliatory policy that would, he hoped, persuade those who had deserted him to return to their allegiance. Although Warkworth says that once in London he ‘did as he liked’, the King had to tread carefully, and once he was settled at Westminster he wisely referred to Warwick and Clarence in courteous and forgiving terms, never once showing any mark of disfavour towards them.
Herbert’s death had left a vacuum in Wales, of which Lancastrian sympathisers in the south of the principality had been quick to take advantage, stirring up rebellion, seizing royal castles, and using them as a base from which to terrorise the local population. In December the King acted to remedy this situation, granting his brother, Gloucester, then only seventeen, full powers to secure the castles that had fallen to the Welsh rebels, a task which the young Duke fulfilled with commendable efficiency.
Warwick and Clarence remained in the north for at least a month after Edward left for London. Then the King summoned them to a meeting of a great council in the capital, which was intended to be a forum in which all grievances could be aired, discussed and, it was hoped, redressed. When Warwick and Clarence arrived at Westminster in December, the King staged a very public ceremony of reconciliation, doing his best to convince everyone that he harboured no ill-feelings towards his brother and cousin. John Paston reported that he had ‘good language of the lords of Clarence and Warwick, saying they be his best friends; but his household men have other language, so what shall hastily fall I cannot say’. Soon afterwards Warwick and Clarence returned north, where they remained for the rest of the winter. Presently, the King issued full and unconditional pardons to those who had been involved in the previous summer’s rebellion. Nevertheless, Warwick’s wings had been well and truly clipped, and he must have realised with dismay that his influence in government was now less than it had ever been and was diminishing daily. Edward might present a smiling face, but he would never again trust Warwick, still less be controlled by him.
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.