Warwick the Kingmaker (48 page)

The Nevilles identified themselves with the North and needed to present themselves as its natural patrons. Warwick joined Bishop Bothe on his knees at Edward’s departure from Durham cathedral priory on 22 April 1461 to solicit the king’s repayment of loans made by the priory to their Lancastrian enemies. ‘Priour, I will be youre goode lorde’, said the king, ‘and I shall remembre your bill’, though it was thirteen years or more before he fulfilled his promise.54 Only a fortnight later, on 11 May 1461, Warwick and Bishop Neville were licensed to found a college for the chantry priests of York Minster in fulfilment of a scheme first mooted in 1414 and nourished by George when prebendary of Masham. The new college was to have a provost and was licensed to acquire lands worth £100 a year. Dedicated to St William at York and actually never so generously endowed, it was housed in a two-storeyed quadrangle of stone and half-timbered buildings under construction in 1465–7 that still survives.55 Richard Clervaux of Croft, although apparently not formally retained by the lords of Middleham and if anything a collaborator with the Lancastrians in 1459–61, nevertheless turned to the earl when he wanted exemption from border service and it was the latter’s intercession that secured the necessary signet letter of immunity from the king.56 Even though on the Lancastrian side at Towton and fortunate to redeem himself, Sir William Plumpton entered Warwick’s service and emerged to his own local advantage as the earl’s steward of Spofforth and deputy-steward at Knaresborough.57

After Towton, Edward IV (and probably Warwick) had spent Easter (5 April) at York. Warwick was at Middleham on the 20th, where he retained the Cumberland esquire Roland Vaux for life, and was with the king on the 22nd at Durham. Edward was at Newcastle on 1 May and with the earl at Middleham on 5–7 May and at York on the 10–11th.58 On 10 May Warwick was appointed to commissions to array seven counties, including the three northernmost shires, three Yorkshire Ridings and three parts of Lincolnshire, and on 13 May he headed a commission of fifteen to arrest and pardon rebels in the North Riding. On his departure for his coronation, Edward ‘left behind him the Earl of Warwick to have the oversight and governance there’. To the wardenship of the West Marches, which Warwick already held, the king had added that of the East with the title of lieutenant as early as 20 April. Probably Ogle continued as deputy.59 It proved to be no sinecure. On 12 June an army of Lancastrians and Scots invaded the West March, burnt the suburbs of Carlisle, invested and took the city, ‘the key of the West marches of England’. Montagu, apparently acting as his brother’s lieutenant, quickly raised the siege, allegedly killing 6,000 Scots. Warwick himself arrived by 24 June, when he retained Faucon as gunner, to serve at Carlisle with his man.60 East of the Pennines matters were much worse. Roxburgh had fallen to the Scots in August 1460 and Berwick itself was handed over to them in April 1461, when an attack on Norham was threatened. There was actually no Yorkist presence in the Percy country north of Tynemouth and Newcastle, where Lumley and Kent had garrisons, and all the major castles remained in hostile hands. On 26 June Lord Roos, William Tailbois, the lord of Tynedale, and other prominent northerners raised revolt both at Ryton south-west of Newcastle and at Brancepeth, a senior Neville castle just south-west of Durham. Each was quickly quashed, the latter by Bishop Bothe,61 but Warwick was also required. He was advanced 500 marks on 28 July, formally commissioned as warden of the East and Middle Marches on 31 July and to negotiate alone with the Scots on 2 August.62 From Middleham on 20 August he proceeded to Northumberland, where the Percy castle of Alnwick fell on 13 September and the coastal stronghold of Dunstanburgh by the end of the month.63 In November and December he attended Edward IV’s crucial first parliament at Westminster.

Warwick’s absence, of course, meant that others had to take the lead elsewhere. Hammes was blockaded by his Calais officers, Duras, Whetehill and Blount, and eventually fell next year; fortunately King Charles VII respected Philip the Good’s refusal of free passage across his territory to attack the colony.64 Warwick was unavailable to resist De Brezé’s invasion of the Channel Isles or Pembroke and Exeter’s campaign in Wales. Apart from his wife’s lordships of Glamorgan, Abergavenny and Elvell, the earl was custodian of several Stafford and Lancaster lordships. Though commissioned with others to array the marcher and south-western shires on 12 August 1461, he was quite unable to participate. That same day William Lord Herbert was commissioned to recover Monmouth and the Three Castles and supplanted the earl as steward.65 By May 1462 Herbert had captured everywhere except Harlech Castle, which was to hold out until 1468.

Warwick came south for the opening of Edward’s first parliament on 6 November 1461. Doubtless he heard his brother George’s opening sermon and the protestations as Speaker of his own retainer Sir James Strangways. He himself attended the Lords every day bar one from 28 November to 11 December. He was again a trier of petitions and more important, on 3 December, he was appointed steward of England temporarily for the purpose of pronouncing sentence on Henry VI and the other Lancastrians for offences dating from Wakefield almost to the present day. He was exempted from the act of resumption and, as we have seen, he benefited from the revocation of the sentences against Cambridge (1415), Salisbury and Despenser (1401). He secured a general pardon, a licence to enter the whole Despenser estate, and a comprehensive list of offices in the duchy of Lancaster.66

The earl was in London on 11 January 1462, when he wrote to the Duke of Milan, and on 13 February, when he was commissioned to keep the sea for a further three years at £1,000 a year. He was reappointed captain of Calais and was granted the proceeds of the subsidy and aulnage in support.67 From London Warwick proceeded to Sandwich and Dover, where he held his Shepway court as warden of the Cinque Ports on 27 February and received lavish gifts from the corporation of Rye,68 and apparently made a lightning visit to Calais. He was back with the king by 5 March and was probably engaged in preparing his fleet, for which he was commissioned to array Hampshire on 18 March and which was scheduled to sail against France on 1 May. He may also have considered attending a peace conference at Valenciennes. It was not to be, however, as northern affairs called and took longer than anticipated to settle. Warwick had foreseen this on 15 February, when he had appointed William Lord Say to captain and govern his ‘navagia’ in his absence, but actually it was Warwick’s uncle Kent who took command and successfully raided Conquet and the Île de Rhé.69 The garrison of Calais, again mutinous, would harken only to the king or earl; in the earl’s absence it was the king who acted.70

The rapid reduction of the northern Lancastrians had proved illusory. It was hard to pacify a shire so accustomed as Northumberland to war and so well furnished with castles, peles and lesser fortifications, so divided by liberties, so traditionally committed to his Percy enemies, and where it was so easy for enemies based in Scotland to attack and retreat across the border by land and sea.

During the winter of 1461–2 Tailbois took Alnwick and Sir Humphrey Dacre recovered his family seat of Naworth near Carlisle.71 Troublesome though such incursions were to the Yorkists, they posed no direct threat to the regime and offered the Lancastrians no immediate hope of recovering the realm. Both sides, indeed, saw them in the context of wider international alignments. Indeed the Scots were divided. The queen-dowager, who headed the regency for the young James III, was far from committed to the Lancastrians, though the influential James Kennedy Bishop of St Andrews was ‘pro-French by conviction’ and hence strongly Lancastrian. The alliances that Edward concluded with the Earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles on 17 March 1462, surely on Warwick’s advice, whilst no threat to the queen, would distract and disarm Mary of Guelders and discourage her from supporting the Lancastrians. Edward was to come north himself, but was not required.72

On 7 March, before departing, Warwick had indented with Robert Perrot. Probably he proceeded via Warwick to Lichfield, where he was on 5 April, and thence presumably up the west coast via Carlisle to Dumfries to meet Mary of Guelders. He offered her an alliance reinforced by three matches, one matching herself with King Edward, but unsuccessfully, allegedly because of the hostile intervention of Bishop Kennedy, Margaret of Anjou’s ally. Warwick stepped up the pressure. This was still in April. Failing to secure the co-operation that he sought, he retired to York, where he left his countess, and thence to Middleham, where on 26–28 April he retained Thomas Blenkinsop, Robert Warcop, Thomas Sandford and Christopher Lancaster.73 Presumably they shared in his raid over the border which culminated in the capture of an unnamed Scottish castle; Edward’s client Ross ravaged Atholl. The Scots returned to the negotiating table. Warwick led another English delegation at Carlisle, where an extremely short truce running only to 24 August was concluded. The Scots were divided on the proper course of action. Perhaps Warwick also was insincere and playing for time; the freedom from Scottish intervention gained by the truce was enough to restore control as complete as the previous autumn. Montagu captured Naworth from Dacre and on 30–31 July Alnwick fell to Warwick’s brother-in-law Lord Hastings and Sir Ralph Grey.74 Whilst the terms offered allowed opponents to fight another day, they also materially shortened campaigns at the very extreme of English lines of communication and supply.

A second diet, to extend the truce, did not happen,75 presumably because Margaret returned with reinforcements. Though neither the French nor Burgundians committed themselves to her, she landed in Northumberland on 25 October 1462 with the veteran De Brezé ‘best warrer of that time’ and 800 Frenchmen in 40 ships. The imposing castles of Alnwick, Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh and Warkworth fell again into her hands – they lacked the provisions for a siege – but this time the local populace failed to join her. When the news reached London, Edward commissioned Warwick to take charge again and determined this time to follow with ‘a mighty powair to thentent tentre into Scotland for the subduyng of your adversaries there’ and presumably to capture Berwick. Edward was accompanied by most of the English nobility on leaving London on 3 November. By the 30th he was at Durham and stayed there for Christmas. Alarmed by their approach, Margaret garrisoned the castles and on 13 November withdrew her field army by sea. Unfortunately it was wrecked on Lindisfarne, 400 Frenchmen being captured, and Margaret herself was lucky to escape.76

Warwick’s letter from Newcastle of about this time reveals his appreciation of the realities of border warfare. He doubted that Edward had the resources to campaign in Scotland. Numbers were not everything and indeed aggravated the difficulties. An army in Scotland could not live off the land; it had to be supplied by sea and victuals must be sent ahead of it. It required munitions:

sufficient stuff of all maner artillerie, that is to saye grete gunnes for betyng of places and othre gunnes for the [battle]felde, suffycient powdre, stones and al othre stuff for the same, grete quantitie of bowes, arows, stringes, speres and all othre habilementes of werre, sufficient nombre of men for ordinaunce as gonners and othre.

Was Warwick’s understanding of the importance of logistics, of seapower, and of the role of combined operations ever more clearly expressed? Whilst welcoming Edward’s participation, which was good for morale, he and the other ‘lordes and men of reputation in thise parties’ respectfully submitted that it would be better for Edward not to come until he could bring such resources.77

It was in this spirit, we may suppose, that Warwick took command when Edward was laid low at Durham with measles. No invasion was launched against Scotland. Some magnates and troops were left with the king and at Newcastle, and the three principal castles with their substantial garrisons were invested by two other earls and four barons. Warwick had men enough, it was reported, though the ordnance was at Newcastle. Probably it was not employed for fear of damaging fortifications that they hoped to reuse. Instead the garrisons were starved out: Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh on 26–27 December and Alnwick on 6 January 1463. Alnwick was besieged by Kent and Scales, Bamburgh by Montagu and Ogle, and Dunstanburgh by Worcester and Grey. Warwick, the king’s lieutenant, Wenlock, Grey of Codnor and Cromwell based themselves at Warkworth Castle, presumably in the comfortable polygonal tower-house of the Percies. Daily Warwick undertook the arduous sixty-mile circuit of the besiegers. He saw it as his task to keep them supplied, so it was reported on 11 December, the day after an armoured convoy of ordnance and victuals was brought through hostile terrain from Newcastle under the escort of the Duke of Norfolk.78

When the castles capitulated, Pembroke and Roos were allowed to withdraw to Scotland, whilst Somerset, Percy and others were granted their lives and were received into Edward’s allegiance. Percy was even appointed constable of Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh. Such leniency proved to be misplaced and Edward IV has been much criticized for it. However Warwick had been interested in terms for Somerset the previous September79 and it must have been he who negotiated the terms. Whilst no doubt he wanted the defectors to be sincere and considered a Percy the most respected commander in Percy country, there were other good reasons for the compromise. It was difficult to conduct sieges in the northern winter. Foodstuffs were short for besiegers as well as besieged; far from maximizing his forces, Warwick had quite enough men to supply. Moreover he wanted a hasty conclusion, before the oft-threatened relief approach. The Scots had failed to appear as forecast before 11 December, when they promised to arrive on the 19th but did not, and on the 28th King Edward knew of yet another such assurance to the Alnwick garrison.80 A Franco-Scottish-Lancastrian army led by De Brezé and the Earl of Angus did indeed materialize on 5 January; Angus had been retained by Henry VI in November.81 Warwick did not intercept them, for which he has been much criticized, but instead fortified his camp. Such defensive tactics, so well tried during the Hundred Years War, were his normal response as an army commander: the boldest of strategists, he was a cautious tactician, who rated (and probably overrated) the defensive potential of his artillery very highly. Warwick cannot have wished to be caught between garrison and army. As contemporaries claimed, he may have been reluctant to commit his weather-beaten and probably unhealthy troops, ‘greved with cold and rayne that thei had no coreage to feght’, to battle with a larger and fresher army. ‘And they may have been wise’, observed pseudo-Worcestre, ‘as there might have been destroyed all the nobility of the lords of England’. Whether he expected to be attacked or not, Warwick was doubtless surprised that the garrison preferred evacuation to reinforcement and that Angus resisted De Brezé’s urgings to engage. He may well have had domestic considerations in mind; however he was certainly strong enough to fight.82 Whatever the reasons, Warwick’s enemies abandoned the castles and Yorkist control was again restored over Northumberland. It was a formidable military achievement.