A history of England

Meanwhile he took care to keep his party together, and steadfastly persevered in his very justifiable desire to evict the incapable Somerset from office. But it was the misfortune of England that Somerset was not friendless and unsupported, as Gaveston or the Despensers had been. He was the chief of a considerable family combination among the nobility, who were ready to aid him in keeping his place. There were, too, many others who disapproved of him personally, but were prepared to support him, some out of sheer loyalty to King Henry, some because they had old personal or family grudges against York or York's chief friends and supporters.

The chief misfortunes of the unhappy time that was now to set in, had their source in the swollen importance of the great noble houses, and the bitterness of their feuds with each other. For the last hundred years the landed wealth of England had been concentrating into fewer and fewer hands. The House of Lords contained less than a third of the numbers that it had shown in the days of Edward I. The greater peers had piled up such vast masses of estates that they were growing to be each a little king in his own district. The weak government of Henry VI. had allowed their insolence to come to a head, and for the last twenty years private wars between them had been growing more and more frequent. They found the tools of their turbulence in the hordes of disbanded soldiers sent home from France, who knew no other trade but fighting, and would sell themselves to be the household bullies of the highest bidder.

England was already honeycombed with family feuds, now ready to burst out into open violence. If we examine the lists of the supporters of York and of Somerset, we find that to a very large extent the politics of the English magnates were personal, and not national. With York were linked a great group of peers who were allied to him by blood. The chief of them were the younger branch of the Nevilles, represented by the two Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, a father and son who had each made his fortune by marrying the heiress of a great earldom. The Nevilles of the elder line, represented by the head of the house, the Earl of Westmoreland, had always been at feud with their cousins of the younger stock, and, since they were strong Lancastrians, the younger branch would probably have favoured York in any case. But their adhesion to him was rendered certain by the fact that Duke Richard had married Salisbury's sister. Another sister of the earl's was wedded to the next greatest supporter of York, John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. He was a nephew of that Mowbray whom Henry IV. had beheaded in 1405, in company with Archbishop Scrope, and so had his private grudge against the house of Lancaster. Among the other chiefs of the Yorkist party we can trace in almost every instance an old feud or a family alliance which seems to have determined their policy.

It was the same with the party that stood by the king and Somerset. It comprised, first of all, the houses which were allied in blood to the Lancastrian line—the king's cousins the Beauforts, the legitimized descendants of John of Gaunt, and his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor, Earls of Richmond and Pembroke. [27] After them came the Percies of Northumberland, the Westmoreland Nevilles, and the Staffords of Buckingham—the three houses which had been prominent in aiding the usurpation of Henry IV. The Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland were certainly confirmed in their loyalty to the king by their bitter quarrel with their kinsmen, the younger Nevilles, the strongest supporters of York.

But the "Wars of the Roses,"—as historians have chosen to name them, from the white rose which was the badge of York, and the red rose which was assumed long after as the emblem of Lancaster—were much more than a faction fight between two rival coteries of peers. At the first they were the attempt of the majority of the English nation to oust an unpopular minister from power by force of arms. There is no doubt that the greater part of England sided with York in this endeavour. The citizens and freeholders of London, Kent, the South, and the Midlands, where lay all the wealth and political energy of the nation, were strongly Yorkist. Henry, on the other hand, got his support from a group of great nobles who controlled the wild West and North, and the still wilder Wales.

Unfortunately for the nation, the constitutional aspect of the struggle was gradually obscured by the increasing bitterness of family blood-feuds. "Thy father slew mine, and now will I slay thee," was the cry of the Lancastrian noble to the enemy who asked for quarter, [28] and it expresses well enough the whole aspect of the later years of the struggle. The war commenced with an attempt to set right by force the government of the realm, but it ended as a mere series of bloody reprisals for slain kinsfolk. It left England in a far worse state, from the political and constitutional point of view, than it had known since the days of John. It began with the comparatively small affliction of a weak, well-intentioned king, who persisted in retaining an unpopular minister in power; it ended by leaving the realm in the hands of an arbitrary self-willed king, who ruled autocratically for himself, with no desire or intention of consulting the nation's wishes as to how it should be governed.

We might place the beginning of the Wars of the Roses at the moment of Cade's insurrection, but it was not till five years later that the struggle broke out in its bitterer form.

Strangely enough, the commencement of the strife was preceded by a time in which it seemed almost certain that the troubles of the realm would blow over. In 1453 the king went mad; the peers and commons unanimously called upon York, as the first prince of the blood, to take up the place of Protector of the realm. He did so to the general satisfaction of the nation, cast Somerset into the Tower, and replaced the old ministers by more capable men. But just as all seemed settled, and York's ultimate succession to the crown appeared inevitable, the whole aspect of affairs was altered by the queen giving birth to a son, after nine years of unfruitful wedlock. This completely cut away York's prospect of succession; but he accepted the situation with loyalty, and swore allegiance to the infant Prince of Wales. But after eighteen months, Henry VI. suddenly and unexpectedly recovered his sanity. At once, at Queen Margaret's behest, he dismissed York and his friends from office, and drew Somerset out of the Tower to make him minister once more.

This action drove Duke Richard to sudden violence. He hastily gathered his retainers from the Welsh Marches, called his kinsmen the two Neville earls to his aid, and marched

on London. Somerset and the king had only the time to collect a few of their friends, when York came upon them at St. Albans. He laid before the king his ultimatum, requiring that Somerset should be given up to be tried, and, when it was rejected, attacked the town, in which the royal troops had barricaded themselves. After a short skirmish, the young Earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, burst his way into the streets and won the day for his uncle Duke Richard. The king was taken prisoner, while Somerset, the cause of all the trouble, was slain in the fray with several other lords of his party (May, 1455).

The first battle of St. Albans put the control of the king's person into the hands of York, who again assumed the management of the realm. But he only kept it for less than a year; in 1456 the king asserted his constitutional power of changing his ministers, and turned Duke Richard's friends out of office. As his foe Somerset was now dead, York was fairly contented to leave matters in the king's own control. But after the blood shed at St. Albans, there could be no true reconciliation between the friends of the king and the friends of York. The fierce and active young Queen Margaret put herself at the head of the party which Suffolk and Somerset had formerly led. She feared for her infant son's right of succession to the throne, and was determined to crush York to make his path clear. Throughout the years 1457-8, while a precarious peace was still preserved, Margaret was journeying up and down the land, enlisting partisans in her cause, and giving them her son's badge of the white swan to wear, in token of promised fidelity.

The inevitable renewal of the war came in 1459. Its immediate cause was an attempt by some of the Queen's retainers to slay the young Earl of Warwick, York's ablest and most energetic supporter. Then Salisbury, Warwick's father, raised his Yorkshire tenants in arms; the queen sent against them a force under Lord Audley, whom the elder Neville defeated and slew at Bloreheath. After this skirmish, all England flew to arms to aid one party or the other. York, Salisbury, and Warwick met at Ludlow, on the Welsh border, while the king gathered a great army at Worcester, taking the field himself, with a vigour which he never before or afterwards displayed. It seems that York's adherents were moved by the vehement appeals which King Henry made to their loyalty, and cowed by the superior forces that he mustered. At the Rout of Ludford they broke up without fighting, leaving their leaders to escape as best they might. York fled to Ireland, Salisbury and Warwick to Calais, of which the younger Neville was governor.

But surprising and sudden vicissitudes of fortune were the order of the day all through the Wars of the Roses. The queen and her friends ruled harshly and unwisely after they had driven York out of the land. They assembled a Parliament at Coventry, which dealt out hard measures of attainder and confiscation against all who had favoured Duke Richard. They sacked the open town of Newbury because it was supposed to favour York, and hung seven citizens of London of the duke's party. These cruel actions turned the heart of the nation from the king and the ruthless Queen Margaret.

Hearing of this state of affairs, Warwick and Salisbury suddenly made a descent from Calais, landed at Sandwich, and pushed boldly inland. The whole of Kent rose to join them, and they were able to march on London. The Yorkist partisans within the city were so strong that they threw open the gates, and the Nevilles seized the capital. The Londoners armed in their favour, and the Yorkist lords of the South flocked in to aid them; soon they were strong enough to strike at their enemies, whose forces were not yet concentrated. The queen had gathered at Northampton the loyalists of the Midland counties, but her friends of the North and West were not yet arrived.

Warwick, on July 10, 1460, stormed the entrenched camp of the Lancastrians in front of Northampton, and took the king prisoner. The queen escaped to Wales, but the greater part of the chiefs of her army were left dead on the field, for Warwick had bidden his men to spare the common folk, and slay none save knights and nobles. There fell the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and many other leading men of the king's party.

The Duke of York had crossed from Ireland too late to take any share in the fight of Northampton, but in time to reap the fruits of his nephew's victory. He advanced to London, and there summoned a Parliament. It then appeared that the vicissitudes of the last year had so embittered him that he was no longer content to act as regent for Henry VI. He fell back on his undisputed hereditary claim as the eldest heir of Richard II., and began to talk of deposing his cousin and assuming the crown. But his own partisans set their faces against this plan, for Henry was still personally popular, and all the blame of his misgovernment was laid on the queen and her friends. The Earl of Warwick openly told his uncle that he must be content to be regent, and York had to accept a compromise, by which Henry VI. was to retain the crown as long as he lived, but to leave it to Duke Richard on his death. The rights of the little Prince of Wales were ignored, and many of the Yorkists swore that he was a supposititious child, and no true son of King Henry.

But in making this arrangement the duke's party had reckoned without Queen Margaret, who was still free and busy. She had fled to the North, and there had gathered to her the Percies, the elder Nevilles, and the barons of the Border, all staunch Lancastrians. Hearing of this muster, Duke Richard marched northward, with his second son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury. He underrated the queen's forces, and rashly engaged with them under the walls of Sandal Castle, close to Wakefield. There, overwhelmed by numbers, he and his whole army were destroyed. Burning to avenge the slaughter of Northampton, the Lancastrians refused all quarter. The Earl of Rutland, a lad of seventeen, fell at the knees of Lord Clifford and asked for his life. "Thy father slew mine, and now will I slay thee," answered the rough Borderer, and stabbed him as he knelt. The Earl of Salisbury was captured and beheaded next day. Queen Margaret set the heads of the slain lords above the gate of York, Duke Richard's in the midst crowned in derision with a diadem of paper.

Thus perished Richard of York, a man who had always displayed great abilities, and down to the last year of his life had shown much self-control and moderation. His death was a great loss to England, as the headship of his house and his party now passed to his son, a selfish and hard-hearted—though very able—young man of eighteen.

The event of the battle of Wakefield came as a thunderclap to the Yorkists, who had hitherto despised the queen and her northern followers. Edward, Earl of March, Duke Richard's heir, was absent in the west, where he was striving with the Lancastrians of Wales. Only Richard of Warwick was in time to reach London before the northern army approached its walls. He rallied the Yorkists of the South, and led them to St. Albans, where Queen Margaret attacked him. Again the Northerners were victorious; they rescued King Henry from his captors, and scattered Warwick's army to the winds. The rancorous queen made her little seven-year old son sit in judgment on the prisoners, and bade him choose the form of death by which they each should die.

If Margaret had pushed on next day, the capital would have fallen into her hands; but her gentle and kindly spouse feared that the northern moss-troopers would sack and burn the city, and persuaded her to wait, in order that London might surrender in due form, and not be taken by assault. The short delay was fatal to him and his cause. While London was negotiating the terms on which it should yield, a new Yorkist army suddenly appeared on the scene.

Not many days before the second battle of St. Albans, the young Edward of York had routed the Lancastrians of Wales at the battle of Mortimer's Cross, in Herefordshire. He had then set out to march on London; on the way he was met by Warwick, who brought the news of his own defeat, and of the queen's approach to the capital. But, learning that she had not yet entered its walls, they marched night and day, and threw themselves into the city just as its gates were opening for surrender.

The arrival of the heir of York and his victorious troops turned the fortune of the war. Margaret's army had in great part dispersed to plunder the Midlands, for the Northerners had vowed to treat every man south of the Trent as an enemy. When Duke Edward advanced they gave way before him, and retreated towards York, wasting the country behind them on all sides.

The slaughter of Wakefield and St. Albans, and more especially the ruthless execution of prisoners which had followed each battle, had driven the Yorkists to a pitch of anger which they had not felt before. There was no longer any talk of making terms with Henry VI., and leaving him the crown. Warwick and the other nobles of his party besought the young duke to claim the crown, as the true heir of Richard II., and to stigmatize the three Lancastrian kings as usurpers. Edward readily consented, and proclaimed himself king at Westminster on his hereditary title, and without any form of election or assent of Parliament.

But the new king had to fight for his crown before he could wear it. He and Warwick pursued the queen's army over the Trent, and caught it up at Towton, near Tadcaster, in Yorkshire. Here was fought the greatest and fiercest of the battles of the Wars of the Roses. Both parties were present in full force; the South and Midlands had rallied round Edward IV. in their wrath at the plundering of the Northumbrians. The Lancastrians of Wales and the Midlands had joined the queen during her retreat. The chroniclers assert that the two armies together mustered nearly a hundred thousand men—an impossible figure, but one which vouches for the fact that Towton saw the largest hosts set against each other that ever met on an English battle-field.

This desperate and bloody fight was waged on a bleak hillside during a blinding snow-storm, which half hid the combatants from each other. It lasted for a whole March day from dawn to dusk, and ended in the complete rout of the queen's army. Thousands of the Lancastrians were crushed to death or drowned at the passing of the little river Cock, which lay behind their line of battle. There fell on the field the Earl of Northumberland, the Lords Clifford, Neville, Dacre, Welles, and Mauley—all the chiefs of the Lancastrian party in the north. Courtney, Earl of Devon, and Butler, Earl of Wilts, were captured, and beheaded some time after the fight. No less than forty-two men of knightly rank shared their fate, so savage were King Edward and Warwick in avenging their fathers and brothers who had died at Wakefield.

Henry VI., with his wife and son, and the young Duke of Somerset, escaped from the field and fled into Scotland, where they were kindly received by the regents who ruled that land for the little King James III.

The carnage in and after Towton assured the crown to the house of York. Edward IV. was able to return to London and summon a Parliament, which formally acknowledged him as king, recognizing his hereditary right, and not going through any form of election. At his command they attainted the whole of the leaders of the Lancastrian party, both those who had fallen at Towton, and those who yet lived. Thinking his position sure, the young king then gave himself over to feasting and idleness, entrusting the completion of the war and the pacification of England to his cousin, the Earl of Warwick, whom men from this time forward called "the King-maker," because he had twice settled the fate of England, by winning the rule of the land for the house of York, at Northampton in 1460, and at Towton in 1461.

Edward IV. showed a strange mixture of qualities. On the battle-field he was a great commander, and in times of danger he was alert and dexterous. But when no perils were at hand, he became a reckless, heartless voluptuary, given to all manner of evil living and idle luxury, and letting affairs shift for themselves. For the first four years of his reign he handed over all cares of state to his cousin of Warwick, a busy capable man, who loved work and power, and strove not unsuccessfully to make himself the most popular man in England. Warwick called himself the friend of the commons, and used the vast wealth which he enjoyed as heir of all the broad lands of the Beauchamps, Nevilles, and Montacutes, to make himself partisans all over the country. He was self-confident and ambitious in the highest degree, and thoroughly enjoyed his position of chief minister to an idle and careless master. When he was at last deprived of it, we shall see that wounded pride could lead him to intrigue and treason.

The four years 1461-64 were occupied by the final crushing out of the civil war by the strong hand of the King-maker. The task proved longer than might have been expected, owing to the desperate efforts which Queen Margaret made to maintain her son's cause. After Towton nothing remained to her but some castles in Northumberland and Wales, but she bought the aid of the Scots by ceding Berwick, and obtained men and money from Lewis XI., the young King of France. That astute prince thought that a weak and divided England was the best security for the safety of France, and doled out occasional help to the queen in consideration of a promise to surrender Calais.

Warwick captured all the Northumbrian strongholds of the house of Percy,—Bamborough, Alnwick, and Dunstanborough—in 1462. But the North was thoroughly disaffected to the new king, and they were twice retaken by treachery when the queen, with her French and Scottish friends, appeared before them. In her third campaign she was aided by a rising of all the Lancastrians who had submitted to King Edward and been pardoned by him, headed by the Duke of Somerset, the son of him who fell at St. Albans. But the two battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham (April-May, 1464) crushed the last desperate effort of the northern Lancastrians: at the former fell Sir Ralph Percy, the last chief of the Percy clan who clung to the lost cause; at the second the Duke of Somerset was taken and executed. Both fights were won by Lord Montagu, the younger brother and lieutenant of the great Earl of Warwick. By June, 1464, Warwick himself stamped out the last embers of resistance by the second capture of Bamborough, the sole surviving Lancastrian stronghold in England.

The King-maker returned in triumph to London, and could report to his master that he had completely pacified England, and had also concluded an advantageous treaty with the Scots. He proposed to finish his work by making terms with the King of France, the last supporter of the Lancastrian cause, with whom Margaret and her young son had sought refuge. For this purpose he advised King Edward to endeavour to ally himself with some princess among the kinswomen of Lewis XI.

It was from this point that the breach between Edward and his great minister began. When pressed to marry, the king announced—to the great surprise and annoyance of Warwick and the rest of his council—that he was married already. He had secretly espoused Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, a staunch Lancastrian, and widow of Sir John Grey, another Lancastrian, who had fallen at St. Albans. She was some years older than Edward, and had a family by her first husband. But her beauty had captivated the susceptible young king, and he had married her in secret, in order to avoid the opposition of his family and his councillors.

When compelled to acknowledge this unwise match, Edward made the best of the matter, brought his wife to court, conferred an earldom on her father, and showered patronage upon her brothers and sisters. When Warwick ventured to remonstrate, he showed that he had no mind to be ruled any more by his too-powerful cousin, and redoubled his favours to the Woodvilles. He gave his wife's sisters as brides to the greatest peers of the realm, and made her father his Lord Treasurer. This was not pique, but policy, for Edward had come to the conclusion that the Neville clan was too strong, and had resolved to surround himself by another family connection which should owe everything to his protection (1465).

For a time an open breach between the king and the King-maker was delayed, and Edward's throne seemed firmly set. His position was made surer by the capture of the old King Henry VI., who was caught in Lancashire, where he had been lurking obscurely for some time. When Edward had placed him in the Tower of London, he thought that all his troubles were over. He forgot the unhealthy condition of the realm, the blood-feuds that reigned in every county, and the general disorganization of society that had resulted from six years of civil war and from the wholesale transference of lands and property that had accompanied it. Above all, he overlooked the vast power that had fallen into the hands of the great military peers, and especially of his ambitious cousin Warwick.

In 1467 Edward put his strength to the trial by dismissing all the King-maker's friends from office, and by ignominiously disavowing an embassy to France on which he had sent his cousin. From sheer desire to humiliate the great earl, he concluded an alliance with Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy, the deadly enemy of France, because he knew that Warwick was opposed to such a tie. He gave his sister Margaret to be the duke's wife, and made Warwick escort her on her embarkation for Flanders.

The earl replied by setting treasonable intrigues on foot. He leagued himself with the king's younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, Shakespeare's "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," a discontented young man of a very unamiable character. Warwick agreed to give his eldest daughter, the heiress of his vast estates, to the duke, and they swore to compel Edward to drive away the Woodvilles, and rule only under their guidance.

Warwick and Clarence were completely successful in their plot. They secretly suborned a rebellion in Yorkshire, under Sir John Conyers, one of Warwick's relatives, who was aided by the Neville retainers, as well as by the discontented Lancastrians of the North. Conyers called himself "Robin of Redesdale," and gave himself out as the champion of the poor and the redresser of grievances—much as Cade had done fifteen years before. He beat the king's army at Edgecote Field, near Banbury, and then Warwick and Clarence appeared upon the scene and apprehended Edward at Olney. They beheaded Earl Rivers, the father of all the Woodvilles, and Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the king's chief confidant. After keeping Edward some months in durance, they released him, on his undertaking to govern according to their desires (1469).

But the spirit of Edward always rose in times of trouble; he cast off his sloth, and plotted against the plotters. Taking advantage of an ill-planned Lancastrian rising in Lincolnshire, he raised a great army, and suddenly turned it against his disloyal brother and cousin. Warwick and Clarence were chased all across England, from Manchester to Dartmouth, and barely escaped with their lives by taking ship to France.

Furious at his failure, the King-maker resolved to sacrifice all his prejudices and predispositions to revenge. He met the exiled Queen Margaret at Angers, and proposed to her to restore Henry VI. to the throne, and make an end of the ungrateful Edward. After long doubting, Margaret resolved to take his offer, though she hated him bitterly, and never trusted him. To bind the alliance, Edward, Prince of Wales, the queen's young son, was married to Anne Neville, the earl's second daughter.

Then Warwick and Margaret joined to foment a rising in England. The numerous clan of the Nevilles were prepared to follow their chief, and the surviving Lancastrians were still ready to risk themselves in a new plan of insurrection. In the autumn of 1470, Warwick and Clarence landed in Devonshire and raised the standard of the imprisoned Henry VI. Their success showed the deep roots of the earl's popularity, and the precarious nature of King Edward's power. Simultaneous risings broke out all over England, and Edward, betrayed by most of his supporters, had to take ship and fly to Flanders. Henry VI. was drawn from his dungeon, and was for a few months again King of England.

But one more change of fortune was yet to come. Edward IV. borrowed men and money from his brother-in-law, Charles of Burgundy, and boldly returned to England in the spring of 1471. He landed in Yorkshire, called his partisans about him, and marched on London. Edward, when his mettle was up, was a captain of no mean ability. He completely out-generalled his enemy, and got between him and the capital. The Duke of Clarence, who had been entrusted with Warwick's western forces, betrayed his father-in-law, and joined his brother with the men whom he should have led to the earl's aid. London and the person of Henry VI. fell into King Edward's hands. Warwick came up too late, and had to fight the Yorkists at Barnet, a few miles north of the city. There he was completely defeated and slain, losing the battle mainly by the accident of a fog, which caused two divisions of his troops to attack one another. With Warwick fell his brother Lord Montagu, and most of the personal adherents on whom his power rested.

But Edward was not yet secure. On the very day of Barnet, Queen Margaret landed at Portsmouth to raise the Lancastrians of the South in Warwick's aid. Hearing of his fall, she turned westward, gathering up a considerable force of adherents as she fled. But Edward rapidly pursued her, and by dint of superior pace in marching, caught her up at Tewkesbury. The queen's army was intercepted, and penned up with its back to the Severn, then destitute of a bridge. Unable to fly, the Lancastrians had to turn, and fought a desperate battle outside Tewkesbury. But King Edward never suffered a defeat in all his days; his courage and skill carried all before it, and the queen's army was annihilated. Her young son Edward, Prince of Wales, was slain in the pursuit, though he cried for quarter to "his brother Clarence." The last Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Devon, and all the surviving Lancastrian magnates fell on the field, or were beheaded next day by the victor. Queen Margaret was taken prisoner and thrown into confinement.

On the death of Prince Edward, the old king Henry VI. was left the only survivor of the house of Lancaster. The ruthless heir of York resolved that he too should die, and on his return to London had the feeble and saintly prince murdered, by the hands of his young brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester (1471).

Thus ended the wars of the Roses, in the complete victory of York, and the extinction of the line of John of Gaunt, after it had sat for three generations on the English throne.