Sir Thomas Kyriel, and others were commissioned (31 July) to hold a public inquiry into his conduct (Fœdera, xi. 374, 415). The result is not known, but the queen seems to have called upon Warwick to resign his post to the young Duke of Somerset (Stevenson, Wars in France, i. 368). The earl came over to London in the autumn, and declined to resign it except to parliament, from whom he had received it. After a narrow escape in a broil which broke out at the council between one of his men and a royal servant, on 9 Nov. (Fabyan, p. 634; cf. Whethamstede, i. 340), Warwick returned to Calais, and in the following spring (1459) made a more legitimate addition to his naval reputation by attacking five great carracks of Spain and Genoa (which had been occupied by France in June 1458), and, after two days' hard fighting, brought three of them into Calais (Whethamstede, i. 330; Beaucourt, vi. 239; Ord. Privy Council, vol. v. p. cxxxii). The booty is said to have been worth 10,000l., and to have halved the price of certain commodities in England for that year.
In the summer, when France and Burgundy were on the verge of war, and Margaret, alarmed by York's evident designs upon the crown, began to arm in the north of England, Warwick was summoned from Calais by his father and uncle, Richard, duke of York, to join them in seizing the king, who was in Warwickshire (Chron. ed. Davies, p. 80). Leaving his wife and daughters at Calais in charge of another uncle, William Neville, lord Fauconberg [q. v.], he landed six hundred picked men of the Calais garrison, under the veteran Sir Andrew Trollope, at Sandwich, and marched rapidly into the midlands. Passing through Coleshill, near Coventry, the same day as Somerset, who was bringing up forces from the west to the queen's assistance, but without meeting him, and finding that Henry had withdrawn to Nottingham, he made his way to York at Ludlow (Gregory, p. 205). Here they were joined by his father, who had cut his way to them by a victory at Blore Heath. They entrenched a position at Ludford, opposite Ludlow, but, as at St. Albans, Lord Clinton was the only peer who had joined them; and when Henry in person appeared at the head of a superior force on 12 Oct., Trollope, who had no mind to fight against the king, went over in the night with the Calais men (ib.; Fabyan, p. 634). The rest of the Yorkist force dispersed, and the leaders fled in various directions. They had been unable to conceal the real character of their movement, and had found little sympathy in the midlands, in spite of the Neville influence. Warwick and the rest were attainted by a parliament at Coventry, and Somerset, who had been appointed captain of Calais three days before the rout of Ludford, set out shortly after for his post. But he found Warwick safely returned, and the gates closed to him. Warwick had fled from Ludford, with his father and the Earl of March, York's eldest son, into Devonshire, where Sir John Dynham provided them with a vessel, in which, after refreshing at Guernsey, they reached Calais on 2 Nov., three weeks after leaving Ludlow (Fabyan, p. 635; Whethamstede, p. 345). Wavrin relates (v. 277) that Warwick himself had to take the helm in the voyage to Guernsey, because the sailors did not know those waters. Somerset established himself at Guisnes, but a storm, or sailors attached to Warwick, brought his ships into Calais harbour; and Warwick, finding on board some of his men who had declined to fight for him against their king at Ludford, had them promptly beheaded (Fabyan, p. 635; Wavrin, v. 281).
But, in spite of some support from the Duke of Burgundy, Warwick's position at Calais, with Somerset close by and no supplies from England, was one of danger, and his men began to desert to Guisnes (cf. Fabyan, pp. 635, 652). Lord Rivers was stationed at Sandwich to overawe Warwick's Kentish friends and prevent a landing. But in January 1460 Sir John Dynham surprised Rivers and his son, Antony Wydeville, in their beds, and carried them off to Calais, where Warwick and the rest taunted them with their humble birth (Paston Letters, i. 506). In May Warwick went to Ireland, where York had found refuge, and concerted a combined invasion of England for the summer. Returning with his mother, who had been with York, he fell in off the Devonshire coast, about 1 June, with a fleet sent out under the Duke of Exeter to intercept him, but was allowed to proceed unmolested (Worcester, p. 772; Chron. ed. Davies, p. 85). Reaching Calais after less than a month's absence, he prepared, in accordance with the plan arranged with York, for a descent upon Kent, whose attachment to York and himself had been strengthened by the severity shown to their partisans (ib. p. 90). An anonymous ballad posted on the gates of Canterbury implied that the Prince of Wales was a false heir, and prayed for the return of York, the ‘true blood’ of March, Salisbury ‘called Prudence,’
With that noble knight and flower of manhood,
Richard, earl of Warwick, shield of our defence
(ib. p. 93).
Manifestoes less frank were issued from
