the king was simple, and led by covetous councillors, and owed
more than he was worth. His debts increased daily, but payment
was there none, for all the manors and possessions
that pertained to the crown he had given away,
so that he had almost nought to live on. For these
Condition of the country.
misgovernances the hearts of the people were turned
from them that had the land in rule, and their blessing was
turned to cursing. The officers of the realm, and especially
the earl of Wiltshire the treasurer, for to enrich himself plundered
poor people and disinherited rightful heirs, and did many wrongs.
The queen was defamed, that he that was called the prince was
not the king’s son, but a bastard gotten in adultery.” When
it is added that the Lancastrian party avoided holding a parliament
for three years, because they dared not face it, and that
the French were allowed to sack Fowey, Sandwich and other
places because there was no English fleet in existence, it is not
wonderful that many men thought that the cup of the iniquities
of the house of Lancaster was full. In the military classes it
was felt that the honour of the realm was lost; in mercantile
circles it was thought that the continuance for a few years more
of such government would make an end of English trade. Some
excuse must be found for getting rid of the queen and her
friends, and the doubtful legitimacy of the Lancastrian claim
to the crown afforded such an excuse. Hence came the curious
paradox, that the party which started as the advocates of the
rights of parliament against the incapable ministers appointed
by the crown, ended by challenging the right of parliament,
exercised in 1399, to depose a legitimate king and substitute for
him another member of the royal house. For Richard of York
in 1460 and Edward IV. in 1461 put in their claim to the throne,
not as the elect of the nation, but as the possessors of a divine
hereditary right to the succession, there having been no true
king of England since the death of Richard II. Hence Edward
assumed the royal title in March 1461, was crowned in June, but
called no parliament till November. When it met, it acknowledged
him as king, but made no pretence of creating or electing
him to be sovereign.
But putting aside the constitutional aspects of the Wars of the Roses, it is necessary to point out that they had another aspect. From one point of view they were little more than a great faction fight between two alliances of over-powerful barons. Though the Lancastrians Motives of the contending parties. made much play with the watchword of loyalty to the crown, and though the Yorkists never forgot to speak of the need for strong and wise governance, and the welfare of the realm, yet personal and family enmities had in many cases more effect in determining their action than a zeal for King Henry’s rights or for the prosperity of England. It is true that some classes were undoubtedly influenced in their choice of sides mainly by the general causes spoken of above; the citizens of London and the other great towns (for example) inclined to the Yorkist faction simply because they saw that under the Lancastrian rule the foreign trade of England was being ruined, and insufficient security was given for life and property. But the leading men among the baronage were undoubtedly swayed by ambition and resentment, by family ties and family feuds, far more than by enlightened statesmanship or zeal for the king or the commonweal. It would be going too far to seek the origin of the Yorkist party—as some have done—in the old enmity of the houses of March, Norfolk and Salisbury against Henry IV. But it is not so fantastic to ascribe its birth to the personal hatred that existed between Richard of York and Edmund of Somerset, to the old family grudge (going back to 1405) between the Percies and the Nevilles, to the marriage alliance that bound the houses of York and Neville together, and to other less well-remembered quarrels or blood-ties among the lesser baronage. As an example of how such motives worked, it may suffice to quote the case of those old enemies, the Bonvilles and Courtenays, in the west country. While Lord Bonville supported the queen, the house of Courtenay were staunch Yorkists, and the earl of Devon joined in the armed demonstration of Duke Richard in 1452. But when the earl changed his politics and fought on the Lancastrian side at St Albans in 1455, the baron at once became a strenuous adherent of the duke, adhered firmly to the white rose and died by the axe for its cause.
Richard of York, in short, was not merely the head of a constitutional opposition to misgovernment by the queen’s friends, nor was he merely a legitimist claimant to the crown, he was also the head of a powerful baronial league, of which the most prominent members were his kinsmen, the Nevilles, Mowbrays and The baronial party. The Nevilles. Bourchiers. The Nevilles alone, enriched with the ancient estates of the Beauchamps and Montagus, and with five of their name in the House of Lords, were a sufficient nucleus for a faction. They were headed by the two most capable politicians and soldiers then alive in England, the two Richards, father and son, who held the earldoms of Salisbury and Warwick, and were respectively brother-in-law and nephew to York. It must be remembered that a baron of 1450 was not strong merely by reason of the spears and bows of his household and his tenantry, like a baron of the 13th century. The pernicious practice of “livery and maintenance” was now at its zenith; all over England in times of stress the knighthood and gentry were wont to pledge themselves, by sealed bonds of indenture, to follow the magnate whom they thought best able to protect them. They mounted his badge, and joined his banner when strife broke out, in return for his championship of their private interests and his promise to “maintain” them against all their enemies. A soldier and statesman of the ability and ambition of Richard of Warwick counted hundreds of such adherents, scattered over twenty shires. The system had spread so far that the majority of the smaller tenants-in-chief, and even many of the lesser barons, were the sworn followers of an insignificant number of the greater lords. An alliance of half-a-dozen of these over-powerful subjects was a serious danger to the crown. For the king could no longer count on raising a national army against them; he could only call out the adherents of the lords of his own party. The factions were fairly balanced, for if the majority of the baronage were, on the whole, Lancastrian, the greatest houses stood by the cause of York.
Despite all this, there was still, when the wars began, a very
strong feeling in favour of compromise and moderation. For
this there can be no doubt that Richard of York was
mainly responsible. When he was twice placed in
power, during the two protectorates which followed
Attitude of Richard of York.
Suppression of York’s rebellion. Executions and confiscations.
The earl of Warwick defeats the Lancastrians at Northampton.
Henry’s two long fits of insanity in 1454 and 1455–1456,
he carefully avoided any oppression of his enemies, though he
naturally took care to put his own friends in office. Most of all
did he show his sincere wish for peace by twice laying down the
protectorate when the king was restored to sanity. He was
undoubtedly goaded into his last rebellion of 1459 by the queen’s
undisguised preparations for attacking him. Yet because he
struck first, without waiting for a definite casus belli, public
opinion declared so much against him that half his followers
refused to rally to his banner. The revulsion only came when
the queen, victorious after the rout of Ludford,
applied to the vanquished Yorkists those penalties of
confiscation and attainder which Duke Richard had
always refused to employ in his day of power. After
the harsh doings at the parliament of Coventry (1459),
and the commencement of political executions by the
sending of Roger Neville and his fellows to the scaffold,
the trend of public opinion veered round, and Margaret and her
friends were rightly held responsible for the embittered nature
of the strife. Hence came the marvellous success of the Yorkist
counterstroke in June 1460, when the exiled Warwick, landing
in Kent with a mere handful of men, was suddenly
joined by the whole of the south of England and the
citizens of London, and inflicted a crushing defeat on
the Lancastrians at Northampton before he had been
fifteen days on shore (July 10, 1460). The growing
rancour of the struggle was marked by the fact that
the Yorkists, after Northampton, showed themselves
by no means so merciful and scrupulous as in their earlier
