The Strife of Parties

The king’s recovery.

At Christmas, to the great joy of the nation, the king began to recover from his sad illness. He woke up, as it were, from a long sleep. So decidedly had he regained his faculties, that, first, on St. John’s Day (27th December), he commanded his almoner to ride to Canterbury with an offering, and his secretary to present another at the shrine of St. Edward. On the following Monday, the 30th, the queen came to him and brought with her the infant prince, for whom nearly twelve months before she had in vain endeavoured to bespeak his notice. What occurred at that touching interview we know from a letter of Edmund Clere to John Paston, and it would be impossible to wish it recorded in other words. ‘And then he asked what the Prince’s name was, and the queen told him “Edward”; and then he held up his hands and thanked God thereof. And he said he never knew till that time, nor wist what was said to him, nor wist not where he had been whilst he hath been sick, till now. And he asked who was godfathers, and the queen told him; and he was well apaid. And she told him that the cardinal (Kemp) was dead; and he said he knew never thereof till that time; and he said one of the wisest lords in this land was dead.’157.1

A.D. 1455.

On the 7th of January, Bishop Waynflete and the Prior of St. John’s were admitted to speak with him, and finding his discourse as clear and coherent as they had ever known it, on coming out of the audience chamber they wept for joy.157.2

Joy was doubtless the prevailing sentiment among all ranks and classes of people; but there was one to whom the news of the king’s recovery must have afforded a delight and satisfaction beyond what any one else—unless it were Queen Margaret—could possibly derive from it. The Duke of Somerset had now lain in prison more than a year. The day appointed for his trial had passed away and nothing had been done. It certainly casts some suspicion upon the even-handed justice of the Duke of York, that his adversary was thus denied a hearing; but the fault may have been due, after all, to weakness more than malice. In cases of treason, when once a trial was instituted against a leading nobleman, a conviction was, in those days, an absolutely invariable result; but this made it a thing all the more dangerous to attempt when it was hopeless to expect the positive sanction of the king. The real cause, however, why Somerset was not brought to trial can only be a matter of conjecture. His continued confinement, however harsh, was, according to the practice of those days, legal; nor was it till six weeks after the king’s recovery that he was restored to liberty. A new day, meanwhile, and not a very early one, was fixed for the hearing of charges against him. On the morrow of All Souls—the 3rd of November following—he was to appear before the Council. This was determined on the 5th of February. Four lords undertook to give surety in their own proper persons that he would make his appearance on the day named; and orders were immediately issued to release him from confinement.158.1

On the 4th day of March, he presented himself at a Council held before the king in his palace at Greenwich. The Duke of York was present, with ten bishops and twenty temporal peers, among whom were the Protector’s friend, the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Worcester, Treasurer of England, and the king’s half-brother, the Earl of Pembroke. His accuser, the Duke of Norfolk, was absent, probably not without a reason. In presence of the assembled lords, Somerset then declared that he had been imprisoned without a cause and confined in the Tower of London one whole year and more than ten weeks over, and had only been liberated on bail on the 7th of February. So, as he declared there was no charge made against him for which he deserved to be confined, he besought the king that his sureties might be discharged; offering, if any one would accuse him of anything contrary to his allegiance, that he would be ready at all times to answer according to law and like a true knight. Somerset released. His protestations of loyalty were at once accepted by the king, who thereupon declared that he knew the duke to be his true and faithful liegeman, and wished it to be understood that he so reputed him. After this, the mouths of all adversaries were of course sealed up. The duke’s bail were discharged. His character was cleared from every insinuation of disloyalty; and whatever questions might remain between him and the Duke of York were referred to the arbitration of eight other lords, whose judgment both parties were bound over in recognisances of 20,000 marks, that they would abide.158.2

The significance of all this could not be doubtful. The king’s recovery had put an end to the Duke of York’s power as Protector, and he was determined to be guided once more by the counsels of the queen and Somerset. On the 6th March, York was deprived of the government of Calais which he had undertaken by indenture for seven years.159.1 On the 7th, the Great Seal was taken from the Earl of Salisbury and given to Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. These changes, or at least the former, promised little good to the country; and in the beginning of May we not only find that Calais stood again in imminent danger of siege,159.2 but that considerable fears were entertained of an invasion of England.159.3 But to the Duke of York they gave cause for personal apprehension. Notwithstanding the specious appointment of a tribunal to settle the controversy between him and Somerset, it was utterly impossible for him to expect anything like an equitable adjustment. A Council was called at Westminster in the old exclusive spirit, neither York nor any of his friends being summoned to attend it. A Great Council was then arranged to meet at Leicester long before the day on which judgment was to be given by the arbitrators; and it was feared both by York and his friends, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, that if they ventured to appear there they would find themselves entrapped. The ostensible ground of the calling of that council was to provide for the surety of the king’s person; from which it was fairly to be conjectured that a suspicion of treason was to be insinuated against persons who were too deservedly popular to be arrested in London with safety to the Government.159.4

York and his friends take arms.

York had by this time retired into the north, and uniting with Salisbury and Warwick, it was determined by all three that the cause assigned for the calling of the Council justified them in seeking the king’s presence with a strong body of followers. On the 20th May they arrived at Royston, and from thence addressed a letter to Archbishop Bourchier, as Chancellor, in which they not only repudiated all intention of disloyalty, but declared that, as the Council was summoned for the surety of the king’s person, they had brought with them a company of armed followers expressly for his protection. If any real danger was to be apprehended they were come to do him service; but if their own personal enemies were abusing their influence with the king to inspire him with causeless distrust, they were determined to remove unjust suspicions, and relied on their armed companies for protection to themselves. Meanwhile they requested the archbishop’s intercession to explain to Henry the true motives of their conduct.160.1

Next day they marched on to Ware, and there penned an address to the king himself, of which copies seem to have been diffused, either at the time or very shortly afterwards, in justification of their proceedings. One of these came to the hands of John Paston, and the reader may consequently peruse the memorial for himself in Volume III.160.2 In it, as will be seen, York and his friends again made most urgent protest of their good intent, and complained grievously of the unfair proceedings of their enemies in excluding them from the royal presence and poisoning the king’s mind with doubts of their allegiance. They declared that they had no other intent in seeking the king’s presence than to prove themselves his true liegemen by doing him all the service in their power; and they referred him further to a copy of their letter to the archbishop, which they thought it well to forward along with their memorial, as they had not been informed that he had shown its contents to the king.

In point of fact, neither the letter to the archbishop nor the memorial to the king himself was allowed to come to Henry’s hands. The archbishop, indeed, had done his duty, and on receipt of the letter to himself had sent it on, with all haste, to Kilburn, where his messenger overtook the king on his way northwards from London. But the man was not admitted into the royal presence; for the Duke of Somerset and his friends were determined the Yorkists should not be heard, that their advance might wear as much as possible the aspect of a rebellion. York and his allies accordingly marched on from Ware to St. Albans, where they arrived at an early hour on the morning of the 22nd. Meanwhile the king, who had left London the day before, accompanied by the Dukes of Buckingham and Somerset, his half-brother, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, the Earls of Northumberland, Devonshire, Stafford, Dorset, and Wiltshire, and a number of other lords, knights, and gentlemen, amounting in all to upwards of 2000, arrived at the very same place just before them, having rested at Watford the previous night. Anticipating the approach of the Duke of York, the king and his friends occupied the suburb of St. Peter’s, which lay on that side of the town by which the duke must necessarily come. The duke accordingly, and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, drew up their forces in the Keyfield, outside the barriers of the town. From seven in the morning till near ten o’clock the two hosts remained facing each other without a blow being struck; during which time the duke and the two earls, still endeavouring to obtain a peaceful interview with the king, petitioned to have an answer to their memorial of the preceding day. They were told in reply that it had not been received by the king, on which they made new and more urgent representations. At first, it would seem, they demanded access to the royal presence to declare and justify their true intentions; but when this could not be obtained, they made a still more obnoxious request. They insisted that certain persons whom they would accuse of treason should be delivered into their hands, reminding the king, as respectfully as the fact could be alluded to, that past experience would not permit them to trust to a mere promise on his part that a traitor should be kept in confinement.161.1

For the answer made to this demand, and for the details of the battle which ensued, we may as well refer the reader to the very curious paper (No. 283) from which we have already derived most of the above particulars. We are not here writing the history of the times, and it may be sufficient for us to say that York and his friends were completely victorious. The action lasted only half an hour. Battle of St. Albans. The Duke of Somerset was slain, and with him the Earl of Northumberland, Lords Clifford and Clinton, with about 400 persons of inferior rank, as the numbers were at first reported. This, however, seems to have been an over-estimate.162.1 The king himself was wounded by an arrow in the neck, and, after the engagement, was taken prisoner; while the Earl of Wiltshire, and the Duke of York’s old enemy, Thorpe, fled disgracefully. When all was over, the duke with the two earls came humbly and knelt before the king, beseeching his forgiveness for what they had done in his presence, and requesting him to acknowledge them as his true liegemen, seeing that they had never intended to do him personal injury. To this Henry at once agreed, and took them once more into favour.162.2

Thus again was effected ‘a change of ministry’—by sharper and more violent means than had formerly been employed, but certainly by the only means which had now become at all practicable. The government of Somerset was distinctly unconstitutional. The deliberate and systematic exclusion from the king’s councils of a leading peer of the realm—of one who, by mere hereditary right, quite apart from natural capacity and fitness, was entitled at any time to give his advice to royalty, was a crime that could not be justified. For conduct very similar the two Spencers had been banished by Parliament in the days of Edward II.; and if it had been suffered now to remain unpunished, there would not have existed the smallest check upon arbitrary government and intolerable maladministration.

Such, we may be well assured, was the feeling of the city of London, which on the day following the battle received the victors in triumph with a general procession.162.3 The Duke of York conducted the king to the Bishop of London’s palace, and a council being assembled, writs were sent out for a Parliament to meet on the 9th of July following.162.4 Meanwhile the duke was made Constable of England, and Lord Bourchier, Treasurer. The defence of Calais was committed to the Earl of Warwick.162.5 There was, however, no entire and sweeping change made in the officers of state. The Great Seal was allowed to continue in the hands of Archbishop Bourchier.

It remained, however, for Parliament to ratify what had been done. However justifiable in a moral point of view, the conduct of York and his allies wore an aspect of violence towards the sovereign, which made it necessary that its legality should be investigated by the highest court in the realm. Inquiry was made both in Parliament and by the king’s Council which of the lords about the king had been responsible for provoking the collision. Angry and unpleasant feelings, as might be expected, burst out in consequence. The Earl of Warwick accused Lord Cromwell to the king, and when the latter attempted to vindicate himself, swore that what he stated was untrue. So greatly was Lord Cromwell intimidated, that the Earl of Shrewsbury, at his request, took up his lodging at St. James’s, beside the Mews, for his protection. The retainers of York, Warwick, and Salisbury went about fully armed, and kept their lords’ barges on the river amply furnished with weapons. Proclamations, however, were presently issued against bearing arms. The Parliament, at last, laid the whole blame of the encounter upon the deceased Duke of Somerset, and the courtiers Thorpe and Joseph; and by an Act which received the royal assent, it was declared that the Duke of York and his friends had acted the part of good and faithful subjects. ‘To the which bill,’ said Henry Windsor in a letter to his friends Bocking and Worcester, ‘many a man grudged full sore now it is past’; but he requested them to burn a communication full of such uncomfortable matter to comment upon as the quarrels and heartburnings of lords.163.1

The Parliamentary elections.

But with whatever grudge it may have been that Parliament condoned the acts of the Yorkists, it seems not to have been without some degree of pressure that the duke and his allies obtained a Parliament so much after their own minds. Here, for instance, we have the Duchess of Norfolk writing to John Paston, just before the election, that it was thought necessary ‘that my lord have at this time in the Parliament such persons as long unto him and be of his menial servants (!)’; on which account she requests his vote and influence in favour of John Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlain.164.1 The application could scarcely have been agreeable to the person to whom it was addressed; for it seems that John Paston himself had on this occasion some thought of coming forward as a candidate for Norfolk. Exception was taken to John Howard, one of the duke’s nominees (who, about eight-and-twenty years later, was created Duke of Norfolk himself, and was the ancestor of the present ducal family), on the ground that he possessed no lands within the county;164.2 and at the nomination the names of Berney, Grey, and Paston were received with great favour.164.3 John Jenney thought it ‘an evil precedent for the shire that a strange man should be chosen, and no worship to my lord of York nor to my lord of Norfolk to write for him; for if the gentlemen of the shire will suffer such inconvenience, in good faith the shire shall not be called of such worship as it hath been.’ So unpopular, in fact, was Howard’s candidature that the Duke of Norfolk was half persuaded to give him up, declaring, that since his return was objected to he would write to the under-sheriff that the shire should have free election, provided they did not choose Sir Thomas Tuddenham or any of the old adherents of the Duke of Suffolk. And so, for a time it seemed as if free election would be allowed. The under-sheriff even ventured to write to John Paston that he meant to return his name and that of Master Grey; ‘nevertheless,’ he added significantly, ‘I have a master.’ Howard appeared to be savage with disappointment. He was ‘as wode’ (i.e. mad), wrote John Jenney, ‘as a wild bullock.’ But in the end it appeared he had no need to be exasperated, for when the poll came to be taken, he and the other nominee of the Duke of Norfolk were found to have gained the day.164.4

Besides the act of indemnity for the Duke of York and his partisans, and a new oath of allegiance being sworn to by the Lords, little was done at this meeting of the Parliament. On the 31st July it was prorogued, to meet again upon the 12th November. But in the interval another complication had arisen. The king, who seems to have suffered in health from the severe shock that he must have received by the battle of St. Albans,165.1 had felt the necessity of retirement to recover his composure, and had withdrawn before the meeting of Parliament to Hertford; at which time the Duke of York, in order to be near him, took up his quarters at the Friars at Ware.165.2 He was well, or at all events well enough to open Parliament in person on the 9th July; but shortly afterwards he retired to Hertford again, where according to the dates of his Privy Seals, I find that he remained during August and September. The king again ill. In the month of October following he was still there, and it was reported that he had fallen sick of his old infirmity;—which proved to be too true.165.3

Altogether matters looked gloomy enough. Change of ministry by force of arms, whatever might be said for it, was not a thing to win the confidence either of king or people. There were prophecies bruited about that another battle would take place before St. Andrew’s Day—the greatest that had been since the battle of Shrewsbury in the days of Henry IV. One Dr. Green ventured to predict it in detail. The scene of the conflict was to be between the Bishop of Salisbury’s Inn and Westminster Bars, and three bishops and four temporal lords were to be among the slain. The Londoners were spared this excitement; but from the country there came news of a party outrage committed by the eldest son of the Earl of Devonshire, on a dependant of the Lord Bonvile, Disturbances in the West. and the West of England seems to have been disturbed for some time afterwards.165.4 From a local MS. chronicle cited by Holinshed, it appears that a regular pitched battle took place between the two noblemen on Clist Heath, about two miles from Exeter, in which Lord Bonvile having gained the victory, entered triumphantly into the city. A modern historian of Exeter, however, seems to have read the MS. differently, and tells us that Lord Bonvile was driven into the city by defeat.165.5 However this may be, the Earl of Devonshire did not allow the matter to rest. Accompanied by a large body of retainers—no less, it is stated, than 800 horse and 4000 foot—he attacked the Dean and Canons of Exeter, made several of the latter prisoners, and robbed the cathedral.166.1

That one out of the number of those great lords who had been attached to the government of the queen and the Duke of Somerset should thus have abused his local influence, was pretty much what might have been expected at such a juncture. But the effect was only to strengthen the hands of York when Parliament met again in November. The situation was now once more what it had been in the beginning of the previous year. The day before Parliament met, the Duke of York obtained a commission to act as the king’s lieutenant on its assembling.166.2 The warrant for the issuing of this commission was signed by no less than thirty-nine Lords of the Council. The Houses then met under the presidency of the duke.166.3 The Commons sent a deputation to the Upper House, to petition the Lords that they would ‘be good means to the King’s Highness’ for the appointment of some person to undertake the defence of the realm and the repressing of disorders. But for some days this request remained unanswered. The appeal was renewed by the Commons a second time, and again a third time, with an intimation that no other business would be attended to till it was answered. York again Protector. On the second occasion the Lords named the Duke of York Protector, but he desired that they would excuse him, and elect some other. The Lords, however, declined to alter their choice, and the duke at last agreed to accept the office, on certain specific conditions which experience had taught him to make still more definite for his own protection than those on which he had before insisted. Among other things it was now agreed that the Protectorship should not again be terminated by the mere fact of the king’s recovery; but that when the king should be in a position to exercise his functions, the Protector should be discharged of his office in Parliament by the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal.167.1

On the 19th of November, accordingly, York was formally appointed Protector for the second time. Three days afterwards, at Westminster, the king, whose infirmity on this occasion could scarcely have amounted to absolute loss of his faculties, committed the entire government of the kingdom to his Council, merely desiring that they would inform him of anything they might think fit to determine touching the honour and surety of his person.167.2 The business of the nation was again placed on something like a stable and satisfactory footing; and Parliament, after sitting till the 13th December, was prorogued to the 14th January, in order that the Duke of York might go down into the west for the repressing of those disorders of which we have already spoken.167.3

A.D. 1456.

Unluckily, things did not remain long in a condition so hopeful for the restoration of order. Early in the following year the king recovered his health, and notwithstanding the support of which he had been assured in Parliament, York knew that his authority as Protector would be taken from him. On the 9th of February, as we learn from a letter of John Bocking, it had been anticipated that he would have received his discharge in Parliament; but he was allowed to retain office for a fortnight longer. On that day he and Warwick thought fit to come to the Parliament with a company of 300 armed men, alleging that they stood in danger of being waylaid upon the road. The pretence does not seem to have been generally credited; and the practical result of this demonstration was simply to prevent any other lords from going to the Parliament at all.167.4

The real question, however, which had to be considered was the kind of government that should prevail when York was no more Protector. The queen was again making anxious efforts to get the management of affairs into her own hands; but the battle of St. Albans had deprived her of her great ally the Duke of Somerset, and there was no one now to fill his place. It is true he had left a son who was now Duke of Somerset in his stead, and quite as much attached to her interests. There were, moreover, the Duke of Buckingham and others who were by no means friendly to the Duke of York. But no man possessed anything like the degree of power, experience, and political ability to enable the king to dispense entirely with the services of his present Protector. The king himself, it was said, desired that he should be named his Chief Councillor and Lieutenant, and that powers should be conferred upon him by patent inferior only to those given him by the Parliament. But this was not thought a likely settlement, and no one really knew what was to be the new régime. The attention of the Lords was occupied with ‘a great gleaming star’ which had just made its appearance, and which really offered as much help to the solution of the enigma as any appearances purely mundane and political.168.1

At length on the 25th of February the Lords exonerated York from his duties as Protector; soon after which, if not on the same day, Parliament must have been dissolved.168.2 Again discharged. An Act of Resumption, rendered necessary by the state of the revenue, was the principal fruit of its deliberations.168.3 The finances of the kingdom were placed, if not in a sound, at least in a more hopeful condition than before; and Parliament and the Protector were both dismissed, without, apparently, the slightest provision being made for the future conduct of affairs. Government, in fact, seems almost to have fallen into abeyance. There is a most striking blank in the records of the Privy Council from the end of January 1456 to the end of November 1457. That some councils were held during this period we know from other evidences;168.4 but with the exception of one single occasion, when it was necessary to issue a commission for the trial of insurgents in Kent,169.1 there is not a single record left to tell us what was done at them.

Yet the machine of state still moved, no one could tell exactly how. Acts were done in the king’s name if not really and truly by the king, and by the sheer necessity of the case York appears to have had the ordering of all things. But his authority hung by a thread. His acts were without the slightest legal validity except in so far as they might be considered as having the sanction of the king; and in whatever way that sanction may or may not have been expressed, there was no security that it would not afterwards be withdrawn and disavowed.

And so indeed it happened at this time in a matter that concerned deeply the honour of the whole country. The outbreak of civil war had provoked the interference of an enemy of whom Englishmen were always peculiarly intolerant. The Duke of Somerset slain at St. Albans was uncle to James II., the reigning king of Scotland, who is said to have resented his death on the ground of consanguinity. The King of Scots. In less than six weeks after the battle, ‘the King of Scots with the red face,’ as he is called in a contemporary chronicle, laid siege to Berwick both by water and land. But the Bishop of Durham, the Earl of Northumberland, and other Lords of the Marches, took prompt measures for the relief of the town, and soon assembled such a force as to compel James not only to quit the siege but to leave all his ordnance and victuals behind him.169.2 How matters stood between the two countries during the next ten months we have no precise information; but it is clear that England, although the injured party, could not have been anxious to turn the occasion into one of open rupture. Peace still continued to be preserved till, on the 10th of May 1456, James wrote to the King of England by Lyon herald, declaring that the truce of 1453 was injurious to his kingdom, and that unless more favourable conditions were conceded to him he would have recourse to arms.169.3 A message more calculated to fire the spirit of the English nation it would have been impossible for James to write; nevertheless, owing either to Henry’s love of peace, or to his lack of advisers after his own mind, it was not till the 26th of July that any answer was returned to it. On that day the Duke of York obtained, or took, the liberty of replying in Henry’s name. To the insolence of the King of Scots, he opposed all the haughtiness that might have been expected from the most warlike of Henry’s ancestors. Insisting to the fullest extent on those claims of feudal superiority which England never had abandoned and Scotland never had acknowledged, he told James that his conduct was mere insolence and treason in a vassal against his lord; that it inspired not the slightest dread but only contempt on the part of England; and that measures would be speedily taken to punish his presumption.170.1

A month later the Duke of York addressed a letter to James in his own name, declaring that as he understood the Scotch king had entered England, he purposed to go and meet him. He at the same time reproached James with conduct unworthy of one who was ‘called a mighty Prince and a courageous knight,’ in making daily forays and suddenly retiring again.170.2 The end of this expedition we do not know; but we know that not long afterwards Henry changed his policy. The letter written by the Duke of York in the king’s name was regularly enrolled on the Scotch Roll among the records of Chancery; but to it was prefixed a note on the king’s behalf, disclaiming responsibility for its tenor, and attributing to the duke the usurpation of authority, and the disturbance of all government since the time of Jack Cade’s insurrection.170.3

The glimpses of light which we have on the political situation during this period are far from satisfactory. Repeated notice, however, is taken in these letters of a fact which seems significant of general distrust and mutual suspicion among the leading persons in the land. The king, queen, and lords were all separated and kept carefully at a distance from each other. Thus, while the king was at Sheen, the queen and her infant prince were staying at Tutbury, the Duke of York at Sandal, and the Earl of Warwick at Warwick.171.1 Afterwards we find the queen removed to Chester, while the Duke of Buckingham was at Writtle, near Chelmsford in Essex. The only lord with the king at Sheen was his half-brother the Earl of Pembroke. His other brother, the Earl of Richmond, who died in the course of this year, was in Wales making war upon some chieftain of the country whose name seems rather ambiguous. ‘My Lord [of] York,’ it is said, ‘is at Sendall still, and waiteth on the queen, and she on him.’171.2 The state of matters was evidently such that it was apprehended serious outrages might break out; and reports were even spread abroad of a battle in which Lord Beaumont had been slain and the Earl of Warwick severely wounded.171.3

The king and queen.

The separation of the king and queen is especially remarkable. During May and June they were more than a hundred miles apart; and in the latter month the queen had increased the distance by removing from Tutbury in Staffordshire to Chester. It was then that she was said to be waiting on my Lord of York and he on her. The exact interpretation of the position must be partly matter of conjecture, but I take it to be as follows. The Duke of York, as we find stated only a few months later, was in very good favour with the king but not with the queen;171.4 and we know from Fabyan that the latter was at this time doing all she could to put an end to his authority. It appears to me that by her influence the duke must have been ordered to withdraw from the Court, and that to prevent his again seeking access to the king’s presence, she pursued him into the north. At Tutbury171.5 she would block his way from Sandal up to London; and though for some reason or other she removed further off to Chester, she still kept an anxious watch upon the duke, and he did the same on her. Very probably her removal did give him the opportunity she dreaded of moving southwards; for he must have been with the king at Windsor on the 26th of July when he wrote in Henry’s name that answer to the King of Scots of which we have already spoken.

However this may be, Margaret soon after had recourse to other means to effect her object. In consequence of the Duke of York’s popularity in London, it was expedient to remove the king some distance from the capital.172.1 He appears to have been staying at Windsor during July and the beginning of August. In the middle of the latter month he took his departure northwards. By the dates of his Privy Seals we find him to have been at Wycombe on the 18th, at Kenilworth on the 24th, and at Lichfield on the 29th. In September he moved about between Lichfield, Coventry, and Leicester; but by the beginning of October the Court seems to have settled itself at Coventry, where a council was assembled on the 7th.172.2 To this council the Duke of York and his friends were regularly summoned, as well as the lords whom the queen intended to honour; but even before it met, changes had begun to be made in the principal officers of state. On the 5th, Viscount Bourchier, the brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was dismissed from his office of Lord Treasurer, and the Earl of Shrewsbury was appointed in his room. On the 11th, the archbishop himself was called upon to surrender the Great Seal, and Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, was made Chancellor in his stead. Laurence Booth, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was made Lord Privy Seal.

The new appointments seem to have been on their own merits unexceptionable,—that of Waynflete more especially. Whether the superiority of the new men was such as to make it advisable to supersede the old is another question, on which we would not attempt to pronounce an opinion, either one way or other. One thing, however, we may believe on the evidence of James Gresham, whose letters frequently give us very interesting political intelligence: the changes created dissatisfaction in some of the queen’s own friends, particularly in the Duke of Buckingham, who was half-brother to two of the discharged functionaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Viscount Bourchier. Either from this cause or from a mere English love of fair-play, it would appear that Buckingham now supported the Duke of York, who, it is said, though at this time he had some interviews with the king and found Henry still as friendly as he could desire, would certainly have been troubled at his departure if Buckingham had not befriended him. About the Court there was a general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. On the 11th October, the very day on which Waynflete was appointed Chancellor, an encounter took place between the Duke of Somerset’s men and the watchmen of the city of Coventry, in which two or three of the citizens were killed. And probably it would have gone hard with the duke’s retainers, had not Buckingham used his good offices here too as peacemaker; for the alarm-bell rang and the citizens rose in arms. But by the interposition of Buckingham the tumult was appeased.173.1

A.D. 1457.

For about a twelvemonth from this time we find that the Court continued generally at Coventry,173.2 occasionally moving about to Stafford, Coleshill, Chester, Shrewsbury, Kenilworth, Hereford, and Leicester.173.3 The queen evidently feared all the while to bring her husband nearer London, lest he should fall once more under the power of the Duke of York. Meanwhile the want of a vigorous ruler became every day more apparent. Not only was Calais again in danger of siege,173.4 but the coast of Kent was attacked by enemies, and within the kingdom a dangerous spirit of disaffection had shown itself in various places. On the Patent Rolls we meet with numerous commissions for keeping watch upon the coasts,173.5 for arraying the country against invasion,173.6 and for assembling the posse comitatus in various counties, against treasonable attempts to stir up the people.173.7 During April the Court had removed to Hereford,174.1 apparently in consequence of some disturbances which had taken place in Wales under Sir William Herbert. Its sojourn upon the Welsh borders had an excellent effect, the burgesses and gentlemen about Hereford all declaring themselves ready to take the king’s part unless a peace were made. On the 1st of May it was reported in London that Herbert had offered, on being granted his life and goods, to return to his allegiance and appear before the king and lords at Leicester; so we may conclude the insurrection did not last long after.174.2

But though the personal influence of the king was doubtless great and beneficial within his own immediate vicinity, it could do little for the good order and protection of the country generally. Distrust, exclusiveness, and a bankrupt exchequer were not likely to obtain for the king willing and hearty service. Notwithstanding the commissions issued to keep watch upon the coasts, the French managed to surprise and plunder Sandwich. The French attack Sandwich. On Sunday, the 28th August, a large force under the command of Pierre de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy, landed not far from the town, which they took and kept possession of during the entire day. A number of the inhabitants, on the first alarm, retreated on board some ships lying in the harbour, from whence they began presently to shoot at the enemy. But de Brézé having warned them that if they continued he would burn their ships, they found it prudent to leave off. Having killed the bailiffs and principal officers, the Frenchmen carried off a number of wealthy persons as prisoners, and returned to their ships in the evening, laden with valuable spoils from the town and neighbourhood.174.3

The disaster must have been keenly felt; but if Englishmen had known the whole truth, it would have been felt more keenly still. Our own old historians were not aware of the fact, but an early French chronicler who lived at the time assures us that the attack had been purposely invited by Margaret of Anjou out of hatred to the Duke of York, in order to make a diversion, while the Scots should ravage England!175.1 It was well for her that the truth was not suspected.

Earl of Warwick severely wounded.171.3
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