REPORTING THE WARS: Helen Maurer, University of California at Irvine
The gist of the story, as Warwick told it, went something like this: He had been attending a council at Westminster, to which he had been summoned. There he was, striving for the good of the realm, when he found himself in gravest danger and assuredly would have been killed but for God's aid.[2] He provided no details of the actual situation. There is, however, a single chronicle source--among others, which we'll get to presently--that more or less supports his story. According to the Brut, while Warwick was attending the council, "all the king's household meiny gathered them together for to have slain the earl. But, by the help of God and of his friends, he recovered his barge and escaped their evil enter-prise, [although] the cooks came running out with spits and pestles against him." Then, just as things are getting interesting, the writer abruptly closes the scene, saying that on the same day the earl rode toward Warwick, and soon after got himself a commission and went overseas to Calais.[3] Although it does appear that someone was out to get Warwick, was this an attempted assassination? If you were king...or queen...and wanted to off someone, would you assign the project to your kitchen staff? I'm tempted to suggest that there might be something fishy about this story, what with the cooks and all. But let's pursue it for a moment to see what happened after Warwick got to Calais. Warwick, as it happened, was captain of Calais. He had obtained the post in 1455, shortly after the Yorkist victory at St. Albans, when King Henry was in Yorkist hands and in no position to refuse.[4] It should be noted, by the way, that at St. Albans Warwick had intrepidly led his troops through back gardens and houses to attack the Lancastrians, in a brash move that probably assured Yorkist success. But, getting back to Calais, he had astutely taken possession in summer of 1456, after the end of the duke of York's second protectorate, but before Queen Margaret of Anjou had been able to consolidate her own power. Initially, it may have seemed easier to let him stay put than to try to dislodge him. By the end of 1457, he was receiving support in the form of commissions to govern the sea, reinforcements for the garrison, and subsidies of tonnage and poundage. [5] Be that as it may, at the time that concerns us, Warwick had some things to say about his recent adventure in England. A newsletter sent by an informant from Burgundy to the king of France reported Warwick's "understanding" that had certain conditions existed, he would have been removed from office, as was notorious. We need not spend time working through the logic of the proposition, though we should note that nothing was said about a narrow escape or a deliberate attempt to kill him. For Warwick, the important matter was distilled into a public declaration: No way, nohow would he give up Calais. [6] Unfortunately, there is no independent evidence that a plan to remove him from office existed at that time. The only testimony that we have appears to come from the earl himself, who was an interested witness.[7] Despite the lack of evidence, there is, in fact, a certain plausibility to the claim that such a plan was afoot in late 1458. In recent months Warwick had engaged in acts of piracy that had netted him considerable attention and admiration in London while embarrassing the Lancastrian crown. [8] And if we believe that Queen Margaret, as effective head of a Lancastrian faction, was determined to destroy the Yorkists from at least 1456, an effort to evict Warwick--or worse--fits right into the picture. I want to make this point quite carefully. Margaret's mistrust of the Yorkists and her desire to control or minimize their influence is not in doubt, nor is there any doubt that the Yorkists were in some ways victimized. They left substantial testimony that they believed themselves to be victims. The question really concerns a possible disjuncture between aims and outcomes. With benefit of hindsight, we know that the situation devolved into battle and bloodshed, but was violence a part of officially sanctioned policy from the beginning? A series of incidents involving the Yorkists, often perceived as culminating in the alleged attack on Warwick at Westminster and constituting a pattern of violent intent, will help to resolve this question and to put Warwick's story--and our acceptance of it--into perspective. The first two incidents occurred in autumn of 1456, during --and shortly after--a meeting of the great council at Coventry. To set the stage a bit: the duke of York's second protectorate had come to an end earlier in the year. More recently, the king and court had moved from London to Coventry, probably at the queen's instigation. At this council, in what may be seen as a step towards Margaret's consolidation of power, or at least as a means of keeping power out of York's hands, the realm's chief officers were replaced by persons whose loyalty to the king--or to Margaret herself--was above question. Moreover, as a matter of record, the queen made no effort at Coventry to conceal her dislike of York, and maybe of Warwick as well.[9] Within this context, tempers flared. It appears that Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, whose father had been killed by the Yorkists at St. Albans, attempted to attack York. Perhaps he was emboldened by the altered situation; perhaps he thought he had the queen's support. Perhaps he did. He was kept from his target by the efforts of other lords, in particular the duke of Buckingham, and by the town watch.[10] Two or three men of the watch were killed by Somerset's men, and Buckingham again intervened to keep the angry townsmen from going after Somerset. The second incident occurred soon after, in early November. As Warwick rode from Coventry back towards London, a party made up of Somerset and several other lords tried to "distress" him before he got there. He evaded them and made it into the city, where his popularity was reported to have kept him safe.[11] By themselves, these two incidents could be construed as part of a larger plan to "get" the Yorkists. But, if they were, it does not seem to have been a very consistent plan, for it was shortly abandoned, as we shall see, in favor of an approach that tried to avoid violence. Meanwhile, a third event, occurring in December, suggests that something else was going on. This time there was a confrontation in London between Somerset and Warwick's younger brother Sir John Neville. It began with "grete visagyng to gidder"--hard looks to us--no doubt accompanied by an exchange of words. After these preliminaries, both sides retired to muster reinforcements so that they could "bicker" together seriously. Their preparations came to naught when the mayor and watch intervened. [12] We need to think about this for a moment. Imagine the scene. A pair of young guys--Somerset was about 21, and Sir John a few years older--and both of them apparently spoiling for a fight. This was the third incident for Somerset in as many months, leaving one with the impression that he was a bit eager for this sort of thing, while Sir John had a track record of violence in the Neville's feud with the Percy family going back several years. [13]Can either one be considered a hapless victim or a reluctant participant? I seriously doubt it. I suggest that we are seeing the effects of grudges and hot heads rather than a deliberately thought-out policy. Incidents such as these, in fact, may have encouraged the regime to call for an end to further confrontations at a second council held at Coventry in February-March 1457.[14] In an effort to encourage would-be combatants to "just say no," it was enacted "that no lord should attempt by way of fate against another," but should refer any grievances to the king and his laws.[15] Although the Lancastrians later made much ado, during attainder proceedings, about York and Warwick having signed this act, it is likely that all lords present were signatories. In fact, and perhaps as a result, there appears to have been a brief cessation of would-be ambushes and face-offs at high noon. But the problem with just saying no is that sooner or later big temptation comes along. In February 1458, the gathering of rival lords and their retinues in London to reconcile their differences offered unmatched opportunity for mayhem. Accordingly, Somerset, the duke of Exeter, and the Percy Lord Egremont--a veritable trio of loose cannons-- hatched a plan to ambush York and the earl of Salisbury, Warwick's father. It never saw fruition, for the mayor and the watch were out in force again to guard against just such occurrences.[16] There was a nearer miss in early March. This time, as negotiations for a settlement continued, Somerset and the earl of Northumberland, Egremont's older brother, rode to Westminster with their men all "harnessed and arrayed in form of war" in the hope of "meeting" Warwick there. Unfortunately for their plans, some other lords caught wind of what was up and intercepted Warwick before he got that far. They escorted him from the scene--with the result that nothing happened-- for which the chronicler who reported the incident thanked God. It's not at all clear that Warwick thanked anyone. Undeterred, he blustered that he would go back the next day in spite of them all.[17] One has to wonder whom he meant by "all," and whether he really wanted to be dragged away. Taking stock at this point, the "pattern" of violence appears to have been largely opportunistic. Though all but one of these incidents were initiated by the Lancastrians, most notably the duke of Somerset, they cannot be understood simply as malign attacks upon innocent victims. On one occasion, involving Sir John Neville, the mutuality of the encounter is clear. On another, involving Warwick, there is reasonable doubt that he was desperate to avoid a fight. With this in mind, let's return to the alleged assassination attempt to try to ascertain what really happened. Besides Warwick's own account and the one in the Brut, there are four more versions of the story, all written after Henry VI's deposition. The simplest, in the strongly pro-Yorkist English Chronicle, merely says that there "fell a great debate" between Warwick and "them of the king's house," who would have killed him had he not escaped.[18] That sounds kind of like a plain old fight to me. But what were they fighting about? The second version, in a London chronicle that elsewhere applauds Warwick as "the moost corageous and manliest knight lyvyng," reports that a fight broke out in Westminster palace between one of Warwick's men and one of the king's men, and that the king's man was hurt. Although the earl might have been punished as the responsible party, the chronicle observes cryptically that he "wisely purveied a remedy therfor." [19] We already know what that was: he didn't stick around. The story gets better in a third version found in two more London chronicles. Since it's too good to miss, I'll read it.
In this year...a man of the earl of Warwick smote a servant of the king's in Westminster Hall; wherewith the king's household meiny were wroth, and came out with weapons, and some for haste with spits, for to have slain the earl. But the lords that were his friends conveyed him to his barge, howbeit many of his household...were hurt. And for this was great labor made to the king to have had the said earl arrested, but he incontinently departed the town... /P> |
The pots and pans, spits and pestles were flying
at Westminster, on a day in late 1458 or early 1459 (the date is not
entirely certain, though the former may be the more likely), in a
violent incident involving the retinue of Richard Neville, earl of
Warwick, perhaps the earl himself, and servants of the Lancastrian
royal household. Less than a year later, as the insurgent Yorkists
confronted Henry VI's army outside Ludlow, Warwick characterized the
incident as an attempt on his life, and a spate of recent historians --
with the exception of R.L. Storey, who called it a "vulgar brawl"--
have tended to accept his word.