The Wars of the Roses
1377-1471
By Robert Balmain Mowat
First published in 1914
London
PREFACE
The Mediaeval and Modern History of England are divided from one another by the Wars of the Roses. Out of the troubles of that time a New England arose. The period has been described by the historian Stubbs in a memorable passage: “Weak as is the fourteenth century, the fifteenth is weaker still, more futile, bloodier, and more immoral. “But out of the weakness came strength. The Wars of the Roses were a rough schooling to England, but they ushered in the glories of the Tudor reigns.
It was a period when in Europe national states were slowly being evolved, with autocratic monarchs and consolidated governments. Spain grew to unity and strength through her great conflict with the Moors. France, in the first half of the fifteenth century, suffered dreadfully both from civil and from foreign wars. Out of these grew the centralized government of Lewis XI.
England too had her period of internecine war, during which she got rid of many troublesome elements, and emerged a strong, consolidated state. In this England was more fortunate than other countries. The caste nobility was almost completely exterminated, and the country gentlemen and the middle classes stepped into their place in the local government of the country. New nobility had to be formed, recruited from the best servants of the State. In the century following the Wars of the Roses, England prospered under a strong monarchy, a nobility of service, and a wealthy middle class. Thus she was able to go through the tremendous crisis of the Reformation, without the internal conflicts which devastated other countries.
It is, therefore, as being the death of the old England and the beginning of the new, that the Wars of the Roses have their great interest.
Throughout this volume will be found references to the original sources of the period. There remains only to make acknowledgments to the more recent authors to whom so much is owed.
First must be mentioned Bishop Stubbs. It is impossible for anyone at Oxford to write on the history of England before 1485, without showing traces of the influence of Stubbs on nearly every page. His learning and judgment have so entered into the mind and attitude of all who learn and teach at Oxford, that no one could make a special acknowledgment on every occasion where these appear. Nevertheless frequent references to the "Constitutional History of England “will be found throughout the present volume. And although the two last chapters in some respects may be considered as a criticism of Stubbs' views on the Lancastrian and Yorkist houses, yet this cannot in any way lessen the sense of obligation towards one who is, perhaps, Oxford's greatest historian.
Next should be mentioned James Gairdner, whose edition of the "Paston Letters, “with its copious and learned introduction, threw so much light on fifteenth century England. Grateful acknowledgment is also to be made to the “Lancaster and York “of Sir James
Ramsay, a work of profound and exhaustive learning, full of interest, and containing the most useful material drawn with great skill and judgment from the public records.
The edition of Fortescue's “Governance of England “edited by the Rev. Charles Plummer has added much to the knowledge of the Lancastrian period. Mr. Plummer's admirable introduction and notes are not only full of great learning, but of most fresh and suggestive criticism, which form an excellent supplement and corrective to Chapter XVIII. Of Stubbs. Finally, for any adequate understanding of the personalities and the military history of the period, no better guide could be found than the “Political History of England, “by Professor Charles Oman.
Although the present work does not follow the views, nor adopt the conclusions of these authors, and although (it is hoped) something may have been added to the knowledge of the period, nevertheless their work has gone so deep that no one who studies the history of the time can help benefiting by their researches, and feeling a profound obligation towards them.
THE WARS OF THE ROSES
CHAPTER I. THE FAMILY SETTLEMENT OF EDWARD HI.
There were many causes which produced the unhappy troubles in England known as the Wars of the Roses, but there were two things in particular without which these troubles could never have occurred: one was the family settlement of Edward III., the other was the “over-mighty subject. “These two things were intimately connected with each other.
By his family settlement, Edward III, endowed his sons with great lands and inheritances: and so the royal house was split up into several powerful families, not necessarily in agreement with one another. At the same time certain other noble families grew so wealthy and powerful that in time their influence rivaled and sometimes surpassed that of the king. Some of them, too, became connected by blood with the royal house. Gradually, as the fifteenth century went on, a curious situation arose. In Spain, the nobles used to say that they were of as good birth as the king, only less rich. But in fifteenth-century England, some of the nobles might have said that they were of as good birth as the king, only richer. Towards the end of the Wars of the Roses the great constitutional lawyer, Fortes cue, gravely wrote that if law and order in the kingdom were to be assured, it was necessary that the king's income should be greater than that of a great lord. It appears that Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to history as the King-maker, had much more money to spare than the king had for the levying of troops. But the "over-mighty subject “is a feature of the later fifteenth century: the family settlement of Edward III. Was in the later fourteenth.
Edward III., the patriarch of the Lancastrian and Yorkist houses, had twelve children, two of whom died in infancy. His surviving children were five sons and five daughters. Of the sons, the eldest, Edward, born at Woodstock in 1330, became famous as the Black Prince.
He died before coming to the throne, but left one son, King Richard II., who died childless, and so this line became extinct.
The second son was Lionel, born at Antwerp in 1338.
Lionel left only a daughter, who married Edward Mortimer, Earl of March, on the Welsh border. This line too ended in a female, Anne, who married back into the royal family by espousing her first cousin twice removed, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, the head of the Yorkist house.
The third son was John, born at Ghent, or Gaunt, in 1340. John was married thrice, and left many children, and founded several important families; the most famous of which is that known as the house of Lancaster. This came through John's eldest son, Henry of Lancaster, or king Henry IV,, whose son and grandson successively reigned before the line came to an end.
The fourth son was Edmund, born at King's Langley, in Hertfordshire, in 1342. Edmund's son, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, married Anne Mortimer (as stated above), the surviving representative of Lionel of Antwerp.
The fifth son was Thomas, born at Woodstock in 1355. His only male heir died without issue in 1399.
All these sons were prominent figures in history throughout their lives. All, with the exception of Edmund of Langley, were ambitious and desirous of power. All had great estates by the gift of their father and by marriage.
If one of them became king, it was not unlikely that the other members of the royal family would be strong enough to try to control the throne.
Edward of Woodstock was made Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, and Duke of Cornwall. Lionel of Antwerp was created Earl of Clarence that is of Clare, a great territorial "honour ”in Suffolk. This property came to him through his marriage with the heiress of Clare in 1352. With her also came the great Irish estates of her family in Ulster. These estates, when united in the next century with the Mortimer estates on the Welsh march, formed a substantial part of the endowment of the Yorkist house.
John of Gaunt was Duke of Lancaster, a position which carried with it exceptional territorial privileges in that part of England. He was earl of three counties — Derby, Leicester, and Lincoln, and had honours and castles in nearly every other county in England.
Edmund of Langley was Duke of York, and held estates both in the north and in the Home Counties.
When his line united with that of Lionel of Antwerp, the combined inheritance was enormous.
The last was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, who had large estates, not merely in Gloucester, but in Buckingham (of which he was Earl), and in Northampton and Essex.
Thus Edward III., by his family settlement, set up five great royal houses in England. By the extinction of the first line (1400, death of Richard I If:), of the fifth line (death of the young Duke of Gloucester in 1399), and by the union of the second and fourth lines through the marriage of Anne Mortimer and Richard of Cambridge in 1410, these royal houses were reduced to two. There was no apparent superiority of one to the other, either in birth or wealth. With their friends and supporters they divided England between them.
This plan of allotting great appanages to the younger members of the royal family has often been tried in England, France, and Germany, and the result has always been bad. In the early days of the Norman rule, William the Conqueror left England to his second son, William Rufus, and Normandy to his eldest son, Robert. On William II.'s death England was held by his younger brother, Henry; but Normandy still remained with Robert. The result of this division of the Norman power was fifteen years of warfare within the royal family.
Again, towards the end of the twelfth century, Henry II, gave great appanages to his sons. The eldest, young Henry was reserved for the throne of England, but Aquitaine was given to Richard and, by a fortunate marriage, Brittany was secured to Geoffrey. The result was rebellion and civil war within the royal house, increased by the efforts of the youngest, John “Lack-land, “to establish himself, like his brothers, in some great appanage.
In France the donation of Burgundy by king John the Good to his second son, Philip the Bold, in 1363, set up the practically independent line of Burgundian dukes, who, in the course of their feud with the Orleanist branch of the royal family, plunged France into civil war, the strife of Burgundians against Armagnacs.
In Germany certain ruling houses adopted the system of creating appanages. Thus the rulers of Saxony created duchies for their younger sons, with the result that at one time or another there have been in existence at least eighteen different Saxon duchies, not one of them, of course, being really strong. So, too, in the sixteenth century, appanages were created for the younger Haps. The date is not quite certain, but this is the most probable year. Burg princes, with the result that the central power was weakened, and even domestic warfare was not unknown.
The reasons why this unfortunate practice of making appanages has so often been adopted are probably three: in the first place, kings, like any other men, are moved by affection for their children, and may not like their younger sons to suffer merely because these were born later than their eldest brother. In the second place, it has often been thought necessary for the dignity of the royal family that all the princes of the blood should hold great territories, and be almost equal to the head of the house. In the same way the great Napoleon planted out his own brothers as rulers of conquered states. In the third place, it has often been thought that the appanages would strengthen the royal house as a whole, and would prove useful allies of the king, and strenuous supporters of the crown.
This last idea was probably very strong with Edward III. When he carried out his family settlement. The early Plantagenet had found the nobles too strong. The great territorial baronage had limited the kingly power. But these great baronial families often ended in an heiress.
What could be better for the king's purpose than to join one of his sons to such an heiress, so that her great estates should be held by a member of the royal house, her powerful family influence wielded by a prince of the blood? Edward III. Thought that by this means the old centrifugal feudal spirit would be done away with, and superseded by family loyalty, by the strong ties of blood and interest which bound the younger sons to the head of the house, to the crown.
But it was the contrary that happened. The old rebellious feudal spirit was not superseded by a firm family allegiance to the crown. On the contrary, the natural family affection and interest of the younger princes were drawn away into the old feudal spirit. The families of the younger princes became separatist and territorial, rivals of the crown like the old feudal baronage, but stronger because they accumulated more territories, and because by birth they were royal. The princes in the first generation might, like John of Gaunt, remain loyal to their head; but the second and third generation felt no such close tie.
CHAPTER II. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE LANCASTRIAN DYNASTY
Edward III. died in the year 1377. His eldest son, Edward of Windsor, whom later ages have called the Black Prince, was already dead. So the old king was succeeded by his grandson, Richard, only son of the Black Prince.
Richard's reign was a stormy one; he was a young man of great ideas and high ambitions. But his uncles would not let him rule freely; already the results of the family settlement of Edward III. We’re beginning to show them-selves. The chief danger came from the youngest uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, the fifth son of Edward III.
Thomas was Duke of Gloucester, a man of strong will, and great wealth and influence. It was he who, at the head of some of the greatest barons under the name of Lords Appellant, curbed the powers of the young Richard, and kept him in a strict tutelage from 1387 to 1389. But in the last year Richard shook off the Lords Appellant, and for eight years ruled well by him. But in 1397 he began to act in an arbitrary fashion; a series of unconstitutional acts lost him the confidence of many people, and in 1399 his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, was able to carry out the revolution in which Richard was deposed, and Henry elevated to the throne.
Henry was another member of the royal family who had great possessions. His father, John of Gaunt, had many estates, a “Lancastrian belt, “which stretched across England from the Duchy of Lancaster to Essex. John had remained faithful to his nephew Richard, but his son Henry had been one of the Lords Appellant who for a time controlled the king. Richard, by stretching his prerogative, had made Henry an exile in 1398. Next year Henry landed at the mouth of the Humber, to enter into possession of the estates of his father, who had just died.
Within three months (on September 30th) Henry had been recognized as king in Parliament. Richard was a prisoner, and died in February 1400 in Pontefract Castle.
Thus began the rule of the Lancastrian branch of the ancient Plantagenet family. Henry IV. Was able to come to the throne, not merely because he was a prince of the royal blood, but because he was a man of great possessions, being, through his father, heir to all the Lancastrian inheritance, and through his wife, Mary de Bohun, heir to a great part of the Bohun inheritance in Hereford, Essex, and Northampton. Thus the family settlement of Edward HL was already working out its effect. Already the legitimate king had been dispossessed by a prince who had the wealth, and the influence, and the ambition of a great territorial magnate, combined with the claims that attach to royal birth. Sixty years later the family settlement was to achieve another revolution, when another prince, who was also one of the greatest territorial magnates, was to dispossess a king whose wealth and influence were not so great as his.
Henry IV, claimed the crown on two grounds: firstly, as being descended from king Henry III.; secondly, as being acknowledged by Parliament, to save the realm from “default of governance and undoing of the laws. “ The first part of his claim can scarcely have been meant as giving him a prior right to everyone else. There were other princes who were descended from Henry III. But Henry IV. Claimed this descent not so much through his father, John of Gaunt, as through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, who was descended from Edmund Crouchback, second son of Henry III. But young Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, grandson of Philippa of Clarence, was descended from Edward I., the elder son of Henry III.
To do away with this difficulty, it was pretended by the Lancastrians that Edmund Crouchback, not Edward I., was really the elder son of Henry HI., but was passed over because of his supposed deformity. Few people, however, believed this story.
So the real title of Henry IV. to the throne was a parliamentary one. He did think of claiming the throne by right of conquest. But his wise adviser, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, dissuaded him from taking this course. For to hold the crown by conquest would be to nullify all previously existing law of the land, and to start an entirely new state of things. Such a course would have been fatal to the new dynasty, as a revolution is only acquiesced in by people who have anything to lose, if titles and property are guaranteed, and the law of the land is maintained.
The Lancastrian title, therefore, depended on the recognition of Parliament given in September and October 1399. The fact that there was an elder branch of the Plantagenet family in existence did not in any way invalidate the parliamentary title of the king, which was a good one in law, and according to the ancient customs of the realm, just as the title of the house of Brunswick, established by the Act of Settlement in the year 1701, was not invalid because there was a family of prior descent in existence, namely, the Stewarts.
The governing classes of the country accepted Henry IV. As king because they were afraid for their property and for their religion. Richard II., at the end of his reign, had made himself an absolute monarch, and the propertied classes could not feel themselves safe from his power.
Through his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, who had been brought under the influence of John Huss, he had been attracted by the new religious thought, known in England as Lollardy. The Lollards attacked the doctrine and the property of the Church. Their views on property seem to have extended sometimes from disendowment of the Church to disendowment of all the propertied classes.
Thus people who had anything to lose and people who were attached to the mediaeval Church welcomed the Lancastrian dynasty as being an orthodox family that would preserve both Church and State.
It may almost be said that Henry IV, and his successors were kings by a sort of contract. They owed their title to Parliament, and the conditions of their ruling were that they should give good government, that they should be constitutional in their methods, taking always the advice of their counselors and Parliament, and that they should be orthodox and good churchmen.
To the best of their ability the Lancastrians strove all through to carry out their understanding. They were loyal to the Church, they persecuted the heretics, they preserved the property of the religious corporations, and they established and endowed new pious communities. So the churchmen as a whole stood by them, and all the chroniclers who were ecclesiastics speak well of them.
But though they satisfied the churchmen, they could not satisfy the laymen. The nobles and the middle classes found that “good government “did not always exist, that law and order did not invariably prevail. Except during the short reign of Henry V., the country was never quite free from disorder. The Wars of the Roses when they came were just a supreme and crucial instance of the breakdown of government, with which in a minor degree the country had long been familiar.
The failure of government was not entirely the fault of the Lancastrians. It was due partly to the policy of Edward III., setting up appanages houses within the royal family, and partly to the state of the nobles, who were reduced to too few numbers and who had accumulated too much land and influence. The Lancastrian kings did their best, and doubtless would have done better had they not been too poor. Henry IV. Throughout his reign was a hard-working, active king, and scrupulous to abide by the understanding according to which he had come to the throne. In all important matters he carefully took the advice of the Privy Council, his ministers were appointed with the approval of Parliament, and any legislation that_ the Commons as a whole desired was freely accepted by the king. The records of the Privy Council show the scope and variety of the business submitted to it; war, peace, finance, justice, nothing was kept from it. The king sat regularly at the council-board, and worked hard at the business of the realm. The privileges of Parliament were scrupulously maintained by Henry IV, and Henry V. And measures were taken to ensure that the Commons were freely elected. In 1406 the famous “Indenture Act “was passed, ordering that the name of the person elected in any constituency should be confirmed under the seals of the electors, and that this proof should be sent up to Westminster by the sheriff along with the writ. Thus the sheriff could not substitute the name of another candidate between the time of the election and the return of the writ.
Yet although Henry IV. Meant well and worked hard, his reign was troubled. The nobles who had helped him to the throne had grown too powerful and proud in the process. The great northern family of Percy was especially troublesome, and several times renewed the game of king making, before they were finally quelled on Bramham Moor in 1408. The Scots made many raids over the border into England, though these raids were fewer when their king was a captive in London after 1406. In Wales the great rebel, Owen Glendower, remained unconquered, though often defeated, for the space of twelve years.
Worst of all, the Narrow Seas, of which the English kings had long claimed the dominion, were no longer guarded. A year passed without some maritime raid on an English coast town.
Henry IV, was a man of weak health, but of valiant spirit? He shrank from no task that faced him, and it was only due to the meagerness of the resources of the crown that his government was not efficient or unquestioned.
For although Henry IV. Had been a wealthy duke, he was by no means a wealthy king. After his elevation to the throne his followers had to be rewarded, and some of the crown revenues and land were alienated to them. The remaining portions of the royal income were absorbed partly by the great household expenses which the king had to maintain, partly by the public services of the crown.
For in those days there was no distinction between the private and public expenditure of the king: the royal income had to provide for both. It has been estimated that the total revenue of the crown, including the income from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, the earldom of Chester, and from customs, subsidies, and other dues, was an average of little over .100,000 per annum. Out of this sum all the services of the crown had to be maintained; all the king's palaces, castles, and manors, the expenses of administration at home, the defence of the Narrow Seas, and the upkeep of the fortresses of Berwick and Calais. The maintenance of these two places alone cost upwards of £'30,000 per annum.
It is small wonder, then, that the administration was not completely effective throughout this reign. It is all to the king's credit that he maintained his throne and his government, and met his difficulties so manfully, and died leaving the kingdom in peace.
His son, the attractive and brilliant Henry V., did much at the time to confirm his dynasty on the throne. He showed that he was superior to troubles at home by leading the forces of the nation abroad, and by gaining the succession to the crown of France. He had the advantage of not being a parvenu king, for his fattier had reigned before him. Whatever the circumstances of his accession, Henry IV. Had undoubtedly been king, and so young Henry held the throne by hereditary right. Everything seemed to combine to establish his dynasty forever. When he succeeded his father on the throne he had been a popular and long-accepted heir apparent. He was a brilliant and successful soldier; nothing so much stimulates the loyalty of a people as great foreign conquests. He was the unquestioned ruler of England; the friend and supporter of the Catholic Church; the ally and confidant of the Holy Roman Emperor, the most legitimate sovereign in Europe. To all this he added the succession to the crown of France, and so succeeded to a long line of Capets and to the throne of Clovis and Charlemagne.
The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 marks the highest point to which his power reached. His realms now extended from the Tweed to the Atlantic, and to the Pyrenees.
When he died he left a son to carry on his work, with the noble, valiant, and loyal John, Duke of Bedford, to guard the kingdoms during the king's tender years.
No one now questioned the right of the house of Lancaster, which, strictly respecting the constitution of the country, had raised England to the highest point ever reached in the Middle Ages. For the glory of Henry V far surpassed that of the famous "Angevin Empire “of Henry H. Henry II. was sovereign in England, but as Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Duke of Aquitaine, he was the “man “and inferior of the French king. But Henry V. had no one over him except God. He owed no fealty; whether as king or duke he was free of all feudal ties.
His brothers — John, Duke of Bedford, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Thomas, Duke of Clarence — were able, vigorous, and loyal. Clarence died on the field of Beaug in 1421. In the next reign the ambition of Humphrey of Gloucester caused difficulties. But at the death of Henry V. everything seemed prospering for the house of Lancaster.
The family known later as Yorkist showed no dangerous ambitions. The reigning family was well supported by the Beauforts. This last family was descended from the union of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford. It was thus closely related to the reigning house. But though legitimated by Act of Parliament, they were legally incapable of inheriting the crown. Their wealth and influence made them powerful supporters of the reigning line, to which they were attached by every tie of kinship, gratitude, and interest. Their fortune depended upon those of the Lancastrian dynasty; with this they must rise or fall.
Meanwhile, the two remaining branches of Edward's family had amalgamated, Edmund Mortimer, who was the great-grandson of Lionel of Clarence, and who was the adopted heir of Richard II., died in 1424, without issue.
The family of his sister, Anne Mortimer, therefore, represented the line of Lionel of Clarence, who, it must be remembered, was elder brother of the progenitor of the Lancastrian line, John of Gaunt. Anne Mortimer, in 1410, had married Richard (known later as Earl of Cambridge), the son of Edmund of Langley, the fourth son of Edward III.
Richard, at the end of a career of loyalty to the Lancastrian line, became involved in a conspiracy against Henry V.
in 141 5. For this he was tried, found guilty, and executed at Southampton. But the family was not attainted. He left a son Richard, four years old, who was kindly treated by Henry V., and who on the death of his father's brother at the battle of Agincourt became Duke of York.
CHAPTER III. THE FRENCH WAR
When young Henry VI., not quite nine months old, succeeded to the throne, the prestige of the crown was very high. Henry V. had been acknowledged heir to the French throne, but when he died on August 31st, 1422, he was still uncrowned in France. His father-in-law, the mad king Charles VI., was still alive and reigning, though not ruling. But within two months (October 21st, 1422) poor Charles, "the well-beloved, “had died; so Henry VI was proclaimed king of France.
Henry V. had done his work well. Renewing the claim of Edward III. to the French crown, he had fought a war of aggression for pure conquest. It was the logical converse of the expedition of William the Conqueror in 1066. Then a Frenchman had set himself on the throne of England, cynically alleging that he was only enforcing his legal rights. Now an Englishman, with an equally baseless pretext, had set his foot on the steps of the French throne, and his son was soon, though only for a time, to wear the crown.
Within four years after the victory of Agincourt Henry V. had reduced practically the whole of Normandy, and established himself as completely sovereign duke there. In the next year (1419) the English forces overran the Isle of France, and the old king was forced to accede to Henry's terms. In the cathedral church of Troyes, on the upper Seine, on May 21st, 1420, the famous Great Peace was concluded, by which Henry became heir to the crown of France, marrying the French king's daughter, Catherine, and governing the kingdom that soon was to be his as regent for his ailing father-in-law.
There was only one check to the victorious career of Henry V. He was the legal crown prince of France, but Charles VI.'s son, the Dauphin Charles, who had been disinherited by the Treaty of Troyes, refused to acknowledge him. The Dauphin proclaimed himself to be king of France, and although the English were masters of most of France to the north of the river Loire, and also of Guienne, he maintained a heroic struggle in the country to the south of the Loire. While Henry went back to England to crown his queen, Thomas, his elder brother the Duke of Clarence, was defeated and slain by a combined force of French and Scots at Beaug in Anjou (March 22nd, 1421). This was the first serious defeat the English had sustained. Next year found Henry consolidating his conquests, and capturing such towns as still held out against him in central France, when death overtook him at Vincennes on September ist, 1422.
The defeat at Beaug6 was prophetic of the ultimate fate of the English power in France. Yet the tide did not set in favour of the Dauphin for some time. Henry VI, was king of England, king of France, duke of Normandy.
The Privy Council of England sat, as usual, at London; there was a Council at Rouen, and another at Paris. The king's uncle, the heroic John, Duke of Bedford, was appointed, according to the terms of Henry V.'s will.
Regent of France and Normandy; his brother, the unstable Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was Protector of England, while Bedford was absent. There seemed no likelihood that in thirty years the Lancastrian dynasty would no longer be recognised in France, and already would be tottering in England.
Henry V. was right in his view. Success in France meant success for his dynasty in England. Merely as English king, the Lancastrians' title to the throne might be questioned. There were others hving in England whose rights might be advanced. But if the Lancastrian Hne by conquest acquired the sovereignty of France, Englishmen would proudly hail them king; no one could say that either in law or fact the Lancastrians were not true kings.
And if they, men of the Plantagenet blood, were kings in France, were they not kings of England too ? In the same way, the German kings from the tenth to the thirteenth century strengthened their title in Germany by getting themselves crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome.
But if the English should be driven out of France, if the Lancastrians should lose their indefeasible right by conquest to wear the crown of the Capets, then their hold on the regal dignity would be tremendously weakened.
Clearly, as kings of France, by right of conquest and by solemn treaty, they had no English rival. The Lancastrian family, and the Lancastrian family alone, had conquered France and received the crown in Notre-Dame. Their right to the English crown, which some lawyers might hold to be weak, was covered over by their established possession of the historic throne of France. But once lose the regal dignity in France, and the title to the crown of England might hardly stand alone.
The gradual loss of the French territories has, therefore, an important bearing on the origin of the Wars of the Roses and on the ultimate downfall of the Lancastrian dynasty. With the loss of the French territory the Lancastrian position as French king was gone. The name might remain, but by itself it meant nothing.
Until the dramatic appearance of Joan of Arc in the field, the English power, under the wise and firm guidance of Bedford, went on prospering. But although the English administration in France was good, although the peasantry were treated with consideration, and the middle classes were encouraged in trade and in self-government, yet the forces of nationality, even in distracted, divided, feudal France, were too strong. When the romantic figure of Joan of Arc appeared, with her devoted and religious passion to free France from “Talbot and the English,”she became a focus for all the vague, national, and patriotic aspirations of the people, whom neither the craft and pertinacity of the Dauphin, nor the valour of the professional generals, had till then been able to rouse.
The strong ally of the English in France was Philip "the Good,”Duke of Burgundy. His father had been murdered by some of the Dauphin's supporters at the Bridge of Montereau, on the Seine, in 1419. Between Philip and the English, the “king of Bourges,”as the Dauphin was satirically called, seemed to have little chance. In 1423 the Anglo-Burgundian forces defeated the French with their Scottish allies at Cravant on the Yonne, in the east of France. Next year, James I., the Scottish king, who for eighteen years had been captive in the Tower of London, was released on condition of paying a ransom and recalling the Scottish soldiers from P'rance.
So the P'rench were left to fight their battles alone. In that year, August 17th, 1424, Bedford met an army of the Dauphin, Charles VII., at Verneuil, on the river Avre, to the north-west of France. After a severe battle, in which Bedford fought personally on foot, wielding a great pole-axe, the French were driven off the field. But the battle showed that the}' were not afraid to meet the best English army in a hand-to-hand conflict. The result of the victory of Verneuil was that the English were now predominant in all the land north of the Loire, with the exception of a few towns on the river itself. The war dragged on for four years more before anything decisive happened; the English were hampered by the lack of strong financial support from home, while the king of Bourges had to witness a renewal of internecine war between some of his own followers. Meanwhile Bedford was steadily building up a solid English government in the conquered territory; and in 1428 the Council at Paris decided that the time was ripe for a further advance to be made. A new English general, Thomas de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, had come out to act under Bedford.
Salisbury, with a good army, advanced to the Loire, and gained in all thirty-eight small towns. Then on October 7th, 1428, against the advice of Bedford it is said, he proceeded to invest the city of Orleans, the strongest town on the north bank of the Loire, being with its important bridge the key to the southern country. The siege of Orleans was the turning point in the history of the English occupation of France. Every effort was made by the English to take the city. The Council in London strained every nerve to provide adequate supplies of men and money for the task. But on October 22nd the Earl of Salisbury received a fatal wound, and England lost one of her most successful soldiers. Even before Joan of Arc brought the French army of relief it ought to have been clear that Orleans was not to be taken.
The blockade of the English army was never really effective, for all through the siege supplies were brought up the river from Blois, which was in the Dauphin's hands, and introduced into the city. On May 8th, 1429, the siege was raised by the English.
Joan followed up her successes, and on June i8th defeated Talbot and the English at Patay on the road to Paris itself On July loth she brought the Dauphin to Rheims and had him solemnly crowned as Charles VII. In August the Maid brought her army before Paris, but failed to gain the capital.
The English power slowly declined. As a demonstration to the contrary, the English Council sent the young king Henry, who had already been crowned in London (1429), over to Paris to be crowned king of France there in the ancient capital of the Capets (1431). Six months before this coronation the Maid, who had been captured, was burned by the Engh'sh at Rouen.
From this point, any successes scored by the English commanders were only temporary. Their administration in France degenerated, and they began to treat the peasants with undue severity. Philip of Burgundy began to feel that he had sufficiently revenged his father's murder on the Bridge of M6ntereau, and in 1435 he left the losing cause and took the natural line of joining his kinsman Charles VII., by the Treaty of Arras. This was on September nth. On September isth, at Rouen, the wise, noble, and loyal Duke of Bedford breathed his last.
He was only forty-six years old. Next year the French army entered Paris.
The English power in France was certainly doomed.
Supplies of money from home, always inadequate, seem, after the year 1433, practically to have ceased. The north of France was no longer a place where war could be made to support war. But the English captains struggled on for eight more years. The war, except for a short time after Agincourt, had never been really popular in England, and yet public opinion would not tolerate a peace. To maintain the war became a sort of point of honour with the nation; yet they would not pay for it. For eight years the English grimly maintained themselves in Normandy and in Guienne. After Bedford's death the commander-inchief of the forces in France was the Duke of York, son of the Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who had been executed for treason in 1415. York, who was twenty-five years old when appointed to the French command in 1436, showed good military ability and achieved some successes. He held the position of Lieutenant-General of “France and Normandy”for two periods, 1436-37 and 1441-45. But the Council of Henry VI. had not full confidence in him, and in 1447 he was sent out of the way to be Lieutenant of Ireland.
Meanwhile, in 1444, the home government had arranged a truce with Charles VII., according to which the English gave up everything except Normandy, Guienne, and Calais, and Henry VI. was to marry the niece of Charles VII., Margaret of Anjou. The marriage was carried out next year, and the English garrisons were withdrawn from Maine and Anjou. The truce was renewed and maintained till 1449, when the plundering forays of the ill-paid English garrisons against the friends and subjects of Charles VII. provoked the formal outbreak of war again.
The English general in France, Edmund Beaufort, was a conspicuous failure as compared with his predecessor, York.
Less than a year sufficed for the French to conquer the whole of Normandy, which was held by quite inadequate forces among what was now an alien and hostile population.
Guienne, the oldest dependency of England, was still left. It was bound to England by a strong economic tie.
It was a great wine country, and the prosperity of the countrymen of Guienne and of the merchants of Bordeaux depended largely on the wine-fleet that sailed annually to London. But by the end of 145 1 all Guienne, city by city, had been conquered too. In 1452 the Gascons asked for help from England. They found the new French government more irksome than the old English government had been. "Talbot, our good dog,”who had grown old in the French war, but whose spirit was as high as ever, was sent over to their help with about 3,000 men. He soon brought the Bordelais back into English power. But next summer he flung himself on the French camp in front of Castillon, and after a severe fight suffered defeat and death at the same time. Guienne was lost. “Thus,”in the words of the Burgundian Waurin, whose active life included the last forty years of the war, “by the grace and aid of God, the Duchy of Guienne was brought back into obedience to the King of France soon after the Duchy of Normandy and all the French kingdom, except the town of Calais, which is still left in the hands of the English.
May God be willing that it, too, be brought back, if the Scripture is to be fulfilled which says, ' Better is obedience than sacrifice.' “
The failure to hold France ruined the Lancastrian dynasty, although undoubtedly the failure was for the good of England. The French and the English would never, in all likelihood, have done well under a common sovereign. Nor would England have grown to the strong, consolidated, imperial position which she later attained.
France was too opulent, her people too brilliant, ever to be secondary to England. The greater would have drawn the less, as England, after 1603, drew Scotland. England might have sunk to be a second-class kingdom, overshadowed by the brilliant and attractive France.
The causes of the failure are not to be sought far. In the first place, the military superiority of the English was gone by the early years of Henry VI. Just as after the early victories of Edward III., du Guesclin organised a workmanlike professional army to take the place of the feudal levy, so after the victories of Henry VI., which had been partly due to the fact that the French had again gone back to the feudal system of fighting, a new professional army was created by such men as the Bastard of Orleans, La Hire, and Pothon de Xintrailles. The establishment in 1437 of the perpetual tax, known as the taille, enabled Charles VII. to maintain this professional army, and especially to have regular companies of artillery — weapons in which the French showed immense superiority to the English in the later stages of the war.
In the second place, the English were attempting to hold districts where, with the exception of the Bordelais, the population felt an intense dislike to them. The lack of proper supplies from England, the life in small garrison towns, varied only by feverish raids into the enemy's country, demoralised the soldiery. Even in Normandy the memory of the good administration of Henry V. and Bedford was effaced. And just as Napoleon found it impossible to hold down by garrisons countries where the population had a bitter and national hatred for them, so too the English captains, with their companies of hardbitten soldiers, found it impossible to hold down France.
In the third place, the early English successes had been partly due to the divisions of France. It was the faction fights between the Burgundian and Armagnac (or Orleanist) parties which so weakened the French monarchy.
But when, in 1435, the Duke of Burgundy made his peace with Charles VII., and united his strength to the national forces, the moral as well as the material position of the French was immensely strengthened, and the flank of the English sphere of occupation was exposed to a steady and continuous attack from the east.
In the fourth place, the situation of the English in France from the early years of Henry VI. was not easily defensible. The English sphere consisted of the outlying dependency of Guienne, which was strong enough so long as England retained command of the sea, and kept the ring of fortresses from Bayonne to Blaye, which defended the frontier towards the French kingdom. But the rest of the English territory was a sort of triangle, with its base from the frontier of Brittany in the west, to Calais on the east, and with its apex at Paris. The loss of the Burgundian aUiance, which safe-guarded the east of this triangle, and the loss of Paris at the apex (in two successive years, 1435 and 1436), made the English position practically untenable.
In the fifth place, the administration of the home government left a great deal to be desired. One defect was that it had no united policy, the Council being divided into two parties — those who desired to proceed with the war, and those who advocated peace while it could be obtained with honourable terms. The war party was led by the king's younger uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and the peace party by his great-uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of .Winchester. Up till 1444 the war party gained its own way, but never completely. The war was carried on, but not at all costs : in any step taken the main consideration had to be economy. Moreover, the divisions in the Council sometimes became most acute, and twice Bedford, who was continually overworked, had to leave the direction of affairs in France and fly to London to make peace between his contending relatives. Later on the Duke of York was removed from the command in France to Ireland, and the much less capable Edmund Beaufort put in his place. But the lack of money would, in any case, have ruined everything. To maintain the war became a point of honour with the people. For any minister to propose peace was a dangerous proceeding. The peace of 1444 and the French marriage cost the minister Suffolk his life. And yet, though Parliament kept insisting on a war policy, it refused to pay for it. The revenue, even for purposes of peace, was continually shrinking. The theory that “the king should live off his own,”and maintain his own war, was still believed. So the army in France was starved, and the English garrisons, stubbornly fighting, wasted away, or were pushed backwards to the sea.
It is always easier, in the long run, to attack than to defend. And it is always easier to re-win a country, where one's friends are living, than to hold an alien country in spite of the inhabitants. The forces of French patriotism were continually rising; the life of Joan of Arc inspired the whole nation, and Charles VII., whose character gradually grew stronger as the long schooling of the war proceeded, formed a centre for the national aspirations.
The fifteenth century saw the birth of patriotism; the feudal system was breaking up, and the claims of France were superseding the claims of the fief The rise of French patriotism was the doom of the English occupation.
It may be granted, then, that the loss of France was not entirely the fault of the Lancastrians. Henry VI. was not a soldier; he took no real part in the war. Under any other king the French dependencies must have been lost, sooner or later. But the effect of the loss on the position of the dynasty was disastrous. The glorious adventure of Henry V., the proudest days in the long history of England, had ended in failure abroad and financial bankruptcy at home. The troubles, from which since 1 399 the dynasty had never been wholly free, now rose up into .startling magnitude.
CHAPTER IV. THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL
The gradual decline of the English power in France ran parallel with a gradual decline in the Lancastrian power at home. According to arrangements made by Henry V. at the time of his death, the care of the young king was entrusted to the two brothers of the late king, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, acting with the Privy Council as a Council of Regency. Bedford, who had the superior voice, confined his attention to France.
Gloucester was left to preside over the Council in England, with the title of Protector. He expected to be regent in England, but Parliament, which, since the accession of the Lancastrians had wielded great powers, refused him.
Then by Act of Parliament a form of government was drawn up for the minority of the king; Bedford was recognised as Protector in France and England; Gloucester was to be Protector in England when Bedford was absent in France. The rest of the councillors were nominated to the number of sixteen : the most important after Gloucester were Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and his brother, Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter. This body was intended to give all its time to the business of administration, and was paid for its services. Humphrey of Gloucester, while acting as Protector, was paid . 5,3336s. 8d. a year; the others received smaller payments, from the Bishop of Winchester, with;£'200 a year, to Lord Beauchamp, who received £40. When in the next year a few other names were added to the Council, knights received ' 100, and a simple esquire;£'40. If a councillor neglected his duty, his salarj' was reduced : in the case of those who received;£'200 annually, £1 was taken off for each day's absence; from those who received; ioo, los. for each day's absence, and so with the others in proportion, according to their wages.i The nomination of the councillors remained in the hands of Parliament till 1437, when Henry VI., who took a great interest in politics and government, began to nominate the Council himself
This Council naturally had immense power. It consisted of the most eminent men in the land. The king was a child, and could not act by himself Parliament, unlike the Council, did not sit continuously. Thus it is correct to say that during the minority of Henry VI. the government of England was practically government by the Council.
When, after 1437, Henry VI. began to take an active part in politics, the government of England was by king and Council together. If by the middle of the century the administration of the country had broken down, it must be attributed in some manner to the failure of government by the king and Council.
As might be expected, the work of the Council was enormously varied. The records and Minutes of the Council were carefully kept through the period, and they show how industriously the business of the kingdom was attended to. The volume containing the records for the first seven years of the reign of Henry VI. proves this.
One of the early acts of the Council was to sell some of the largest ships of the Royal Navy, a measure of economy which shows the poor state of the government. No foreign power, except an ally of England, was allowed to purchase any of the ships. Next, some of the less important French prisoners who, since their capture at Agincourt, had been confined in the Fleet prison, were set free. The complicated negotiations respecting the release of the captive Scottish king, James I., were then taken up. Again it was resolved that the expenses of the Duke of Orleans, who had been taken prisoner at Agincourt, should be defrayed by himself. Hitherto he had been kept at the charges of the king. The king's nurse or governess. Lady Alice Boteller, was authorised “reasonably to chastise him from time to time, as the case might require, without her being afterwards molested or injured for so doing.”Later, her salary was raised from yearly. Philip, Duke of Coimbra, son of the king of Portugal, first cousin to Henry VI., visited England in 1424; the Council arranged for his reception, and made the necessary orders for his expenses. The appointments and translation of bishops were taken in hand (1426), John Kemp, Bishop of London, being appointed to the see of York. The pope, however, had a nominee of his own, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, whom he “appointed “to be Archbishop of York. But the Council vigorou.sly resisted this attempt of the pope (made periodically throughout the Middle Ages) to control the English episcopate.
The pope, Martin V., saved his dignity by translating his nominee from York back to Lincoln. In the same year the Council issued a declaration of war between England and the Duchy of Brittany. Public order inside the kingdom came within the purview of the Council; rewards were posted for the arrest of highwaymen, and the right of sanctuary, whenever claimed, was carefully inquired into. The Council, in fact, seems to have combined all the work of a modern Cabinet, with a great deal of the work that now falls to the great departments of State.
In intention the government was good andhonest, but it was not unanimous. There was nothing like the present system of responsible government, according to which one group of men who have the confidence of a majority in
Parliament form the whole Cabinet. In the reign of Henry VI., although up till 1437 Parliament appointed the Council, there was no homogeneity among the members.
Those who were reputed the. greatest and wisest in the ' ' land were chosen as councillors, irrespective of their attitude to each other. It is obvious that this system could only work well if the members would exercise a wise , tolerance and forbearance towards each other's views. As i things turned out such forbearance was seldom exercised, and the Council was never able to work whole-heartedly together.
The first thing which now began seriously to break up ' “the kingdom was the ambition of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. There is much to be said both for and against this man. He was an affable, popular prince, and was always liked by the citizens of London. He was brave and active, and had been wounded on the glorious field of Agincourt. He was intelligent, interested in science and literature, and a patron of men of learning, for which reason he obtained the title of the “Good Duke.”In his early days he was connected with Oxford, being probably a member of Balliol College; and one of his last acts was to leave his collection of books to the University, thus beginning the famous library now called the Bodleian.
But his ambition was tremendous, so much so, that towards the end of his life he was considered to be aiming at the crown. It is not, however, likely that he went so far as this. But he did mean to be chief man under the king, and he was bitterly disappointed when, on Henry V.'s death, the Parliament refused to make him regent.
The best that can be said for his public policy is that he was consistent. Henry V.'s wishes in death had been that the French war should go on till the English power in France was made secure; and Humphrey never swerved from this design. Throughout the rest of his life he was the leader of the war party in England.
The struggle in the Council falls into two parts : first, the struggle between Gloucester and Bishop Beaufort; next, that between the Earl of Somerset and the Duke of York. The latter quarrel was only settled when Somerset fell fighting in the battle of St Albans in 1455.
The struggle between Gloucester and Beaufort was always going on, with every now and then a severe crisis. It must not be considered that Beaufort was always crying “Peace “with France, and Gloucester “War.”On the contrary, Beaufort supported the war so long as England seemed likely to gain anything by it, and he lent or gave large sums of money to the government to carry on the war when the treasury was empty. But as the war dragged on disastrously, Beaufort naturally turned, both as a statesman and a churchman, to advocate peace. Yet what really divided Gloucester and Beaufort from the first was undoubtedly the ambitious, high-handed actions of the duke.
In March 1423 the Duke married Jacqueline, Duchess of Holland and Hainault. Jacqueline, although still young, had been twice married, and had only been relea.sed from her last union by a rather dubious divorce allowed by the Anti-Pope Benedict XIII. At the time of the marriage she had been living at the English court, as her possessions and claims in the Low Countries had made her useful to Henry V. But there was a danger to England from Gloucester's marriage with her; the Duke of Burgundy did not wish to see an English prince become Lord of Hainault and Holland. The marriage of Humphrey did much to rob England of the support of Burgundy in the French war. '
But Gloucester never stopped to count the cost. In October 1423 he set out from Calais for Hainault, which was then in the possession of Jacqueline's former husband, the Duke of Brabant. Gloucester had with him 5,000 men raised in England; this was fully up to the numbers of the armies usually employed by the English generals in France in the reign of Henry VI. Gloucester won Hainault, and then found himself opposed by the Duke
of Burgundy, to whom Jacqueline's former husband had appealed for help. In 1425 Gloucester, leaving Jacqueline in Mons, returned to England to get ready for a duel to which the Duke of Burgundy had challenged him. But he did not return, and Jacqueline, after defending Mons for some time with great spirit, had to surrender to the Duke of Burgundy. Naturally the Council were cold in their reception of Gloucester on his return, and Beaufort, who was the best man in it, had plenty of ground for complaint.
Beaufort, in 1422, had been appointed Chancellor. In the absence of both Bedford and Gloucester he was at the head of the Council, and practically vice-gerent of the kingdom. This was too much for Gloucester, who complained bitterly of Beaufort's power. In order to vindicate his position, Gloucester demanded entrance into the Tower of London. The captain, Richard Wydville, who belonged to the party of Beaufort, refused to open the Tower to Humphrey and his following of London citizens. Civil war was only averted by the intervention of Archbishop Chichele. Beaufort wrote off to Bedford : “As you desire the welfare of the king our Sovereign Lord and of his realms of England and France, your own weal, with all yours, haste you hither; by my truth, if you tarry, we shall put this land in jeopardy; for such a brother you have here, God make him a good man. “ This was written on September 21st, 1425; on December 20th, Bedford arrived in England. He remained till the end of March 1427,' and kept harmony in the government; but affairs in France urgently demanded his presence, and when he returned there the friction between Humphrey and Beaufort would at once have arisen. Beaufort anticipated this by resigning the chancellorship just before Bedford's departure; later, in May or June, he left England on a pilgrimage or “crusade “to Bohemia. Beaufort and Bedford
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Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 09.05.2014
ISBN: 978-3-7368-0968-0
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