637 



WARWICK, EARL OF. 



WARWICK, EARL OF. 



633 



It is important to keep in view this strong natural or family position 

 of the great Earl of Warwick as to a material extent accounting for 

 the vast power which he came to exercise in the state. The Nevils 

 were at this time perhaps the most extensively connected family that 

 has ever existed among the nobility of England. Besides the Nevils 

 of llaby, from whom the Earls of Westmorland were sprung, there 

 were several other baronies held by other branches of the same stock, 

 datiug also from tho first reigns after the Conquest. The Talbots, 

 earls of Shrewsbury, were also descended from a Thomas Nevil, brother 

 of Ralph, earl of Westmorland, and from him had inherited the barony 

 of Furnival, which he had acquired by marriage, after the fashion of 

 BO many of his family. 



His extended connections and immense possessions were joined in 

 Warwick to the most distinguished personal qualities : intrepidity, 

 decision, and all the military virtues,. eloquence and general talent, an 

 affability and frankness of bearing that captivated equally all classes, 

 a boundless hospitality and magnificence that enthroned him in the 

 universal heart of the commons. AVherever he resided, we are told, 

 he kept open house. It is affirmed that the number of people daily 

 fed at his various mansions, when he was at the height of his pros- 

 perity, was not less than thirty thousand. " When he came to London," 

 says Stow, in his ' Chronicle,' " he held such an house that six oxen 

 were eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat ; for 

 who that had any acquaintance in that house he should have had as 

 nmch sodden and roast as he might carry upon a long dagger." 



The history of this mighty peer is that of the whole of the contest 

 between the two houses of York and Lancaster from the first armed 

 rising against Henry VI. to the final establishment of Edward IV. on 

 the throne, by the overthrow of the Lancastrian forces in the fight of 

 Barnet. Here we can only briefly note the more important events 

 that marked his career. 



He is first mentioned as accompanying his father, the Earl of Salis- 

 bury, upon a hostile incursion across the Scottish marches, which 

 Salisbury conducted in 1448 in conjunction with the Earl of Northum- 

 berland. The Lord Richard Nevil, as he was then called, greatly dis- 

 tinguished himself by his bravery on this expedition. When the 

 Duke of York took up arms in 1455, he was joined both by Warwick 

 and Salisbury ; and the battle of St. Albane, fought on the 22nd of 

 May, was mainly won by the impetuous valour of Warwick. Imme- 

 diately after this, while the office of chancellor was bestowed by the 

 parliament upon Salisbury, Warwick was rewarded with the govern- 

 ment of Calais, then and for a long time after the most important 

 military charge in Christendom. To this was added two or three 

 years subsequently by Henry, who perhaps wished to attach to himself 

 so able and powerful a subject, the custody of the sea, or command of 

 the fleet, for five years. It was in virtue of the latter appointment 

 that, on the 29th of May 1458, he set out from Calais with five large 

 and seven small vessel^, and attacking a fleet of twenty-eight sail 

 belonging to the free town of Liibeck, captured six of them after a 

 contest which lasted six hours. When the Yorkists made their next 

 attempt in the summer of 1459, Warwick came over from Calais with 

 a large body of veterans, with which he joined his father at Ludlow, 

 a day or two after Salisbury's victory over Lord Audley at Bloreheath 

 in Staffordshire, on the 23rd of September. On the discomfiture of 

 the Yorkists at Ludiford, a few weeks after, through the treachery of 

 Sir Andrew Trollop, who deserted to the royal army, Warwick returned 

 to Calais : he was superseded in that government by the Duke of 

 Somerset, and in his command of the fleet by the Duke of Exeter ; 

 but when Somerset attempted to enter the harbour of Calais, he was 

 fired upon from the batteries and compelled to retire. In the begin- 

 ning of June following, Warwick again landed in Kent with a force of 

 fifteen hundred men ; before he reached London, according to some 

 accounts, nearly forty thousand of his countrymen had flocked to his 

 banner; the capital, from which King Henry had fled, received him 

 with all welcome ; the battle of Northampton followed, on the 10th 

 of July, at which Henry fell into the hands of the Yorkists. The next 

 remarkable events in this fluctuating struggle were the battle of Wake- 

 field, in Yorkshire, fought on the 30th of December, where the Duke 

 of York was defeated by Queen Margaret, and lost his life, and where 

 the Earl of Salisbury was also taken, and beheaded next day at Po ite- 

 fract ; and the queen's second victory over the Yorkists, commanded 

 in this instance by Warwick, at Bernard's Heath, near St. Albau's, on 

 the 17th of February 1461, which restored Henry to liberty. But the 

 junction, immediately after this, of the forces of Warwick and the 

 young Edward, earl of March, now Duke of York, compelled the royal 

 army to retire to the north. Edward, accompanied by Warwick, 

 entered London in triumph; on the 4th of March he was proclaimed 

 king, by the title of Edward IV. ; and on the 29th the defeat of the 

 Lancastrian army at Towton in Yorkshire secured the throne to King 

 Edward. On this occasion the main body of the Yorkist army was 

 commanded by the Earl of Warwick ; who also, during the next two 

 or three years, while the contest still lingered, performed various 

 important military services to his new prince. In the winter of 1462- 

 1463 he reduced the three strong fortresses of Bamborough, Alnwick, 

 and Dunstanburgh ; and it was to him also that the castle of Bambo- 

 rough capitulated a second time, in May 1464, after it had been made 

 over to the Lancastrians by the defection of the governor, Sir Ralph 

 Grey. Finally, it was Warwick by whom the unfortunate Henry was 



conducted to the Tower, in June 1465, after his capture at Waddington 

 Hall in Yorkshire, about fourteen months after the final defeat of the 

 Lancastrians at Hexham by Warwick's brother, Lord Montague. 



The Nevils were now in a manner the rulers of the king and king- 

 dom. Warwick himself, besides his government of Calais, held the 

 office of chamberlain and the wardenship of the West Marches ; his 

 next brother, Lord Montague, was warden of the East Marches, and 

 had obtained the extensive estates of the Percies, with the title of Earl 

 of Northumberland ; his youngest brother, George, was lord high, 

 chancellor and Archbishop of York. But circumstances soon arose to 

 alienate Edward from partisans to whom he was too deeply indebted 

 for the two parties to continue friends in then? relative positions. The 

 king's marriage, which took place in 1464 ; the jealousy of the queen's 

 relations, the Wydvilles; the marriage of the king's sister, the 

 Princess Margaret, with the Duke of Burgundy, brought about in 

 1468, in opposition to the advice of Warwick ; the seductions of the 

 French king Louis XI. ; the arts of Lancastrian emissaries ; and, 

 according to one account, an attempt made by Edward in the earl's 

 own house, to violate the chastity of his niece or daughter are sup- 

 posed to have been the principal causes that contributed to sever the 

 king from the Nevils ; but the story is too complicated, and, in many 

 parts, obscure, to admit of being detailed or investigated to any pur- 

 pose, in so rapid a summary as this. We may merely remark that 

 Dr. Lingard appears to have shown that the common account which 

 makes Warwick to have been in France negociating on the part of the 

 king a marriage with Bona of Savoy, sister to the French queen, at 

 the time when Edward clandestinely married Elizabeth Wydville, 

 cannot be true. (See his 'Hist, of Eng.,' v. 190, note, edition of 

 1837.) The first open intimation of the loss, by the Nevils of the 

 royal favour was given in June 1467, by the king commanding the 

 Archbishop of York to deliver up the great seal. After this there was 

 a formal reconciliation, and the next year, Warwick, who had retired, 

 with a clouded countenance, to his castle of Middleham in Yorkshire, 

 appeared again at court. But the hollow compact did not last long. 

 In July 1468, Edward's next brother, George, duke of Clarence, gave 

 great offence to his majesty by marrying Isabella, the eldest of the two 

 daughters of the Earl of Warwick. Immediately after this there 

 broke out in Yorkshire an insurrection of the peasantry, which, being 

 joined by two near connections of Warwick's, the sons of the Lords 

 Latimer and Fitzhugh, speedily became converted into an avowed 

 attempt to drive the Wydvilles from the management of affairs. The 

 royalists were routed with great slaughter at Edgecote, on the 26th of 

 July ; and a few days after, Edward was taken prisoner by Warwick 

 and Clarence at Olney. The king was detained in confinement at 

 Middleham, under the care of the Archbishop of York, for two or 

 three months, during which Warwick twice defeated bodies of 

 the Lancastrians who had risen in the north, counting upon his 

 support of the cause of King Henry. While Edward was in his 

 hands, also, the earl obtained from him a grant of the office of 

 justiciary of South Wales, and of all the other dignities held by the 

 late Earl of Pembroke, who had been beheaded after the battle of 

 Edgecote. Contradictory accounts are given of the manner in which 

 the king recovered his liberty; but he was at large again before the 

 end of the year, and apparently with the consent of Warwick. A new 

 rupture, followed by another seeming reconciliation, took place in 

 February, 1470. But in all these movements both parties were pro- 

 bably only attempting to gain time and opportunity to destroy one 

 another. In the beginning of March an insurrection broke out in 

 Lincolnshire, which soon very clearly appeared to have been instigated 

 by Warwick and Clarence; but before they could join the insurgents, 

 who were headed by Sir Robert Wells, the son of Lord Wells, the 

 latter were defeated by the king's troops, on the 12th of March, at 

 Erpingham in Rutlandshire. Upon this Warwick and Clarence fled 

 first to the north ; whence, pursued by the king, they returned to 

 Exeter, and embarked for Calais ; but here, to their astonishment, the 

 guns of the batteries were turned upon them by the deputy, a Gascon 

 named Vauclerc, to whom Warwick had entrusted the keeping of the 

 place. On this they made for Harfleur, and were there received with 

 distinguished honours by the Admiral of France. Shortly after this, 

 on the 15th of July, Warwick met Henry's queen, Margaret, at 

 Amboise, and there the two solemnly agreed to forget the past, and to 

 unite their interests and efforts for the future, sealing their compact 

 by the marriage of Margaret's son, Prince Edward, to Warwick's 

 second daughter, Anne. A force was now raised for the invasion of 

 England; Warwick landed at its head, at Plymouth, on the 13th of 

 September, and immediately proclaimed Henry VI. ; Edward, who 

 was in Yorkshire, fled to the town of Lynn, and there taking ship, 

 on the 3rd of October, made his escape to Alktnaar in Holland. 

 On the 6th Warwick and Clarence entered London in triumph, and 

 taking Henry from the Tower, conducted him with the crown on his 

 head to the cathedral of St. Paul's. Warwick was now formally 

 restored by parliament to his offices of chamberlain of England and 

 captain of Calais, with the addition of that of lord high admiral ; his 

 brother, the Archbishop of York, was again made chancellor; his 

 other brother, now Marquis of Montague, for which title he had a few 

 months before been forced to exchange that of Earl of Northum- 

 berland with the estates of the Percies, was restored to the wardenship 

 of the East Marches. But all this lasted only a few months. On the 



