These two defeats cooled the ardour of the Scotch allies of the house of Lancaster. Moreover, trouble was soon provided for them on their own side of the Border. There were always discontented nobles to be found in the North, and King Edward was able to retaliate on the Scotch regents by concluding a treaty with the Earl of Ross, which set a considerable rebellion on foot in the Highlands and the Western Isles. By the time that the autumn came there was no longer any immediate danger to be apprehended on the Borders, and Warwick was able to relinquish his northern viceroyalty and come south, to pay his estates a flying visit, and to obey the writ which summoned him in November to King Edward's first Parliament at Westminster.
While Warwick had been labouring in the North, the King had been holding his Court at London, free to rule after his own devices. At twenty Edward the Fourth had already a formed character, and displayed all the personal traits which developed in his later years. The spirit of the fifteenth century was strong in him. Cultured and cruel, as skilled as the oldest statesman in the art of cajoling the people, as cool in the hour of danger as the oldest soldier, he was not a sovereign with whom even the greatest of his subjects could deal lightly. Yet he was so inordinately fond of display and luxury of all sorts, so given to sudden fits of idleness, so prone to sacrifice policy to any whim or selfish impulse of the moment, that he must have seemed at times almost contemptible to a man who, like Warwick, had none of the softer vices of self-indulgence. Still in mourning for a father and brother not six months dead, with a kingdom not yet fully subdued to his fealty, with an empty exchequer, with half the nobles and gentry of England owing him a blood-feud for their kinsmen slain at Towton, Edward had cast aside every thought of the past and the morrow, and was bearing himself with all the thriftless good-humour of an heir lately come to a well-established fortune. It seems that the splendours of his coronation-feasts were the main things that had been occupying his mind while Warwick had been fighting his battles in the North. Reading of his jousts and banquets and processions, his gorgeous reception by the city magnates, and his lavish distributions of honours and titles, we hardly remember that he was no firmly-rooted King, but the precarious sovereign of a party, surrounded by armed enemies and secret conspirators.
In the lists of honours which Edward had distributed after his return homeward from Towton field, Warwick found that he had not been neglected. The offices which he had held in 1458-59 had been restored to him; he was again Captain of the town and castle of Calais, Lieutenant of the March of Picardy, Grand Chamberlain of England, and High Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster. In addition he was now created Constable of Dover and Warden of the Cinque Ports, and made Master of the Mews and Falcons, and Steward of the Manor and Forest of Feckenham. His position in the North, too, was made regular by his appointment as Warden and Commissary General of the East and West Marches, and Procurator Envoy and Deputy for all negotiations with the Scots.
Nor had the rest of the Neville clan been overlooked. John Neville had, as we have already mentioned, received the barony of Montagu. George Neville the Bishop of Exeter was again Chancellor. Fauconbridge, who had fought so manfully at Towton, was created Earl of Kent. Moreover, Sir John Wenlock, Warwick's most faithful adherent, who had done him such good service at Sandwich in 1459, was made a baron. We shall always find him true to the cause of his patron down to his death at Tewkesbury field. Although several other creations swelled the depleted ranks of the peerage at the same time, the Nevilles could not complain that they had failed to receive their due share of the rewards.
Nor would it seem that at first the King made any effort to resent the natural ascendency which his cousin exercised over his counsels. The experienced warrior of thirty-three must still have overborne the precocious lad of twenty when their wills came into contact. The campaigns of 1459-60, in which he had learnt soldiering under Warwick, must have long remained impressed on Edward's mind, even after he had won his own laurels at Mortimer's Cross and shared with equal honours in the bloody triumph of Towton. So long as Richard Neville was still in close and constant contact with the young King, his ascendency was likely to continue. It was when, in the succeeding years, his duties took him for long periods far from Edward's side, that the Earl was to find his cousin first growing indifferent, then setting his own will against his adviser's, then deliberately going to work to override every scheme that came to him from any member of the Neville house.
We have no particular notice of Warwick's personal doings in the Parliament which sat in November and December 1461; but the language of his brother George the Chancellor represents, no doubt, the attitude which the whole family adopted. His text was "Amend your ways and your doings," and the tenor of his discourse was to point out that the ills of England during the last generation came from the national apostasy in having deserted the rightful heirs so long in behalf of the usurping house of Lancaster. Now that a new reign had commenced, a reform in national morality should accompany the return of the English to their lawful allegiance. The sweeping acts of attainder against fourteen peers and many scores of knights and squires which the Yorkist Parliament passed might not seem a very propitious beginning for the new era, but at any rate it should be remembered to the credit of the Nevilles that the King's Council under their guidance tempered the zeal of the Commons by many limitations which guarded the rights of numerous individuals who would have been injured by the original proposals.
Moreover, the Government allowed the opportunity of reconciliation to many of the more luke-warm adherents of Lancaster, who had not been personally engaged in the last struggle. It is to Warwick's credit that his cousin Ralph of Westmoreland was admitted to pardon, and not taken to task for the doings of his retainers, under the conduct of his brother, in the campaign of Wakefield and St. Albans. Ralph was summoned to the Parliament, and treated no worse than if he had been a consistent adherent of York. The same favour was granted to the Earl of Oxford, till he forfeited it by deliberate conspiracy against the King. Sanguine men were already beginning to hope that King Edward and his advisers might be induced to end the civil wars by a general grant of amnesty, and might invite his rival Henry to return to England as the first subject of the Crown. Such mercy and reconciliation, however, were beyond the mind of the ordinary partisan of York; and the popular feeling of the day was probably on the side of the correspondent of the Pastons, who complained "that the King receives such men as have been his great enemies, and great oppressors of his Commons, while such as have assisted his Highness be not rewarded; which is to be considered, or else it will hurt, as seemeth me but reason."