Warwick, the Kingmaker

by Charles Oman

The two prominent features in Warwick's character which made him a leader of men, were not those which might have been expected in a man born and reared in his position. The first was an inordinate love of the activity of business; the second was a courtesy and affability which made him the friend of all men save the one class he could not brook—the "made lords," the parvenu nobility which Edward the Fourth delighted to foster.

Of these characteristics it is impossible to exaggerate the strength of the first. Warwick's ambition took the shape of a devouring love of work of all kinds. Prominent though he was as a soldier, his activity in war was only one side of his passionate desire to manage well and thoroughly everything that came to his hand. He never could cease for a moment to be busy; from the first moment when he entered into official harness in 1455 down to the day of his death, he seems hardly to have rested for a moment. The energy of his soul took him into every employment—general, admiral, governor, judge, councillor, ambassador, as the exigencies of the moment demanded; he was always moving, always busy, and never at leisure. When the details of his life are studied, the most striking point is to find how seldom he was at home, how constantly away at public service. His castles and manors saw comparatively little of him. It was not at Warwick or Amesbury, at Caerphilly or Middleham that he was habitually to be found, but in London, or Calais, or York, or on the Scotch Border. It was not that he neglected his vassals and retainers—the loyalty with which they rallied to him on every occasion is sufficient evidence to the contrary—but he preferred to be a great minister and official, not merely a great baron and feudal chief.

In this sense, then, it is most deceptive to call Warwick the Last of the Barons. Vast though his strength might be as the greatest landholder in England, it was as a statesman and administrator that he left his mark on the age. He should be thought of as the forerunner of Wolsey rather than as the successor of Robert of Belesme, or the Bohuns and Bigods. That the world remembers him as a turbulent noble is a misfortune. Such a view is only drawn from a hasty survey of the last three or four years of his life, when under desperate provocation he was driven to use for personal ends the vast feudal power that lay ready to his hand. If he had died in 1468, he would be remembered in history as an able soldier and statesman, who with singular perseverance and consistency devoted his life to consolidating England under the house of York.

After his restless activity, Warwick's most prominent characteristic was his geniality. No statesman was ever so consistently popular with the mass of the nation, through all the alternations of good and evil fortune. This popularity the Earl owed to his unswerving courtesy and affability; "he ever had the good voice of the people, because he gave them fair words, showing himself easy and familiar," says the chronicler. Wherever he was well known he was well liked. His own Yorkshire and Midland vassals, who knew him as their feudal lord, the seamen who had served under him as admiral, the Kentishmen who saw so much of him while he was captain of Calais, were all his unswerving followers down to the day of his death. The Earl's boundless generosity, the open house which he kept for all who had any claim on him, the zeal with which he pushed the fortunes of his dependents, will only partially explain his popularity. As much must be ascribed to his genial personality as to the trouble which he took to court the people. His whole career was possible because the majority of the nation not only trusted and respected but honestly liked him. This it was which explains the "king-making" of his later years. Men grew so accustomed to follow his lead that they would even acquiesce when he transferred his allegiance from King Edward to King Henry. It was not because he was the greatest landholder of England that he was able to dispose of the crown at his good will; but because, after fifteen years of public life, he had so commended himself to the majority of the nation that they were ready to follow his guidance even when he broke with all his earlier associations.

But Warwick was something more than active, genial, and popular; nothing less than first-rate abilities would have sufficed to carry him through his career. On the whole, it was as a statesman that he was most fitted to shine. His power of managing men was extraordinary; even King Louis of France, the hardest and most unemotional of men, seems to have been amenable to his influence. He was as successful with men in the mass as with individuals; he could sway a parliament or an army with equal ease to his will. How far he surpassed the majority of his contemporaries in political prescience is shown by the fact that, in spite of Yorkist traditions, he saw clearly that England must give up her ancient claims on France, and continually worked to reconcile the two countries.

In war Warwick was a commander of ability; good for all ordinary emergencies where courage and a cool head would carry him through, but not attaining the heights of military genius displayed by his pupil Edward. His battles were fought in the old English style of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth, by lines of archery flanked by clumps of billmen and dismounted knights. He is found employing both cannon and hand-gun men, but made no decisive or novel use of either, except in the case of his siege-artillery in the campaign of 1464. Nor did he employ cavalry to any great extent; his men dismounted to fight like their grandfathers at Agincourt, although the power of horsemen had again revindicated itself on the Continent. The Earl was a cool and capable commander; he was not one of the hot-headed feudal chiefs who strove to lead every charge. It was his wont to conduct his first line to the attack and then to retire and take command of the reserve, with which he delivered his final attack in person. This caution led some contemporary critics, especially Burgundians who contrasted his conduct with the headlong valour of Charles the Rash, to throw doubts on his personal courage. The sneer was ridiculous. The man who was first into the High Street at St. Albans, who fought through the ten hours of Towton, and won a name by his victories at sea in an age when sea-fights were carried on by desperate hand-to-hand attempts to board, might afford to laugh at any such criticism. If he fell at Barnet "somewhat flying," as the Yorkist chronicler declares, he was surely right in endeavouring to save himself for another field; he knew that one lost battle would not wreck his cause, while his own life was the sole pledge of the union between the Lancastrian party and the majority of the nation.

Brave, courteous, liberal, active, and able, a generous lord to his followers, an untiring servant to the commonweal, Warwick had all that was needed to attract the homage of his contemporaries: they called him, as the Kentish ballad-monger sang, "a very noble knight, the flower of manhood." But it is only fair to record that he bore in his character the fatal marks of the two sins which distinguished the English nobles of his time. Occasionally he was reckless in bloodshedding. Once in his life he descended to the use of a long and deliberate course of treason and treachery.

In the first-named sin Warwick had less to reproach himself with than most of his contemporaries. He never authorised a massacre, or broke open a sanctuary, or entrapped men by false pretences in order to put them to death. In battle, too, he always bid his men to spare the Commons. Moreover, some of his crimes of bloodshed are easily to be palliated: Mundeford and the other captains whom he beheaded at Calais had broken their oath of loyalty to him; the Bastard of Exeter, whom he executed at York, had been the prime agent in the murder of his father. The only wholly unpardonable act of the Earl was his slaying of the Woodvilles and Herberts in 1469. They had been his bitter enemies, it is true; but to avenge political rivalries with the axe, without any legal form of trial, was unworthy of the high reputation which Warwick had up to that moment enjoyed. It increases rather than lessens the sum of his guilt to say that he did not publicly order their death, but allowed them to be executed by rebels whom he had roused and might as easily have quieted.

But far worse, in a moral aspect, than the slaying of the Woodvilles and Herberts, was the course of treachery and deceit that had preceded it. That the Earl had been wantonly insulted by his thankless master in a way that would have driven even one of milder mood to desperation, we have stated elsewhere. An ideally loyal man might have borne the King's ingratitude in silent dignity, and foresworn the Court for ever: a hot-headed man might have burst out at once into open rebellion; but Warwick did neither. When his first gust of wrath had passed, he set himself to seek revenge by secret treachery. He returned to the Court, was superficially reconciled to his enemies, and bore himself as if he had forgotten his wrongs. Yet all the while he was organising an armed rising to sweep the Woodvilles and Herberts away, and to coerce the King into subjection to his will. The plan was as unwise as it was unworthy. Although Warwick's treason was for the moment entirely successful, it made any confidence between himself and his master impossible for the future. At the earliest opportunity Edward revenged himself on Warwick with the same weapons that had been used against himself, and drove the Earl into exile.

There is nothing in Warwick's subsequent reconciliation with the Lancastrians which need call up our moral indignation. It was the line of conduct which forced him into that connection that was evil, not the connection itself. There is no need to reproach him for changing his allegiance; no other course was possible to him in the circumstances. The King had cast him off, not he the King. When he transferred his loyalty to the house of Lancaster, he never swerved again. All the offers which Edward made to him after his return in 1471 were treated with contempt. Warwick was not the man to sell himself to the highest bidder.