It remained, however, for Parliament to ratify what had been done. However justifiable in a moral point of view, the conduct of York and his allies wore an aspect of violence towards the sovereign, which made it necessary that its legality should be investigated by the highest court in the realm. Inquiry was made both in Parliament and by the king’s Council which of the lords about the king had been responsible for provoking the collision. Angry and unpleasant feelings, as might be expected, burst out in consequence. The Earl of Warwick accused Lord Cromwell to the king, and when the latter attempted to vindicate himself, swore that what he stated was untrue. So greatly was Lord Cromwell intimidated, that the Earl of Shrewsbury, at his request, took up his lodging at St. James’s, beside the Mews, for his protection. The retainers of York, Warwick, and Salisbury went about fully armed, and kept their lords’ barges on the river amply furnished with weapons. Proclamations, however, were presently issued against bearing arms. The Parliament, at last, laid the whole blame of the encounter upon the deceased Duke of Somerset, and the courtiers Thorpe and Joseph; and by an Act which received the royal assent, it was declared that the Duke of York and his friends had acted the part of good and faithful subjects. ‘To the which bill,’ said Henry Windsor in a letter to his friends Bocking and Worcester, ‘many a man grudged full sore now it is past’; but he requested them to burn a communication full of such uncomfortable matter to comment upon as the quarrels and heartburnings of lords.[163.1]
The Parliamentary elections.
But with whatever grudge it may have been that Parliament condoned the acts of the Yorkists, it seems not to have been without some degree of pressure that the duke and his allies obtained a Parliament so much after their own minds. Here, for instance, we have the Duchess of Norfolk writing to John Paston, just before the election, that it was thought necessary ‘that my lord have at this time in the Parliament such persons as long unto him and be of his menial servants (!)’; on which [164] account she requests his vote and influence in favour of John Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlain.[164.1] The application could scarcely have been agreeable to the person to whom it was addressed; for it seems that John Paston himself had on this occasion some thought of coming forward as a candidate for Norfolk. Exception was taken to John Howard, one of the duke’s nominees (who, about eight-and-twenty years later, was created Duke of Norfolk himself, and was the ancestor of the present ducal family), on the ground that he possessed no lands within the county;[164.2] and at the nomination the names of Berney, Grey, and Paston were received with great favour.[164.3] John Jenney thought it ‘an evil precedent for the shire that a strange man should be chosen, and no worship to my lord of York nor to my lord of Norfolk to write for him; for if the gentlemen of the shire will suffer such inconvenience, in good faith the shire shall not be called of such worship as it hath been.’ So unpopular, in fact, was Howard’s candidature that the Duke of Norfolk was half persuaded to give him up, declaring, that since his return was objected to he would write to the under-sheriff that the shire should have free election, provided they did not choose Sir Thomas Tuddenham or any of the old adherents of the Duke of Suffolk. And so, for a time it seemed as if free election would be allowed. The under-sheriff even ventured to write to John Paston that he meant to return his name and that of Master Grey; ‘nevertheless,’ he added significantly, ‘I have a master.’ Howard appeared to be savage with disappointment. He was ‘as wode’ (i.e. mad), wrote John Jenney, ‘as a wild bullock.’ But in the end it appeared he had no need to be exasperated, for when the poll came to be taken, he and the other nominee of the Duke of Norfolk were found to have gained the day.[164.4]
Besides the act of indemnity for the Duke of York and his partisans, and a new oath of allegiance being sworn to by the Lords, little was done at this meeting of the Parliament. On the 31st July it was prorogued, to meet again upon the 12th November. But in the interval another complication had arisen. The king, who seems to have suffered in health from [165] the severe shock that he must have received by the battle of St. Albans,[165.1] had felt the necessity of retirement to recover his composure, and had withdrawn before the meeting of Parliament to Hertford; at which time the Duke of York, in order to be near him, took up his quarters at the Friars at Ware.[165.2] He was well, or at all events well enough to open Parliament in person on the 9th July; but shortly afterwards he retired to Hertford again, where according to the dates of his Privy Seals, I find that he remained during August and September. The king again ill. In the month of October following he was still there, and it was reported that he had fallen sick of his old infirmity;—which proved to be too true.[165.3]
Altogether matters looked gloomy enough. Change of ministry by force of arms, whatever might be said for it, was not a thing to win the confidence either of king or people. There were prophecies bruited about that another battle would take place before St. Andrew’s Day—the greatest that had been since the battle of Shrewsbury in the days of Henry IV. One Dr. Green ventured to predict it in detail. The scene of the conflict was to be between the Bishop of Salisbury’s Inn and Westminster Bars, and three bishops and four temporal lords were to be among the slain. The Londoners were spared this excitement; but from the country there came news of a party outrage committed by the eldest son of the Earl of Devonshire, on a dependant of the Lord Bonvile, Disturbances in the West. and the West of England seems to have been disturbed for some time afterwards.[165.4] From a local MS. chronicle cited by Holinshed, it appears that a regular pitched battle took place between the two noblemen on Clist Heath, about two miles from Exeter, in which Lord Bonvile having gained the victory, entered triumphantly into the city. A modern historian of Exeter, however, seems to have read the MS. differently, and tells us that Lord Bonvile was driven into the city by defeat.[165.5] However this may be, the Earl of Devonshire did not allow the matter to rest. Accompanied [166] by a large body of retainers—no less, it is stated, than 800 horse and 4000 foot—he attacked the Dean and Canons of Exeter, made several of the latter prisoners, and robbed the cathedral.[166.1]
That one out of the number of those great lords who had been attached to the government of the queen and the Duke of Somerset should thus have abused his local influence, was pretty much what might have been expected at such a juncture. But the effect was only to strengthen the hands of York when Parliament met again in November. The situation was now once more what it had been in the beginning of the previous year. The day before Parliament met, the Duke of York obtained a commission to act as the king’s lieutenant on its assembling.[166.2] The warrant for the issuing of this commission was signed by no less than thirty-nine Lords of the Council. The Houses then met under the presidency of the duke.[166.3] The Commons sent a deputation to the Upper House, to petition the Lords that they would ‘be good means to the King’s Highness’ for the appointment of some person to undertake the defence of the realm and the repressing of disorders. But for some days this request remained unanswered. The appeal was renewed by the Commons a second time, and again a third time, with an intimation that no other business would be attended to till it was answered. York again Protector. On the second occasion the Lords named the Duke of York Protector, but he desired that they would excuse him, and elect some other. The Lords, however, declined to alter their choice, and the duke at last agreed to accept the office, on certain specific conditions which experience had taught him to make still more definite for his own protection than those on which he had before insisted. Among other things it was now agreed that the Protectorship should not again be terminated by the mere fact of the king’s recovery; but that when the king should be in a position to [167] exercise his functions, the Protector should be discharged of his office in Parliament by the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal.[167.1]
On the 19th of November, accordingly, York was formally appointed Protector for the second time. Three days afterwards, at Westminster, the king, whose infirmity on this occasion could scarcely have amounted to absolute loss of his faculties, committed the entire government of the kingdom to his Council, merely desiring that they would inform him of anything they might think fit to determine touching the honour and surety of his person.[167.2] The business of the nation was again placed on something like a stable and satisfactory footing; and Parliament, after sitting till the 13th December, was prorogued to the 14th January, in order that the Duke of York might go down into the west for the repressing of those disorders of which we have already spoken.[167.3]
A.D. 1456.
Unluckily, things did not remain long in a condition so hopeful for the restoration of order. Early in the following year the king recovered his health, and notwithstanding the support of which he had been assured in Parliament, York knew that his authority as Protector would be taken from him. On the 9th of February, as we learn from a letter of John Bocking, it had been anticipated that he would have received his discharge in Parliament; but he was allowed to retain office for a fortnight longer. On that day he and Warwick thought fit to come to the Parliament with a company of 300 armed men, alleging that they stood in danger of being waylaid upon the road. The pretence does not seem to have been generally credited; and the practical result of this demonstration was simply to prevent any other lords from going to the Parliament at all.[167.4]
The real question, however, which had to be considered was the kind of government that should prevail when York was no more Protector. The queen was again making anxious efforts to get the management of affairs into her own hands; but the battle of St. Albans had deprived her of her great ally the Duke of Somerset, and there was no one now to fill his [168] place. It is true he had left a son who was now Duke of Somerset in his stead, and quite as much attached to her interests. There were, moreover, the Duke of Buckingham and others who were by no means friendly to the Duke of York. But no man possessed anything like the degree of power, experience, and political ability to enable the king to dispense entirely with the services of his present Protector. The king himself, it was said, desired that he should be named his Chief Councillor and Lieutenant, and that powers should be conferred upon him by patent inferior only to those given him by the Parliament. But this was not thought a likely settlement, and no one really knew what was to be the new régime. The attention of the Lords was occupied with ‘a great gleaming star’ which had just made its appearance, and which really offered as much help to the solution of the enigma as any appearances purely mundane and political.[168.1]