Before they crossed the sea, the three earls had sent over a set of articles addressed to the archbishop and the commons of England in the name of themselves and the Duke of York, declaring how they had sued in vain to be admitted to the [188] king’s presence to set forth certain matters that concerned the common weal of all the land. Foremost among these was the oppression of the Church, a charge based, seemingly, on facts with which we are unacquainted, and which, if known, might shed a clearer light upon the conduct of the legate and Archbishop Bourchier. Secondly, they complained of the crying evil that the king had given away to favourites all the revenues of his crown, so that his household was supported by acts of rapine and extortion on the part of his purveyors. Thirdly, the laws were administered with great partiality, and justice was not to be obtained. Grievous taxes, moreover, were levied upon the commons, while the destroyers of the land were living upon the patrimony of the crown. And now a heavier charge than ever was imposed upon the inhabitants; for the king, borrowing an idea from the new system of military service in France, had commanded every township to furnish at its own cost a certain number of men for the royal army; ‘which imposition and talliage,’ wrote the lords in this manifesto, ‘if it be continued to their heirs and successors, will be the heaviest charge and worst example that ever grew in England, and the foresaid subjects and the said heirs and successors in such bondage as their ancestors were never charged with.’[188.1]

Besides these evils, the infatuated policy into which the king had been led by his ill-advisers, threatened to lose Ireland and Calais to the crown, as France had been lost already; for in the former country letters had been sent under the Privy Seal to the chieftains who had hitherto resisted the king’s authority, actually encouraging them to attempt the conquest of the land, while in regard to Calais the king had been induced to write letters to his enemies not to show that town any favour, and thus had given them the greatest possible [189] inducement to attempt its capture. Meanwhile the Earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire and Viscount Beaumont, who directed everything, kept the king himself, in some things, from the exercise of his own free will, and had caused him to assemble the Parliament of Coventry for the express purpose of ruining the Duke of York and his friends, whose domains they had everywhere pillaged and taken to their own use.[189.1]

It was impossible, in the nature of things, that evils such as these could be allowed to continue long, and the day of reckoning was now at hand. Of the great events that followed, it will be sufficient here to note the sequence in the briefest possible words. The battle of Northampton. On the 10th July the king was taken prisoner at the battle of Northampton, and was brought to London by the confederate lords. The government, of course, came thus entirely into their hands. Young George Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, was made Chancellor of England, Lord Bourchier was appointed Lord Treasurer, and a Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster for the purpose of reversing the attainders passed in the Parliament of Coventry. Of the elections for this Parliament we have some interesting notices in Letter 415, from which we may see how the new turn in affairs had affected the politics of the county of Norfolk. From the first it was feared that after the three earls had got the king into their hands, the old intriguers, Tuddenham and Heydon, would be busy to secure favour, or at all events indulgence, from the party now in the ascendant. But letters-missive were obtained from the three earls, directed to all mayors and other officers in Norfolk, commanding in the king’s name that no one should do them injury, and intimating that the earls did not mean to show them any favour if any person proposed to sue them at law.[189.2] Heydon, however, did not choose to remain in Norfolk. He was presently heard of from Berkshire, for which county he had found interest to get himself returned in the new Parliament.

John Paston in Parliament.

John Paston also was returned to this Parliament as one of the representatives of his own county of Norfolk. His [190] sympathies were entirely with the new state of things. And his friend and correspondent, Friar Brackley, who felt with him that the wellbeing of the whole land depended entirely on the Earl of Warwick, sent him exhortations out of Scripture to encourage him in the performance of his political duties.[190.1] But what would be the effect of the coming over from Ireland of the Duke of York, who had by this time landed at Chester, and would now take the chief direction of affairs?[190.2] Perhaps the chief fear was that he would be too indulgent to political antagonists. Moreover, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk had contrived to marry her son to one of York’s daughters, and it was apprehended her influence would be considerable. ‘The Lady of Suffolk,’ wrote Friar Brackley to Paston, ‘hath sent up her son and his wife to my Lord of York to ask grace for a sheriff the next year, Stapleton, Boleyn, or Tyrell, qui absit! God send you Poynings, W. Paston, W. Rokewood, or Arblaster. Ye have much to do, Jesus speed you! Ye have many good prayers, what of the convent, city, and country.’[190.3]

Such was the state of hope, fear, and expectation which the new turn of affairs awakened in some, and particularly in the friends of John Paston. The next great move in the political game perhaps exceeded the anticipations even of Friar Brackley. York challenges the Crown. Yet though the step was undoubtedly a bold one, never, perhaps, was a high course of action more strongly suggested by the results of past experience. After ten miserable years of fluctuating policy, the attainted Yorkists were now for the fourth time in possession of power; but who could tell that they would not be a fourth time set aside and proclaimed as traitors? For yet a fourth time since the fall of Suffolk, England might be subjected to the odious rule of favourites under a well-intentioned king, whose word was not to be relied on. To the commonweal the prospect was serious enough; to the Duke of York and his friends it was absolute and hopeless ruin. But York had now determined what to do. On the 10th of October, the third day of the Parliament, he came to Westminster with a body of 500 armed men, and took up quarters for himself within the royal palace. On the [191] 16th he entered the House of Lords, and having sat down in the king’s throne, he delivered to the Lord Chancellor a writing in which he distinctly claimed that he, and not Henry, was by inheritance rightful king of England.[191.1]

The reader is of course aware of the fact on which this claim was based, namely, that York, through the female line, was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III., while King Henry, his father, and his grandfather had all derived their rights from John of Gaunt, who was Lionel’s younger brother. Henry IV. indeed was an undoubted usurper; but to set aside his family after they had been in possession of the throne for three generations must have seemed a very questionable proceeding. Very few of the lords at first appeared to regard it with favour. The greater number stayed away from the House.[191.2] But the duke’s counsel insisting upon an answer, the House represented the matter to the king, desiring to know what he could allege in opposition to the claim of York. The king, however, left the lords to inquire into it themselves; and as it was one of the gravest questions of law, the lords consulted the justices. But the justices declined the responsibility of advising in a matter of so high a nature. They were the king’s justices, and could not be of counsel where the king himself was a party. The king’s serjeants and attorney were then applied to, but were equally unwilling to commit themselves; so that the lords themselves brought forward and discussed of their own accord a number of objections to the Duke of York’s claim. At length it was declared as the opinion of the whole body of the peers that his title could not be defeated, but a compromise was suggested and mutually agreed to that the king should be allowed to retain his crown for life, the succession reverting to the duke and his heirs immediately after Henry’s death.[191.3]

So the matter was settled by a great and solemn act of state. But even a parliamentary settlement, produced by a display of armed force, will scarcely command the respect that it ought [192] to do if there is armed force to overthrow it. The king himself, it is true, appears to have been treated with respect, and with no more abridgment of personal liberty than was natural to the situation.[192.1] Nor could it be said that the peers were insensible of the responsibility they incurred in a grave constitutional crisis. But respect for constitutional safeguards had been severely shaken, and no securities now could bridle the spirit of faction: suspicion also of itself produced new dangers. The Duke of York, after all the willingness he had shown in Parliament to accept a compromise, seems to have been accused of violating the settlement as soon as it was made; for on that very night on which it was arranged (31st October), we are told by a contemporary writer that ‘the king removed unto London against his will to the bishop’s palace, and the Duke of York came unto him that same night by torchlight and took upon him as king, and said in many places that “This is ours by right.”’[192.2] Perhaps the facts looked worse than they were really; for it had been agreed in Parliament, though not formally expressed in the Accord, that the duke should be once more Protector and have the actual government.[192.3] But it is not surprising that Margaret and her friends would recognise nothing of what had been done in Parliament. Since the battle of Northampton she had been separated from her husband. She fled with her son first into Cheshire, afterwards into Wales, to Harlech Castle, and then to Denbigh, which Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, had just won for the House of Lancaster.[192.4] Her flight had been attended with difficulties, especially near Malpas, where she was robbed by a servant of her own, who met her and put her in fear of the lives of herself and her child.[192.5] In Wales she was joined by the Duke of Exeter, who was with her in October.[192.6] From thence she sailed to Scotland, where the [193] enemies of the Duke of York were specially welcome. For James II., profiting, as might be expected, by the dissensions of England, a month after the battle of Northampton, had laid siege to Roxburgh, where he was killed by the bursting of a cannon. Margaret, with her son, arrived at Dumfries in January 1461, and met his widow, Mary of Gueldres, at Lincluden Abbey.[193.1] Meanwhile her adherents in the North of England held a council at York, and the Earl of Northumberland, with Lords Clifford, Dacres, and Nevill, ravaged the lands of the duke and of the Earl of Salisbury. The duke on this dissolved Parliament after obtaining from it powers to put down the rebellion,[193.2] and marched northwards with the Earl of Salisbury. A few days before Christmas they reached the duke’s castle of Sandal, where they kept the festival, the enemy being not far off at Pomfret.[193.3] On the 30th December was fought the disastrous battle of Wakefield, The battle of Wakefield. when the Yorkists were defeated, the duke and the Earl of Salisbury being slain in the field, and the duke’s son, the Earl of Rutland, ruthlessly murdered by Lord Clifford after the battle.

The story of poor young Rutland’s butchery is graphically described by an historian of the succeeding age who, though perhaps with some inaccuracies of detail as to fact, is a witness to the strong impression left by this beginning of barbarities. The account of it given by Hall, the chronicler, is as follows:—

‘While this battle was in fighting, a priest called Sir Robert Aspall, chaplain and schoolmaster to the young Earl of Rutland, second son to the above-named Duke of York, scarce of the age of twelve years [he was really in his eighteenth year], a fair gentleman and a maiden-like person, perceiving that flight was more safeguard than tarrying, both for him and his master, secretly conveyed the Earl out of the field by the Lord Clifford’s band towards the town. But or he could enter into a house, he was by the said Lord Clifford espied, followed, and taken, and, by reason of his apparel, demanded what he was. The young gentleman, dismayed, had not a word to speak, but kneeled on his knees, imploring mercy and desiring grace, both with [194] holding up his hands and making dolorous countenance, for his speech was gone for fear. “Save him,” said his chaplain, “for he is a prince’s son, and peradventure may do you good hereafter.” With that word, the Lord Clifford marked him and said—“By God’s blood, thy father slew mine; and so will I do thee and all thy kin”; and with that word stack the Earl to the heart with his dagger, and bade his chaplain bear the Earl’s mother word what he had done and said.’