The Wars of the Roses: The Key Players in the Struggle for Supremacy by Matthew Lewis

Author:Matthew Lewis [Lewis, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2015-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

13

Warwick’s Pride

On 20 March 1470, Lord Berkeley of Berkeley Castle took an army into the field against Lord Lisle of Wooton at Nibley Green in Gloucestershire. The two men had been locked in a longstanding dispute over portions of the Berkeley inheritance, to which Lord Lisle believed he was entitled through his mother the Countess of Shrewsbury. It was possibly Lord Lisle who challenged Lord Berkeley to settle the matter in battle, and both men took their forces, probably less than 1,000 men each, and squared up at North Nibley that morning. Lord Berkeley won the field and built the south aisle of St Martin’s church in the village in thanks for his victory; many of the men who fell that day are buried in the churchyard. The Battle of Nibley Green was the last private battle fought on English soil, and the willingness of two barons to settle their feuds outside the king’s law demonstrated a fatal collapse in the Yorkist government – one which threatened a repeat of the catastrophes that had cost Henry VI his throne.

The second half of the 1460s saw a terminal decline in Edward IV’s relationship with his most powerful subject. The king’s new wife is frequently blamed for the collapse in their long-standing and successful friendship, but the Crowland Chronicler, a politically astute writer very close to events of the time and believed to have been a member of Edward’s Council, laid the blame firmly elsewhere. This informed source claims that Edward’s foreign policy ‘was really the cause of the dissensions between the king and the earl, and not the one which has been previously mentioned – the marriage of the king with queen Elizabeth’. On 11 February 1466 Edward and Elizabeth celebrated the birth of their first child, Princess Elizabeth of York. They were a settled couple and although the king’s new in-laws were accruing power and prestigious matches, this in itself does not appear to have upset Warwick.

Edward had entered negotiations with France, Burgundy, Brittany and Scotland to sue for peace. He was keen for France to refrain from supporting Margaret of Anjou, now lodged in poverty in that country, and agreed to stay out of disputes between Louis and Burgundy and Brittany in return for Louis’ agreement. At the same time Edward had made a secret promise to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to assist him. The English king was keeping his options open, playing his cards close to his chest so that none were entirely sure of his plans.

At home, things were beginning to look up for Edward. After the Lancastrians had been defeated at Hedgley Moor and Hexham a Lancashire knight named Sir James Harrington had captured Henry VI near Clitheroe. Warkworth records that Harrington escorted Henry south, the deposed king ‘on horseback, with his legs bound to the stirrups, and so brought through London to the Tower, where he was kept long time’. It is also suggested that he was quite well cared for and that ‘every man was suffered to come and speak with him, by licence of the keepers’.

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