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Lancaster and York
The Percy-Mortimer Alliance; Part 4

The Percy-Mortimer Alliance; Part 4

So the first act in the drama of Lancaster and York - the Hundred Years' Civil War - occupied the reign of Richard II. It ended with the overthrow of the eldest line by the line of Lancaster. The second act ended at Bramham Moor: it displays a struggle against the usurping Lancastrian carried on by an ambitious family which made a catspaw of the Mortimer title; and it closed with the triumph of the Lancastrian. But it is impossible not to recognize the true features of the Wars of the Roses proper, repealed in this reign. We have rebellion, treachery, murder, beheading without trial; we have the great northern house of Percy, playing the part afterwards played by the great northern house of Neville, first raising a king to power, then trying to control him, and finally destroying itself in the attempt to overthrow him. And, most significant of all, we have the ready appeal to arms in order to back a quarrel: we have "livery" and the "retainer".

The "retainer" is sometimes described as being "feudal". This, strictly speaking, he was not. The essence of feudalism is the giving of service on condition of holding land. The retainer was bound to his lord, not by tenure of land, but by wages. He was not born a retainer; he chose to become one. He accepted service at his master's hands, and wore his badge, his " livery ". Retainers were, in fact, the substitute for a regular army. When a king wished to go to war he employed his nobles to bring men into the field: in old days they brought their feudal tenants: when feudalism decayed they brought their retainers. Unfortunately these men, who proved a blessing at Crecy and Agincourt, were a curse at home. "Retained" by their masters after the war was over, they were employed in time of peace to pursue private quarrels at home, to overawe local tribunals, to terrify juries, to rob the barns and stables of an opponent, and even to defy the king. The disaster to the country lay in this, that the fighting power of the age rested neither in the class which formed the bulk of the nation, nor in the central government which had the interest of the nation at heart, but in the hands of a selfish class of nobles who cared for nothing but themselves. The days were not far off when a struggle on the part of the "Bear with the Ragged Staff" against the "Portcullis" (The badges of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. The "Portcullis" was afterwards borne by Henry VII, and is displayed all over King's College Chapel) would not be a harmless AEsop-like affair with a moral at the end, but a stern strife, convulsing a kingdom.

Chronology

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