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Lancaster and York
York against Somerset; Part 1

York against Somerset; Part 1

Henry VI, gentle and pious like another Job - a simple, upright man, fearing the Lord above all, and avoiding evil - would never have provoked further trouble. But his queen, Margaret of Anjou, was fierce as her husband was meek. In spirit, resource, courage, resolution, and in the bad side of these qualities, ambition, guile, ferocity, merciless-ness, the " she-wolf of France " was a match for any baron of the time. There was nothing of the softer sex about her. In an age full of treason and brutality Margaret was treacherous and ruthless above the rest. To cast discredit on the Yorkist lords she did not scruple to invite French marauders into England: she even advised them where they might land, sack, burn, and kill without fear of resistance. While Henry could not bear to look on the quartered remains of a traitor, perched on Cripplegate, saying, "I will not that any Christian man be so cruelly used for me", Margaret would have agreed with Louis XI's maxim that there was "no perfume to match the scent of a dead traitor". After the second battle of St. Albans she bade her son Edward, then eight years old, choose what death two Yorkist prisoners should die. The boy's answer, "Let their heads be taken off", must have delighted his mother.

As Margaret was the mainstay of the Lancastrians, so were the Nevilles of the Yorkist side. At first sight two things are perhaps surprising about these Nevilles. To begin with, the grandfather of Neville the Kingmaker, Ralph, Earl of Westmorland, was a Lancastrian; and so was his second wife, Joan Beaufort, the Kingmaker's grandmother, being a daughter of John of Gaunt. Thus the Nevilles were of that large and dangerous class, royal cousins; but we should scarce expect to find them on the Yorkist side. Secondly, since Richard Neville, the Kingmaker's father, was indeed only the elder son of a second family, and there were nine children in the first family, it does not seem likely that he will inherit wide estates. The answer which explains both the sympathies and the power of the Nevilles can be given in two words - fortunate marriages.

Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort had fourteen children (Ralph Neville was well blessed with "olive branches round about his table". A student of the Psalms will remember the words with which the next Psalm begins - Saepe expugnaverunt): no inconsiderable number to add to the nine in the first family. It was hardly likely that there would be much love lost between the elder and younger branches, or that the younger branch would be rich in this world's goods. Ralph, the father of this multitude, did the best he could for them. He left to his widow his Yorkshire lands, and she in her turn took care that they should pass to her eldest son, Richard, thus depriving the elder branch of what they considered their rights. But better than this, both parents had a genius for matchmaking. Two marriages only need be dwelt upon. Richard, the eldest son in the second family, married Alice Montacute, heiress of the Earl of Salisbury; the youngest daughter, Cicely, married Richard Duke of York. Here is the beginning of the fortunes of the younger Nevilles: here is the explanation why they take the Yorkist side, all the more eagerly since the first family with whom they had quarrelled was Lancastrian.

York against Somerset; Part 1

Chronology