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Lancaster and York
York against Somerset; Part 2
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York against Somerset; Part 2
The Earl of Salisbury was killed at the siege of Orleans, and Richard Neville, in right of his wife, became Earl of Salisbury, and added the Montacute lands to his own Yorkshire inheritance. He too was father to four sons and five daughters, a large family, though nothing compared with Ralph's. But again the marriage policy was pursued with striking success. The eldest son, named like his father, Richard, married Anne, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. The marriage seemed scarcely likely to lead to anything more than a dowry, for the heir to the Earldom, Henry Beauchamp, was young and newly married (To a Neville: Cicely, sister of the Kingmaker). But fate seemed bent on favouring the name of Richard Neville. Beauchamp died, leaving only an infant daughter; and the daughter died; and thus Richard Neville the younger became, in right of his wife, "Earl of Warwick, Newburgh, and Aumarie, Premier Earl of England, Baron of Stanley and Hanslape, Lord of Glamorgan and Morgannoc", master of the Despenser lands in South Wales, the Beauchamp lands in Gloucestershire, Warwick, Oxfordshire and Buckingham, with scattered holdings in seventeen other counties all over the length and breadth of England. More than a hundred and fifty manors were his. By this amazing stroke of luck, the boy of twenty-two became far more powerful than his father. Yet ten years later his father's inheritance came to him also, when Richard the elder fell at Wakefield. When we add his other relationships: that his uncles and aunts were allied in marriage to the house of Kaucon bridge, Latimer, Abergavenny, Mowbray, and Stafford; that his sisters were married into the houses of Arundcl, Tiptoft, Stanley, Bon-vile and de Vere; that even the church had one Neville Bishop of Durham, and another Bishop of Exeter (And later Archbishop of York); that his uncle by marriage, Richard Duke of York, was Protector of the Realm, and ready to give any of the great offices into Neville hands, (hen the catalogue nears an end. It may seem a somewhat wearisome catalogue. Yet the recital of it serves a purpose if it impresses on the mind the amazing position held by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. One thing remains to be said, namely, that the man himself had all the qualities of a leader. He was a cautious and sensible statesman, an adequate general, ambitious but not without principle, firm yet not cruel, able from the early days of manhood to use the power which lay in his hands. We shall no longer be surprised that this Neville of a younger branch is called "The Kingmaker". We might go further; we might almost call the years 1460 to 1471 the "reign of Richard Neville".
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Chronology
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