The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [100]
After the death of Suffolk, the Queen had turned to ‘our dearest cousin, Edmund, Duke of Somerset’ to take his place in her counsels and as leader of the court party. Her friendship extended not only to the Duke but also to his wife, Eleanor Beauchamp, one of her closest confidantes. Within two years the Queen would award Somerset an annuity of £66.13s.4d. (£66.67p) for ‘his good and laudable counsel in urgent business’. Favouring Somerset could only alienate York, but the Queen already regarded him as her enemy, and when York returned from Ireland she made it very clear that it was Somerset, and Somerset alone, who, with her favour and the King’s, would enjoy prominence in the government.
York’s influence, however, prevailed for the time being over the Queen’s, and on 1 December he had his way when Somerset was impeached by Parliament: the Duke was condemned to imprisonment in the Tower of London and taken there the same day. Having netted – or so he thought – the biggest fish, York made plans to snare other members of the court party, but the King and Queen refused to accept the judgement of Parliament and Margaret ordered Somerset’s release only hours after his imprisonment had begun.
York’s supporters were incensed. That afternoon, after Somerset had returned to Blackfriars, about a thousand of them marched on his house with a mob of angry citizens, meaning, says Benet, to kill him. They dragged him to a waiting barge, ‘but the Earl of Devon, on the Duke of York’s request, calmed them and prudently arrested their leader, who was taken in secret to the Tower, so as not to provoke the common people’. When Somerset returned home he found that his house had been stripped of all his possessions, and the looters had also ransacked the homes of men who were friendly to him.
On 3 December, the King, angered by this treatment of his favourite, put on armour and rode through the streets of the city at the head of a procession of lords, knights and 1000 soldiers. This had the effect of quelling the rioters but not the ill-feeling of his subjects at large. Somerset nevertheless remained high in royal favour and was soon afterwards appointed chamberlain of the royal household.
Parliament reassembled in January 1451, after the Christmas recess. An angry Commons now submitted to the King a petition demanding the removal from court of twenty-nine persons who had been ‘misbehaving about your royal person and in other places, and by whose undue means your possessions have been greatly amenused [abused], your laws not executed, and the peace of your realm not observed’. The list was headed by Somerset’s name and included also those of Suffolk’s widow, Alice Chaucer, William Booth, Bishop of Chester, Thomas Daniel, John Trevelyan, Thomas Tuddenham and Henry Heydon. Many of those named had also been denounced in Cade’s manifesto, and not only were they to be exiled from court, but they were also to be deprived of their lands and tenements.
Henry VI declared testily that he ‘was not sufficiently learned of any cause why he should banish his favoured advisers in such a way’, but was persuaded to agree to the removal of everyone but the magnates listed and a few personal servants. The rest he promised to banish from court for a year. Thanks to York’s influence the notorious Tuddenham and Heydon, and several more of Suffolk’s former supporters, were brought before judicial commissions in East Anglia and charged with extortion and other crimes. York also tried to have the murderers of Sir Thomas Tresham indicted, but this time without success, and far from banishing William Booth, the Council promoted him to the archdiocese of York. Henry did not keep his promise to banish his evil advisers either.
The Lords in Parliament,