The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [101]
Without the backing of a majority of the aristocracy, York found his hard-won influence gradually slipping from his grasp, while control of the King and the administration reverted by degrees to the court party. Seeing York’s power diminishing daily, Henry VI defiantly refused to dismiss Somerset, who had quickly regained his former eminence at court, and early in 1451 Henry appointed him Captain of Calais, an important and influential post. Notwithstanding the fact that he had just presided over the ignominious loss of Normandy, Somerset was now to be in command of the largest garrison maintained by the English Crown. By May 1451, the court party, headed by the Duke and the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Kempe, had regained its position once more, despite the worsening situation in France, where the French were making serious inroads in Gascony and Aquitaine
The mood of the times was apparent when one of York’s supporters, Thomas Young, a member of the Duke’s council and a member of Parliament for Bristol, persuaded the Commons to submit a petition to the King requesting that ‘because the King had no offspring, it would be for the security of the kingdom that it should be openly known who should be heir apparent and [Young] named the Duke of York.’ Young had naively hoped to deflect any ideas the King may have had of making Somerset his heir, but his proposal provoked a horrified uproar amongst the Lords and incurred the rare displeasure of the King, with the result that the unfortunate Young soon found himself a prisoner in the Tower. This was an infringement of his right as a member of Parliament to speak freely without fear or favour, and it in turn angered the Commons, who petitioned for his release. The King passed the petition to the Council, which ignored it, and Henry abruptly dissolved Parliament the same month.
The case of Young illustrates how factional contentions were interfering with the processes of Parliament, and also points to a crystallisation of political opinion in favour either of Lancaster or York. As for York himself, after Parliament was dissolved he found himself in an isolated position, distrusted more than ever by the King and most of the magnates.
On 30 June 1451 the French occupied Bordeaux, the capital of Aquitaine. The inhabitants of the city did not look upon their ‘liberators’ as friends, for they regarded themselves as English, the city having been a jewel in the Plantagenet crown for three hundred years. The fall of Bayonne, another Aquitainian city, followed a few weeks later and on 23 August the duchy of Aquitaine itself surrendered to Charles VII. News of this engendered great shock and dismay in England, especially among the merchant community, who were concerned about the future of the lucrative wine trade.
England was in a state of high tension, characterised by intermittent outbreaks of rioting, mainly in the West Country. By the autumn of 1451 it was obvious that Henry VI had no intention of implementing any plans for government reform; he had closed his ears to complaints and was content, in his blinkered way, to let things remain as they were. France might be all but lost, his government in England corrupt and rotten to the core, local government and justice subverted, and disorder and anarchy prevalent throughout the realm, yet Henry seemed genuinely unaware of the seriousness of the situation, and his advisers and councillors were too busy looking to their own interests to care. Nor had the pressing question of the succession been answered.
The King was still deeply in debt. How much so had been made dramatically clear the previous Christmas