The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [200]
In gratitude for his services, Edward gave Montague the earldom of Northumberland and granted him most of the ancestral lands of the Percies. Alnwick Castle, however, was still occupied by the Lancastrians, but on 23 June Warwick appeared before it with an army and demanded its surrender. The garrison agreed, on condition their lives were spared, and Alnwick fell to the Nevilles.
The capitulation of Dunstanburgh and Norham followed in late May, then there remained only Bamburgh, in which Sir Ralph Grey, Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth and others had barricaded themselves after Hexham. Warwick’s army arrived there on 25 May and sent Chester Herald to proclaim a free pardon for the garrison if it surrendered. Grey was exempt from this, however, because he had turned his coat too often. King Edward did not want the castle damaged by artillery, and Warwick warned Grey that every shot fired by his great iron guns, ‘Newcastle’ and ‘London’, that caused such damage, would be paid for by the head of one of the defenders. Grey still refused to open the gates, so Warwick resorted to bombarding the castle with his own guns. Great chunks of masonry crashed into the sea below, while shot from a brass cannon called ‘Dijon’ demolished Grey’s room and he was knocked unconscious by falling stonework and left by his men for dead. Very soon the walls were breached and the victorious Yorkists surged in and occupied the castle. Neville and the garrison were allowed to go free, but Grey, in a daze, was taken prisoner and brought south to stand trial before the notorious Tiptoft, who had him beheaded.
The fall of Bamburgh deprived the Lancastrians of their last power base in the north. There now remained just one bastion of enemy resistance and that was Harlech Castle in Wales, which had been providing safe asylum for Lancastrian refugees since 1461. ‘This castle is so strong that men said that it was impossible to get it,’ wrote ‘Gregory’. In the autumn of 1464 Edward IV appointed Lord Herbert constable of Harlech Castle, charging him to take it for the Yorkists and allocating him funds of £2000 for the purpose. Herbert began a prolonged siege, but still the enemy remained unharmed behind Harlech’s forbidding walls, confident that Pembroke would come to their relief. This part of north-west Wales had remained largely Lancastrian in sympathy, and Pembroke was a local hero. In their songs the bards anticipated his return, when he would restore Henry VI and trounce the Yorkists. In fact, Pembroke was in the north of England and would soon go abroad to canvass the support of the princes of Europe. Nevertheless, Herbert was going to have a long wait.
The cost of suppressing Lancastrian resistance had been exorbitantly high and Edward’s subjects were deeply resentful of the heavy taxation he had imposed upon them, and unhappy when he debased the coinage, believing it would cause ‘great harm to the common people’. The promised golden age had still to arrive.
For almost a year now Warwick had been negotiating with Louis XI for the marriage of King Edward to Bona of Savoy. Warwick believed that a firm alliance between England and France, sealed by a royal marriage, was the only way to prevent the slippery King of France from a future show of friendship towards the Lancastrians, while Louis, for his part, wanted to consolidate the truce of St Omer with such an alliance. Warwick was due to go to St Omer in October for another peace conference, and hoped to conclude the negotiations then.
Burgundy naturally did not wish such an alliance to take place; he wanted Edward to join in a defensive compact with himself against France which would also boost trade between the duchy and England. Edward by now was inclined to favour Burgundy, but just then he was doing his