The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [203]
Other marriages of the Queen’s sisters followed. Anne married William, Viscount Bourchier, the King’s cousin; Eleanor married Lord Grey de Ruthin, whose father had recently been created Earl of Kent in place of the deceased Fauconberg; Mary married William, son and heir of Lord Herbert, the King bestowing upon the bridegroom the barony of Dunster, which Warwick himself had claimed as heir to the Montagues; Jacquetta married Lord Strange, and Martha married Sir John Bromley.
In the spring of 1466, Edward created his wife’s father Earl Rivers and made him Treasurer of England, thereby offending Warwick, whose uncle, Lord Mountjoy, had been dismissed from the post to make way for Rivers. Matters were made worse in October that year, when the Queen’s son, Thomas Grey, was married to Anne Holland, daughter of the Duke of Exeter by the King’s sister, Anne Plantagenet. This marriage infuriated Warwick more than any of the others, because the King had paid the Duchess of Exeter, 4000 marks to break a previous alliance between Anne and the son of Warwick’s brother, Northumberland. It seemed that the Queen had deliberately set out to slight Warwick.
Most nobles dared not risk the King’s displeasure by refusing to allow the Wydvilles to mate with their children; indeed, they were obliged to turn down all other offers. This meant that most of the eligible heirs to the peerage were removed from the marriage market, and this angered Warwick because he had two daughters as yet unspoken for. It may have been to mollify Warwick that the King promoted his brother George Neville to the archbishopric of York in September 1464.
One thing that the King could not bestow on the Wydvilles was popularity, which they never acquired. The mass advancement of the Queen’s family drew adverse comment everywhere. Not only the nobles complained but also the common people, whose sense of fitness was outraged. Even Edward’s court jester dared to joke, in his presence, that ‘the Rivers run so high that it is impossible to get through them!’
With the King married, Warwick could no longer consolidate the proposed French alliance with a marriage treaty. But Louis did not let that prevent him from continuing to negotiate with Warwick to bring their two countries closer together. Edward had recently made friendly approaches to Burgundy and Brittany, with regard to forming alliances with them, and Louis had no intention of letting that happen. Warwick continued to put pressure on Edward to agree to what both he and Louis wanted, while Edward refused to commit himself.
The teeth of the Lancastrians might have been drawn, but there were still those who cherished hopes of a restoration. Late in 1464 the Earl of Ormonde went to Portugal to see if the King of Portugal, a descendant of John of Gaunt, would be interested in helping Henry VI. Soon Ormonde was writing to Queen Margaret at Bar to say that the King had told him he would be pleased to assist, but these proved to be empty words. Fortescue wrote back to the Earl that they were all ‘in great poverty, but yet the Queen sustaineth us in meat and drink, so we beeth not in extreme necessity’. King René’s subjects in Bar constantly urged him to give more succour to his daughter, and ballads were written about her plight, but René was too impoverished himself to offer Margaret more than he had already assigned to her.
She still had friends in England, and had been gratified to hear from them of Warwick’s displeasure at King Edward’s marriage. At the same time, her contacts at the French court, less well informed, told her that war between Edward and Warwick was imminent. Delighted with this apparent