The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [214]
News of the northern uprisings had not reached the King when he set out on 1 June on a pilgrimage through East Anglia to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, accompanied by Gloucester, Scales and Sir John Wydville, but it must have caught up with him soon afterwards. Yet for more than two weeks he did nothing. Only on the 18th did he finally bestir himself to devise a strategy for dealing with the rebels and begin recruiting men.
Warwick, meanwhile, had returned to England and on 28 June issued a summons to his ‘servants and well-wishers’ to arm themselves and march with him against the northern rebels, as the King had commanded. In fact, Warwick intended to join those same rebels, but his recruits knew nothing of this. The King, however, was suspicious, and issued an order prohibiting his subjects from forming assemblies unless he himself authorised them to do so.
At the end of June Edward arrived at Croyland Abbey in Lincolnshire, where he stayed a night, and then proceeded by boat along the River Nene to Fotheringhay Castle. He stayed there a week with the Queen, and on 5 July marched to Stamford while Elizabeth returned to London. At Stamford the King wrote to the mayors of various towns, commanding them to furnish him with contingents of soldiers arrayed for war. Five days later, from Newark, he was issuing similar letters, couched in more urgent tones, ordering the levies to muster there. However, says Croyland, ‘the common people came to him more slowly than he had anticipated’, and there were barely enough of them: judging by alarming reports he had received from the north, he had one man to every three rebels. Knowing he could not hope to prevail, he reluctantly marched his army south to Nottingham, there to summon and await reinforcements from the west.
Warwick had now managed to purchase a dispensation from the Pope for the marriage of Isabel to Clarence, and this arrived in early July. Armed with it, the Earl left England on 4 July and sailed to Calais with Clarence, Archbishop Neville and the Earl of Oxford. He was planning a coup that would entail the renewal of civil war in England. The Duchess of York had found out what was going on and had travelled to Canterbury to try to dissuade Clarence from playing any part in it, but to no avail. Clarence had too much to gain to back out now.
When he and Warwick arrived in Calais they were ‘solemnly received and joyously entertained’ by the Countess of Warwick and her two daughters. On 11 July, Clarence and Isabel were married at the Church of Our Lady in the castle of Calais, with Archbishop Neville officiating. Waurin says there were Very few guests and the celebrations only lasted two days, for Clarence was married on a Tuesday, and on the following Sunday he returned to England’. The marriage served to bind the Duke more closely to Warwick and identify him with the Earl’s interests.
In the second week of July, records Warkworth, Sir John Conyers marched south through Yorkshire, leading ‘many knights, squires and commons, numbering 20,000 men in all’. Conyers ‘called himself Robin of Redesdale’, a persona based on Robin Hood, the people’s hero. Croyland claims that the rebel army was 60,000 strong: it was certainly impressive, because reports of its advance caused panic in the south,
The rebels were to join up with Warwick’s affinity in the Midlands,