The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [220]
No sooner was the plan conceived than Warwick began to put it into action, using all the resources at his disposal – wealth, territorial influence and the weight of his formidable personality. Again, he used the old tactic of exploiting the grievances of the commons to effect a popular rising, targeting the lower orders and the gentry, who had always supported him, rather than the nobility, who had not. Predictably, it was the commons who responded to his propaganda.
By late February, as Edward IV worked conscientiously to re-establish himself, Warwick and Clarence had become involved with certain disaffected gentlemen of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, men of Lancastrian sympathies who heartily resented the Yorkist king and his onerous taxes. The chief of these was Robert, Lord Welles and Willoughby. Warwick did not find it difficult to encourage these men and their tenants to rise on the basis of their local grievances and with the aim of restoring Henry VI to the throne, nor did Welles and other leaders have any trouble in getting others to join them.
However, early in March the King summoned Lord Welles, his brother-in-law, Thomas de la Lande, and Sir Thomas Dymoke to London to receive pardons for their part in the previous uprising. Fearing Edward’s displeasure, they all obeyed his summons. In the meantime, Clarence arranged that Sir Robert Welles, the son of Lord Welles, should lead the rebels in his father’s absence, then himself rode to London, saying that he would speak in Lord Welles’s favour and prevent the King from marching north to confront Sir Robert. Yet when Clarence arrived in London on 4 March he did neither of these things.
On that day Sir Robert Welles arranged for a summons to arms, signed by Warwick and Clarence, to be posted on church doors in the county of Lincoln. All able-bodied men were commanded to attend Sir Robert, fully armed, on Ranby Hawe, seven miles north of Horncastle, on 7 March in order to resist the King who, it was alleged, would be coming north to punish the commons for their involvement in riots the previous year.
As soon as Lord Welles had departed for London, a Yorkist knight, Sir Thomas Burgh, had destroyed his house and taken all his goods and livestock. This incensed Lancastrian sympathisers in the region, and 30,000 of them answered Sir Robert’s summons, crying, ‘King Henry!’ and shouting derision at King Edward. At the same time, Sir John Conyers, Lord Scrope of Bolton and Lord FitzWalter were orchestrating a rising in Yorkshire, ostensibly in protest at the King’s failure to restore Henry Percy to the earldom of Northumberland.
On 6 March the King left London and went to Waltham Abbey in Essex, where the next day he was informed of Sir Robert’s proclamation and told that a great army was assembling in Lincolnshire for the purpose of restoring Henry VI. Edward summoned his captains and told them to begin recruiting, then he sent for Lord Welles and Dymoke to join him. He did not send for Clarence because he had not yet learned that the Duke was one of the prime movers in the rebellion.
On the 8th the King arrived at Royston, whence he issued commissions of array to Clarence and Warwick, who had both written to offer their help in suppressing the revolt. The next day Edward was in Huntingdon, raising an army which was to muster at Grantham on the 12th. Clearly, he was expecting a French invasion: ‘We be ascertained’, he wrote, ‘that our rebels and outward enemies intend in haste to arrive in this our realm.’ Then he rode towards Lincolnshire, ordering Lord Welles to write to his son and his tenants saying that they should surrender to the King as their sovereign lord, or else the King had vowed that Welles should lose his head.
With the King on the march, displaying no trace of the lethargy that had proved so damaging before Edgecote, very few people joined the rebels; even supporters of Warwick and Clarence refrained. On the nth the King came to Fotheringhay, whence he issued more commissions of array,