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as a sack of wool. ‘He was a mere shadow and pretence’, a puppet worked by Warwick – who, as the King’s Lieutenant, was now the real ruler of England – and Clarence. Henry, states the Great Chronicle of London, did not rejoice in his restoration, ‘but merely thanked God and gave all his mind to serve and please Him, and feared little or nothing of the pomp and vanity of the world’. He appeared, says Commines, ‘mute as a crowned calf’, and must have been quite bewildered by this new turn of events. His mind, never very acute or stable before his captivity, had become duller as a result of it. During the months to come, ‘what was done in his name was done without his will and knowledge’. However, he was by no means deranged, and was quite capable of issuing a pardon to the man who had stabbed him in the Tower during his imprisonment.

That same day, Edward IV’s ignominious flight from England was announced to the people from Paul’s Cross and he was declared deposed. From then on, all letters, writs and other records showed Henry VI’s regnal year in the following style: ‘In the 49th year of the reign of Henry VI and the first of his readeption to royal power.’ Thus historians refer to the period of Henry’s restoration as ‘the Readeption’.

The new Lancastrians were soon saying that the troubles of Henry’s previous reign were the fault of ‘the mischievous people that were about the King’, whose greed had undermined his royal prestige and the prosperity and well-being of the realm. It was these ‘false lords’, and not Henry himself, who had been to blame for the loss of England’s possessions in France. Now there was to be a new order, and the first sign of this was when the chief officers of Edward IV’s household were required to resign their posts, which were then filled with men of impeccable Lancastrian backgrounds.

By 11 October King Edward had safely arrived at The Hague. He then travelled to St Pol, where he spent several days in the company of Charles of Burgundy. Edward pressed the Duke to help him regain his kingdom, but Charles was not yet prepared to commit himself. He was waiting to see whether or not Warwick would keep his promise and ally himself to Louis XI, and wished to do nothing that might provoke the Earl’s hostility towards Burgundy. Edward had to resign himself to waiting, and travelled to Bruges, where he took up residence in the palace of the Lord of Gruthuyse, Governor of Holland. Commines says Gruthuyse ‘dealt very honourably’ with Edward and his companions, ‘for he gave them much apparel among them’ and accorded them the respect due to visiting royalty.

In Paris, meanwhile, Louis XI had learned of Henry VI’s restoration and ordered that a Te Deum be sung in Notre Dame and that the event be marked by a three-day holiday and festival. He then told the chief dignitaries of the city to prepare an honourable welcome for Queen Margaret, the Prince of Wales and the Countess of Warwick and her daughters, who would be arriving in Paris very soon, en route for England.

On the 13th, Warwick had King Henry attired in his crown and in King Edward’s robes of state and paraded him through the streets of London to St Paul’s Cathedral, himself bearing the King’s train. Crowds flocked to see the spectacle and ‘all the people rejoiced with clapping of hands and cried, “God save King Henry!” ’ After a service in which the King gave thanks to God for his restoration, he took up residence in the Palace of Westminster.

Later that day, John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, was arraigned in Westminster Hall and found guilty of treason. Although Warwick’s policy towards the Yorkist nobility was to be of necessity conciliatory, he had had no compunction about apprehending the much hated Tiptoft. After Edward IV’s flight, the Earl had taken refuge in a forest in Huntingdonshire, where he was found hiding at the top of a tree, and thence brought to London. The Earl of Oxford, who presided over the court and whose father and elder brother had been condemned to death in 1462 by the man people were now calling ‘the Butcher of England