Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/287

 mend him for the next available see (ib.). Salisbury's eldest son, ‘the King-maker,’ and his brothers William, lord Fauconberg [q. v.], and Edward, lord Bergavenny [q. v.], were also regular members of the governing council (ib. p. 169). The available proceeds of tonnage and poundage were assigned to Salisbury and others for three years for the keeping of the sea (Rot. Parl. v. 244). When Henry's recovery drove York from power, the great seal was taken from Salisbury on Friday, 7 March 1455, between eleven and twelve of the clock, in a certain small chapel over the gate at Greenwich, and given to Archbishop Bourchier (Ord. Privy Council, vi. 358). He apparently retired to Middleham, whence he joined York, when he took up arms in May in self-defence, as he alleged, against the summons of a great council to meet at Leicester to provide for the king's ‘surety.’ Both Salisbury and Warwick accompanied York in his march on London with their retainers. They alone signed his letters of protestation addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the king, which they afterwards charged Somerset with keeping from the king's eye (Rot. Parl. v. 280). The honours of the battle which followed (22 May) at St. Albans, and placed Henry in their power, rested not with Salisbury, but with Warwick, and from that day he was far less prominent in the Yorkist councils than his more energetic and popular son. The renunciation of all resort to force was exacted from York and Warwick only, when Queen Margaret recovered control of the king in October 1456, though Salisbury is said to have been present and to have retired to Middleham when York betook himself to Wigmore (Rot. Parl. v. 347; Paston Letters, i. 408;, p. 632). The armed conflicts between his younger sons and the Percies in Yorkshire were renewed in 1457, and Egremont was carried prisoner to Middleham; but in March 1458 a general reconciliation was effected, and Salisbury agreed to forego the fines which he had got inflicted on the Percies, and to contribute to the cost of a chantry at St. Albans for the souls of those who had fallen in the battle (ib.; Chron. ed. Giles, p. 45;, i. 298, 303). In the procession of the ‘dissimuled loveday’ (25 March) Salisbury was paired off with Somerset (, p. 633;, p. 238; Political Poems, Rolls Ser. ii. 254).

When this deceitful lull came to an end, and both parties finally sprang to arms in the summer of 1459, Salisbury left Middleham Castle early in August with an armed force whose numbers are variously reckoned from five hundred (, p. 204) to seven thousand (Chron., ed. Davies, p. 80), and marched southwards to effect a junction with York, who was in the Welsh marches, and Warwick, who had been summoned from Calais (Rot. Parl. v. 348; Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, p. 72). If the original intention of the confederates had been to surprise the king in the midlands, it was foiled by Henry's advance to Nottingham; and as Queen Margaret had massed a considerable force, raised chiefly in Cheshire, on the borders of Shropshire and Staffordshire, round Market Drayton, Salisbury seemed entirely cut off from York, who was now at Ludlow (Rot. Parl. v. 348, 369). The royal forces at Market Drayton under two Staffordshire peers—James Touchet, lord Audley, and John Sutton, lord Dudley—were estimated by a contemporary to have reached ten thousand men, and at any rate outnumbered the earl's ‘fellowship’ (, i. 338;, p. 204). The queen was only a few miles eastwards, at Eccleshall. Fortunately for Salisbury, his son-in-law, Lord Stanley, remained inactive at Newcastle-under-Lyme with the Lancashire levies he had brought at the queen's command; and his brother William Stanley, with other local magnates, joined the earl (Rot. Parl. v. 369). On Saturday, 22 Sept., he occupied a strong position on Blore Heath, three miles east of Market Drayton, on the Newcastle road, with his front completely protected by a small tributary of the Tern. Here he was attacked next morning by Lord Audley, whom Salisbury, according to Hall (p. 240), tempted across the brook by a feigned retreat, and then drove him in confusion down the slope before the rest of his troops had crossed the stream. The slaughter at all events was great. Of sixty-six men brought by Sir Richard Fitton of Gawsworth to the royal side, thirty-one perished (, East Cheshire, ii. 2). Audley himself was slain. Salisbury's two sons, Sir John Neville and Sir Thomas Neville, either pursuing the fugitives or returning home wounded, were captured near Tarporley, and imprisoned in Chester Castle (, p. 204;, p. 634; cf. Chron. ed. Davies, p. 80, and , 1447–71, p. 277). Salisbury got away before the royal forces could be brought up from the east, and effected his junction with York at Ludlow (, p. 204). He and his associates at Blore Heath were excluded from the offer of pardon which Henry sent to the Yorkist leaders at Ludlow (Rot. Parl.). He nevertheless joined the others in protesting ‘their true intent’ to the prosperity and augmentation of the king's estate and to the common weal