Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/294

 ing to Hall, commanded the centre; but the hardest fighting was on the left, where his uncle Fauconberg was in command, and not at the centre, as asserted by Wavrin (p. 341), who, however, ascribes the victory to the ‘grant proesse principalement’ of the king (cf., iii. 84, ed. 1603).

By the beginning of May Edward thought it safe to go south for his coronation, leaving Warwick and Fauconberg to keep watch on the Lancastrians. Henry VI and his queen, with Somerset, Exeter, and other lords, were beating up support in Scotland, and their partisans still held the great castles beyond the Tyne, Warkworth, Alnwick, Bamborough, and Dunstanborough. At Middleham, where Warwick entertained the king before he left Yorkshire, Edward confirmed him (7 May) in the offices of great chamberlain and captain of Calais, and bestowed on him the important post of constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque ports, with other distinctions. He was made warden of the Scottish marches on 31 July, and a few days later empowered to treat with Scotland, but was able to attend Edward's first parliament, which met on 4 Nov. The attainder of his ancestors, John de Montacute, third earl of Salisbury, and Thomas le Despenser, earl of Gloucester, beheaded in 1400, was reversed for the benefit of Warwick and his mother.

During the first three years of the reign Warwick was much more prominent than the king. He was the king's first cousin, and might, says Commines (i. 232), almost call himself his father. ‘There was none in England of the half possessions that he had’ (Chron. of White Rose, p. 23). His offices alone, according to Commines, brought him an annual income of eighty thousand crowns. The House of Lords was packed with his kinsmen. He held the keys of the Channel. Edward's energy, moreover, was spasmodic; he preferred pleasure to politics, and left to Warwick, who had the gifts of a diplomatist and sleepless energy, the task of defeating the foreign combinations which the exiled Margaret was attempting. Foreign observers looked on him as the real ruler of England. The Burgundian historian Chastellain (iv. 159) spoke of him as the pillar of Edward's throne, and Bishop Kennedy, one of the Scottish regents, as managing English affairs for the king (, iii. 173, ed. Dupont). The letters from the Sforza archives at Milan, printed in the ‘Calendar of Venetian State Papers,’ bear witness to his importance. In Scotland he roused a revolt in the highlands (1461), and detached the queen-mother, Mary of Gueldres, and her party from active support of Margaret (ib.) v. 355, ed. Hardy;, p. 169; Fœdera, xi. 476–7, 483–7). Margaret's application for aid to her cousin, the new king of France, Louis XI, in the summer of 1461, Warwick met by an offer of Edward's hand to the Duke of Burgundy for his niece, Catherine of Bourbon (, iv. 155). But Philip did not care to bind himself so closely to Edward as long as his throne remained insecure, and his heir Charles, count of Charolais, was friendly with the Lancastrians (ib. p. 159). After Margaret's departure for France early in 1462, Warwick met Mary of Gueldres at Dumfries and Carlisle, with a view to depriving the Lancastrians of Scottish support. He even suggested, though probably not very seriously, that Mary should marry Edward IV (, p. 779). He came to some arrangement with her, which was believed in England to have included a promise to surrender Henry and his followers (Paston Letters, ii. 111).

His diplomatic labours had obliged him to leave the siege of the Northumbrian castles to his brother Montagu and his brother-in-law Hastings, who, in July, reduced Naworth, Alnwick, and apparently Bamborough (ib.;, p. 779). Hearing that Margaret was returning to the north with a small force supplied by Louis XI, Warwick, who had come up to London, went back to his post on 30 Oct. with a large army (ib. p. 780; Paston Letters, ii. 120). Edward, who followed him, fell ill with measles at Durham, and Warwick superintended the siege of the three strongholds, Dunstanborough, Bamborough, and Alnwick, the two latter having been recovered by Margaret. Warwick himself fixed his headquarters at Warkworth, whence he rode daily to view the three leaguers, a ride of thirty-four miles (ib. ii. 121). Bamborough and Dunstanborough surrendered on Christmas eve, but Alnwick held out until the sudden arrival on 6 Jan., at early morning, of an army of relief from Scotland under Angus and de Brezé (Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, p. 176;, p. 780). As at the second battle of St. Albans, Warwick was entirely taken by surprise, and withdrew from the castle to a position by the river. The bulk of the garrison issued forth and joined their friends, who retreated with them to Scotland. According to Worcester, Warwick had at first thought of fighting, but gave up the idea because he was inferior in numbers (cf., and , p. 406, who says the Scots were not more than than eight thousand men). Alnwick capitulating soon after, Warwick went south to attend the parliament which met at Westminster on 29 April (Rot. Parl. v. 496). Contemporary opinion