The Making of the Kingmaker

by Matthew Lewis

Richard Neville,16th Earl of Warwick, looms large over the middle of the fifteenth century, not only in England but across the continent. French and Burgundian sailors feared him, foreign rulers heard that he was the power behind the throne in England, the mastermind of the Lancastrian ejection and ‘the puppeteer of the Yorkist regime’. Some of this is an exaggeration, but most of it isn’t. Although the ‘Kingmaker’ epithet by which he is widely recognised came much later, he, and contemporaries, might have understood its meaning, even if they found it a simplification of what happened. Warwick was more complex than that, and his marriage might have set him on a course that ended at the Battle of Barnet, killed fighting his cousin and protege, Edward IV.

Born on 22nd November 1428, Warwick was destined for great things. Here was no unlikely great man, but the culmination of generations of hard work by his forebears to elbow and jostle their way to the top table of English politics. His father was another Richard Neville, who became Earl of Salisbury on 7th May 1429, a title held by right of marriage to Alice Montagu. Through his mother, young Richard could trace generations of loyal service and proximity to the crown. Her father, Thomas Montagu, 4th Earl of Salisbury, died less than three weeks before his grandson was born but had been central to the English success in the Hundred Years War. He had been at the siege of Harfleur and the Battle of Agincourt, had captured Le Mans and been killed at the siege of Orleans. That’s some grandad to hear about on your mother’s knee. Thomas Montagu was married to Eleanor Holland, who was descended from Edward I, and her family had also been closely associated with successive kings.

Richard’s paternal heritage was no less impressive. His paternal grandfather was Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. The Neville family had been rising slowly to prominence in the north since the middle of the twelfth century, but Ralph had packed the family fortunes into a carefully prepared cannon and fired them higher than ever. When he secured Joan Beaufort as his second bride, he transformed a regionally influential baronial clan into a nationally important dynastic force. That was because Joan was the daughter of John of Gaunt. That made her the granddaughter of Edward III, but when Henry IV became King in 1399, it also made her the King’s half-sister. The Beaufort family were initially illegitimate, the result of John’s affair with Katherine Swynford, but had been legitimised, and, recent research suggests, contrary to centuries of belief afterwards, never legally barred from succession to the throne.

Add to this a liberal sprinkling of Audley blood, and Monthermer too, and it was a heady cocktail for a little boy. As an adult, Warwick would even include the arms of William Longspee, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, on his seal, even though they were not related by blood. William was an illegitimate son of Henry II, and so offered another prestigious link to a past that justified his current rise to prominence. Warwick was, perhaps, the original spin doctor, focused on the message and what he projected rather than being too concerned with accuracy. All of this family history demonstrates that Warwick was born into greatness, that it was expected of him. That can be a heavy weight for a young man to carry.

The Neville family had always been greatest in their marriages. They always looked up. It was the only direction in which they were willing to move. Ralph rather callously all but disinherited his children from his first marriage to Margaret Stafford – all eight of them – because the 14 (!) children Joan blessed him with had royal blood, and so better prospects. Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, was the oldest son of this second brood, and our Richard Neville was Salisbury’s eldest son. Like his father and grandfather, Warwick would become greatest in his own marriage, and he would hungrily absorb all of the prestige of his wife’s family, along with some of their prejudices.

The Beauchamp inheritence

In 1436, a seven-year-old Richard Neville was married to the nine-year-old Anne Beauchamp. Richard’s sister Cecily married Anne’s brother Henry at the same time. This brought another of England’s premier families, with a long and rich heritage, into the Neville sphere. The marriage could well have come to little more than an alliance of families that brought a bit more prestige. Anne’s father, Richard Beauchamp, had three older daughters from a previous marriage, but also a son by his second wife, Isabel Despenser. Henry Beauchamp was destined to inherit all, and on the death in 1439 of his father – who was serving as Henry VI’s Lieutenant-General in France – not only did he take the position the earldom of Warwick bestowed as the premier Earl in England, but found his patrimony promoted to a dukedom. Duke Henry was married to one of his brother in law’s many sisters, Cecily, so the Neville family looked set to benefit. They did, but ultimately in a different path, perhaps the one designed as a security net for the very eventuality that befell Henry. In 1446, aged 21, Duke Henry died. He left behind only a two-year-old daughter to succeed him as 15th Countess of Warwick, the ducal title slipping away. Little Anne only outlived her father by three years, dying aged five in 1449. Now, an unseemly scramble broke out for the Beauchamp inheritance.

Little Anne Beauchamp’s Inquisition post mortem in September 1449 essentially found her aunt Anne, Richard Neville’s wife, to be the sole heiress to the Beauchamp lands and titles, as Duke Henry’s only full sister. Her half-sisters were cut out completely, though they would pursue what they maintained to be their rights for years to come. One particular rival was Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, who was married to Warwick’s sister-in-law Eleanor Beauchamp. This jostling for parts of an inheritance helped to draw lines in the build-up to the Wars of the Roses. A significant reason for the Neville family’s decision to join the Duke of York’s cause was that Henry VI backed Somerset against Warwick in their dispute over Cardiff Castle, which both claimed in right of their wives.

Warwick engaged fully with his wife’s Beauchamp heritage, adding it proudly to those already feeding into his own bloodline. His coat of arms is a fascinating trophy cabinet of connections. The first quarter shows the arms of his father in law, Richard Beauchamp. As the source of all Warwick’s personal prestige, he was happy to place these at the forefront of his projected image. Richard Beauchamp’s arms themselves were already quartered with his wife’s Despenser arms. In he second quarter were the arms of Montagu, his mother’s family, which were also quartered with Monthermer. In the third quarter came the Neville arms, showing a differentiation for Lancaster that proclaimed Warwick’s descent from not only Ralph Neville, but from Joan Beaufort, and therefore John of Gaunt and Edward III. It was a dazzling array of ancestors, none of whom Warwick was willing to ignore.

The placement of Richard Beauchamp in the first quarter speaks to Warwick’s absorption of his wife’s Beauchamp heritage and the importance he placed on it in defining himself. Warwick was one of the oldest earldoms in England – he was the 16th Earl, not the first of a new creation, but the latest in a long line stretching far back. The position of Warwick, as the premier earldom in England, senior to all others, was jealously guarded. He worked hard to try and have the ducal title returned, but was never successful, no matter how much he cleared the path to the throne for kings (or perhaps because he did it so well). All this as he watched men like Edmund Beaufort easily acquire dukedoms from Henry VI despite Warwick’s own loudly trumpeted Beaufort blood. Richard Neville was willing to allow his own name to be subsumed by the – in his view – greater name of Beauchamp. Along with that came some interesting prejudices.

The feud between Warwick and the Woodville family of Elizabeth, the woman who married Edward IV in 1464, is the stuff of legend. When historians cast about for a reason as to why Edward and Warwick fell out spectacularly in the late 1460s, it is perhaps the easy answer. The Crowland Chronicler is adamant that Warwick’s personal hatred of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, was the real cause as Edward grew closer to Burgundy and gave his sister Margaret in marriage to Charles in 1468. Nevertheless, tension with the Woodville family is evident in the swift retribution meted out by Warwick in 1469. He executed Elizabeth’s father and brother as soon as he had the upper hand against Edward.

The Woodville enmity

Initially, Warwick had not seemed overly concerned by Elizabeth Woodville. He had been negotiating a French marriage for Edward and may well have felt put out and embarrassed to be forced to tell Louis XI that Edward had secretly married one of his own subjects rather than accept the proffered alliance. Warwick was godfather to the couple’s first child, Elizabeth of York, and attended the Queen’s churching as she resumed her place in society after giving birth. If there really were bad blood between Warwick and the Woodville family, an explanation for it, and also for Warwick’s cautious watching of them, may be found in letters furiously shooting about in 1428, penned by men around Richard Beauchamp. This Earl of Warwick appears to have blamed three men for his ejection from the Captaincy of Calais. One was Richard Bokeland, the Treasurer of Calais. Another was Lowis John, Warden of the Mint at Calais (and in London). The third was the Chamberlain to the Duke of Bedford: Richard Woodville, grandfather to the first Yorkist Queen.

In the exchanges, the Earl’s unhappiness is made clear: ‘Our lord of Warwick shows himself always a heavy lord to Wydevile, Lowis John, and Richard Bokeland.’ The three men are keen to get out from under the Earl’s disfavour and seek advice from the Duke of Bedford. Bokeland reaches the point of pleading that he will have to quit his post unless he can ease the Earl’s fury: ‘My lord of Warwick is so sore moved against me in this matter, as I am informed that, unless my lord shows me the better and more singular lordship, men say it would be much better for me to have ceased my service long before this.’ One letter in the series is written from Bokeland to Woodville, complaining bitterly that Woodville had apparently tried to get himself out of trouble by blaming the other two men and excusing himself. Bokeland wrote ‘when it was presented unto my said lord of Warwick, he said, as I am informed, that you had been busy to excuse yourself unto his lordship, and submitted the fault wholly upon Lowys John and me’.

Is it possible that Richard Neville acquired his father-in-law’s hatred of the Woodville family, as well as his lands and titles? Richard Neville married Anne Beauchamp in 1436, and in true fifteenth-century style, the facts are not clear, but it seems likely the two marriages of Neville to Beauchamp took place at Abergavenny while Richard Beauchamp was there as part of a dispute over the lordship. His young son-in-law may have entered his household at that point and begun to absorb Beauchamp life. It is possible that included hearing his father-in-law grumble about the upstart Woodville family thrusting themselves forward. The son of the Richard Woodville he had fallen out with, also named Richard, had married the widowed Duchess of Bedford, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, in secret. The match was revealed in 1437, two years before Beauchamp’s death, when Warwick was nine.

Beauchamp immersion

Warwick immersed himself in being a Beauchamp heir and perhaps it is another layer to the complex events of the 1460s that Warwick felt such an obligation to be poorly disposed towards Richard Woodville that he adopted a familial prejudice against the family of a woman who, entirely unexpectedly, became Queen of England. Warwick was in open rebellion against Edward by the end of the 1460s. In 1470, he drove his cousin from the kingdom and restored Henry VI, the man Warwick was widely credited with having removed from the throne in 1461. On 14th April 1471, Warwick and Edward met in the mists of the battle of Barnet. Warwick was killed fleeing from his erstwhile protege.

The precise reasons for his removal of support from Edward remains a mystery. It is probably a tangled mess of issues around foreign policy, personalities, unfair treatment that Warwick saw as poor repayment for his hard work, and a loss of influence Warwick had failed to see coming as the King grew in confidence. Doubtless Warwick saw the marriage market in which his daughters needed good matches to compensate for the lack of a son being soaked up by the Woodvilles, and that created anger. There is some evidence that Warwick hoped to marry his daughter Isabel to Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, moving his family further up the ladder of noble prestige. If he had, he lost out to the Queen’s sister Catherine Woodville. Among all of this it is possible, too, that these five letters flying about more than four decades earlier had created an innate distrust of Richard Woodville in Warwick that meant the royal marriage caused alarm bells to ring. That would explain his brutal treatment of Richard Woodville in 1469. His father-in-law was avenged. Beauchamp’s work was done.

Matthew Lewis is Chair of the Richard III Society and a historical author. He is currently working on a full-length biography of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, to be published by Amberley.

This article was first published in The Ricardian Bulletin, September 2021.

Who was the Earl of Warwick?

A figure synonymous with the Wars of the Roses, Richard Neville was born in 1428 and became Earl of Warwick through his marriage to Anne Beauchamp. With his own illustrious heritage – his antecedents included John of Gaunt and Henry II – and vast northern estates, Warwick emerged as a decisive figure in the power struggles of the mid-fifteenth century. He successfully deposed the Lancastrian King Henry VI in 1461 – and helped secure the Yorkist’s place on the throne. Then, having seen his influence over Edward IV wane, in 1470 Warwick forced the King’s exile, and restored Henry VI to the throne. He died at the Battle of Barnet in 1471 at the age of 42.

Timeline: Richard Neville

22 November 1428: Birth of Richard Neville, third child and first son of Richard Neville and Alice Montagu. Earlier that year, his future father-in-law Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, blames Richard Bokeland, Lowis John, and Richard Woodville for costing him the post of Captain of Calais.

4th May 1436: Likely date for the marriage of Richard Neville to Anne Beauchamp, daughter of the Earl of Warwick. His sister Cecily married Anne’s brother Henry at the same time.

30th April 1439: Death of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick at Rouen while serving as Henry VI’s Lieutenant-General in France.

11th June 1446: Death of Henry Beauchamp, 14th Earl and 1st Duke of Warwick, aged 21.

3rd June 1449: Death of Anne Beauchamp, 15th Countess of Warwick, only child of Duke Henry, aged five.

20th September 1449: Anne Beauchamp’s Inquisition post mortem (IPM) finds her aunt Anne as her only heir, as her father’s only whole sister, ignoring his three half-sisters.

2nd March 1450: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, secures creation as earl in the style of Duke Henry, as the premier earl in the land, entitled to wear a gold circlet at state events.

15th April 1450: New IPMs into the estate of little Anne Beauchamp begin as her half-aunts stake their claim to the Warwick inheritance, backed by husbands such as the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Shrewsbury.

February-March 1452: Richard, Duke of York, takes troops to Dartford to confront Henry VI. Warwick is amongst those sent to negotiate with York.

August 1453: Henry VI falls into a catatonic state on his way to take Somerset’s side against Warwick in a dispute over the Beauchamp inheritance of their wives.

22nd May 1455: First Battle of St Albans sees Warwick break into gardens at the side of the town, leading directly to victory for the Yorkist side he now championed.

25th March 1458: Henry VI organises a Love Day to celebrate the supposed conclusion of tensions. Yorkist and Lancastrian enemies parade through London holding hands.

12th October 1459: Rout of Ludford Bridge sees the Yorkist leaders scattered, Warwick making it to Calais with his father and his cousin, Edward, Earl of March.

10th July 1460: Battle of Northampton, the last English battle to involve a parlay, sees Warwick and Edward defeat and capture Henry VI.

30th December 1460: Warwick’s father, along with York and his second son Edmund, is killed at the Battle of Wakefield. Young nobles get vengeance for their losses at St Albans, but create new vendettas.

17th February 1461: Second Battle of St Albans sees Warwick lose on the site of his previous victory. Henry VI is taken from Yorkist custody.

29th March 1461: Battle of Towton secures the throne for the Yorkist Edward IV, with Warwick’s support proving critical.

4th May 1464: Possible date of the secret marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, granddaughter of the Richard Woodville with whom Richard Beauchamp had fallen out.

12th August 1469: Warwick executes Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers, father of Elizabeth Woodville, and his son John.

14th April 1471: Death of Warwick the Kingmaker at the Battle of Barnet, aged 42.