Monday, 22 March 2010

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

A Parliament was held at Coventry (November 1459) and the leading Yorkists (and eventually some lesser ones) were attainted. One attainder passed was against Alice, Countess of Salisbury. Now don't run this past your history professor without checking but I believe she was the first woman ever to be attainted, so we may see this Parliament as one of the steps on the long road to gender equality.

Alice had considerable property in her own right - she was heiress of her family, the Montagus or Montacutes or whatever you wish to spell them as. This may have been the reason for attainder, but then again the Countess of Warwick was substantially richer in her own right and she was not attainted. So maybe, just maybe, Alice was a political animal and really involved in Yorkist conspiracy. Or maybe Margaret of Anjou just plain didn't like her.

Unusually the attainders included a clause promising pardon for humble submission, and one is left wondering what would have happened if York and Co. had humbly submitted. The jointures of wives were protected and Duchess Cecily (or Cecille if you prefer her own version) who had no jointure received 1000 marks a year. This was relatively generous and certainly more so than similar arrangements in the Yorkist and Tudor eras.

The forfeited estates were not dismembered, but some parts of them were granted out on lease to various Lancastrian supporters. These included the Duke of Exeter, the Duchess of Somerset, the earls of Wiltshire and Pembroke, and Lords Dudley and Egremont. There was resistance to the forfeitures, particularly in the Welsh Marches where certain castles, including Denbigh (prop. R. York), were held against the Government forces.

Another good centre of resistance was York's town of Newbury. In June 1460 Wiltshire, with Lords Scales and Hungerford, visited in the role of justices of oyer and terminer in response to a revolt against taxation. Several local men were hanged while seventy-five others were imprisoned in Wallingford Castle.

This made for good propaganda, and Warwick (in particular) was just the man to use it.

1 comment:

Ragged Staff said...

The countess of Salisbury's attainder is one of the more fascinating mysteries of the time for me. I've never thought her less of a political creature than the duchess of York, and there must have been something pretty specific for her to have been targetted and not Cecily. I had hoped the Parliamentary Rolls would give some little hint that I could extrapolate, but it's so very vague. It must have been decidedly terrifying for her, despite the obvious support of York and her husband, but at the same time, there's something ever so slightly glamorous about it - it gives her a lot of cred!