Warwick the Kingmaker Read Free Page A

the people incapable of any regular system of civil government’.21 For Sharon Turner in 1823, he was a poor general, irascible and splenetic, ambitious and rest-less, ‘too powerful to be a peaceful subject to any sovereign, yet compelled always to remain one’ and hence better off dead.22 Lord Lytton’s three-volume novel The Last of the Barons presented Warwick as the end of his type, ‘the old Norman chivalry’,23 at which the new critical and scientific historians rejoiced. ‘He comes hardly within the ken of constitutional history’, Stubbs opined.24 ‘He was the last great feudal nobleman who ever made himself dangerous to the reigning king’, denounced Gairdner. ‘His policy throughout seems to have been selfish and treacherous and his removal was an unquestionable blessing to his country.’25
    Most of Gairdner’s twentieth-century successors have followed his lead. Integrating the hostile testimony of Yorkist and Burgundian propaganda and Milanese despatches into balanced assessments has inevitably diluted and detracted from the English eulogies. Warwick became a diplomat subservient and inferior to Kendall’s real hero, the French King Louis XI.26 Thanks to K. B. McFarlane, modern historians are more sympathetic to English magnates and have rediscovered the material bases of aristocratic power that earlier generations of historians took for granted. Rediscovering the ambience and values is more difficult. Modern researchers cannot be content with the mere assertion that Warwick had good qualities and was popular as their predecessors had been, but the sources are lacking to reconstitute these qualities. A full biography is impossible. A fuller one is my attainable end.
    This book avoids judging Warwick’s whole career by the bouleversement of his last years. It tries to identify the influences that formed him, his actions, and motives at each stage of his career. For any biographer, still more one of a man who died 500 years ago, this is a challenging task. We lack almost all the materials of a modern life and most of those desired by medievalists. Warwick must always be seen through the eyes of others, always partisan, often mistaken or misled by his own propaganda, or deduced from actions capable of more than one interpretation. Though much seems clear enough, his total character is beyond recall.
    Though still only forty-two when he died, Warwick is a big subject for a biographer. He was the greatest nobleman of his age, the heir to four great families, their estates, connections and traditions. He was the wealthiest and the most wide-ranging in interests. Bursting full-grown and unexpectedly on to the national scene in 1449, he constantly added geographical interests, new activities, and responsibilities to his portfolio. He ceded none to others. His relentless attention to business demanded an extraordinary energy that we can only marvel at. His ceaseless journeys took place over unmade-up roads, on horseback and sailing ships, and in English weather conditions. He was apparently never ill and never flagged. He is the model rather of the medieval nobility of service and of the all-encompassing chief minister of the future. Pragmatism and ruthlessness went hand in hand with honour. He was a daring subaltern, the boldest and most brilliant of strategists, a consummate logistician, and a pioneer in the tactical use of seapower, combined operations, and field artillery; flawed solely (but fatally) as a battlefield tactician. There was nothing Warwick would not attempt and no obstacle that he would not overcome. He was indomitable, never surrendered, and never failed to recover until the very end. For twenty years he shaped events, his own career, and indeed history itself. An underlying strength of will and determination and an intolerance of opposition and viciousness towards opponents needs to be set against the charm that cajoled, persuaded and won over men of whatever standing. It was this