The four years 1461-64 were occupied by the final crushing out of the
civil war by the strong hand of the King-maker. The task proved longer
than might have been expected, owing to the desperate efforts which
Queen Margaret made to maintain her son's cause. After Towton nothing
remained to her but some castles in Northumberland and Wales, but she
bought the aid of the Scots by ceding Berwick, and obtained men and
money from Lewis XI., the young King of France. That astute prince
thought that a weak and divided England was the best security for
the safety of France, and doled out occasional help to the queen in
consideration of a promise to surrender Calais.
Warwick captured all the Northumbrian strongholds of the house of
Percy,--Bamborough, Alnwick, and Dunstanborough--in 1462. But the
North was thoroughly disaffected to the new king, and they were twice
retaken by treachery when the queen, with her French and Scottish
friends, appeared before them. In her third campaign she was aided by
a rising of all the Lancastrians who had submitted to King Edward and
been pardoned by him, headed by the Duke of Somerset, the son of him
who fell at St. Albans. But the two battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham
(April-May, 1464) crushed the last desperate effort of the northern
Lancastrians: at the former fell Sir Ralph Percy, the last chief of
the Percy clan who clung to the lost cause; at the second the Duke of
Somerset was taken and executed. Both fights were won by Lord Montagu,
the younger brother and lieutenant of the great Earl of Warwick. By
June, 1464, Warwick himself stamped out the last embers of resistance
by the second capture of Bamborough, the sole surviving Lancastrian
stronghold in England.
The King-maker returned in triumph to London, and could report to his
master that he had completely pacified England, and had also concluded
an advantageous treaty with the Scots. He proposed to finish his work
by making terms with the King of France, the last supporter of the
Lancastrian cause, with whom Margaret and her young son had sought
refuge. For this purpose he advised King Edward to endeavour to ally
himself with some princess among the kinswomen of Lewis XI.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Edward.=]
It was from this point that the breach between Edward and his great
minister began. When pressed to marry, the king announced--to the great
surprise and annoyance of Warwick and the rest of his council--that he
was married already. He had secretly espoused Elizabeth, daughter of
Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, a staunch Lancastrian, and widow of Sir
John Grey, another Lancastrian, who had fallen at St. Albans. She was
some years older than Edward, and had a family by her first husband.
But her beauty had captivated the susceptible young king, and he had
married her in secret, in order to avoid the opposition of his family
and his councillors.
[Sidenote: =Breach between Warwick and Edward.=]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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