He was generous, too, in the bestowal of new honours; in the eight years between 1441 and 1449 he created ten barons, five earls, two marquises and five dukes. Even the most impartial observer must have concluded that he was unduly diluting the reserves of patronage. Existing barons and dukes might also have surmised that their rank, at the very least, was not necessarily being exalted. Henry had never known any other position than that of monarch; he took his wealth and power for granted. He did not understand the value or importance of what he bestowed. He was always ready, and even eager, to pardon people; he was following the model of his Saviour. But this generosity did not endear itself to those who believed themselves to have been wronged.
He was too weak to arbitrate between the more powerful nobles of the reign; this encouraged them to take matters into their own hands, and to solve by force or threat the disputes that should have been resolved by a strong king. As a result armed feuds between the powerful families presaged the greater civil conflict of the Wars of the Roses. The king was supposed to guide and to lead his nobles; that was part of their compact with the court. They were the natural supporters of the anointed monarch. They did not wish for a weak king, and they were more secure if a king was strong. But, if they were masterless, then all order was destroyed.
The consequences were obvious to all. With the death of the duke of Gloucester, the duke of York became the direct heir to the throne. Yet Henry still did not trust him and, to lessen his capacity for influence at court, he was despatched to Ireland as lord lieutenant. For two years York refused to take up the appointment, but in the summer of 1449 he sailed across the Irish Sea. The command of the English armies in France was then given to the new duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, brother of the supposed suicide. Suffolk and Somerset were now aligned against York. York and Somerset would soon enough become rivals almost to the death. These were the fruits of Henry’s ‘personal rule’ that would end in the bloodiest dynastic dispute in English history.
A more general sense prevailed that the rule of the law had been left in abeyance. ‘The law serves of nothing else in these days,’ the men of Kent said in a declaration of 1450, ‘but to do wrong.’ All was accomplished by ‘bribery, dread or favour’. The extant letters of the period, particularly those of the Paston family, are filled with accounts of wrongdoing that went unpunished and of nobles who exercised justice (if that is what it can be called) for their own advantage. Endless stories were told of armed gangs threatening tenants, besieging manors and invading courts of justice.
John Paston wrote of one hired gang that ‘no poor man dare displease them, for whatsoever they do with their swords they make it law’. He had direct experience of such violent behaviour. In a petition to the archbishop of York he wrote of ‘a great multitude of riotous people, to the number of a thousand persons or more’ who ‘broke, despoiled, and drew down’ his manor house at Gresham; they ‘drove out my wife and servants there being, and rifled, took, and bore away all the goods and chattels’. The gang then fortified the manor, and kept out Paston himself as well as the king’s Justice of the Peace.
Another gang, commanded by William Tailboys, was under the protection of Suffolk; it will be remembered that Suffolk, with the queen, helped to control the council of the realm. Tailboys and his ‘slaughterladdes’ were accused of three murders as well as charges of trespass and assault; but Suffolk helped him to escape justice. ‘On lordship and friendship’, it was said, ‘depends all law and profit.’ The spirit of misrule prevailed over the land, and the king could do nothing about it.
When Paston’s manor house was plundered and taken, his adversary procured a royal letter asking the sheriff of Norfolk to show ‘favour’. Paston was powerless in these circumstances, and he was advised to place himself under the protection of the duke of York. In 1454 one of Henry’s knights who had done well out of the French wars, Sir John Falstolf, laid aside money to bribe a sheriff; he wanted a jury that would favour his suit in a legal case. It is clear enough that the juries of the period were, on a routine basis, bribed or intimidated.
