Loveday (1458)
Following much discussion and negotiation, and amid the presence of large, armed, noble retinues which almost led to another outbreak of war, a compromise was announced.
On the one hand, the crown publicised its role as the ultimate court of appeal but, conversely, although the Yorkists were bound to pay large sums in compensation, this was done with money already owed by the government.
[19] An uneasy peace existed between the court and the Yorkists until April 1455, when the King summoned a great council to meet at Leicester the following month.
[24] Henry and a small force left London for Leicester on 20 May; while it was natural for both the King and his followers to travel with armed contingents, the majority were members of their civil households.
[27] Fighting in the streets lasted only a short time, and though there were very few fatalities among the common soldiery, the chief Lancastrian captains—Northumberland, Somerset and Thomas, Lord Clifford—were all killed.
[29][30] On the 22nd, Henry was escorted, under guard, back to London: "all honour was shown to him" by York, Salisbury and Warwick, notes Griffiths, and a ceremony—intending to establish the new-found friendship between the King and the Yorkists—was held in St Paul's the following day.
By 1458, Henry's government urgently needed to deal with the unfinished problem that the Battle of St Albans had created, summarised by the scholar Ralph Griffiths as the "craving of the younger magnates for revenge on those who had killed their fathers".
[47] Arbitration, argues legal historian Anthony Musson, was not a resource restricted to one particular group of people, rather a universal phenomenon, occurring at every level and among all orders of society".
[49][note 10] Legal historian John Baker suggested that, in particularly contentious affairs, a loveday was deliberately designed "to avoid reasoned decision making",[51] being intended to result in voluntary—therefore amicable—settlements.
These would be important men in the extra-legal process, says Griffiths: "anyone who talked or wrote about or organized these dies amories was half-way towards settling potentially dangerous quarrels".
On 1 March, Warwick was warned that Somerset and Northumberland planned to avenge St Albans there and then, but the earl refused to be deterred from attending the council meeting.
[note 14] Henry tried to guarantee the safety of those attending, as he summoned levies from the counties for the defence of London and Westminster, which he then paraded through the City in a show of strength.
[73][note 16] There was little appetite for reconciliation among the sons of the nobility killed at St Albans,[75] and York and Salisbury were nearly ambushed by Exeter, Egremont and Clifford on their way to Westminster, although the attempt failed.
[67] The great council met on 27 January 1458[note 17] and King Henry made a personal appearance before the newly gathered lords to make a plea for unity.
York's biographer, Paul Johnson, suggests that, in doing so, Henry damaged any subsequent chance for the attendees to reach a "broad-based accommodation", as now they had no-one to adjudicate their arguments.
[71] The Yorkists, for their part, were declared to be the King's "true lieges", although any reassurance they took from this, comments the medievalist John Watts, may have been tempered by the knowledge that so also had been the three dead lords of St Albans.
All parties held hands: a later chronicle described how "one of the one faction, and another of the other sect, and behind the King, the Duke of Yorke led the Queene with great familiaritie to all mens sighte".
The scholar Kathleen Ashley has highlighted how they presented what she has called a "fusion of sensory experiences, or synaesthesia" for both the participants and observers, who would often amount to as many people as could physically attend, on account of the holiday atmosphere that accompanied them.
[94] The assembled lords were taking no more chances now than they had when they first arrived in London: Salisbury, for example, attended the concomitant religious ceremony at St Paul's with his retinue of 400 men, which included 80 knights and esquires, waiting in the churchyard.
[97] The King and his council seem to have also concluded by now that the Percies and the Nevilles' feud in the north was the primary cause of St Albans, and their treatment of Egremont reflected that.
By focussing on, and emphasising, the personal quarrels between York and Somerset—or Salisbury and Northumberland for example—the award ignored and sidelined the original complaints of the Yorkists that they had argued led to the battle.
[111] She argues that not highlighting the degree to which the nobility was divided was a deliberate policy, but the involvement of the Queen meant there had to be "a formal recognition...that there were two opposing camps".
[112] Historian Cora Scofield suggests that the Loveday procession to St Paul's was "doubtless an edifying spectacle, but it had little real meaning and probably deceived no-one".
[115] Not long after the Loveday, an anonymous poem was published entitled Take Good Heed; this offers the Yorkist lords advice and anxious support for the years ahead, which, the author recognises, will be difficult ones for all.
The poem Reconciliation of Henry VI and the Yorkists repeats the refrain, "rejoise, Angleonde to concorde and unité",[90] suggesting that the author expects the kingdom to be strong and unified going forward.
[117] The author expands on his theme:[118] In Yorke, In Somerset, as I understonde, In Warrewik also is loue & charite, In Sarisbury eke, & in Northumbreland, That euery man may reioise in concord & unite.
[117] Malory portrays Lancelot as attempting to atone for the murders of his enemies through the building of chapels—"penitence as a remedy for war", suggests literary scholar Robert L. Kelly.
But Lancelot's, like Henry's, attempts are in vain: "Lo what meschef lyth in variaunce / Amonge lordis, whan þei nat accorde", comments Malory on both.
[119] The peace ordained at the Loveday, says Pollard, "was shallow and shortlived";[97] having killed Somerset, York no longer had a blatant enemy in government and so could only make concessions.
[19] Carpenter has posited that—"ironically at the most overt moment of conciliation"[111]—the Loveday represents the point at which magnate disunity could no longer be denied, and, therefore, when the Wars of the Roses actually begun.
