Warwick The Kingmaker

RICHARD OF SALISBURY

The large baronial houses' confederacies included of relatively little significance during the first twenty years of Henry of Windsor's reign because the young King's personal weakness was unknown; additionally, no more than 35 peers had ever been called to a Parliament in the early years of Henry the Sixth, and the War in France though the tide had long turned against England was still far from coming to a disastrous conclusion. Since the young King was just recently approaching manhood and may, for all that anyone knew, be the parent of as many warlike sons as his grandfather, the deadly question of the succession to the Crown remained unanswered. People's opinions weren't changed until Henry's nine years of unhappiness; from 1445 to 1454, his nobility campaigned on the succession issue, claiming that England's peace was in grave danger.

The first child of Earl Ralph's second marriage, Richard Neville, was born in 1399. He wasn't old enough to accompany King Henry to the siege of Harfleur and the battle of Agincourt, but some years later, he went to the French Wars with his half-brother John, the successor to Westmoreland. However, the years of his early manhood were to be spent in his father's company on the Scotch Border, not in France. When he reached adulthood and received his knighthood in 1420, he was appointed the old Earl's companion in the Western Marches wardenship. He held this position for several years, which caused him to become heavily involved in Scottish affairs. He twice served as a commissioner to deal with the Regent of Scotland, and when the English Council freed James the First from his protracted captivity, he was escorted to the border of his kingdom. We occasionally hear about him at Court, such as when he served as a carver at the Banquet for the Coronation of the newlywed Queen Catherine. According to Monstrelet, the likes of this event had not been seen since the reign of that glorious warrior Arthur, King of the English and Bretons, were performed with such magnificent splendour.

When Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury's lone child Alice, who had just reached 18 years old, proposed to Richard in 1425, he was twenty-six years old. The Montacute family was not one of the wealthiest English earls because of the last head of the family's fidelity to Richard the Second, who cost him his life and his estates. Even though his son had a new bloodline and had been given back many of the Montacute lands, the list of his manors in the Escheats Roll looks poor enough compared to the March, Arundell, and the Earls of Norfolk and Devon. Nevertheless, Earl Thomas agreed to work for the Lancaster family despite his father's fate.

As we already know, Ralph of Westmoreland, the previous Earl, passed away in 1425. We can read about the meagre inheritance he gave his son Richard in his will, which has been preserved as follows: "two chargers, twelve dishes, a large ewer and basin of platinum, a bed of Arras with red, white, with green hangings, and four unskilled horses, the best that need to be found in his stable." Evidently, he believed there was nothing he needed to do for this boy, who would eventually inherit the earldom of Salisbury. The old Earl passed the baronies of Bidwell with Winlayton, two of his distant holdings, exclusively to Ralph and Edward, the two of his surviving sons who had not yet acquired the property from their spouses.

However, in another way, Earl Ralph's will be destined to cause much heartache in the Neville household and to sever the rigid familial ties that were its source of strength. While he left the Neville lands in Durham, centred on his ancestral castle of Raby, to his child son and heir, Ralph the 2nd, he gave his widow, Joan of Beaufort, who was the mother of Richard and the other thirteen members of his second family, a jointure of his Yorkshire estates instead of the young Earl. The former mistress of Sherif Hopton Castle and the other North-Riding holdings of Neville, the Countess, had no intention of passing them on to her own sons' offspring of the first wife of her groom. On the contrary, they were meant to be taken from the older family and given to the younger one. Many future problems began right here, but because little Earl Ralph was still a kid, the situation did not escalate.