my Maister Fastolf of treson. And by cause that I wolde not, they had me up to Westminster, and there wolde have sent me to the gole house at Wyndsor; but my wyves and j coseyn of myn noune that were yomen of the Croune, they went to the Kyng, and got grase and j chartyr of pardon.”
The Civil Wars and the part taken by the City belong to the history of the nation, and may be briefly dismissed in these pages. The City began with loyalty to the King. He was the son of their hero and darling, the Victor of Agincourt; and he was the grandson of their own King whom they themselves had brought over and set upon the throne. These two considerations outweighed all others, even the disasters in France, the miserable condition to which the country had been brought, and the weakness of the King. Meantime the long-deferred birth of a son strengthened the loyalty of all Lancastrians. The poverty of the City at this time is proved by the fact that when, in 1453, an assessment of half a fifteenth was made, eleven out of the twenty-five wards were in default. After the battle of St. Albans, 22nd May 1455, the Duke of York brought the King to London and lodged him in the Bishop’s Palace, St. Paul’s Churchyard.
There were no Jews to bait and murder, but there were the Lombard money-lenders. On two occasions there were riots between the mercers and the Lombards. After the first, two of the Lombards were hanged. They threatened to retire from the City altogether, but remained and suffered another attack a year later for which twenty-eight mercers were committed to prison. The internal dissensions were followed by the inevitable consequences, of diminished trade, the appearance of pirates in the Channel, and the descent of the French upon the coasts. They plundered Sandwich, for instance, and captured thirty ships. Thereupon the City raised a small force of 2000 men and fitted out ships for them.
The unhappy reign of Henry draws to a close. In 1458 the King tried to effect a reconciliation between the two rival sections of the nobility, and called a conference to meet in St. Paul’s. Warwick attended with a following of 600 men in his livery; the Duke of York and the Earl of Salisbury were received in the City; the young Duke of Warwick and others of the opposite factions were kept outside. And still further to prevent disorder, the Mayor kept a guard of 3000 men in readiness to stand by the Aldermen in case of a disturbance.
The conference was held, and the reconciliation was effected; a solemn service with a procession was held in the Cathedral. Six months later the war broke out again.
Early in 1460 the King issued a commission to the Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs for collecting men and arms to resist the Duke of York. The order was received with jealousy as threatening the City liberties, but the King explained that no such attack was intended. In February the masters and wardens were ordered to look to their arms and their men in view of the dangers threatening the City. In June the Yorkist Lords made a descent on Sandwich, and marched upon London. The City hurriedly placed itself in a position for defence. There was a great show of resistance; the rebel Lords were not to be admitted; they were to keep at a certain distance from the City; then a letter was received from the Earl of Warwick, and, no one knows why, the gates were thrown open and the Lords were admitted.
They proceeded to starve the garrison of the Tower into surrender. Lord Scales, the governor, attempted to reach Westminster by boat in order to take refuge in Sanctuary. He was discovered by the Thames watermen and murdered. After the Battle of Northampton, Henry was brought into London as prisoner. In October of the same year, 1460, the Duke of York declared his right to the Crown, and the struggle was no longer between rival sections of nobles, but between the King and the Claimant.
After the Second Battle of St. Albans, the Queen ordered provisions to be sent to her at St. Albans from London, but the mob stopped the carts. Margaret moved her troops farther north. Then Edward and the Earl of Warwick were admitted within the walls, London was lost to the Lancastrians, and the first half of the Wars of the Roses was at an end.
HANDWRITING IN AN ENGLISH CHARTER, 1457 A.D.
(and fully to be endid, payinge yerely the seid—
successours in hand halfe yere afore that is—
next suyinge xxiij s iiij d by evene porciouns.)
CHAPTER XII
EDWARD IV
The reign of Edward IV., who had now become, as he remained to the end, the most popular of kings in the City of London, presents a record of continual agitation and excitement. He stayed first at Baynard’s Castle, where he began his reign by hanging an unfortunate grocer of Cheapside, trading under the sign of the “Crown,” for saying that his son was heir to the crown. Of course Walker must have said more than that. There were Lancastrians still among the citizens. One could hardly hang a man for making a feeble pun. His remarks were probably seditious and disrespectful to Edward’s title. From the death of Richard II. to the accession of Henry VIII. all the English kings were extremely sensitive as to the strength and reality of their titles.
EDWARD IV. (1442-1483)
The news from the north of the siege of Carlisle would not allow the King to be crowned at once as was intended. A week after the Proclamation he started hurriedly for the north to meet Henry, to whom he gave battle at Towton. The result of the stubborn contest was the defeat of Henry, who with the Queen and his son Prince Edward and such of the Lords as were left, fled into Scotland. Edward stayed awhile to set things in order and then rode south. He was welcomed by the Mayor and Aldermen and five hundred citizens at Lambeth on 27th July, and was escorted to the Tower, whence on the 29th—the 28th day of each month was accounted unlucky—he rode to Westminster and was crowned with due ceremony.
In the second year of his reign he granted a Charter to the City in which he confirmed all past privileges and liberties. The Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen past the chair, were appointed perpetual justices as long as they continued to be Aldermen. They were also constituted justices of Oyer and Terminer for the trying of all malefactors within their jurisdiction; they were exempt from serving on Juries or on Foreign Assizes, and from having to undertake certain offices; they were empowered to hold a Fair in the Borough of Southwark; and they received certain other privileges connected with waifs, strays, and treasure trove. Three other Charters were granted by Edward. All of them will be found in the Appendix.
The year 1463 was taken up by another campaign in the north, with sieges of castles, and with the usual crop of treasures, perjuries, arrests, and beheadings. Surely there was never any war or contest more disgraced by change of sides, broken oaths, and villainies, than this War of the Roses.
Edward returned to London in February 1463, and was received by a procession of barges. It has been observed, doubtless, that the mediæval citizens were at all times perfectly regardless of the season: they had a Riding in January, a Coronation in December, a water procession in February quite as happily as in July or August. Yet it is very certain that the climate was as capricious and as uncertain then as now.
In 1464 the King married secretly Elizabeth, the young widow of Sir John Grey, and daughter of Lord Rivers. The Queen was crowned in May 1465. In the same year the unfortunate King Henry was taken prisoner, and brought to the Tower of London. At this point we may take up the somewhat tangled story of Alderman Coke. In the early years of King Edward’s reign Coke was treated with special favour by the King. Other Aldermen were made plain Knights. Coke was made a Knight of the Bath. He had a town-house and a country seat, Gidea Hall in Essex. It was this Coke who, when he was made Lord
