Update
Chapter 4: The Watchful Peace
Part 2: The Land Across the Sea
“Lancastrian England” by Thomas Courtenay, London 1923
When Henry V returned to his native land in the summer of 1433, he was greeted by an outpouring of joy and love. He was a great conqueror, a paradigm of kingship. He had succeeded where even his most illustrious ancestors had failed by successfully taking the French crown. Yet all was not well in England. Humphrey of Gloucester, the King’s brother, had been an arrogant viceroy during Henry’s long absences on the continent. He had sowed division among the nobility through his avaricious tendencies [1] and had created a destructive rivalry with his ecclesiastical uncle, Cardinal Thomas Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. Cardinal Beaufort opposed the Duke’s inability to confer with the rest of the royal council during his tenure as Protector. The two men’s rivalry split the council into opposing factions and nearly led to armed conflict on several occasions [2]. Henry acted in a conciliatory manner, attempting to bring the men together in order to resolve their differences. However, when this failed, he chastised them for putting petty personal animosities above the greater needs of the realm and the dynasty.
Humphrey’s marriage to Elizabeth Mowbray, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, forged an important dynastic alliance with one of the greatest magnates in the land, but brought him a cash dowry with only a few midlands manors. Therefore, Henry decided to provide for his brother with a landed endowment out of the royal demesne, something done little since it decreased markedly the income of the English crown. Nevertheless, Henry promised his brother £2000 in landed income. Had this order been carried out, it would have satisfied Humphrey’s demands. However, the promise was never carried out due to the penury of the crown’s resources, and thus the duke was not placated.
The Parliament of 1433 met at Oxford to discuss the end of the French war and the state of the realm. The assembly was filled with complaints, especially from the Commons, about the great burden the King’s war had placed on the common people. No further subsidies would be granted, they explained, now that the French threat had been destroyed, and the king had gained his “just rights and ancient inheritance.” There were further complaints about the nature of the link between the crowns. The 1420 Treaty of Paris had clearly stated that the two realms were to remain separate. Parliament insisted that this be followed. No one yet proposed a separation of the crown into two branches of the dynasty, as they later would; yet one can find in the Oxford Parliament the first inklings of dissent. He was accompanied by his cousin Lord Richard Neville of Middleham [3]
Henry progressed north in the fall of 1433 to survey his northern dominions. Since the fall of the Percies after their great rebellion, Henry had come to rely on the Nevilles to enforce royal will north of the Trent. They were the greatest magnate in Yorkshire, and he had lavished gifts on them as a reward for their crucial support. However, Henry’s next act of largesse towards the Nevilles brought this patronage to a new level. On September 21st, 1433, he created Richard Earl of Richmond, imparting the honor of Richmond on his house in tail-mail [4]. This ensured the Neville’s undisputed hegemony in northern Yorkshire. The senior Nevilles, Earls of Westmoreland, and the rehabilitated Percy Earls of Northumberland could only look on in envy. Humphrey of Gloucester, whose hard-won landed endowment was only slowly coming in, was even more furious act this creation, and totally failed to appreciate Henry’s pragmatic motives for the promotion in building up an ally of the crown in one of England’s most lawless regions.
At Berwick, on the border between Scotland and England, Henry met with his Scottish counterpart, James I. The continued payment of ransom from the Scottish king’s long captivity in England was confirmed. Then, James formally accepted Henry as king of France as well as England. Finally, a peace treaty was signed between the two monarchs. It was the work of many years of diplomatic activity. It regularized the border between the two nations as it had stood before the century and a half of warfare begun in the 1290s, with Berwick as the only English gain. It affirmed “march days” where English and Scottish wardens of the march would meet to resolve conflicts peacefully. The treaty of Berwick marked a new era in Anglo-Scottish relations, an attempt to restore peace to the border after so many generations of depredation and warfare. Before Henry returned south, he appointed the new Earl of Richmond as Warden of the West March, and reaffirmed Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, as Warden of the East March to balance out the power interests in northern England.
England after the Third War of French succession was a land full of contrasts. The differences between rich and poor, country and city, north and south, became exacerbated as the threat of French invasion and the destruction of French naval raids came to an end. The English political community was divided between those who had benefited from the most recent French war and those who had not, between those who enjoyed the King’s favor and those left out in the cold. These tensions, although at the time incipient, would soon boil over and lead to great violence and suffering across the realm.
1. The Lancastrian princes were never well endowed territorially, instead relying on annuities from the exchequer. Therefore, ITTL as in OTL, Humphrey constantly seeks to build up his landed income.
2. This is all OTL.
3. ITTL, the Earl of Salisbury produces a male heir and thus Richard does not inherit the Montague earldom. However, as a result of some shady transactions by his father, Ralph Neville, the bulk of the Neville inheritance has been transferred to Richard, as in OTL. Richard is the first son from Ralph’s second marriage, and as his mother is a Beaufort, the legitimized bastard descendants of John of Gaunt, he is better placed in English politics and thus a better successor to the great territorial hegemony.
4. The Earldom of Richmond, one of the greatest Earldoms, was long held by the Duke of Brittany. However, the destruction of Arthur, Count of Richemont (made-up French version of Earl of Richmond) and its uncertain legal status allows Henry to grant it to Richard Neville. The honor of Richmond (lordship attached to the title) covers all of Richmondshire, thus this grant ensures Neville hegemony in their region of greatest strength.
Note: sorry this took longer than I expected to put out. My interest and research in English history has allowed me to give much more detail on England than when I started the timeline. I hope my footnotes about the Nevilles are clear, its a pretty complicated situation. However, I do love the Nevilles, they've really become my favorite English noble house. Anyway, I hope people enjoy this and I would like to encourage people to respond with questions, comments, ideas and anything else.
Scipio