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Bastard Feudalism, Overmighty Subjects and
Idols of the Multitude during the Wars
of the Roses

MICHAEL HICKS

King Alfred’s College, Winchester

Abstract
A handful of overmighty subjects exercised a disproportionate influence on the events of
the Wars of the Roses. This article considers how and why. Circumstances were certainly
propitious. Not only did the greatest noblemen command exceptional resources of their
own, albeit always less than the king, but they deployed the principal military commands
against the crown and sought to enlist the populace on their side. Successful overmighty
subjects were also idols of the multitude. Generally they failed and almost all died viol-
ently. Their misfortunes, a recovery of royal power and the disappearance of the desire to
disturb the realm all help to explain the demise of their type.

T

he Wars of the Roses is the label applied by historians to a series
of factional struggles and civil wars between roughly 1450 and
1500. Over so long a period the personnel and issues changed. The

wars were not a succession of rounds fought between Lancaster and York,
the red and white roses, on issues of dynastic principle. What the wars
definitely did have in common was the capacity of leading subjects to
threaten and even dethrone the incumbent monarch. English kings were
successfully deposed five times. There were many other serious attempts.

Contemporaries such as the Crowland Continuator attributed much

of the responsibility to a series of overmighty subjects and idols of the
multitude. Chief Justice Fortescue, the foremost political theorist of his
day, discussed the topic on several occasions. Doubting the public spirit
of the magnates, Fortescue sought to exclude them from government
by constitutional means. A section of his Governance of England on ‘the
perils that mowe falle to a king by ovur mighti subgiettes’ explains how
noblemen with more resources than a king ‘aspired to thastate of a prince’
and found it ‘more fesable’ to rebel, since ‘the peopul will go with hym

© The Historical Association 2000. Published by
Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

This article has benefited from comments made at the Conference on Lordship and Clientage in
England and France at York University in 1996 and at the Cambridge University Graduate Medieval
Seminar in 1997 and from the advice of the anonymous referees of this journal.

MICHAEL HICKS

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© The Historical Association 2000

hat beste may sustene and rewarde hem’. It was essential that the ‘kynges
lyveloode, above such revenues as shulne be assigned for his ordinari
charges, biene gretter thanne the lyveloode of the grettest lorde in
Englonde’, but such was not the case: some indeed were ‘double so mighti
as theire olde prince’. There was ‘no gretter perile’ for ‘a prince thanne
tahave a subgiet equilopolente to hym selfe’.

1

Though a minority view in

his own day, Fortescue’s arguments appealed strongly to such Victorian
constitutional historians as James Gairdner, Charles Plummer, Bishop
Stubbs and William Denton, who attributed much of the blame to the
great nobility and their enormous retinues, and to their twentieth-century
successors.

2

Such arguments were summarily dismissed by K. B. McFarlane

in his 1964 Raleigh lecture to the British Academy. ‘Only undermighty
kings had anything to fear from overmighty subjects’, he proclaimed. ‘And
if he [the king] were undermighty, his personal lack of fitness was the
cause, not the weakness of his office and its resources.’

3

Though the causes

of royal undermightiness have been much explored and even disputed,

4

McFarlane’s downgrading of the significance of the magnates has been
generally accepted. This article contends that there were indeed over-
mighty subjects during the Wars of the Roses. It seeks also to explain
how and why.

This article does not explain why the Wars of the Roses happened or

why they lasted so long. The circumstances that enabled overmighty
subjects to flourish are obviously relevant, however. One factor was the
weakness of contemporary kings. That four kings were dislodged, one
twice, was not because they were all deficient in character, but was at-
tributable in part to international, financial and dynastic weaknesses.
After a period of anomalous ascendancy, England was again a minor
player on the international stage. England suffered more than a dozen
invasions across the sea and the Scottish borders, usually backed by
foreign powers, and those invasions of 1460, 1470, 1471 and 1485 were
successful. Royal revenues diminished to about half those of Richard II
or Henry V. Ordinary expenses remained. All the monarchs lacked the
spare resources to throw against external threats and to maintain the
armies and fleets necessary to deter, prevent or defeat invasions. Finally,
kings could not count on their subjects against invasions and rebellions.
Calls for government reform, at their strongest before 1461, were sup-
plemented thereafter and ultimately supplanted by rival dynastic claims.

1

Crowland Chronicle Continuations 1459–1486, ed. Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (1986) [here-

after Crowland Continuations], p. 147; The Politics of Fifteenth-century England: John Vale’s Book,
ed. M. Lucille Kekewich et al. (Stroud, 1995) [hereafter Vale’s Book], pp. 235–7.

2

Michael Hicks, Richard III and his Rivals: Magnates and their Motives during the Wars of the Roses

(1991), pp. 3–5. This view culminated in Robin L. Storey’s massively documented End of the House
of Lancaster (1966).

3

K. B. McFarlane, ‘The Wars of the Roses’, England in the Fifteenth Century (1981), pp. 238–9.

4

See, for example, A. J. Gross, ‘K. B. McFarlane and the Determinists: The Fallibilities of the English

Kings, c.1399–c.1520’, The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed.
R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard (Stroud, 1995) [hereafter McFarlane Legacy], ch. 3.

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All the kings after 1461 were usurpers of doubtful legitimacy whose
authority was suspect in the face of rival titles.

5

It was difficult to guard

against external invasions that could fall (and did) anywhere around the
coastline of England and Wales or against dynastically unreliable sub-
jects whose identity and geographical concentrations were uncertain or
concealed. Such issues form the context within which overmighty subjects
operated and which permitted them to flourish.

This article concentrates on a succession of magnates (great noblemen)

as listed below:

1450–61: Richard, duke of York (ex. 1460); his heir Edward, earl of

March and duke of York who succeeded as King Edward IV (1461–
83); and the two Neville earls, Richard, earl of Salisbury (k. 1460) and
his son Richard, earl of Warwick (k. 1471), the kingmaker.

1469–71: Warwick and his son-in-law, Edward IV’s brother, George, duke

of Clarence (ex. 1478).

1471–83: Clarence; his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, later Richard III

(1483–5); and Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham (ex. 1483).

1483–5: Thomas Lord Stanley, later earl of Derby (d. 1504), and Sir

William Stanley (ex. 1495).

1485–1509: The De La Poles, the brothers John, earl of Lincoln (k. 1487)

and Edmund, earl of Suffolk (ex. 1513).

Not all of these noblemen possessed all the criteria outlined below,

certainly not the De La Poles, and not all can be regarded as successful
examples of their type. Endeavour rather than success is the necessary
criterion for selection. Opposition to the crown, a willingness to disturb
the realm and a track record for doing so are all essential qualifications.
There were at all times other magnates with the power to upset the realm
who lacked the desire to do so and who featured rather as lions under
the throne. Some obvious examples are Humphrey, duke of Buckingham
(k. 1460), John Howard, duke of Norfolk (k. 1485), and after 1485
Thomas, earl of Derby, Jasper Tudor, duke of Bedford (d. 1495) and
Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey (later duke of Norfolk, d. 1524). William,
duke of Suffolk (k. 1450) and William Lord Hastings (ex. 1483) carried
little weight apart from the court. All these leading figures are specifi-
cally excluded from this study.

The overmighty subject is a phenomenon that does not begin or end

with the Wars of the Roses. Fortescue himself identified Simon de
Montfort, earl of Leicester (d. 1265) as an earlier instance.

6

Thomas of

Lancaster (ex. 1322) and Roger Mortimer, earl of March (d. 1330) were
perhaps the most conspicuous examples before the term came into vogue.
John Dudley, duke of Northumberland (ex. 1554), lord protector to
Edward VI and kingmaker to Lady Jane Grey, is a later instance. The

5

As pointed out by Dr Helen Castor.

6

Vale’s Book, p. 236.

MICHAEL HICKS

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conditions of the Wars of the Roses were especially propitious for the
activities of overmighty subjects.

I

The Wars of the Roses were fought between kings and the heads of the
greatest noble houses, the magnates. How did the latter raise their armies?
The traditional answer is through bastard feudalism: through those men
bound to them by ties of service whom they deployed upon the battlefield.
The nobility were able to raise whole armies through combining the reti-
nues that every nobleman possessed. Retinues combined the members of
the noble household, the tenants of their lands, members of the gentry or
extraordinary retainers, accompanied by their own households and ten-
ants; and, perhaps for hostilities only, others (who could be numerous)
identified only by a lord’s livery and badges. Existing chains of command,
within the household, on the estate, through the sub-retinues of extra-
ordinary retainers, enabled them to be mustered quickly and deployed
in battle.

Bastard feudalism has been defined ‘as the set of relationships with

their social inferiors that provided the English aristocracy with the man-
power they required’.

7

It is thus a label applied to a series of mechanisms.

The same mechanisms modified or different mechanisms delivered man-
power at other times. In this period the male members of the household
were bound to their lords by particularly intimate ties and may indeed
have been recruited for their military potential. For the tenants, who made
up the bulk of the rank and file, obedience may have counted for more
than loyalty and could commonly be assumed. The extraordinary retainers
were commonly gentry, aristocratic landlords, lords and heads of house-
hold on a smaller scale and men of local standing, who were retained by
private contracts such as indentures, benefited from fees and good lord-
ship, and who were expected to bring their own dependants with them
whether in peace or war. A lord always had his household with him: a
great lord such as Clarence might recruit it from all over his far-flung
estates.

8

Tenants and estate officials, however, were distinctly local re-

sources. It is not particularly difficult to plot on maps the location of
estates and thus of the retinues of many lords, as Chris Given-Wilson has
done;

9

contemporaries were clear about the local roots of particular lords

and their spheres of influence. Extraordinary retainers might reinforce a
nobleman’s power in his area of strength, such as Warwick on the west
March in the early 1460s,

10

though a nobleman’s natural ascendancy could

7

Michael Hicks, Bastard Feudalism (1995) [hereafter Hicks, Bastard Feudalism], p. 1. For what

follows, see ibid., pp. 43–68.

8

Michael Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence: George Duke of Clarence 1449–78 (rev. edn.,

Bangor, 1992) [hereafter Hicks, Clarence], pp. 168–9.

9

Chris Given-Wilson, English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (1987), pp. xii–xxii.

10

Michael Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker (Oxford, 1998) [hereafter Hicks, Warwick], pp. 237, 241.

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ensure dominance and dependence without such formal ties. Alternatively,
they could extend a lord’s authority into areas beyond his own estates
where otherwise he was weak.

All aristocrats – nobility, gentry and indeed the king – engaged in

bastard feudal relationships, some both as lords and men, and enjoyed
these resources to widely varying degrees. Bastard feudalism was power.
England was a mixed monarchy in which power was shared between
crown and aristocracy. Undoubtedly the nobility, and still more obviously
the nobility and gentry together, commanded far more manpower than
the king. Admittedly the household and estates of the king were larger
than those of any individual, but he could not maintain direct personal
links with all his servants and tenants, who often indeed had other stronger
associations in the shires, and inevitably his dependants were widely dis-
persed rather than conveniently concentrated. His moral authority as king
to everyone gave him a prime claim to everyone’s allegiance: theoretically
everybody’s retainers were his own. This was his strongest card in pre-
venting and defusing rebellion; sufficing for Henry VI at Ludford in 1459,
though less effective in this era than before and after. In practice, the
nobility and gentry did not ever combine all their resources against the
crown. The only occasions when almost everyone appeared on the same
side, as in 1459 and 1470, was in support of a king who had apparently
won. Even the greatest of English magnates could not compare with the
great feudatories of contemporary France such as the dukes of Brittany
and Bourbon or of other federal states where the nobility actually ruled
whole provinces. The incomes of even the richest of English magnates,
York, Warwick or Buckingham, were only a fraction of those of any king.
A king should therefore have been able to cope easily with any of them
without recourse to his moral authority.

It was therefore in alliances, as factions, that recalcitrant nobles made

their power count. Substantial numbers of noblemen were involved in
most of the set-piece battles, though it was not always the largest army
that won. Kings regnant were defeated by forces containing fewer peers at
the first battle of St Albans (1455), Northampton (1460), Towton (1461)
and Bosworth (1485). But the wars were not merely or perhaps even pre-
dominantly about pitched battles. There were three other more common
scenarios where the moral supremacy of the king could be overcome by
force: by exploiting surprise, by coercive petitioning and by passive re-
sistance. In each case kings could be placed at a disadvantage vis-à-vis
their subjects or reduced to equal terms. To negotiate, as Edward IV
complained, was to disturb the proper relationship between the king who
commanded and condescended and the subject who should obey, solicit
and supplicate. Not to bend, however, was to precipitate further conflict
and bloodshed. It was only in the last quarter of his reign, after the
destruction of Clarence, that Edward was able to confront his greatest
subjects and challenge them to their faces.

11

11

Crowland Continuations, p. 147.

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Bastard feudalism had a role in every scenario. Manpower was needed

for the field of battle, for ambushes and stratagems, for forceful petition-
ing and passive resistance. Bastard feudal mechanisms, exploited skilfully,
could deliver manpower in varying numbers and equipped for different
tasks quickly, secretly and efficiently. Yet they could not be taken for
granted, as Henry Vernon demonstrated in 1471 when both Warwick and
Clarence were disappointed in support that they had taken for granted.

12

Buckingham suffered the same experience in 1483: the Staffords were
unpopular with their Welsh tenants and at odds with the Vaughans of
Tretower.

13

Competence mattered too. All York’s advantages proved to

no avail when ambushed at Wakefield in 1460.

Of course, bastard feudalism was not the sole source of men. As

Anthony Goodman has shown, corporate towns supplied contingents for
the main campaigns, small in number both individually and in sum total,
but well organized and well equipped. There were also the much more
numerous shire levies raised by commissions of array.

14

In theory they

were available only to existing authorities, the government of the day, to
which they constituted a massive resource, though one that was relatively
slow to deploy. They were more useful for defence than for attack. Such
commissions were also important in turning out bastard feudal retinues
of almost every type. Commissions of array gave royal support to the levy
of troops. They gave a legality and a legitimacy to such levies and ensured
that they were compatible with a retainer’s primary allegiance to the
crown: a theoretical and legal priority that was often a reality. But not
always. In 1460, 1470 and 1471 noblemen led such levies into the oppos-
ing camp. It was in shrewd distrust of Warwick’s real motives that his
west midlanders declined to muster in the spring of 1470.

15

One of the

principal obstacles for even the overmightiest of subjects was to reassure
his retainers and shire levies of his loyalty. Without such reassurance, they
could not be successfully recruited nor safely employed, with potentially
fatal consequences.

II

The various scenarios did not depend for effectiveness on the deployment
of all or even large sections of the nobility. The same result could be
achieved by individuals or small groups of nobles who were able to con-
centrate overwhelming force in particular places or at particular times.
Bastard feudal lords were not all equal. The income tax returns of 1436
reveal a steep pyramid from a horde of minor gentlemen on around

12

Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of the Duke of Rutland (1888) [hereafter HMC

Rutland ], i. 4.

13

Carole Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham 1394 –1521 (Cam-

bridge, 1978) [hereafter Rawcliffe, Staffords], pp. 33–4.

14

Anthony Goodman, Wars of the Roses (1981), pp. 202–3.

15

Ibid., p. 140; ‘Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire, 1470’, ed. John G. Nichols, Camden

Miscellany (1847) [hereafter ‘Chron. Lincolnshire’], i. 11.

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£10 a year, through the wealthiest gentry and poorest barons on a few
hundred pounds a year to the richer earls on anything between £1,200
and £2,500 and the greatest magnates far above that level. At his peak
Richard, duke of York may have enjoyed £5,800 net from his lands, his
brother-in-law Humphrey, duke of Buckingham £5,020, and Richard
Beauchamp, earl of Warwick £4,400. Of the two Nevilles, Salisbury and
his mother were assessed at £1,903 in 1436 but were actually worth much
more, and Warwick, ultimately, may have been in receipt of £12,000, much
of it from other sources. Clarence’s income has been estimated at £3,400
in 1467, £6,000 in 1473, and £4,500 in 1478.

16

Probably his brother

Gloucester had rather more. Though of the same class, the magnates were
several times wealthier than their greatest peers and several hundredfold
more than the parish gentry. York could outspend half a dozen earls or
a dozen barons.

The different ranks were expected to live in the style appropriate to

their station. This meant that the bottom levels of each rank spent their
whole income maintaining their status: manning households, buying
attire, keeping horses, offering hospitality, equipping chapels, collecting
jewels, and resourcing retainers to the numbers and quality commen-
surate with their status. To be a poor duke like Henry Holland, duke of
Exeter,

17

a poor earl or a poor baron was to be under constant financial

strain with little to spare for other things. John, duke of Suffolk, as poor
as dukes could be, did not attend the parliament of 1471 because he could
not procure an escort or household splendid enough.

18

The De La Poles

indeed were never overmighty in bastard feudal terms. A York, Warwick
the kingmaker or Clarence could afford more of everything. York owned
a jewelled collar worth 4,000 marks (£2,666 13s 4d), twice the endow-
ment of a duke, and paid fees of £900, more than the qualifying income
for an earl. Buckingham’s household in 1444 cost him £2,200 and
Clarence’s riding household of 188 alone was three times as numerous
as that of Lord Grey of Ruthin or that of Lord Howard in 1467.

19

That

the smaller resources of a lesser peer were so largely committed and that
the magnates had much more free for disposal exaggerated the differences
between their incomes. Their spending power and credit far exceeded even
that of their immediate inferiors.

To take Warwick the kingmaker as an example, we know of substan-

tial retinues that he brought from the west midlands and south Wales to

16

Hicks, Warwick, pp. 19, 227; Hicks, Clarence, pp. 2, 164.

17

Michael Stansfield, ‘John Holland, Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon (d. 1447) and the

Costs of the Hundred Years War’, Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed.
Michael Hicks (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 105, 111, 115; T. Brynmor Pugh, ‘Richard Duke of York and
the Rebellion of Henry, Duke of Exeter, in May 1454’, Historical Research [hereafter HR], lxiii (1990),
249–51; Simon J. Payling, ‘The Ampthill Dispute: A Study in Aristocratic Lawlessness and in the
Breakdown of Lancastrian Government’, English Historical Review, civ (1989), 883–4.

18

Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483, ed. Charles L. Kingsford (Camden Society, 3rd series, xxix,

xxx, 1919) [hereafter Stonor Letters], i. 117.

19

Hicks, Clarence, pp. 2, 169; Hicks, Bastard Feudalism, pp. 45, 47.

MICHAEL HICKS

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the Leicester parliament and against Cade in 1450, against York in 1452,
to the Percy–Neville feud in Yorkshire in 1453, to parliament early in
1454, and to the first battle of St Albans in 1455. In 1483 John Rous
observed of Henry, duke of Buckingham that ‘so many men had not worn
the same badge since Richard Neville, earl of Warwick.’ Warwick’s badge
of the bear and ragged staff was reportedly everywhere in London and
Calais in 1470–1. Warwick’s household was just as impressive. ‘The which
Erle’, we are told, ‘was evyr hadd in Grete ffavour of the commonys of
this lond. By Reson of the excedyng howsold which he dayly kepid In
alle Cuntrees where evyr he sojournyd or laye.’ His retinue was remark-
able: ‘After that the Erle of warwyke toke to hyme in fee as many
knyghtys, squyers, and gentylmenne as he might, to be strong.’ Warwick
in short was retaining additional gentry in the late 1460s for political
purposes, just as earlier, in 1461–2, he was recruiting northerners flat out
to fight the Lancastrians and Scots in the west March. His estate records
have largely disappeared, but his accounts for Warwick in 1451–2 reveal
several new appointments and annuities; so do those for Middleham in
1465–6. And he maintained, besides, his own train of ordnance and his
own squadron of ships, second among contemporary Englishmen only
to that of the fabled Bristolian William Canynges.

20

Warwick was not alone. Following the battle of Heworth in 1453, 710

retainers and tenants of the Percies were indicted: their conquerors, the
Nevilles, did not have less. Clarence carried 4,000 men across to Edward
IV in 1471. Their father York was recruiting more gentry by indenture
in September 1460 to assist his bid for the crown. Buckingham took on
new men in 1483, including those of the executed Lord Hastings.

21

Such

magnates commanded much greater resources than ordinary earls and
dukes like the De La Poles. By choosing the right moment, they could
make them count for even more. Though the Stanleys dominated Lan-
cashire and Cheshire, they were notorious for their careful decisions: they
did not act in 1459 and 1470 when circumstances appeared unpromising
and it was only their carefully disguised casting vote in 1485 that dem-
onstrated an overmightiness that was not to be repeated. In practice, of
course, it was almost impossible to deploy all one’s resources. As they
derived from lands, and lands derived from the accidents of inheritance,
they were too widespread. York was the greatest magnate in Wales and
Ireland and had significant estates in East Anglia, Northamptonshire and
Lincolnshire, and south Yorkshire. Warwick’s principal concentrations
were in Cumberland and the west riding, the west midlands, south Wales,
and central southern England, other manors being scattered thinly across

20

Hicks, Warwick, pp. 44–50, 81–2, 89, 93, 115–16, 227, 237, 250–1, 265, 304; John Warkworth,

Chronicle of the First Thirteen Years of King Edward IV, ed. John O. Halliwell (Camden Society, 1839),
vi. 3–4.

21

Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV in England and the Finall Recouerye of his kingdome from

Henry VI, ed. J. Bruce (Camden Society, i, 1838) [hereafter The Arrivall ], p. 11; ‘Private Indentures
for Life Service in Peace and War’, ed. Michael C. E. Jones and Simon K. Walker, Camden Miscel-
lany, xxx (Camden Society, 5th series, 1994), iii. 164–5; Stonor Letters, ii. 161.

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almost every other county. Initially basing himself at Tutbury in Stafford-
shire, Clarence came to commute from Warwick via Tewkesbury to
Tiverton in Devon.

22

The Yorkists had to manage without their northern

retainers in 1460–1 and Warwick failed to join up with his Kentish sup-
porters in 1471. Almost all overmighty subjects, however, had another
advantage over other noblemen that set them apart. They were massively
subsidized by the crown.

All noblemen sought royal patronage to enhance their status, reputa-

tions, incomes and/or inheritances. These ranged from the great honorary
offices, such as steward or great chamberlain of England, through min-
isterial posts such as lord treasurer and posts at court to military com-
mands, custodies of estates and estate offices. Most if not all noblemen
at some time were constables of royal castles and stewards of royal
estates that enabled them to exercise royal authority and patronage in the
locality and brought in small but not insignificant accretions to their
incomes. The political value of York’s constableships in south Wales far
exceeded the fees of £40 with which he was compensated with an annuity
in 1457.

23

Such offices could be sinecures. More important and long-lived

magnates could amass a portfolio of such offices. No previous magnate
had ever enjoyed such a massive grant of offices in Wales as Henry, duke
of Buckingham in 1483. He was appointed chief justice and chamberlain
of north and south Wales and constable and steward of every castle
and lordship of the crown and duchy of Lancaster. The fees alone ran
to hundreds of pounds.

24

Wales was still governed as a border region

in which marcher lords and their officers enjoyed exceptional powers.
Buckingham alone was to replace the council of Wales. He would have
appointed deputies who owed their advancement to himself and would
have governed through them. He had little time to make his possession
into a reality. Of his two predecessors, William, earl of Pembroke led a
Welsh force to disastrous defeat at Edgecote in 1469 and Anthony, earl
Rivers was restricted to 2,000 men as escort for the young Edward V in
1483.

Far more significant were the roles of the Nevilles, Percies and Gloucester

as wardens of the marches towards Scotland. As the king’s represen-
tatives they too were entitled to the obedience of the king’s subjects in
the borders, whom on occasion they committed to domestic politics, and
exercised marcher law over them. These offices were sources of prestige
and essential components in their regional hegemonies. Wardens were
entitled to substantial pay from the crown even in peacetime which they
sought to maximize. From a nadir of £983 in 1443 – still one and a half
times the income of an earl – the Nevilles managed to increase their
peacetime pay as wardens in the west to £1,250 by 1455, as much as

22

Hicks, Clarence, pp. 15, 168, 179.

23

Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1452–61 [hereafter CPR], pp. 245, 340.

24

CPR, 1476–85, pp. 349–50, 361; Robert Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster (1953), i.

640–2, 648; Rawcliffe, Staffords, p. 31.

MICHAEL HICKS

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Salisbury’s net income from land in 1436. This was also Gloucester’s rate.
Unlike their Percy rivals, the Nevilles had particular revenues appropri-
ated for their salaries and ensured that they were paid. Henry VI and
Edward IV gave priority to funding the armaments that were subsequently
used against them. The wardens paid their lieutenants only one-third to
deputize.

25

To be fair, we cannot properly study their budgets, and any

balance received into their coffers could have been counter-acted by
building works at Carlisle and other castles and the high level of fees on
their estates. Warwick would certainly have lived poorly since only 75 per
cent of income remained to cover all other expenses after payment of
fees!

26

Wardens were expected to recruit their own forces; indeed in 1468

the wardens were explicitly exempted from new legislation on retaining.

27

They drew recruits almost exclusively from the north, from Durham and
Yorkshire as well as the borders, which enabled them to patronize and
dominate well beyond the strict bounds of their military commands.

In time of war, the sums were doubled: there were wars with Scotland

when the enhanced sums were due in 1461–4 and 1480–3, but there were
also obviously extra costs, not least the feeing of a gunner and other
retainers. Warwick’s brother John, earl of Northumberland was being
paid £6,000 a year in 1464.

28

At such times the wardens were more likely

to reside in person and take command. Salisbury’s northerners were
brought south to fight at St Albans and were marched across the mid-
lands to Blore Heath, where they defeated the royal army of Lords Audley
and Dudley, and the rout at Ludford. Warwick, who had been lieutenant
of the north in the early 1460s, raised the men of Richmondshire for the
Edgecote campaign in 1469, tried again in March 1470 and succeeded in
August; a local contingent was at Barnet on 14 April and Richmondshire
and Carlisle were in arms again later in 1471.

29

Warwick’s son-in-law

Gloucester also benefited from a near-monopoly of official authority, a
substantial subsidy and the advantage of being the obvious avenue of
royal patronage to build up his power in the north and arrogate to him-
self lordship over the northern peerage even including the earls. He too
was lieutenant of the north. In 1483 parliament granted him the heredi-
tary wardenship of the west March and palatine authority in Cumberland
and as much of Scotland as he could conquer. His northern army over-
awed court and capital in June 1483.

30

It was the connections that he had

25

Robin L. Storey, ‘Wardens of the Marches of England towards Scotland 1377–1489’, EHR, lxxxiii

(1957) [hereafter Storey, ‘Wardens’], 605–7; idem, The End of the House of Lancaster (2nd edn.,
Gloucester, 1986), pp. 116–17.

26

Anthony J. Pollard, ‘The Northern Retainers of Richard Nevill, Earl of Salisbury’, Northern

History, xi (1976), 64–5.

27

Michael Hicks, ‘The 1468 Statute of Livery’, HR, lxiv (1991), 21.

28

Storey, ‘Wardens’, 615n.

29

Anthony J. Pollard, ‘Lord FitzHugh’s Rising in 1470’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical

Research, li (1979), 170–5; HMC Rutland, i. 4; Hicks, Warwick, pp. 116, 163, 276–7, 285, 295; The
Arrivall, i. 31–2; ‘Chron. Lincolnshire’, 16; CPR, 1461–7, pp. 214–16, 277.

30

Michael Hicks, Richard III: The Man Behind the Myth (1991) [hereafter Hicks, Richard III ],

pp. 53–6, 59–62, 73.

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forged as figurehead of Richard III’s council of the north that John, earl
of Lincoln sought to mobilize for the Stoke campaign in 1487. Support-
ing such military commands was financially burdensome for kings as well
as politically dangerous. To some extent Edward IV and Richard III,
and more systematically Henry VII, sought to make the borders self-
supporting and to squeeze the profits out of the posts.

Warwick was also captain of Calais from 1455, keeper of the seas from

1457, and warden of the Cinque Ports and constable of Dover from 1460.
Together these constituted a constellation of military and maritime
offices that made him particularly powerful in the south-east, in Kent and
Sussex which provisioned Calais, and also in the west country which
appears to have furnished much of the shipping. Almost all the crown’s
customs revenues were appropriated to him to defend the seas and Calais.
He was contracted to raise ships and seamen and to enlist a personal crew
(bodyguard) 300 strong at royal expense.

31

We know about his ships and

their masters.

32

What little we know about the chief officers of Calais,

recipients of protections and those pardoned in 1471 suggests that around
a core of longstanding retainers (Worsley, Gate) Warwick recruited on a
national basis. Apart from a handful of residents of Calais (Whetehill)
and others who were French (Duras, Galet), we know of Otters and Colts
from Yorkshire, Blounts from Derbyshire, Wrottesleys from Staffordshire,
and a Courtenay of Powderham from Devon.

33

Though regrettably poorly

documented, the Calais garrison was probably the most valuable patron-
age available to any contemporary nobleman and brought service and
loyalty to its captain personally at the same time as diminishing resources
available to the crown. Apart from his substantial salary from Calais,
Warwick surely retained a margin from the £3,000 he enjoyed as keeper
of the seas, and from the perquisites and £300 that he drew as warden
and constable. Unfortunately, we cannot know how he spent them.

34

Most

of this money was actually paid; not only was Warwick reimbursed, unlike
his immediate predecessors as captain of Calais, he also received the first
instalment of £1,742 in advance.

35

His credit even in exile was sufficient

for him to borrow £3,580 from the staplers.

36

Such authority had been available to previous holders of these offices,

but they had not held them in combination, had seldom resided, had
usually regarded them as sinecures to be exercised by deputy, and had
suffered from non-payment that had provoked repeated mutinies.York
had never secured admittance to Calais at all. The enormous arrears
of pay (£58,000) were paid off before Warwick took up office and the

31

Hicks, Warwick, pp. 138–48.

32

Ibid., pp. 250–1.

33

Ibid., pp. 248, 252; CPR, 1467–77, pp. 290–2.

34

CPR, 1461–7, p. 45; Hicks, Warwick, p. 141; Gerald L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais: An Aspect

of the Rivalry of Lancaster and York’, EHR, lxxv (1960), 45.

35

Hicks, Warwick, p. 141.

36

Michael K. Jones, ‘Edward IV, the Earl of Warwick, and the Yorkist Claim to the Throne’, HR,

lxx (1997), 342–52, esp. 351–2.

MICHAEL HICKS

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customs were appropriated for future wages which, though quickly in
arrears, were blamed on the government and not the captain. The earl
resided almost continually at Calais from 1457 to 1460 and visited frequently
thereafter, when he remained closely interested through his deputies and
diplomats. The earl’s attacks on foreign shipping brought action and profits
to the garrison, mariners and Kentish suppliers and earned him popularity
in maritime and mercantile circles throughout London and the south-east.
Warwick was thus the most powerful magnate for many years in south-
eastern England. King Henry found it impossible to dismiss him.

37

Warwick was also unique in that he applied such forces to English

politics. He brought a substantial escort of 600 to the Loveday of St Paul’s
in 1458 and invaded England from Calais in 1459, 1460 and 1469. He
was received and joined by the Kentishmen and admitted by the Lon-
doners on each occasion. Exiled in 1459, Warwick returned to Calais and
made it into his base and his springboard for invasion. Though some
would not support him against his allegiance, deserting him at Ludford
and holding the castle of Guines for the king, most of the garrison backed
him and lynched former colleagues who fell into their hands. Besides
Calais, Warwick had his fleet, which enabled him to deny supplies and
reinforcements to Guines. It carried him to Ireland, forced the lord
admiral to avoid battle, twice raided Sandwich to the destruction of the
king’s expeditionary forces, and finally conveyed him to England. When
history repeated itself in 1470, the exiled Warwick was unable to secure
entrance to Calais, but the bastard of Fauconberg carried his ships across
to the earl. It was these ships that gave Warwick mobility, independence
and initiative, that won him publicity and discounted the supposition that
he was finished, promoted the rupture between France and Burgundy
that made his return to England possible, and finally conveyed his army
to their bridgehead. In 1471 Calais was to be the earl’s base for a war
of aggression against Burgundy.

38

The men of Calais and Kent joined

Fauconberg’s Kentish rising against Edward IV in the aftermath of
Warwick’s death.

39

Richard, duke of York illustrates some of the same points. His appoint-

ments as lieutenants of France and Ireland and captain of Calais brought
him prestige and political credibility. Nominally they brought him sub-
stantial incomes – £2,000 from Ireland – which were seldom paid: failing
payment, in 1450 he threatened to lay down office, and the enormous
debts that he accrued, which caused him considerable embarrassment,
were attributable at least in part to expenditure that the crown could not
refund.

40

Residence in Ireland, where he made both friends and enemies,

37

Hicks, Warwick, pp. 154–5.

38

Ibid., pp. 133, 162–3, 177, 276–7; Hicks, Clarence, p. 35.

39

The Arrivall, pp. 33–9.

40

T. Brynmor Pugh, ‘Richard Plantagenet (1411–60), Duke of York, as the King’s Lieutenant in

France and Ireland’, Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Society, ed. John G. Rowe (Toronto,
1986), pp. 125–6; Paul A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York 1411–60 (Oxford, 1988) [hereafter Johnson,
York], pp. 54–64, 69–70.

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brought him a reputation and a following there that was to stand him in
good stead. In 1450 he was to re-enter England in defiance of royal wishes
and take command of the reformers. In 1459 he fled to Ireland, turned his
nominal lieutenancy into real political control and made Ireland into the
base for his return. The Irish parliament accepted him. He executed his
principal rival, received Warwick and planned his conquest of England,
and duly returned unmolested to the mainland when victory was won.

41

His second son Clarence, also lieutenant but non-resident, considered
exploiting his father’s popularity by fleeing to Ireland in 1470, but decided
against it. York’s supposed grandson and Clarence’s supposed son, Lam-
bert Simnel, was accepted at his own valuation in Ireland. It was from
there with an Irish force that he launched his ill-fated Stoke campaign.

Yet York’s most important royal offices were his three protectorates

of England: in 1454–5, the creation of parliament during Henry VI’s
insanity; briefly in 1455–6, again the creation of parliament; and in 1460
under the Act of Accord that assured him the throne after Henry VI’s
death and rule during his life. The office of lord protector was not a
regency, but was supposedly limited to leadership in defence and of the
council which York certainly took on. Moreover, the protectorate enabled
York to secure preference at the exchequer and to bestow office on him-
self and his allies. He was licensed to recruit retainers at public expense.
Royal authority was used to still his opponents. He held judicial sessions
supposedly in the interests of justice, but also to strike at his enemies:
followers of the Percies were indicted for their feud with his Neville allies,
and Thomas Lord Egremont was fined to his utter ruin. Parliament was
induced to rehabilitate York and his co-conspirators of 1452 and to sanc-
tion an official version of the battle of St Albans that rehabilitated the
Yorkists and placed the blame on their foes. A draconian act of resump-
tion was intended to dispossess the queen, the king’s half-brothers and
their adherents.

42

Moreover, York was to be paid the rate for the job. In

1454–6 he was awarded 2,000 marks (£1,333 6s 8d) a year. In 1460, when
he was acknowledged additionally as heir apparent, the duke was to re-
ceive 10,000 marks (£6,666 13s 4d) and his elder sons 4,000 marks (£2,666
13s 4d) and 1,000 marks (£666 13s 4d) respectively.

43

The Act of Accord

bestowed on him the moral high ground, made him into the ruler, gave
him possession of the administration, capital and all the resources of
the crown. Though insufficient to save York, they gave the initiative to
his son, whom Queen Margaret tried and failed to dislodge, and made
it possible for him to become king. Similarly, the protectorate placed
Gloucester in control of resources and events. It enabled him to act as a
king and to make himself king.

Most overmighty subjects were not only the greatest of bastard feudal

lords, but were also directly subsidized by the crown. It was as warden

41

Johnson, York, pp. 196–201, 210–11.

42

Ibid., pp. 133, 141–4, 163, 172–3; Hicks, Warwick, p. 125.

43

Rolls of Parliament, ed. J. Strachey et al. (6 vols., 1777) [hereafter Rolls of Parliament], v. 244.

MICHAEL HICKS

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of the west March in 1455, as captain of Calais and keeper of the seas
in 1460, as king’s lieutenants in the north, and as lords protector that
Salisbury, Warwick, Gloucester, York and even Lincoln intervened so
decisively in politics. Henry VI hesitated to destroy such great men and
Edward IV dared not do so until after the fall of Clarence. York, War-
wick, Simnel, Lincoln and Warbeck all used bases overseas beyond the
king’s reach from where their invasions could be launched; Clarence might
have done the same. They were of interest to foreign powers that were
prepared to back them. It was as protector of England and captor of the
resources of the crown that York in 1460, his son in 1461, and Gloucester
in 1483 sought to complete their revolutions.

III

The Wars of the Roses were not merely a contest in which the greatest
bastard feudal lords overwhelmed hordes of their lesser neighbours.
Edward IV’s execution of his brother Clarence in 1478 was significant,
the Crowland Continuator records, because henceforth he could rule at
his pleasure ‘now that all those idols had been destroyed to whom the
eyes of the common folk, ever eager for change, used to turn in times
gone by. They regarded the earl of Warwick, the duke of Clarence and
any other great man who withdrew from the royal circle as idols of this
kind.’

44

It is easy to see that the Continuator had in mind York in the

1450s and Warwick in the late 1460s, both of whom removed themselves
or were excluded from court. York claimed to have been excluded from
court and to be seeking only an audience with the king in 1450, 1452,
1455 and 1459; whether he was indeed ‘exiled’ to Ireland remains unsub-
stantiated and a matter of academic debate. Several times what was at
issue was his inability to dominate rather than his exclusion. Warwick’s
breach with the court in the late 1460s culminated in similar claims in
his manifesto of 1469. That the Continuator saw Clarence as the last does
not mean that there were no more in future. Anyway his remark can apply
only up to when he was writing, in 1486. It is perhaps surprising that he
omitted the future Richard III and his henchman Buckingham, ‘the old
royall blode of this realme’, who both courted public opinion and were
allegedly rarely at court.

45

The case for the exclusion of Buckingham is

strong: royal blood and a Wydeville wife had not secured him the offices
and influence that he might have expected. So, too, is that for Lincoln,
who lost the preferments and expectations that he had enjoyed under
King Richard. Gloucester’s supposed exclusion, however, may derive from
the duke himself and deserves no credence. If Gloucester was absent in

44

Crowland Continuations, p. 147.

45

Dominic Mancini, Usurpation of Richard III, ed. C. A. John Armstrong (2nd edn., Gloucester,

1984) [hereafter Mancini, Usurpation], pp. 64–5; York House Books 1460–90, ed. Lorraine C. Attreed
(2 vols., Stroud, 1991), p. 714.

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the north, it was his own preference and on his own business and did
not prevent his presence at parliament or at family rites of passage.

46

For bastard feudalism, royal subsidies and foreign intervention were

not enough to make subjects overmighty. Warwick’s victories in 1460 and
1471 were not built on bastard feudal power nor, in the latter case, on
Calais and the Cinque Ports. When the Yorkists in 1459 and Warwick
in 1471 relied purely on bastard feudal resources, they failed. In 1450
York was able to present himself as the spokesman of an almost univer-
sal movement of parliamentary and popular unrest. When the Yorkists
invaded from Calais in 1460, they were carried forward by a wave of popu-
lar enthusiasm that swept them inexorably into the city and to their tri-
umph at Northampton. When Warwick invaded in 1470, he was joined
by an extraordinary mass of people whereas King Edward was left almost
alone. Even Edward’s victory in 1471, both in his official verses and his
official history, was achieved against the odds, in the teeth of popular will,
and was deservedly ascribed to God’s judgement. Even after Warwick’s
defeat and death, the bastard of Fauconberg was able to raise the Kentish
towns and countryside against the king. On occasion the people turned
out in overwhelming and potentially decisive numbers.

47

No wonder that overmighty subjects thought the people to be worth

courting. York in 1450, Warwick in 1460, Edward IV in 1461,Warwick
and Clarence in 1469–71, Gloucester and Buckingham in 1483, all ap-
pealed successfully over the heads of kings and politicians for popular
support. This could take the form of mass demonstrations and mass
recruitment to armies, of reassurance and of the disarming of potential
opposition. Usually it required professions of loyalty that were tendered
in the most public and solemn manner, though from 1461 loyalty could
be pledged to the dynastic rival of the current king. When such profes-
sions were discredited, for York in 1460 and Gloucester in 1483, there
was a dangerous loss of popular support.

48

Several of the criteria for idols of the multitude have been discussed.

All were of the blood royal: from Jack Cade in 1450 onwards the people
always naïvely reposed their faith in ‘lordys of his ryal blode’ over par-
venues ‘of lower nature . . . broughte up of noughte’.

49

The Mortimer

name and Yorkist legitimacy justified the participation in and domina-
tion of government by York and all his sons.

50

All idols had been excluded

from their rightful say in political issues or at least claimed to have been
so excluded; all distanced themselves from and criticized the government
of the day. Idols thus had much in common with the political saints of

46

Michael Hicks, ‘Richard Duke of Gloucester: The Formative Years’, Richard III: A Medieval

Kingship, ed. John Gillingham (1993), p. 24.

47

Hicks, Warwick, pp. 300–1, 311–12.

48

Ibid., pp. 211–12; Hicks, Richard III, pp. 127–9.

49

Conflated from Isobel M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford, 1991) [hereafter

Harvey, Cade’s Rebellion], p. 187; Vale’s Book, p. 188.

50

Harvey, Cade’s Rebellion, p. 191; Rolls of Parliament, v. 378–9.

MICHAEL HICKS

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which Archbishop Richard Scrope was perhaps the last example.

51

They

had to appeal for popular support. How they did this is for the most part
hidden from us: we have the propagandist letters and manifestos that they
circulated and sometimes second-hand reports, but seldom what they said.
York’s crucial audience with King Henry and the tumultuous events of
the ensuing parliamentary session surely witnessed several speeches, but
none of them is recorded. Little is known of Warwick’s address to con-
vocation in 1460 and nothing of any other speeches. Several speeches are
reported of the young Edward IV, who made the crucial oration prior to
his election and spoke at length from the throne in Westminster Hall, in
each case to his committed supporters. Though the Crowland Continu-
ator speaks of Clarence’s mastery of popular eloquence, we know of no
instance outside the royal council when this was employed, nor, but for
his testimony, that the duke was an idol of the multitude at all! Contem-
poraries credited to Buckingham the orchestration of Gloucester’s acces-
sion, in particular his nomination and acclamation at the Guildhall. We
know of no public speeches by Gloucester. Persuasive though he was, he,
like his father, may have been an insider, at his most effective in council
and behind closed doors, who enlisted public opinion by carefully crafted
public letters and ceremonial symbolism.

The bulk of the illiterate commons must surely have been aroused by

the spoken word, yet this need not have been through formal speeches.
Ceremonial and display had its place: ‘it was by these arts’, observed
Mancini, ‘that Richard acquired the favour of the people.’

52

The people

to be addressed were seldom if ever together in one place; if they were, it
was the result of earlier recruitment. What the idols had to say and to
offer was commonly disseminated in written manifestos that could be
‘read and cried’. We possess many manifestos, open letters and verses
written by various oppositions to government and to supporters in the
south between 1450 and 1483. Regrettably we cannot know how many
copies there were or how widely they were distributed. They were care-
fully tailored to their audiences. Every government of the Wars of the
Roses was charged with evil counsel, cronyism, indebtedness, fiscality,
neglect of justice, disregard and overriding of the commonweal. Each
manifesto additionally cited specific abuses, ranging from the catalogue
of fiscal and judicial abuses in Jack Cade’s Kent, the earl of Wiltshire’s
‘bloody assize’ at Newbury and the Wydevilles’ pursuit of Sir Thomas
Cook, to the sexual debauchery of Edward IV and the infanticide and
incest of his brother.

53

That in every instance support was indeed secured

51

These are discussed in Simon K. Walker, ‘Political Saints in Later Medieval England’, The

McFarlane Legacy, pp. 77–106.

52

Mancini, Usurpation, pp. 64–5.

53

Vale’s Book, pp. 204–22; An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and

Henry VI, ed. J. S. Davies (Camden Society, 1856), lxiv. 90; Rolls of Parliament, vi. 240–1. For com-
mentary, see additionally John L. Watts, ‘Ideas, Principles and Politics’, The Wars of the Roses, ed.
Anthony J. Pollard (Basingstoke, 1995) [hereafter Watts, ‘Ideas, Principles and Politics’], p. 119; Hicks,
Richard III, pp. 83, 146–9.

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suggests that the right note was struck. The accuracy or justice of such
charges seems hardly to be relevant and takes no apparent account of
the reconstruction of authority, probity and solvency from the nadir of
1450. At all times there was a common fund of popular grievances,
whether legitimate or misdirected, to which appeal could be made and
which could be trusted to secure support. Idols of the multitude knew
how to arouse and channel it. Kings feared it. In destroying Empson and
Dudley, was not Henry VIII identifying himself with critics of his father’s
regime and harnessing popular support just as Henry VII himself and
Richard III had done?

Whether the idols of the multitude really shared these grievances, really

lusted for reform or were merely manipulating public opinion is not the
point of this article. It was not necessary to believe one’s own propa-
ganda.

54

Even Richard III made a serious attempt to align himself with

judicial and financial reform. The essential point is that overmighty sub-
jects were able to represent such popular feeling and thus add it to the
resources at their command. If popular enthusiasm could not be kept in
the field indefinitely, it could be translated in the short term into such
numbers that no king or bastard feudal army could resist. No govern-
ment during this period, however well intentioned or reforming, was
exempt from such threats. It was popular hostility to all the governments
of the Wars of the Roses and popular receptiveness to such appeals that
gave real opportunities to overmighty subjects. It was a passing phase
that perhaps began in 1450, ebbed away sometime after 1485, and deserves
a fuller explanation than can be essayed here.

IV

These great men were of several different types. Fortescue himself
accepted that they could even be ‘righte good for the londe’ as long as
they ‘aspire to noon higher degree or estate’ and cited as example John
of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster (d. 1399), the greatest of medieval English
noblemen.

55

The Stanleys were of this type. They possessed the means

to be overmighty, but they lacked the desire. Their instinct for self-
preservation kept them out of the limelight and enabled them repeatedly
to escape commitment. They were not royal and were never candidates
for the crown themselves. If it were not for their decisive intervention at
Bosworth, they would not qualify for discussion at all. The De La Poles,
by contrast, lacked the normal qualifications for overmightiness of per-
sonal resources, offices or popular appeal. They mattered solely because
of the Yorkist blood that made them candidates for the crown, that
appealed to dynastic legitimists and foreign powers, and that made them
pawns in the games of others. It did not allow them the independence or

54

Watts, ‘Ideas, Principles and Politics’, p. 117. Watts’s paper has redefined the terms and signifi-

cance of political debate.

55

Vale’s Book, p. 237.

MICHAEL HICKS

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choices of York or Warwick. They occurred at a late stage when the wars
had assumed a wholly dynastic character that was not the case before.
Most truly overmighty subjects combined the attributes of the Stanleys
and the De La Poles, admittedly in varying proportions.

Overmighty subjects were born not made. All were princes of the blood

royal, lords of great inheritances and/or estates, possessed of a concomi-
tant pride of lineage and sense of superiority. Almost all held high military
commands or vice-regal office. They had to be good communicators, able
to win and persuade their peers, masters of the spoken and written word,
experts in public relations and skilful propagandists. They were the ablest
as well as the greatest of the English nobility. Moreover they were con-
vinced of their capacities to rule more effectively than the government
and were prepared to go to considerable lengths and to take great risks
in order to achieve power. Their ambition and assertiveness, appropriately
described as a lust for power, contrasts sharply with the caution, even
cowardice, of many of their peers. With such leaders and such resources,
their chances of success were really quite favourable. All the overmighty
subjects except the De La Poles staged one successful coup d’état. Seiz-
ing power without taking the crown, however, never worked, or worked
only in the short term. Such coups led only to further attempts that added
further risks. Having tasted power, neither York, nor Warwick, nor Buck-
ingham was content to retire. The very characteristics that had made them
successful also rendered them inflexible and unable to compromise. The
alternatives, further coups or even usurpation of the crown, raised the
stakes and guaranteed no more certain rewards. Of all the overmighty
subjects and idols of the multitude, only Edward IV was to escape a
violent death. If the type disappears, it was not merely less propitious cir-
cumstances and diminished volatility among the people that contributed,
but also an unwillingness among the great to expose themselves and their
families to almost certain disaster. Albeit a short-lived phenomenon, the
overmighty subject did indeed play a central and frequently decisive role
during the Wars of the Roses.