The Beginning of Sorrows
Warwick and Somerset in Wales (1452-53)
On 19 June 1449 Richard Neville attended the Lords and was recognised as Earl of Warwick in the right of his wife Anne, sole heiress of her brother Henry who had died in 1446. Notionally this gave Warwick control over the whole of the vast Beauchamp/Despenser estates consisting of 89 lordships and manors stretched over 39 counties including the Welsh lordships of Glamorgan and Abergavenny.
Warwick enjoyed his estates for barely 18 months before his tenure was challenged by his wife’s older three half-sisters who, through the rights of their husbands, challenged his control over the whole inheritance. The most powerful of these was Eleanor, wife of the king’s chief minister, Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Somerset. Somerset had spent most of his career in France where he had been Count of Mortain, losing his Normandy lands in the campaigns of 1450 when the English were swept out of France and confined to Calais.
Somerset returned to England in October 1450 to political odium and potential poverty since, although a duke, the division of family property gave him an income of scarcely £300 to sustain his ducal status and his ten children. The solution to Somerset’s precarious financial position was to challenge Warwick’s inheritance, particularly in south Wales where he had held important offices since 1433. As Constable of Carmarthen and Cardigan, Somerset controlled the two most important royal castles in south Wales; in addition, as chief steward of the Duchy of Lancaster lands he held the castles of Kidwelly, Monmouth, White Castle, Skenfrith and Grosmont.
Somerset now challenged Warwick’s control over the large and rich lordship of Glamorgan by beginning to move his men into the lordship. Warwick responded in early 1452 by sending war horses there from the Midlands. During this time the lands of the Abbey of Neath were devastated by this conflict and the situation really deteriorated after 15 June 1453 when Somerset was granted half of Glamorgan. In response, Somerset’s local adherents from Carmarthenshire occupied the western part of Glamorgan and evicted the earl's men. The violence escalated and on 19 July William Herbert - Sheriff of Glamorgan and eight others were required to appear before the Royal Council.
Warwick now took matters in hand and, having summoned his retinue, moved towards Wales. By 27 July things were so bad that a report to the Council stated there were ‘gatherings, congregations and assemblies unlawful and the town of Cardiff and the castle and town of Cowbridge were held in great strength as it were a land of war’. Warwick's forces were ejected and he and his men retired. Such was the commotion that Henry VI himself led a Commission of oyer and terminer to investigate these disputes, leaving Westminster for Clarendon on 27 July. The council ordered Glamorgan to be entrusted to a third party - Lord Dudley, until the king arrived. This was ignored by Somerset whose men had pursued Warwick’s men into Cardiff castle. However, Warwick had retired to recruit a retinue from the west Midlands including Fulk Stafford and Henry Flaxhall, steward of his manor of Walsall. On 20 August Warwick was at Tewkesbury in force and by the 24th he and his men were at Cardiff.
It was while he was here that regional events were overtaken by national ones because, sometime between 27 July and 13 October Henry VI collapsed in a ‘fransy’, losing all his mental faculties and ushering in a period of political uncertainty. A major result of this period of conflict in what initially was a family dispute over inheritance, was the realignment of national politics. After the rout at Dartford Richard, Duke of York was socially isolated and politically impotent. Warwick’s conflict with Somerset, Henry’s chief minister, brought Warwick and the Nevilles into alliance with York creating a powerful new opposition to their Beaufort cousin.