The Treatment of Traitors’ Children and Edward IV’s Clemency in the 1460s

Summary

Edward IV's reputation for clemency remains intact amongst modern historians. Charles Ross wrote ‘His record of mercy to his enemies is quite remarkable in a ruthless age’, Christine Carpenter has argued that ‘a remarkable degree of mercy was shown’, and while Simon Payling, focussing more on the gentry and the attainders of 1461, has recently questioned the level of conciliation, he does describe a ‘politic but limited magnanimity’. There is also general agreement as to why Edward behaved in the way he did: Ross argues that ‘clemency was also dictated by policy, by the need to widen the basis of support for his regime, especially amongst the baronage’, Michael Hicks has discussed the importance to Edward of winning over erstwhile Lancastrians, while Rosemary Horrox has argued ‘Given the narrowness of his power base in 1461, such a policy had obvious practical advantages, but it perhaps also marked a deliberate attempt by the king to restore political life to normality after the factionalism of the previous decade.’ In discussing this policy of conciliation, historians have tended to focus on the restorations of estates and titles to those who had taken up arms against the Yorkists, such as Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, or those who were of age, or near enough, to succeed their traitorous fathers, such as John de Vere, earl of Oxford. Less attention, because less is known, has been paid to young noble children and adolescents, both heirs and younger sons, who lost their fathers in the carnage of the civil war of 1459–61. A little light is shed upon the fate of three such boys by a warrant surviving amongst the remnants of the documents of the privy seal office, now housed at The National Archives. One of these boys is, appropriately, Henry Percy, the subject of Michael Hicks's M.A. dissertation.

The document is a damaged warrant from the king, dated 9 March 1463 and addressed to Robert Stillington, keeper of the privy seal, ordering him to draw up letters to the treasurer and chamberlains of the exchequer to pay £87 11s. 6d. to John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, for his expenses in looking after Henry Percy, son and heir of Henry, third earl of Northumberland, who had been killed at Towton in 1461, and two younger sons of John, earl of Oxford, executed for treason in February 1462.