| Nationality | Beauchamp, Richard, thirteenth earl of Warwick (1382–1439), magnate, was the eldest son of Thomas Beauchamp, twelfth earl of Warwick (1337x9–1401), and of Margaret (d. 1407), daughter of William, third Lord Ferrers of Groby.
Background and early career
Richard Beauchamp was born at Salwarp, Worcestershire, on 25 or 28 January 1382 and the godparents at his baptism were two other Richards, the king and Richard Scrope, later archbishop of York. Despite this strong ‘Ricardian’ background, Beauchamp identified himself closely with the Lancastrian kings throughout his career, and this is hardly surprising given that the family was almost destroyed by Richard II in 1397–9 and saved only by the accession of Henry IV. During these years Richard Beauchamp was placed in the custody of Thomas Holland, duke of Surrey. He was knighted at Henry IV's coronation in October 1399, and in 1402 was serving the king in Wales against Owain Glyn Dwr even before he received livery of his lands in February 1403. His father had died in April 1401, leaving him heir to a large estate. It was concentrated principally in the west midland counties of Warwickshire and Worcestershire—the Beauchamps were hereditary sheriffs in this county—with residences at Elmley, Worcestershire, and Warwick, but it spread across much of the midlands, with outliers in the south-west, East Anglia, the home counties, and the north, and the office of hereditary chamberlain of the exchequer. However, it was not until 1407 that Warwick inherited his mother's dower lands, which had included several of the west midland properties, Elmley among them. Even so, he was placed on the commission of the peace in Warwickshire and Worcestershire soon after his father's death, before he had livery from either parent. He fought on campaigns in Wales until 1404, and again in 1407, participating in the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, after which, according to the Pageant of the Birth, Life and Death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, he was made a knight of the Garter. His spiritual relationship to Scrope did not prevent him assisting in the archbishop's arrest and trial in 1405. From 1408 to 1410 he travelled abroad, visiting Rome and the Holy Land and returning via eastern Europe, 'And in this Jurney Erle Richard gate hym greet worship at many turnamentes and other faites of warre' (Dillon and Hope, 44): he was indeed a renowned jouster in his youth. On his return he was retained by the prince of Wales with an annuity of 250 marks, the culmination of a relationship initiated during their Welsh campaigns. In May 1410 he was named a royal councillor, his appointment coinciding with the prince's achievement of ascendancy on the royal council. In May 1411 he was a commissioner to treat with the Scots and in September he was on the expedition against the French sponsored by the prince against his father's wishes. But by the time this returned, in late 1411, the king had recovered his power, and Warwick was among those removed from the council in December.
Under Henry IV, Warwick served the house of Lancaster hard and loyally. He was rewarded well, if not spectacularly, notably at the expense of the Mowbrays, with whom the earls of Warwick had a long-standing dispute over the Welsh lordship of Gower, which Richard II had resolved in the Mowbrays' favour in 1397. In 1404 Warwick was given precedence over Thomas (II) Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, and in 1405, after Mowbray's execution for treason, a life grant of Gower. It seems that Henry IV never mistrusted Warwick, even when the earl's friendship with the prince of Wales might have turned the king against him. Henry was, however, characteristically unwilling to allow Warwick's power to expand beyond the west midlands into northern and eastern Warwickshire, which came within the purview of the royal duke of Lancaster, and where the king expected to be locally supreme. Within this relatively restricted region, by the end of the reign Warwick had successfully dealt with the local division and disorder that followed his father's confiscation and Richard II's deposition, and had managed to rebuild the Warwick affinity after the traumas of 1397–9.
Foreign service and local power under Henry V
The accession of Warwick's master, Henry V, in 1413 immediately gave him a new pre-eminence. Among other things, he was steward at Henry's coronation in April, made captain of Calais in February 1414, took part in the repression of Oldcastle's rising in 1414, and was frequently employed on diplomatic missions throughout the reign: for example, he treated with Burgundy and France in July 1413, and was ambassador to the Council of Constance and the German emperor in October 1414. He was at the siege of Harfleur in 1415 but, having been sent to Calais with prisoners, missed the battle of Agincourt. After further military and diplomatic service in 1415–16, he was part of the invasion force for Normandy in 1417 and remained in France with the king until 1421. During this time he was present at several successful sieges, including those of Caen in 1417 and Rouen in 1418–19, where he was chief commissioner for the town's surrender, and he commanded when Domfront and Caudebec were taken in 1418. In February 1419 he was made captain of Beauvais. He was extensively involved in the negotiations leading up to the treaty of Troyes of May 1420. He returned to England with the king and his new queen in early 1421 and was deputy steward at Queen Catherine's coronation in February 1421. In May 1421 he was back in France and victorious with the king at the siege of Meaux in 1421–2, and as independent commander at the sieges of Gamaches and St Valéry-sur-Somme in respectively June and September 1422. He was present at Henry's death at Vincennes on 31 August and named an executor of his will, and accompanied the body of the king back to England at the end of October 1422.
Under Henry V, a king with whom he had almost grown up, and who, through both natural instinct and ambition abroad, was readier to delegate than his father, Warwick flourished. If his only substantial grant was the county of Aumale in Normandy in 1419, and he had indeed to surrender Gower when John (V) Mowbray was restored in 1413, his local sphere of influence widened considerably in these years. It was at this time that he added by purchase to his existing lands in south Staffordshire, that he began to forge closer ties with the gentry in north Warwickshire and Staffordshire, and that, in 1413, he was appointed for the first time to the Staffordshire commission of the peace. It was also during this reign that his links with gentry in east Warwickshire and Leicestershire developed. By the end of the reign, he was becoming a powerful figure over much of the midlands and already demonstrating his capacity for keeping local order, even when abroad, notably with respect to the Montfort inheritance and to the various adventures of the Burdets of Warwickshire and Worcestershire and of his aunt by marriage, Joan Beauchamp, Lady Bergavenny [see under Beauchamp, William (V), first Baron Bergavenny]. His first wife's inheritance, had he been able to secure it in its entirety, would have made him an even more formidable force throughout the west midlands. Warwick had married Elizabeth Berkeley (c. 1386–1422), only daughter and heir of Thomas, fifth Lord Berkeley, before 5 October 1397. On her father's death in 1417 he hoped to obtain the parts of the estate that were entailed on her cousin, James Berkeley, most of them in Gloucestershire, including the castle of Berkeley itself. At first it seemed that James's claims would be denied. However, perhaps partly because of Warwick's extended absence in these years, leaving his wife to mount the defence of the lands, partly because Berkeley was able to secure the help of the duke of Gloucester, keeper of the realm for some of this time, but probably chiefly because the king himself was unwilling to accept the local upheaval occasioned by the dispute, a series of compromise settlements was arranged. The process was incomplete at Henry's death and somewhat disrupted by it.
Service and politics during Henry VI's minority
In December 1422 Warwick became a member of Henry VI's minority council. The records suggest that until about mid-1425 he was frequently in England and much about the young king, but, at the same time, he was captain of Rouen by early 1423 and of Calais not long after. He may have gone on the Verneuil expedition in 1424 but it seems that it was only from the second half of 1425 that he spent much time in France, where he was made custodian of Normandy by the duke of Bedford, the regent in France, at Christmas 1425. There Warwick remained a fairly constant presence until his replacement by Bedford as captain of Calais in 1427—an appointment to which the earl reacted with some fury. During this time, in early 1427, he captured Pontorson in Brittany, but was defeated at Montargis the following September. He returned to England in March 1428 and in June he was made personal governor and tutor of Henry VI; in this role in November 1429 he famously bore the young king in his arms to his coronation. There ensued a period of almost continuous residence in England until 1436, broken only, it seems, by service on the coronation expedition and subsequent campaign in 1430–32, in which he won a notable victory near Beauvais in 1431. Remaining in England may have been quite an attractive prospect to Warwick because, in the absence of an adult king, political division, locally and nationally, was emerging in ways that were not to his advantage. Despite the contretemps over the Calais captaincy, in the 1420s Warwick was firmly in the camp led by Cardinal Beaufort and the duke of Bedford, with regard to both internal politics and foreign affairs. Thus, when Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, looking for allies in his increasingly acrimonious dispute with Beaufort, again took up the cause of Lord Berkeley in 1425 and coupled this with espousing the claim for precedence over Warwick of the Mowbrays, Lord Berkeley's in-laws, the situation was fraught with danger for the earl. In that year he was forced to accept both an arbitration over the Berkeley lands which left him with much less than he had originally hoped and the elevation of Mowbray to the dukedom of Norfolk, by which the precedence issue was settled firmly in the latter's favour.
Meanwhile, Warwick was running into difficulties locally. In a sense they were a function of his enormously increased authority. The royal duke of Lancaster was a minor; the Stafford dowager still held much of the Warwickshire and Staffordshire lands of the young earl of Stafford, the only other rival force in north and east Warwickshire and the abutting county of Staffordshire; and Warwick had acquired at least part of the Berkeley estate. All this gave him an unrivalled hegemony over much of the midlands. This became all the stronger on his marriage to Isabella (1400–1439), the Despenser heir, widow of Warwick's cousin and Joan's son, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Worcester, which took place on 26 November 1423, Warwick's first wife, Elizabeth, having died on 28 December 1422. With Isabella came still more west midland manors, notably Hanley, Worcestershire, and Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and, to complete his dominance in this region, the large lordship of Glamorgan in south Wales, as well as substantial other property in the marches, which restored the earls to the position of great marcher lords that they had lost with Gower in 1397. It was during the minority of Henry VI that the Warwick affinity completed its evolution into a large and cohesive following dominating the whole of Warwickshire, probably the whole of Worcestershire, and a large part of the midlands as a whole. Warwick's men monopolized most of the local offices in Warwickshire and Worcestershire and he himself was appointed JP in virtually every county where he held lands. In Warwickshire especially, however, Warwick's hegemony was built on a series of alliances with nobles who had lands outside his principal areas of landed power, west Warwickshire and east Worcestershire, the most important being Lady Bergavenny and Edmund, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, and he began to have difficulties in holding his coalition together. In particular there was the problem of Joan Beauchamp. Her husband, the first Lord Bergavenny, had been a loyal associate to both his brother, Earl Thomas, and his nephew, Earl Richard, and Joan too in her widowhood had been an ally, if at times an unstable one. But in the 1420s she began to challenge Warwick's power, both directly and by acting against Lord Ferrers; within and outside the Warwick affinity there was a growing amount of local disorder involving substantial local landowners. The situation for Warwick was especially difficult in 1425, when he was also being worsted on the national scene, and by 1427 he was in danger of losing control of eastern Warwickshire. It is thus possible that he decided to accept the appointment as Henry VI's governor so that he could be at home for a longer period. Certainly, from 1428 there was less local division and Warwick's hold tightened again on the local officers. If the earl's absence with the king in 1430–32 allowed the stand-off between Joan and Ferrers to develop into open confrontation in 1431, his return ensured that Joan was persuaded to modify her ambitions and that the region was generally peaceful thereafter. In 1435 Joan's death restored the entailed part of the Bergavenny lands, much of it in the midlands, to the main line of the Beauchamps, and also brought a large part of the Hastings lands, including the marcher lordship of Abergavenny. From 1430 the young Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, was being drawn into Warwick's coalition, which became even more dominant in the midlands. Until Warwick's final departure for France in 1437 his sphere of influence was large, assured, and essentially peaceful.
Return to France, death, and legacy
Apart from participation on Gloucester's expedition to Calais and Flanders in August 1436, Warwick remained in England until 1437. Politically he was still aligned with Beaufort and Bedford and when, in November 1432, he protested that his powers as the king's governor no longer sufficed, it seems that he was primarily lending his weight to prevent Gloucester's further attempts, by acting in the king's name, to subvert the authority of the minority council. In 1434 the marriage of Warwick's children from his second marriage, Henry and Anne, to Cecily and Richard Neville, children of the earl of Salisbury, endorsed his commitment to the Beaufort camp. In May 1436 he was released from his duties about the king and seems to have spent much of the ensuing period on his estates. In July 1437 he was appointed lieutenant-general and governor of France and Normandy, after protracted negotiations over terms and over payments owed for past services. He left in August and died at Rouen on 30 April 1439: he had managed to hold the fort in northern France against the Burgundians but little more, partly because his strength was undermined by the diversion of resources to the Beaufort expedition to Maine in 1438.
Warwick's widow died on 27 December 1439. His heirs were Henry Beauchamp, still a minor in 1439, who inherited the Warwick and Despenser lands, and the three daughters from his first marriage who shared what Warwick had managed to obtain of the Berkeley inheritance. These were Margaret, second wife of John Talbot, first earl of Shrewsbury; Eleanor, who married Thomas, Baron Ros (d. 1430), and then Edmund Beaufort, later duke of Somerset; and Elizabeth, married to George Neville, Baron Latimer. Henry's full sister, Anne, was eventually to bring the earldom to Richard Neville. Warwick left a large number of lands in trust, which were used to add to the endowment of the family's collegiate church of St Mary, Warwick, and to rebuild its chapel. There Warwick was buried on 4 October 1439 and commemorated in a magnificent tomb, the effigy on which is probably the most lifelike representation of him. He also made gifts to the chantry at Guy's Cliffe near Warwick, which he had founded, to Elmley Castle chantry, and to the Despenser religious centre of Tewkesbury Abbey.
Although Warwick spent much of his time abroad and, when in England as minority councillor and later royal governor, he was often with the king, he had a core of loyal councillors and servants who looked after his estates and local political interests. At the Warwickshire and Worcestershire heart of the estate, these included John Throgmorton, Thomas Crewe, William Wollashill, William Mountford, the Hugfords, and the Harewells. Among his trusted associates further afield were Robert Andrewe in Wiltshire and John Nanfan in Cornwall. Apart from a crisis of management resulting from an official's dereliction during Warwick's prolonged absence under Henry V, the estate was well run: it is estimated that by the 1430s the earl was the third wealthiest noble in England, after York and Stafford. He was able to invest considerable sums in rebuilding his house in London and he also built at Hanley, Elmley, Warwick, and elsewhere. The management of both the estates and the affinity, often at a distance, reflect the fact that this was an extremely able nobleman, who demonstrated competence in almost all the spheres to which a noble might aspire: war, diplomacy, administration at home and abroad, local politics, and the care of his own estates. He seems also to have been a most conscientious servant of the crown, who received relatively little reward for it but did not complain, except when he was being asked to serve abroad again, in advanced middle age and before the money owed from his previous service had been repaid. He was at his best under Henry V, whom, in his conventionality combined with great ability, he in some ways resembles. When national direction was less firm under the young Henry VI, Warwick seems to have found the less straightforward, and arguably more tawdry, political world at the centre of affairs harder to handle. Even so, despite the lack of royal leadership and the burdens of war and central government, he coped magisterially with the enormous local responsibilities of this period. Curiously, for such an apparently prosaic man, a conventional poem in praise of his second wife is said to be his work, although it could have been written by his secretary, the poet John Shirley. |