Proclamation at Calais, July 1469
In Calais, a proclamation was made on 12 July 1469 by the Duke of Clarence, Earl of Warwick, and Archbishop of York regarding the state of English politics. The proclamation was similar to the calls made twenty years earlier by the Yorkist faction. They claimed to be the King’s true liegemen and identified several seditious and corrupt individuals who were giving the King poor advice.
‘the false means and subtle dissimulations of such certain covetous and seditious persons, as such covetous and seditious persons, as have guided… their own singular and insatiable covetousness, and to the magnifying of their friends and adherents, than they had to the Majesty Royal… to the great hurt, impoverishing and the utter destruction of you and the Realm…
Stowe’s Transcripts quoted in the Giles, John Allen. The Chronicles of the White Rose of York, p.235.
The list of names makes the source of their anger clear, the Queen’s family, raised to ranks above their station, dominated it:
seditious persons, that is to say, the Lord Rivers, the Duchess of Bedford his wife, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devonshire, Lord Scales and Audley, Sir John Woodville and his brothers…
Warkworth Chronicle
The proclamation makes the charge against them clear:
mischeavkus rule, opinion and assent, which have caused our sovereign lord and his realm to fall into great poverty and misery, disturbing the administration of laws, only tending to their own promotion and enrichment.
Warkworth Chronicle
The proclamation was distributed throughout the South East of England. It also stated that these great lords would be returning to Canterbury. They had set down a challenge that, realistically, was only ever going to end on the battlefield.
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