A fate for a kingmaker

What happens to kingmakers once the kings have been made?

So asks a concerned supporter of Nick Clegg, wondering whether both Brown and Cameron might be cunningly displaced by their man in a rerun of the Wars of the Roses and what might happen after that.

On press day at the TLS, there is no time for more than a brief note of the Battle of Barnet, the one in 1471 which restored Edward IV, not the one which returned the excellent Theresa Villiers to the Commons last week.

That was the battle in which Richard Neville, Warwick the Kingmaker, the young French-favouring, wheeler-dealing, fresh-faced earl who had made and unmade two sovereigns, finally met his own maker.

The first man to carry the title that Nick Clegg bears today died at Barnet on April 14, along with his brother and other allies; on May 4 the rest of his crew were victims of a massive slaughter at Tewkesbury. On May 21, King Henry VI was murdered in the Tower of London.

O blessed Barnet! There followed the longest parliament in English history up to that date and the longest till the reign of Henry VIII. There was Yorkist rule for fourteen years.

It was a friendly and amenable parliament, much chastened by the unpleasantnesses of the Kingmaker's time, and focusing on wood for archers, sewers for cities and taxes to settle the national accounts.

We now should be so lucky.

Comments

[Bernadette Jansen op de Haar]

He may be a kingmaker but: How Dutch is Nick Clegg? See Arnold Jansen op de Haar’s blog.

[Will Robinson]

Can Sir Peter please confirm that he has not been reading the Prospect blog?
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/05/a-quick-history-lesson-for-clegg-the-kingmaker/#more-80894

[peter stothard]

i have just now read will robinson's blog about richard neville on the website of the excellent prospect magazine. . since he asks, i can confirm that i had not read it before.. blogging now on a warm summer night, with the notion of a lib-dem labour government a distant nightmare, my own hastily composed post seems excessively aggressive.. .but that is, i guess, the nature of this business. . .

[Clayton Burns]

Will Robinson: I am not sure what you mean by your comment. If you are suggesting that Sir Peter copied your text, I would have to say that setting your passage beside his does not establish any such case. At all. Perhaps you meant your comment as a joke? It would have been better if you had presented any evidence you have, which would seem to me to be extremely slim.

Perhaps you meant something else entirely by your somewhat cryptic comment. Could you fill me in?

[Will Robinson]

Two vaguely similar postings on a likely theme: I gladly accept that this was a coincidence. Thank you for the clarification.

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