Westmoreland in Henry VI, Part 3

Westmoreland appears only in Act 1, Scene 1, yet his few lines burn with the passionate outrage of a man witnessing the collapse of legitimate rule. He is among King Henry VI’s defenders in Parliament when the Duke of York and his allies make their shocking bid for the throne. Westmoreland’s fury at what he sees as outrageous presumption gives voice to the moral horror at the heart of this play: the breakdown of the natural order when subjects rise against their anointed king.

His immediate instinct is violence. When Henry counsels patience and forbids bloodshed within Parliament itself, Westmoreland cannot contain his anger. “What, shall we suffer this?” he demands, his hand burning for action. He represents the old order—men trained in chivalry and loyalty, who cannot comprehend how an oath of kingship can be unmade by negotiation and force. When York’s men lay hands on him and his fellows, Westmoreland speaks the language of blood revenge: he vows that whoever sheds his father’s blood will answer to him, and he curses the house of York with prophetic bitterness. Before he exits, he delivers a brutal wish: “Be thou a prey unto the house of York, / And die in bands for this unmanly deed!”

Though Westmoreland vanishes after this scene, his words frame the entire catastrophe that follows. He is right to see Henry’s capitulation—his agreement to name York as heir—as a betrayal so profound that it demands vengeance. Westmoreland never appears again because his kind of straightforward loyalty and honor has no place in the brutal new world the play depicts. He belongs to an older, simpler understanding of kingship and duty, one that will be drowned in the blood of the Wars of the Roses. His absence is itself a comment: once the machinery of legitimate rule breaks, the faithful old warriors have nothing left to do but curse and exit.