The arrival of the Duchess at the first banquet was the signal for the beginning of nine days of continuous festivities. On every day there was a great feast.74 Gilded and silvered swans, peacocks, unicorns bearing baskets of comfits, harts carrying panniers of oranges and roasts laid out on thirty vessels, each one representing one of the Duke’s lordships were the sort of elaborate dishes set before the ducal guests. The entremets (between the courses) included mechanical surprises, plays and more pageants. The Lady Mary’s dwarf, Madame de Beaugrand, rode in on a gilded lion, a pedlar pretended to sleep while monkeys stole his wares and gave out purses, brooches, laces and beads to the company, and a dromedary in Saracen style was ridden in by a wild man who threw coloured balls among the guests. As well as unicorns (which were, it seems, readily available in Burgundy) there were giants and ogres, dragons and griffons to delight and astound the court. There were classical mimes of the deeds of Hercules and historical ones of the marriage of Clovis and, after each of the banquets, there was dancing and more music. No wonder a tone of exhaustion crept into John Paston’s letter home:
As for the Duke’s Court as of ladies and gentlewomen, knights, squires and gentlemen I heard never of none like to it save King Arthur’s court … for of such gear and gold and pearl and stones they of the Duke’s Court, neither gentlemen or gentlewomen they want none; for without that they have it by wishes, by my troth, I heard never of so great plenty as there is.
After dinner the Duke made his first appearance in public on his wedding day, joining his wife to attend the opening ceremonies for the tournament of the Golden Tree. This was held in the Market Place beneath the famous tower of the Bruges’ Halle, the market hall.75 For this occasion the Duke wore robes which were more the work of a goldsmith than a tailor. His golden gown was encrusted with diamonds, pearls and great jewels, ‘and on his hede a blake hate one that hat a ballas called the ballas of Flanders, a marvellous riche jewell’. The English writer had never seen ‘so great richez in soo littel a space’. His horse too was richly caparisoned and hung with golden bells. For this celebration the sober Duke was transformed into a veritable knight of medieval tapestry and legend.76
The tournament of the Golden Tree arranged by Anthony, Count of La Roche, as a rejoinder to the Smithfield tournament, provided that mingling of chivalry and honour, courage and brutality which satisfied the desires of the court for entertainment, display and sport.77 The presence of a ‘Great Lady’ made it an even more important occasion, and it was Margaret who was now the centre of all attention as the first lady of the Burgundian court.
The action of the tournament was woven around a fantasy composed specially for the occasion. The legend centred on the standard figures of medieval romance and included enslaved knights, evil dwarfs, ogres and mysterious strangers who inhabited gloomy forests. The tournament was at the bidding of the ‘lady of the Hidden Ile’, who asked the Count of La Roche to undertake three great tasks on her behalf: to break one hundred and one spears or to have them broken, to make or to suffer one hundred and one sword-cuts and to decorate a Golden Tree with the arms of illustrious champions. The Golden Tree had been erected at the entry to the lists and as each knight entered his coat of arms was mounted on the tree.
The costumes of all the participants were colourful and elaborate and the horses were covered in cloth of gold, with gold and silver harnesses and feathered plumes. Some of the noblemen entered the lists disguised as legendary heroes, as Black Knights or as Ancient Knights. Some arrived concealed within decorated pavilions, such as Anthony of Luxembourg who entered chained within a black castle, from which he could only be released with a golden key when the ladies gave their approval. The pages wore harlequin costumes, and carried shields of green and gold, crimson and silver. It was a great theatrical entertainment and the Market Place of Bruges was a kaleidoscope of colour and drama.
In spite of all the pageantry, when the fighting began it was truly fierce and dangerous, and Duke Charles did not hesitate to participate himself. The unfortunate Count of La Roche broke a leg, and was still receiving treatment from the doctor six months later. There were many great ‘buffets’ and the cries of wounded knights filled the air. Margaret was apparently greatly alarmed and she waved her handkerchief to persuade Charles, who was in the thick of the fighting, to unhelm and stop the fray.
The jousts, banquets and entertainments continued unabated for nine days. Each day there were more fantasies and the events were attended by the Duke and Duchess. Sir Edward Woodville was declared the Prince of the Tournay and the Lord d’Argueil, a brother of the Prince of Orange, was judged to be the Prince of the Joust, a diplomatic selection which would have pleased the English Queen and satisfied the honour of both Burgundy and England. The festivities finally came to an end on 13 July when Charles left for Zeeland and Holland. The English guests took their leave and the Burgundian nobles and clerics returned home. Among the latter was Jean de Haynin, who hurried back to his castle at Bavay and five days later sat down to write his account of the wedding, which is certainly the liveliest and freshest of all the reports which have survived.78
Margaret was now the Duchess of the mightiest and richest Duchy in Europe. Her marriage celebrations had shown the opulence of the court and the imagination of the artists. It was a situation to please even the most ambitious child of Richard, Duke of York. With her intelligence and experience she had acquired during her eight years at her brother’s court, she was well fitted to play an effective role in Burgundian affairs. As Duchess of Burgundy, Margaret would find ample scope to develop her political and administrative talents. When the Duke left Bruges, she set forth on a series of journeys around the Low Countries to enable her to get to know her new homeland.
However, Charles had not married Margaret because he sought a partner in government, far from it. The main significance of the wedding for him was the procurement of an English alliance against France. Louis XI had not been able to prevent the marriage, but he was to be more successful in neutralising its threat to France. During the next nine years, Margaret received an education in European politics which went far beyond the insular feuds of the English court.
CHAPTER 2
Daughter of York
‘SHE SELDOM SMILED AND WAS RATHER RESERVED.’
The new Duchess of Burgundy had been born the third daughter and the sixth of the twelve children born to Cecily Neville, Duchess of York. Hers was a dynamic inheritance, three parts Plantagenet and one part Neville and her birth on the third of May in 1446 came at a critical watershed in her father’s career.
If high lineage merited high office then Richard, Duke of York, could claim a very high place indeed. In the absence of a royal heir, York, with his descent from both the second and fourth sons of King Edward III, was widely regarded as the heir-apparent.1 He had inherited all his titles and lands from his two uncles, Edward, Duke of York, who was his father’s brother, and Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, his mother’s brother. His own father Richard, Earl of Cambridge, had been executed at Southampton on the eve of King Henry V’s expedition to France in 1415. He had been accused of conspiring to place his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer, on the throne, a plot betrayed to the King by Mortimer himself. After his father’s execution, Richard was made a ward of the crown and, before the year was out, the death of Edward, Duke of York, at Agincourt, made the four-year-old boy the heir to the Duchy of York.
Since Edmund Mortimer had no issue, all the Mortimer and Clare lands together with the Mortimer claim to the throne came to Richard through his mother, Anne Mortimer. The Mortimers were directly descended from Edward III’s second surviving son Lionel, Duke of Clarence who had married Philippa, the heiress of the Mortimer Earl of March. Their son, Roger Mortimer, had been named by King Richard II as his heir. After Roger Mortimer’s death in Ireland in 1398, the rights of his infant son, Edmund, were set aside by the Lancastrian King Henry IV, when he seized the throne a year later. Although Richard of York’s Mortim
er claim to the throne passed through two female lines, there was nothing in English law to prevent female inheritance. Richard himself emphasised his Mortimer inheritance. He named his eldest daughter Anne after her Mortimer grandmother and his second son Edmund after his Mortimer uncle and succeeded in obtaining the title of the Earl of March for his eldest son Edward, the future King Edward IV.
Aristocratic children were well schooled on the subject of their genealogy and Margaret and her brothers and sisters would have been made fully aware of their family history and their royal rights. They learned their lessons well. Among the first acts of Edward IV’s reign was the revival of the Duchy of Clarence for his brother George and the annulment of the sentence of treason passed upon his grandfather the Earl of Cambridge. Margaret’s mother Cecily would, after the death of her husband call herself ‘the widow of the late Richard Duke of York, rightful King of England’. Throughout her life Margaret displayed the arms of a Princess of England and she did not fail to remind Queen Isabella of Spain of their close relationship when she wrote to her for help against Henry VII.2 In this case, Margaret was referring to her third line of Plantagenet descent, through John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, which came from her mother, Cecily Neville.3
The union of Richard Duke of York and Cecily Neville, which was ultimately to destroy the house of Lancaster, had been intended to submerge all the dangerous Mortimer pretensions within a loyal Lancastrian framework. After the death of King Henry V, the wardship of the twelve-year-old Richard had been granted to Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland and the brother-in-law of the chancellor, Cardinal Beaufort. Within a year the boy was betrothed to the Earl’s youngest daughter, the nine-year-old Cecily. The dowerless Cecily came from a stock that married and bred well. Her mother was the youngest daughter of John of Gaunt, by his third wife and former mistress, Katherine Swynford. Her father, Earl Ralph, was always on the lookout for suitable husbands and wives for his brood of twenty-two children, who had been born to him by his two wives, Margaret Stafford and Joan Beaufort.
Whereas the York and Mortimer lines were notable for their lack of offspring, through her mother, Margaret was connected to a vast affinity. The family network included the King of Scotland, the Dukes of Exeter and Norfolk, the Earls of Northumberland, Westmorland, Salisbury, Warwick, Kent, Worcester and Buckingham, and the Lords Latimer, Despenser and Howard. There was a wider European connection, through John of Gaunt’s daughter Philippa, who had married into the Portuguese royal family. Margaret herself was thus related to the royal houses of Aragon, Castille and Portugal, to the house of Habsburg and to the ducal house of Burgundy.
This network of relationships was not necessarily an advantage either to Richard or to his children. The very extent of these connections made him seem dangerous to the crown. Newer and less well-connected men like the Earl of Suffolk were more dependent on court favour and therefore more trusted. Any extension of this affinity through the marriages of the York children would be closely scrutinised and blocked if it enhanced their claims to the throne. Nor were these large numbers of relatives necessarily a reserve of powerful friends. There were many disagreements over property and interests. The Neville connection brought with it its own internal feud between the children of Earl Ralph’s two marriages. The widowed Countess Joan had succeeded in depriving the second Earl of Westmorland (who was Earl Ralph’s grandson) of some of his inheritance, which she held for her own eldest son Richard, Earl of Salisbury. Lengthy litigation ensued between the two parties and since it was never settled to the full satisfaction of the Earls of Westmorland, they allied with the Percys against their half-brothers. This family feud led to ever-increasing violence in the north and would ultimately erupt into widespread civil war.
However, in 1446 the battles were a decade away. Richard of York was still expecting to receive honourable treatment from the King and he looked forward to an appointment that would reflect his noble lineage. He had no reason to fear the ill will of Henry VI. Both the previous Dukes of York had proved themselves loyal servants of the crown, and Richard had a good relationship with the young King, who had always shown him favour and friendship. Up to 1445, fortune smiled upon Richard, Duke of York.4 When Henry VI had been crowned King of France at Notre Dame in 1431, Richard, ten years older than his royal cousin, was one of the most resplendent knights in his retinue. Four years later, after the death of the Regent John, Duke of Bedford, Richard was appointed Lieutenant in France with ‘like and semblance power as my Lord of Bedford had by commission’. The stage was set for him to follow in the footsteps of the great Regent as a pre-eminent and loyal servant of the Lancastrian crown. But this was not to be, and the consequences were grave both for England and the House of York.
When he had been the royal representative at Rouen, Duke Richard held great honour. He was regarded as the near equal of England’s two most powerful neighbours, the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy. Through the good relations he established with the nobility and the church in both Normandy and Burgundy, he won support and popularity among his Norman subjects. Although English armies were attacked with increasing success by a revitalised France, inspired by Joan of Arc, his period of office could not be viewed as a complete failure. He showed considerable administrative skill and a sensible, cautious approach to military matters. Indeed he could claim with some justification that he was more successful than the Dukes of Somerset who succeeded him. After his experience in France, he might reasonably have expected to be consulted over the Anglo-French negotiations that sought an end to the long conflict between the two nations. Yet on his return to England, he found himself disregarded by the men who had gathered around King Henry VI’s new Queen, Margaret of Anjou. Chief among these was William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. It was he who had negotiated Margaret of Anjou’s marriage to King Henry in 1445 and he was the most ardent proponent of a policy of reconciliation with France.
Richard’s appointment in France came to an end in the year before his daughter Margaret was born. His promising career came to a peremptory stop. During the next decade, throughout the whole of Margaret’s childhood, his frustration grew. Less and less royal patronage came his way and Richard, his family and his clients, found themselves in an increasingly dangerous situation. They were confronting a series of crises which culminated in their open rebellion against the crown and, ultimately, in the deaths of Richard and his second son Edmund, Earl of Rutland. The birth of a third daughter was of little significance compared with the serious loss of political power resulting from the termination of the Duke’s appointment. Since his return from France, Richard had tried to re-establish himself at court, but in common with many young men before and since, he found that his overseas posting held mixed blessings. Although it had given him heavy responsibilities and prestige, in his absence he had lost touch with the more powerful members of the court and had few allies among the most trusted courtiers.
The new Queen having found herself married to the gentle and inactive King Henry VI could not fail to regard Richard, with all his Plantagenet inheritance and his family of five living children, as a threat to the smooth succession of her own future offspring. Her fears were not allayed when the Duke and Duchess of York paid the young Queen the compliment of naming their first child born after her accession in her honour. It was not the first time that they had sought royal favour in this manner. Five years earlier, they had called their first-born son Henry, and the King had been well pleased, but this child had died in infancy. Now they hoped to charm the Queen, but naming their new daughter Margaret appears to have made little impression on her.
The doubts surrounding the family’s future are reflected by the uncertainty over the location of Margaret’s birthplace. Fotheringhay Castle and Waltham Abbey are both named by contemporary chroniclers and either of them could offer an appropriate birthplace for the future powerful and pious Duchess.5 Of the two, Fotheringhay Castle is the most immediately appealing, as it was the chief seat of the Ho
use of York.6 The family badge of the falcon and fetterlock had stood guard over the castle’s grey keep since the days of Edmund Langley, the first Duke of York (1341-1402). Lying close to the great north road, about eighty miles from London, the castle was particularly well situated, looking south across the River Nene over the gentle Northamptonshire countryside and surrounded by the large hunting forest of Rockingham. It was conveniently central to all Richard’s lands, which lay scattered across England and Wales from Yorkshire to Sussex and from East Anglia to the Welsh Marches.
At the time of Margaret’s birth, Fotheringhay was still a strong, defendable castle protected by a double moat. The main entrance lay through an impressive gatehouse on the north-west side. Once inside the final drawbridge, there was a whole range of buildings including the ancient keep, a newer and more comfortable manor house, two chapels and all the usual workshops, stables, kitchens, brewhouses, bakeries, butteries and barns. At least two York children were born at Fotheringhay, Anne, the eldest and Richard, the youngest. It was certainly a pleasant and well favoured place, and it would have had considerable appeal to the Duchess Cecily, brought up in the bleaker and colder environs of Raby Castle.
Today only a few ruined walls mark the site of what was, for two hundred years, one of the finest castles in England. There is, however, one substantial survivor from the time of Margaret’s birth, and that is the unusually large and magnificent parish church, which dwarfed the small village of Fotheringhay. Yet the modern church is a fragment of the great collegiate church that stood there early in the fifteenth century. The older, smaller church that stood on the site since pre-Norman times was completely rebuilt with a new lantern tower over 100 feet high. This new church was established and endowed by the first and second Dukes of York, Edmund Langley and his son Edward, who made it the religious centre and mausoleum of the house of York. It was a chantry for the deceased members of the royal and ducal family, where five masses were sung on every weekday and six on Saturdays and Sundays. Margaret’s father, the third Duke, continued the building and by 1446 the college establishment had twelve chaplains or fellows, eight clerks and thirteen choristers under a master. It was a centre of learning and religion for the whole area, its buildings covering a site of more than two and a half acres. They were on a truly lavish scale, with rows of stained glass windows in the cloisters and the library.
Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Page 5