The Duke’s petition drew attention to his six living children, a clear sign of God’s blessing and was a slur on the Queen, who was still childless after five years of marriage. His sudden return without royal invitation, at the head of a body of troops and at a time when violence was prevalent and unrest still widespread, was seen as an open challenge. From his arrival back in England until early 1452, an uneasy impasse existed between the supporters of York and Somerset both at court and in the country at large. But in 1452, Duke Richard was tricked, isolated from his troops at Greenwich, and forced to accept the pre-eminence of Somerset. He was also made to submit to arbitration by a royal committee on the issue of his financial demands, and obliged to renew his act of allegiance to the King in a public ceremony at St Paul’s.26
Cecily followed her husband back to England and during the next five years three more children were born to her, Thomas who died young, Richard, the future King Richard III, born at Fotheringhay in October 1452, and another daughter Ursula, who also died young. With the birth of Ursula in 1455, Cecily’s childbearing years seem to have come to an end. She was then forty years old. Her lengthy and regular childbearing since the age of twenty-four had left no apparent toll on her health. She was to outlive her husband, all her brothers and sisters and all but two of her own children, living on until she was nearly eighty. None of her children would live as long, and only two matched her fecundity, Edward IV and Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk.
These years were a difficult time for York, his family and followers. Sir William Oldhall was forced to take sanctuary at St Martin-le-Grand, and York’s tenants were harassed by Somerset and his allies. Open warfare broke out in the north, triggered off by feuds between the Percys and the Nevilles.27 The Earl of Warwick’s arguments with the Duke of Somerset over the Beauchamp inheritance and his clashes with the King’s Tudor half-brothers over lands in Wales, drove both Warwick and his father, the Earl of Salisbury who was Cecily’s eldest brother, into a closer alliance with Duke Richard.28
In October 1453 any hopes that Richard still harboured of being declared heir to the throne finally collapsed when the Queen at last gave birth to a son, Edward, Prince of Wales, ‘of whoos birth the peple speke strangley’. ‘The Quene was defamed and descaundered that he that was called Prince was nat hir son but a bastard goten in avoutry.’29
This royal birth came at a momentous time in the struggle between England and France. In the autumn of 1452 John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, had recovered control over Bordeaux and Gascony, but early in the spring, the French King, Charles VII, began a major campaign. This reached a peak in July with the defeat of the English at Castillon, and the death of the great Talbot himself. English Gascony collapsed, leaving England with barely a vestige of her former possessions in France. In the midst of this crisis the health of King Henry VI suddenly gave way and by the late summer he apparently became insane. The Queen and her friends tried to conceal the King’s incapacity and to exclude the Duke of York from the Great Council summoned to meet on 24 October. Pressure from other nobles and a well-timed letter from the Duchess Cecily congratulating the Queen on the birth of her son finally secured a summons for the Duke.30
By March 1454, York had enough backing among the Lords and the Commons to ensure that he was made Head of the Council for the duration of the King’s illness. The Duke of Somerset and young Henry Holland, Richard’s hostile son-in-law, were both imprisoned.31 The Earl of Salisbury became Chancellor and, for a few months, the Duke of York was firmly in the saddle. But King Henry regained his sanity, Somerset and Exeter were released, and York then found himself in a very perilous position. With Salisbury and Warwick, York began to muster a large army explaining in a series of manifestos that they were coming in force because otherwise they dared not attend the Council that had been summoned to meet at Leicester. York found his attempts to communicate with the King blocked by the Queen and Somerset. The result of this political stalemate was the first major military engagement in the Wars of the Roses, the battle of St Albans fought on the 22 May 1455. King Henry was wounded and Somerset and the Percy Earl of Northumberland were among the dead.32
The Duke of York and his Neville allies were once more in control and they were able to consolidate their power and reward their followers. Warwick obtained the Captaincy of Calais and Viscount Bourchier, York’s brother-in-law, became Lord Treasurer. Although the Duke of York was only in power for a short time, he secured some substantial financial advantages for his family. He obtained the wardship of Suffolk’s heir, John de la Pole, and so provided his second daughter Elizabeth with a suitable marriage. He also ensured the settlement of all the outstanding crown debts to himself, and was granted the licence to exploit the gold and silver mines of the south-west. By the late 1450s, the family fortunes were so much improved that the Duchess Cecily was interested in purchasing the fine castle at Caistor that had belonged to Sir John Fastolf.
In reality, however, the position of Duke Richard and his family was more perilous than ever. There was now no room for a reconciliation between York and the Queen, who feared his intentions towards Edward, Prince of Wales. Nor could all the deaths from the battle of St Albans be easily forgotten, even though the Duke paid for a chantry chapel on the site of the battle. King Henry tried to promote peace between the protagonists by encouraging a great public act of reconciliation, the so-called ‘love day’ at St Paul’s, when Richard of York led in Queen Margaret, ‘with great familiarity in all men’s sight’.33 But this familiarity came to nothing and by the summer of 1459 both sides were once again preparing to fight.
The royal forces were gathering in the Midlands, Cheshire and Shropshire and the Queen made a serious effort to prevent the Earl of Salisbury’s forces from meeting up with York. Attacked at Blore Heath as they marched south on 23 September, Salisbury fought off the royal troops and reached York at Ludlow with the bulk of his men. But by 12 October the royalist forces had grown considerably, while the Yorkist army had been weakened by the desertion of Andrew Trollop and the men of the Calais garrison, who refused to fight against their King.34 The Yorkists were therefore forced to retreat. Richard and his son Edmund made their way to Ireland, and Salisbury, with Warwick and Edward Earl of March, left from the Devonshire coast to seek refuge in Calais. There followed what is known as the rout of Ludford Bridge when ‘the toune of Ludlow longyng thaan to the Duk of York was robbed to the bare walles and the noble Duches of York unmanly and cruelly was entreted and spoyled’.35
Much historical and fictional imagination has gone to work on this episode at Ludlow. Ludlow was the principal residence of York’s two eldest sons, Edward and Edmund, but the rest of the family also stayed there from time to time. Large domestic buildings had been added, full of the comforts which had so improved the quality of life for the fifteenth century aristocracy.36 There were chimneys in most of the rooms, great windows full of the new window-glass and plenty of private rooms, a far cry from the dark, communal accommodation which the old keep had offered. Contemporaries might well assume that the whole family was often in residence at this most comfortable castle. Both the writer of Hearne’s Fragment and John Wheathampsted recorded that the Duchess and her two young sons were taken prisoner at Ludlow, but we have no evidence that the Duchess was there at the time.
Both the English Chronicle and Fabyan recorded only that the Duchess submitted to the King at the Parliament called to Coventry in November. The lands of York, March, Rutland, Salisbury and Warwick were attaindered, but the King made provision for ‘the relief and sustentation of her [Cecily] and her young children what have not offended against us’. These would include Margaret. The Duchess was allowed an income of 1,000 marks per annum to be drawn from the York estates, and she was put into the care of her older sister Anne, Duchess of Buckingham, where according to, Fabyan, ‘she was kept full straight and with many a rebuke.’37
Yet by January 1460 Cecily was travelling freely in Kent and by July she was with Margaret, Geo
rge and Richard in London ‘staying till Michaelmas at Fastolf’s place in Southwark.’38 Fastolf had owned Crosby House, one of the most modern properties in London with Purbeck marble floors and fine airy windows. Cecily was there for only two days, for as soon as she heard that the Duke of York had returned from Ireland, she rushed off to meet him ‘in a chair covered in blue velvet and four pair coursers therein’.39
Margaret, then aged fourteen, and her two brothers remained in London. John Paston, who reported their residence at Crosby House, was anxious to show that he was discharging his responsibilities as Fastolf’s executor with true care. He wrote that ‘my Lord of March cometh every day to see them’.40 Edward, Earl of March, was then aged eighteen, and at over six feet tall he was a powerful and attractive young man as well as a proven soldier. This is the first documentary reference to Margaret herself. It implies that, unlike her older sisters, she had remained within the family household, a situation reflecting the political problems of the 1450s. The seven surviving children of the House of York may be divided into two groups, the older four, all placed in suitable establishments and the younger three who remained at home. Of these three younger children, all of whom were reared in the stormy years of Duke Richard’s rebellion, only Margaret would survive to live out a full and successful life.
Events moved quickly and dramatically after the rout of Ludford. The ferocity and extent of the attainders decreed at the Coventry Parliament resulted in a reaction in favour of York and his fellow rebels. They had already established their power bases. York was so strong in Ireland that the new Governor’s emissary, the Earl of Wiltshire, was hanged as a traitor when he tried to proclaim his master’s appointment, and no royal force could dislodge Warwick and Salisbury from Calais. Efforts to do so resulted in Warwick’s daring retaliatory raid on Sandwich, when he seized both the royal ships and their royal commanders including Lord Rivers and his son Sir Anthony Woodville, Edward Earl of March’s future father-in-law and brother-in-law. They were abducted to Calais and rebuked for their interference in the affairs of their betters by Warwick and Edward himself.41
In the meantime the efforts of the Crown to crush Yorkist support within England had only stirred up more agitation, and Yorkist propaganda was being widely circulated. Warwick sought and obtained support from abroad, both from the Papal Legate Coppini and from the Dauphin Louis, who was then in exile at the Burgundian court. By June, the Calais Earls considered themselves sufficiently strong to invade England and on 2 July they were in control of London, albeit with a strong Lancastrian garrison still holding out in the Tower. Warwick and March advanced to meet the royalist forces at the Battle of Northampton. This was Edward’s first personal military success, the royal army was totally defeated and there were many casualties including Cecily’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham. The King was taken prisoner but the Queen and the Prince of Wales remained at liberty. With the King back in London, the Tower was assaulted and seized, and by the end of July the Yorkists were in full control.
Their triumph determined Richard to make an outright bid for the throne. Reviving all the old Mortimer claims, he arrived from Ireland, was met by the Duchess, glorious in her blue litter, and marched south through Ludlow and Hereford to Abingdon. On his banners he displayed the arms of England, and his claim to the throne was justified in yet another series of manifestos. His arrival in London in September 1460 was both triumphal and royal. Falcons and fetterlocks were embroidered on his livery beside the white roses of the Mortimers, but above everything floated the royal arms. As he entered Westminster Hall for the session of Parliament, the sword of state was borne unsheathed before him. Everything was designed to emphasise his right to the throne which, ‘though right for a time rest and be put to silence yet it rotteth not nor shall it perish’.42
His entrance was met with an embarrassed silence from the nobility, while the Archbishop of Canterbury asked the Duke if he wished to see the King. It was at once apparent that his royal pretensions had very little support. Contemporaries reported that the Calais Earls, including his eldest son, the Earl of March, opposed the Duke’s attempted usurpation. Although he persisted in his claim for several days, issuing lengthy genealogical proofs to support his right, he was reminded of his repeated oaths of allegiance to King Henry, and was eventually forced to accept a compromise in the form of the Act of Accord. In this the Duke was acknowledged as the heir-apparent and the Prince of Wales was set aside. The income from the principality of Wales was to be paid to the Duke. The Coventry attainders were annulled and large annuities were to be paid to the Earls of March and Rutland. Finally the Duke of York was declared Protector of England and granted all the powers of a Regent.
This disinheritance of the Prince of Wales, while leaving King Henry on the throne, was clearly not going to last. Throughout the last months of 1460 both sides gathered troops. The Queen, accompanied by her son, recruited in the north with the full support of Westmorland and the Percys. Edward, Earl of March, went west to recruit along the Marches and York rode north with Salisbury to bring in their own forces from Yorkshire. Warwick remained in control of London and the King. The Duchess Cecily together with Margaret, Richard and George also remained in London, probably at Baynard’s Castle.
York’s arrival at his castle of Sandal was intended to support his loyal tenantry in the West Riding from the raids of the Percys and their royal allies. But the Lancastrian force at the nearby castle of Pontefract seems to have been larger and by the end of the year the Duke found that he was virtually besieged at Sandal. On 30 December a brief skirmish between a Yorkist foraging party and a Lancastrian ambush resulted in a catastrophic clash of arms and the deaths of Richard himself, his son Edmund, the Earl of Salisbury, his son Thomas and the Duke’s nephew, Sir Edward Bourchier.43
The news of this ‘evil day of Wakefield’ reached London in the first days of January, striking horror into the party that had been keeping the Christmas feast at Baynard’s Castle. The reports must have seemed incredible. The Duke was forty-nine years old and not given to rash military ventures. Only a breach of the Christmas truce by the Lancastrian forces could make any sense of what had occurred. Rumours that Edmund had been killed while fleeing from the field, and that Salisbury had been executed without trial at Pontefract, added to the sense of terror. News too that Richard’s head wearing a paper crown had been mounted on the walls of York added a final macabre note. Cecily acted swiftly, exhibiting calmness in the face of a serious crisis which Margaret would later emulate. She sent her two youngest sons off to safety in Burgundy, ‘unto a towne in Flaundyrs namyd uteryk.’44
Duke Philip of Burgundy greeted the news of their arrival in his dominions with some embarrassment. The boys were sent to Utrecht to be cared for by Bishop David, one of the ducal bastards who could be relied upon to carry out his father’s orders. The two boys settled down to their studies under the Bishop’s enlightened eye. The Yorkist disaster of Wakefield had attracted much attention in Burgundy, where there were virtually three courts at that time, the Duke’s own court, which was centred on Brabant and Flanders, the court of his heir Charles, the Count of Charolais, who was either at The Hague or with the ducal armies in the field, and the court of the Dauphin Louis of France, who was living in exile at Jemappes.
Louis was enthusiastic in his support for the Yorkist cause, chiefly because he opposed all the policies of his father, Charles VII, from whom he had fled. Louis’ response to the news of Wakefield was to send his own personal messenger with a small force to support the Yorkists. They eventually fought beside Edward at the battle of Towton under the Dauphin’s standard.45 Due to the Dauphin’s Yorkist leanings, Charles, who was hostile to Louis’ influence on Burgundian policy, inclined towards Lancaster. The old Duke Philip steered a middle course, preserving an austere neutrality to the anarchical wranglings of the English nobility. George and Richard were left at Utrecht and it was not until after the Yorkist victory at Towton that they were invited to the c
ourt at Bruges, where they were shown ‘great reverence’ and entertained to a ducal banquet.46 When they returned to London in June, they were able to provide Margaret with first-hand descriptions of the splendour of the Burgundian court, which was then at its apogee under the third ‘Great Duke of the West’, Philip the Good.
In the five months between the disaster at Wakefield and the coronation of her brother Edward in June, Margaret remained with her mother in London which was still in Yorkist hands. While the rest of the country offered unknown dangers, Baynard’s Castle became the safe house for the family. It was a large house, capable of accommodating the 400 armed men which Richard of York had brought with him in 1458.47 The great hall was over forty feet long and twenty-four feet wide; there were large undercrofts and several courtyards. It lay between Thames Street and the river, and its pleasant gardens ran beside the Thames. The elegant gardens of the London houses were a well-known feature of the medieval city, and they were planted with a wide variety of trees and flowers. The views from the terraces were spectacular and exciting. The Thames was full of ships, both foreign galleys and the local craft. These were manned by formidable boatmen, who had to be strong and tough in order to get their small boats through the narrow arches of London Bridge in the face of the rushing currents and tides. Further downstream towards the Tower was the quay, where the Venetian galleys loaded and unloaded under the watchful eye of the garrison.
It is likely that Cecily and Margaret stayed at Baynard’s Castle until after the coronation of Edward IV. From January to March, they faced some very uneasy times, especially after Warwick was defeated at the second battle of St Albans, leaving the way to London open to the Queen’s northern army. The city was only spared by her hesitation and reluctance to launch an attack. A delegation of ladies who were known for their loyalty to the royal cause, including Anne, Dowager Duchess of Buckingham and Jacquetta, Lady Rivers, went to plead with the Queen not to bring her northern rabble into the city. Fortunately for London she listened to their appeals.48
Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Page 7