Sir now I see well that ye have dyssayvyd yoursylf & alsoo me, But that not wythstandynd, all such promyse as I made unto my lady the duchess I shall perfform. Exortyng therl to doo the same. And upon this spedd theym toward the ffeeld wt as good a corage as he hadd xx m men more than he had.36
The rebels were certainly deceived over the amount of support they could expect in England. Very few rose to join ‘Edward VI’s’ army after it had landed near Furness on the Lancastrian coast and marched across the northern Pennines and down through the plain of York. The swift arrest of Dorset (the son of Elizabeth Woodville by her first marriage) had deterred many potential rebels and the rapidity with which the King moved north gave no time for waverers to flock to the Yorkist standard. Henry was at Coventry when he heard that the rebels had landed and were on the way south. He lost no time in cutting them off near the village of East Stoke on 16 June, only a dozen days after their landing in England.
At the hard-fought battle of Stoke, which lasted for more than three hours, Martin Schwartz and most of his landknechts were killed together with John Earl of Lincoln and Thomas Fitzgerald, the brother of Kildare, as well as hundreds of the ill-clad and ill-equipped Irish troops who made up the bulk of the army. Many were drowned as they tried to escape across the Trent. Lovel vanished from history if not from legend, and the ten-year-old Edward VI now known as King Lambert was arrested, exposed as a craftsman’s son from Oxford and contemptuously placed in the royal kitchens.37
For the Yorkists, the battle of Stoke was almost worse than Bosworth. The ignominy of accepting a mere artisan as a Prince of the House of York ran against the whole spirit of the age and did nothing to help and everything to hamper future claimants. Henry would ensure that any new pretenders were immediately identified with this impostor, whom he kept alive as an excellent example of the gullibility of the conspirators.
The consequences for the members of the House of York in England were not very noticeable. The Suffolk family were hardly affected by the treason of their eldest son and his brother Edmund was allowed to inherit some of his titles and lands. The Duchess of Suffolk still took a prominent place at her niece’s coronation, though when the Duke of Suffolk died in 1491, it was said that he had never recovered from the death of his eldest son, John Earl of Lincoln. Edward, Earl of Warwick, simply remained in the Tower as a useful exhibit.
For Burgundy the outcome was interesting. Although a few Flemish merchants were attacked in London, Henry was careful not to point the finger of blame at either Margaret or Maximilian. It was not until several years later when the Warbeck conspiracy began to threaten his security that Henry named Margaret as responsible for the Simnel affair. In 1487, it seemed that he had learned the lesson that Maximilian had been anxious to teach him and in December negotiations began for renewing the commercial and friendship treaties between England and Burgundy. These were signed in January 1488. Four months later ambassadors from Burgundy were again at Windsor and Maximilian was hopeful of obtaining English help against his own rebellious subjects. As the Low Countries erupted once more into violence, Maximilian needed English cooperation.38
The failure of Margaret to feature in any of the conspiracies against Henry VII, which took place between the spring of 1487 and the autumn of 1492, gives the lie to the Tudor theory that her whole life was focused on her vendetta with the English usurper. She was, once more, much too preoccupied with events in Burgundy to give much attention to England. And events in the Low Countries were certainly dramatic. Maximilian was again confronted by a major revolt in Flanders, while 1487 had been an extraordinary year for the ducal family. Following the coronation of Maximilian as the King of the Romans in February, the Emperor arranged his long awaited visit to the Low Countries. In July, Malines was en fête for his visit and, with his son Maximilian and his grandson Philip, the old Emperor Frederick made state visits to several of the cities of Brabant. Their arrival in Brussels had, according to Molinet, been likened to a visitation by the Holy Trinity: the Imperial Father, Maximilian the Son and the young Philip as the Holy Ghost.39 The whole ceremony was considered a great triumph.
However the summer campaigns against France did not go well. Although Maximilian captured Therouanne and planned a march on Paris, he was halted by mutinies among his unpaid armies and forced back to Valenciennes. The French struck back, recovering Therouanne, seizing St Omer and defeating the Burgundians near Béthune. These disasters coupled with a dislike of foreign and imperial interference in the affairs of the Low Countries, provoked rebellion in Flanders. There may also have been some anger at the invasion of England which had threatened to jeopardise trade and shipping in the Channel. Once more the rebellion broke out at Ghent where the flames were fanned by Adrien van Liederkerke who had an old score to settle with both Margaret and Maximilian.40
The misfortunes of the Humbercourt family had not ended with the execution of 1477. Shortly after the execution of her husband his widow, Antoinette, had arrived at Malines with her family. But within a few months she was abducted by Liederkerke and one of his allies while she was on her way to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Hanswijke. Her captors took her to the castle of Bornhem and she subsequently married Liederkerke, so whether it was an abduction or an elopement it is difficult to say. Both Margaret and Maximilian intervened, instructing the magistrates of Malines to take action, first to secure Antoinette’s release, which they failed to achieve, and secondly to take over the guardianship of her children and her property, which had been handed to the parents of Adrien van Liederkerke. This was rather more successful and the children and their lands were put under the guardianship of a group of eminent courtiers including the Count of Chimay.
Liederkerke considered himself robbed of his wife’s property and took his opportunity in 1487 to join with his cousin, the Lord of Rosseghem, who had led the revolt against Maximilian in 1485. They stirred up rebellion in Ghent and ducal officials were arrested and murdered. The rebels summoned the Flemish Estates to assemble but, while the delegates hesitated, Maximilian called the Estates to come to Bruges instead. Bringing his army with him, led by the old enemy of Flanders the Lord of Gaasbeek, Maximilian moved towards Bruges intending to use the Estates and his army to crush Ghent and its supporters. During October, Margaret took the young Philip on visits to her loyal cities of Mons and Binche before returning to the safety of Malines to spend Christmas. In December the Estates met at Bruges. The town and the countryside around were full of armed men and the rebels at Ghent feared a full scale attack by Maximilian, but the Archduke’s plan to divide Ghent and Bruges failed, and Bruges refused to allow Maximilian to bring his army into the city.
The King of France, Charles VIII, intervened confirming all Ghent’s privileges, including the restoration of the city mint which had been transferred to Bruges. He claimed to be acting in the name of his vassal, Duke Philip, whose powers had been usurped by his father. A month later, Maximilian found himself facing an even more serious situation, trapped in Bruges with his army held outside the walls. On 31 January, in the year that Commynes began to write his Memoires, the best schemes of the late King Louis XI finally came to fruition and the ruler of Burgundy found himself a helpless prisoner in the Cranenberg house on the market square of Bruges.41
It was not a particularly uncomfortable imprisonment even though it was to last for more than three months. Maximilian was accompanied by his Chancellor, the Abbot of St Bertin and during most of his captivity he was attended by his own personal servants. The city magistrates even hired Gerard David to paint the shutters in his room and the artist’s later works depicting the arrest and torture of the unjust judge were inspired by the scenes he witnessed in the market square below the windows of the Cranenberg. It was very distressing for Maximilian to have to listen impotently for two days as his chief agents in the city, Pierre Lanchals and Mathis Payert, were tortured before being executed. Many old scores were settled and Lanchals had the misfortune to be tried and punished by one
of his old enemies and rivals, Coppenole. Maximilian, in fear for his own life, wrote anxiously to his father the Emperor Frederick that his servants were being taken away from him.42
Both the Emperor and the Pope protested against the imprisonment of the King of the Romans, the imperial heir.43 The Emperor sent an embassy to deal directly with the rebels and threatened to follow this up with an army if his son was not released. Margaret acted calmly and firmly, protecting the young Duke Philip and Malines was put into a strong defensive position in case the Flemish tried to seize him as well. In Philip’s name, the Estates General was summoned to assemble in Malines and in February all the provinces and cities, apart from the three rebel members of Flanders, Ypres, Bruges and Ghent, and their few allies among the nobility, sent representatives there. The Estates appointed a committee headed by Lord Ravenstein to negotiate with the rebels for Maximilian’s release.
By May it was known that an imperial army was on its way, and that its advance guard had reached Oudenaarde. The Pope threatened the citizens of Bruges with excommunication if they did not release their ruler and serious negotiations were underway between the Flemish rebels and the committee of the Estates General. The Flemish agreed to release Maximilian in return for promises from the Archduke to withdraw the German army, to uphold the Great Privilege, to consult the Great Council and the Estates on all matters of war and peace and to take no action to punish the rebellious cites. Maximilian had to furnish hostages as sureties that he would keep the promises. Among those who offered to take Maximilian’s place at Bruges was Lord Ravenstein’s son, Philip of Cleves. A peace treaty was signed and the King of the Romans was released on 16 May. As soon as he was safe, he abjured all the promises he had been forced to make under duress and began to assemble an army at Louvain with which he intended to crush the rebels. This of course put his hostages in a very difficult position. For Philip of Cleves this was the breaking point, he abandoned Maximilian and took up arms with the rebels.
The old guard, which had supported Margaret and Mary in their crisis of 1477, was breaking up. Apart from Philip of Cleves and his father Lord Ravenstein, the Lord of Gruuthuyse had also fallen out with Maximilian over his approach to the problems in Flanders.44 In 1485 he had supported the idea of a regency council excluding Maximilian, and in February 1488 he had been arrested and held at Malines together with his two sons. He was later removed to Dendermonde and might have been executed at Vilvoorde if the Order of the Golden Fleece had not intervened on his behalf. During the imprisonment of Maximilian at Bruges, the rebels insisted on Gruuthuyse’s freedom, but he was imprisoned again when Maximilian was released. His detention was short-lived and he spent his last years at Bruges, enjoying the considerable consolations of his fine house and library which had so impressed Edward IV in 1472. Lord Ravenstein died in 1493, Philip of Cleves inherited his father’s title and was finally reconciled to Maximilian. Margaret must have regretted the loss of all her old advisers but nothing seemed to shake her determination to stand by Maximilian.
Throughout the summer of 1488 the civil war continued, as Maximilian strove to recover cities lost to the rebels and to avenge the indignities he had endured. He turned to England to help him in his struggle and the alliance between Henry and Maximilian was cemented by the events in France. Due to the Anglo-Burgundian entente, which lasted with minor interruptions from 1488 to 1492, there was no support from Burgundy for Yorkist pretenders. The cessation of the conspiracies throughout these four years suggests that it was Maximilian who really controlled the Yorkist activity. When it was no longer in his interests to plague Henry, the plots ceased.
In 1488 Maximilian certainly needed English support and not only against his own rebels. In the duchy of Brittany the death of Duke Francis II in September resulted in a major international crisis over the succession. Like Duke Charles, Francis left an heiress Anne, and the King of France claimed the right to take over the duchy in default of a male heir. The Bretons appealed both to Henry VII and Maximilian in their efforts to preserve their independence. A major European alliance against France gradually came into being, including Brittany, Burgundy, England and Spain.
It was, however, the English who took the most active role in Brittany. In April 1489, Henry sent over a well-equipped force of about 5,000 men to assist the young Duchess. He also supplied troops to fight beside Maximilian, against his Flemish rebels because they were aided by their allies, the French. Two thousand English archers and 1,000 pikemen marched from Calais and proved themselves very useful at the battle of Dixmude in June.45 After the battle, when they heard that Lord Morley, their commander, had been killed in the assault, the English army disgraced itself by slaughtering all their prisoners. Molinet was very shocked by this and considered that it was only the strong discipline of the German troops which had saved the town of Dixmude from total destruction. In spite of some obvious ill feeling between the English and their Burgundian allies, this was one of the few periods during Maximilian’s regency when the old Anglo-Burgundian alliance really operated.
The success at Dixmude marked the end of rebel strength and in October 1489 another peace treaty was signed between Flanders and Maximilian, although pockets of rebels still resisted pacification. Reparations were made to Maximilian and Margaret for all their losses in the wars, with Margaret receiving 21,000 livres for the damage done to her property.46 Even after this the rebellions in the Low Countries did not cease, and although Maximilian was able to negotiate treaties with France at Frankfurt and at Montils-lez-Tours in the summer of 1489, these did not settle all the problems. However there was a lull in the fighting and some of the damage caused by the wars could be repaired. Margaret’s dower properties in French hands were once more restored to her. In 1490 therefore, Margaret was able to send money to Brielle in order to help that city to rebuild its defences which had been destroyed by a rebel attack led by Frank van Borselem and Jan van Naaltwyck.
By October 1489, Maximilian was once more fully accepted as Regent and he turned again to the English alliance which he hoped would help him to reverse the treaty of Arras and keep France out of Brittany. Henry and Maximilian renewed their treaties and during Christmas of 1490, as a sign of their new friendship, Maximilian was invested with the Order of the Garter at Neustadt.47 In an effort to promote his interests in Brittany he decided to marry the young Duchess Anne and sent his friend Wolfgang, Lord von Pelhain, to act as his proxy. But few of the troops which he had promised for the defence of his bride arrived in the duchy, and when the French King Charles VIII began a systematic invasion of Brittany there was little that either Maximilian or his English ally could do. Charles VIII conquered the residue of the Breton army and arrived before Anne with a papal dispensation to permit his own marriage to the Duchess. With no other choice left to her, Anne ignored her own previous proxy marriage to Maximilian and also Charles’ long betrothal to Margaret of Austria. Maximilian thus lost both a wife and a son-in-law, but he at least had the satisfaction of seeing destruction of the treaty of Arras, which had been based on the marriage of his daughter to King Charles.
Henry VII proved himself more determined than Maximilian and even after the marriage of Charles to Anne was known, he prepared for an invasion of France. He crossed the Channel at the head of his army and laid siege to Boulogne in October 1492. Like Edward IV before him, he was soon opening negotiations with France, and Charles VIII was only too willing to renew the payments due under the old treaty of Picquigny, promising to cover all the arrears and Henry’s expenses for having to come in person to collect his danegeld. The peace of Étaples was signed on 3 November 1492 and Maximilian, like Duke Charles before him, was said to be furious at the perfidy of Albion. But in fact Maximilian had gained much from the English intervention. The English fleet had helped in the conquest of the last rebel strong point at Sluis, held by Lord Ravenstein. The rebels finally gave up the struggle and Maximilian was able to achieve peace and the final submission of Ghent at the Treaty of Cads
and in July 1492. Moreover, his son Philip was now almost old enough to rule in his own right. In 1491, when he was thirteen, he had become a Knight of the Golden Fleece and he was beginning to play a larger part in the government of the duchy.
The treaty of Senlis, negotiated between Charles VIII and Maximilian in May 1493, resulted in the return of Margaret of Austria together with her dowry of Artois and Franche Comté.48 Thus although the Duchy of Burgundy and Picardy were now lost for ever, Maximilian had at least salvaged a large part of his son’s inheritance. Margaret also benefited from the settlement. All her dower properties were restored to her, with reparation payments for her loss of income during the many years of war. But perhaps her chief delight was in the return of Margaret of Austria to the Low Countries. Margaret was now thirteen years old and had been well educated under the wise guidance of Anne de Beaujeu. She joined the court at Malines and was in close contact with the Dowager during the next few years. Margaret once more had the pleasure of the companionship of a young girl, just as she had had with the child’s mother a quarter of a century earlier.
In March 1494, when Philip came of age, Margaret must have felt that her promises to Mary had been fulfilled. The young Duke of Burgundy had inherited most of his mother’s possessions. The new ducal council reflected Margaret’s influence, manned as it was by families who had long years of service to the ducal family, such as the Chancellor Carondelet who had worked with Hugonet and the president of the council who was Engelbert, Count of Nassau.49 As Philip toured the Low Countries attending his inaugural celebrations, Margaret had a special pleasure for beside the young Duke rode her latest protégé, Richard of York, the new Yorkist Pretender. He claimed to be none other than the second son of Edward IV, born in August 1473, and miraculously rescued from death in the Tower.50
Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Page 23