The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  After Christmas (in the meantime Sens had fallen and Montereau as well, with great slaughter) Henry took Katherine back to England with him, anxious to show the people his radiant young bride. She was received like “an angel of God” (which indeed she was not) and her coronation took place on February 24. The banquet which followed was unique in one respect. As Lent was starting, nothing but fish could be offered. The cooks, who were artists in those days, served twenty-two kinds of fish in all manner of odd ways: bream of the sea and jelly colored with columbine, conger with cream of almonds, white leche with hawthorn leaves and red haws, perch with gudgeon, eels roasted with lampreys, roast porpoise; well, so it went.

  Katherine sat in great state at one end of the table, with Archbishop Chichele, Cardinal Beaufort, and King James of Scotland grouped about her. The Earl of March (who, strictly speaking, should have been king) and Warwick squatted on their haunches on each side of the royal chair, holding her scepters, and the Countess of Kent was under the table at the queen’s feet, holding a napkin. Neville was cup bearer, Stuart was sewer, Clifford pantler, and Grey of Ruthin (Owen Glendower’s old enemy) was naperer. A high degree of state indeed!

  The queen then went to Windsor where she expected to be joined by Henry. But at this stage she was to learn the bitter lesson over again, that she did not come first in the king’s mind. He wanted heavy financial support from the House for another smashing campaign and so went off on the medieval equivalent of a “barnstorming” tour, a processional which took him to practically all towns in the kingdom. He would have taken Kate with him, because he knew the consuming curiosity there was about her, but she was with child and nothing must be done to disturb the even course of nature. Kate stood this dreary solitude at Windsor as long as she could. She had only the ladies of her household about her and their names added to the monotony of things: Joanna Belknap, Joanna Troutbeck and Joanna Coucy, all named no doubt after Henry IV’s second wife. She set out to join her errant spouse, catching up with him at Leicester. They returned together in time for the meeting of Parliament in May.

  As one of the king’s brothers, Thomas of Clarence, had been defeated and killed at Beaugé, Henry hurried back to France, leaving Kate to have her child alone and with a stern admonition that the event must not take place at Windsor. But the queen felt at home in Windsor, and nowhere else in England, and so in spite of the king’s instructions, she gave birth there in the Queen’s House to a boy who was to be named Henry after his sire, a quiet baby with small features and very blue eyes. When Henry heard of this, he is reported to have improvised a piece of verse, with a prophetic ring about it:

  I, Henry, born at Monmouth,

  Shall small time reign, and much get;

  But Henry of Windsor shall long reign, and lose all.

  But as God will, so be it.

  Leaving the newborn heir to the throne, Katherine crossed to Honfleur in May, followed by the large army which the parliamentary grants had made possible, 20,000 men under the Duke of Bedford, the ablest of the royal brothers. She was shocked when she saw her husband, although she knew he had been through a grueling period. Henry, who had been so fleet of foot that he could catch deer in the royal enclosures without the use of dogs, now walked slowly and stumbled under the weight of his armor. The fine complexion so general in the family had deserted him and his cheeks were gray. A short time before, he had been stricken with a mysterious malady, the exact nature of which left the royal physicians at a loss. All maladies seemed to have been mysterious in this day of medical ignorance, but Henry’s condition seems to have been a severe case of dysentery, from which Edward I had died.

  He strove to make light of it, being certain that his strong constitution would prevail. He sent Katherine on to Vincennes to join her parents while he completed the campaign. It soon became apparent that there was no hope of recovery and he was taken in a litter to Vincennes. He died almost at once, in a penitential mood because he had accomplished so little of what he wanted to do. Jerusalem had been in his mind and he had desired to lead a final crusade for the liberation of the holy city. He had even sent a Burgundian knight named Gilbert de Lannoy to reconnoiter Palestine and had received a hopeful report.

  “How long have I to live?” he asked the physicians.

  They answered with great reluctance. “Sire, not more than two hours.”

  “Comfort my dear wife,” he said to his brother John of Bedford, who stood beside the royal couch. “The most afflicted creature living.”

  He did not live out the time they had allowed him. Perhaps he drew on his ebbing strength to issue instructions for the government of the kingdom and for the care of his infant son. He did not name Katherine as regent nor did he commit the little king to her care, thinking probably that this would be done as a matter of course.

  He died at two o’clock in the morning of August 31, 1422. It was a night of heavy black clouds, as indeed it should have been. Black clouds would hang over England during all the long years of the reigns which would follow immediately after.

  Katherine, who mourned her dead lord with an intensity of grief, accompanied the body back to England. When the cortege entered London, a large clerical body, made up of fifteen bishops and a long line of abbots, chanted loudly as they followed the bier through the city. All householders stood before their doors with lighted torches.

  Parliament met shortly after and Katherine came from Windsor, carrying her son on her knee as they traversed the streets to Westminster. The little king conducted himself with much gravity. It was well that this occurred on a weekday, for the boy had already developed the habit of refusing to engage in any activities on Sundays!

  7

  With Henry dead so young and buried at Canterbury under his emblazoned shield, his saddle, and his battered helmet, the story continues with the sorry balance of Kate’s life. For three years she lived in various of her dower homes, but mostly at Baynard’s Castle in London, and had the care of the infant king as her chief concern. She was unhappy, as a widow who had loved her husband very much, must be.

  It is said that she sought to settle a quarrel between two of Henry’s brothers, John of Bedford and Humphrey of Gloucester but nothing could be done to create a permanent healing between two men of such wide differences—John so able, honest, and just, Humphrey so selfish and unprincipled. Something further should be told about her relationship with the two brothers.

  Stout Bedford had been the main prop and stay of Henry, the kind of assistant that a great chief of staff can be to a military leader of genius. He was capable of leadership himself but willing to serve in a secondary capacity. After Henry’s death he conducted the operations in France with vigor and skill, winning two great battles, one at Verneuil, which is sometimes compared with Crécy and Poictiers. John of Bedford ranks among the great men who somehow fail to come alive on the pages of history. This may have been due in his case to a certain stolidity of character and a degree of insensitivity which he manifested in acquiescing in the burning of Jeanne d’Arc.

  There were three possible husbands for Katherine in the royal family if the council had desired to use her in cementing the French regency. Bedford was handsome, rather stocky in build, and Kate would perhaps have been sensible enough to accept his hand had he offered it. But John was willing to comfort her, as Henry had desired, but not to marry this sister-in-law with her beauty and charm, her Valois nose, and her inherited tendencies, and it was almost certain that the Pope would refuse his consent. Then there was Humphrey, for whom Kate had no respect, and Edmund Beaufort, a grandson of John of Gaunt by his third wife. It is certain that Kate would have married this handsome and sophisticated young man and almost certainly the Pope would have consented. But Humphrey, the persistent troublemaker, fought the idea bitterly, knowing that Beaufort, with Kate as his wife, would be directly in line for the French regency.

  Kate was not temperamentally fitted to a long widowhood and, when she found that the English council
would not sanction her return to France (she was not particularly anxious to go) and was not concerning itself with finding a new husband for her, she began to notice that there was a handsome Welshman in her household, one Owen Tudor. He was serving as master of the wardrobe, which brought them in contact a great deal. He is described as having a bright eye, a well-turned pair of dancing legs, and a regard for the main chance. On one occasion some members of the household were dancing while the dowager queen sat watching with her ladies. The adroit Owen missed a step and stumbled against her, as expert a loss of balance as could conceivably be achieved.

  He had to consult her about the intimate details of her wardrobe and the great lady in her mourning robes became very conscious of his presence. It was soon noticed that he was in and about her apartments oftener than duty necessitated. Despite the long and easy flowing robes that ladies wore in those days, it was impossible to conceal from the keen feminine eyes about her that she was facing the inevitable consequences of her folly.

  The liaison continued for over ten years and in that time Kate brought five children into the world, three sons and two daughters. History has been at a loss on the question of the legitimacy of the Tudor children. Tudor historians, whose purpose was always to present Henry VII in the best possible light, never expressed a doubt that a marriage had taken place, although they were unable to discover when, where, or by whom the ceremony was performed. In 1428, when the scandal had become an open one, Parliament passed a law prohibiting the queen dowager from marrying anyone without the consent of the king, her son, or his council. Because of this it has been argued that she could not have been married to Tudor before that date and, in consequence, that it was later when the nuptials occurred. This supposition overlooks the likelihood that, because of the parliamentary prohibition, the marriage never took place at all.

  It is significant that after his mother’s death Henry VI erected an altar tomb in the Lady Chapel at Westminster in which she was inscribed the widow of Henry V and no mention made of a subsequent marriage.

  There is doubt also about the antecedents of Owen Tudor. He is often described as a Welsh gentleman of minor standing and no wealth. Some historians (of the Tudor period, naturally) claim an antiquity for his family, tracing it back to Ednyfed Fychan, who had property on the Isle of Anglesey and who married a daughter of Rhys, Prince of South Wales.

  The relationship between the dowager queen and the handsome adventurer, whether legal or not, was allowed to drag along until 1436 when Henry took action to end it. Tudor was arrested and placed in Newgate Prison and Kate retired or was committed to Bermondsey Abbey. The father of the children managed to escape from prison with the connivance of his servant and a priest. The boy king then made it known that he desired that “Oweyn Tidr the which dwelled wt the said quene should come to his presence.” This sounded ominous to Tudor, who was living quietly at Daventry, and he demanded that he be given a written safe conduct. On reaching London he went into sanctuary at Westminster (a curious course if there were any proofs he could produce) and remained there for some time before issuing out to defend himself. He was again confined to Newgate and again made his escape.

  When the king came of age he was generous enough to settle an annuity on him. Tudor repaid this generosity by fighting well on the Lancastrian side during the first stages of the Wars of the Roses. He was captured at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross and on orders from Edward of York was beheaded in the market place at Hereford. A sentimental admirer, a woman presumed in the chronicles to be mad, proceeded in a weeping condition to comb the hair and wash the face and to place around it many lighted candles.

  Kate died at Bermondsey on June 3, 1437. Whether death was due to physical disabilities or grief cannot be determined; probably both figured in her early demise. She was thirty-six years of age and had survived her mother, the indestructible Isabeau of the easy morals, by one year only. And from this sordid relationship to which she had devoted all of her last years came in time the extinction of the Plantagenet line in favor of the able and arrogant Tudors. Edmund Tudor, the eldest son of the union, married Margaret, a daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and bore a posthumous son who became Henry VII under circumstances which will be told later.

  The five Tudor children were kept in a nunnery in care of the Abbess of Barking until Henry VI came of age. He then asserted himself by looking after this brood of half brothers and sisters with an affectionate care. Edmund, the first son, was made Earl of Richmond. Jasper, the second, was created Earl of Pembroke, and it was in his tall western castle that the son of the Richmond family was born. The third brother, Owen, took holy orders. Of the two sisters, Jacina married Reginald, Lord Grey of Wilton; the other became a nun. It is said that the gentle Henry VI became quite fond of his half brothers and sisters and gave them every honor, save an acknowledgment of legitimacy.

  Poor Katherine’s body was not to be allowed the calm of one resting place. When Henry VII became king he found it necessary to demolish her tomb because he needed the space for the elaborate new chapel he was erecting. The epitaph her son had placed above her was removed and in its place a long poem was chiseied into the stone, concluding with these lines:

  Of Owen Tudor, after this, thy next son Edmund was,

  O Katherine! a renowned prince, that did in glory pass.

  Henry VII, a Britain pearl, a gem of England’s joy,

  A peerless prince was Edmund’s son, a good and gracious roy;

  Therefore a happy wife this was, a happy mother pure,

  Thrice happy child, but grand-dame she, more than thrice happy sure!

  Thrice happy wife and mother! After this absurd and inelegant epitaph, could any historian of the day do else but assert the legitimacy of the union?

  The tomb over the body of the dowager queen was never raised again, but the coffin was opened and it was found that the body had become almost mummified and had remained in an unusual state of preservation. The bier was kept open for three centuries for the benefit of curious visitors. In the reign of Charles II a fee of tuppence was charged for looking at the brown and wizened countenance. Samuel Pepys paid his tuppence and that night, in excessive bad taste, wrote in his diary that he “this day kissed a queen.”

  CHAPTER IV

  The Red and the White

  1

  ENGLAND was tired of boy kings. There had been Henry III who was eight years old when they placed the crown on his head and who turned out to be a devious and petty man without dignity or courage. Then there had been Richard II who had too much dignity and great courage when aroused but who, after a good start, became a bad king. And now here was Henry VI, an infant of less than a year, with England in the midst of a major war and with two factions at home fighting for control of the government.

  Nothing good could be expected under the circumstances. Henry became a gentle and devotional boy, with the qualities which often go with early piety—a little smugness, some stubbornness, and a certain inflexibility. He grew into a saintly man and it was a pity he could not have gone into the church. Certainly he was ill fitted to hold the factions in control, to direct the war in France, and, in the end, to fight a cruel civil war which went on and on, through triumphs and defeats, to end in his mysterious death in the Tower.

  The dissensions at home were due, as usual, to royal uncles. Bedford the reliable, in whom the late king had trusted implicitly, was in command of the armies in France. The youngest of the surviving uncles, Humphrey of Gloucester, acted as protector. Although he had won the good will of the people, Humphrey was weak, rash, and selfish. He always put his own interests first and fatally weakened the English cause by antagonizing the Burgundians. The other faction was the Beauforts, descendants of John of Gaunt by his third wife, Katharine Swynford, who took their name from Beaufort Castle in Anjou, where the children had been born. This branch of the family had never been popular although they were handsome, polished, and able. The public dislike for them was due to
a feeling that they were interlopers, and in equal degree perhaps to their wealth.

  The strongest member of the Beauforts was Henry, the third of the original brothers, who had taken holy orders. He had become Bishop of Winchester and had been appointed chancellor by Henry V, holding that post when the warrior king died. Beaufort had a secret desire (which everyone suspected) to become Pope. If conditions had been different he might have achieved his ambition, having charm, a subtlety of wit, and a great gift for diplomacy, in addition to being the possessor of unusual wealth. But the schism in the papacy had become three-sided and the church was degenerating into a state almost of impotence. The result was a tendency in national churches to conduct their own affairs without much control from Rome or the other centers of the papal triangle.

  Beaufort appeared at the Council of Constance, which had been called to discuss unification and reform, wearing the robe of a pilgrim. He played an important part in the election of Martin V as the one Pope and was made a cardinal as a reward. Later he was selected to direct a campaign in Bohemia against the religious reformers. If he had succeeded, he would have been an overwhelming favorite to follow Martin. This left him on the wrong side of the fence in England, where the people were convinced he put Roman interests first.

  To counterbalance this weakness in his position, Beaufort had one great asset: he stood strongly for peace with France. This served to open a wider breach with Humphrey, who was openly for war. Humphrey, in fact, seems to have followed closely in the footsteps of the leading malcontent in Richard’s reign, Thomas of Woodstock, in his ambitions and policies and, as it developed, in his sudden end.

  The boy king inclined to the Beaufort side from the beginning. He liked his uncle Henry and had small regard for Humphrey. The cardinal, moreover, was always ready to advance money when it was needed. At one time the Crown owed him close to £30,000, a sum so great that it was believed he had been helped by others in raising the money. At several stages the hostility between the cardinal and “good Duke Humphrey,” as the unthinking populace called him, blazed into open conflict. Throughout it all the young king maintained his personal preference for the cardinal and gave his full support to the movement for peace.