The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  Henry’s hopeful travels had taken him to Clarendon and there on July 6 the Valois curse descended on him. The light of reason flickered out in his mind and his body became almost completely impotent. He lay in a coma, unable to speak or hear, or even to move voluntarily a muscle of his body. The intelligence was received by the people with more grief and alarm than news of a military defeat; they had suffered through so many defeats that they were becoming inured, although not reconciled, to them. But what would happen to the nation now?

  At first nothing happened. The Crown advisers continued to function under the watchful eye and the sometimes imperious guidance of the queen. The unconscious king was taken to Windsor. He did not suffer from the neglect in which the French king had existed. In fact, he was most carefully tended and fed, even though there was no sign of intelligence in his eyes. He never spoke and certainly did not indulge in the maniacal outcries of his maternal grandfather.

  The royal child was born on October 13, 1453. It was a boy and the name of Edward was given him. The country, which should have rejoiced, was disturbed by rumors and baseless canards. It was said that the father of the child was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, the minister so obnoxious to the people but so much favored by Margaret herself. Other stories followed, equally false, that the queen’s child had died and that a boy of low degree had been spirited into the palace and put in the cradle of the deceased heir. It was declared that the unfortunate king, if he ever found it possible to speak again, would refuse to recognize the child as his. This wave of calumny resulted finally in a public statement by the Earl of Warwick at St. Paul’s Cross that the supposed heir was the child of adultery and that the claims made for him were a fraud.

  Queen Margaret, so gentle and lovely in appearance but so determined and unyielding in spirit, was furious over these vile aspersions. At first she could do nothing about them because Richard of York had not joined in the campaign of slander. But when the first hint reached her from Windsor that the king was showing some improvement under the enlightened care of Dean Kemer of Salisbury, who was accounted the wisest man of medicine in the kingdom, the queen decided to make a test. She took her infant son to Windsor, hoping that the sight of the boy would bring back the king’s reason.

  At the door of the sick chamber the queen confided the infant to the Earl of Buckingham and the latter carried him in. He came back shortly and shook his head. Henry was propped up in bed but had given no sign of intelligence. Queen Margaret still believed that her husband could be brought back to sanity and she carried the infant into the chamber a second time. She knelt at the side of the royal couch.

  She implored the king to give his blessing to the boy. Henry’s face remained without expression. He had not recognized her and nothing that was said aroused a spark of understanding in the weakened brain.

  This failure was a sad blow to the royal party. Parliament convened in February of the next year, faced with the problem of naming a protector for the term of the king’s mental incompetence. Richard of York presided and the tenor of the House was strongly against allowing the queen’s officials to remain in power. Margaret asked to be appointed regent, but the request was set aside.

  A report reached Westminster that the king was showing signs of improvement and a deputation of lords was sent down to get firsthand information. The report, however, had been premature. Henry again was sitting up in bed. He was obviously very weak although the attendants said he had partaken of a good meal. There was not a flicker of interest or recognition in his eyes. The lords addressed him earnestly and imploringly but failed to arouse the sick monarch. They returned to London, therefore, convinced that some definite decision must be reached.

  On March 27 they elected Richard of York protector for the term of the heir’s minority or until the king recovered his senses. The new head of state proceeded to direct things with a firm hand. The Duke of Somerset was arrested and committed to the Tower. The offices of the chancellery were cleared of all the Beaufort appointees, and Yorkist supporters put in their places. Richard’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury was made chancellor. When Archbishop Kemp of Canterbury died, his successor was not William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and the great friend of both king and queen, but Bishop Bourchier of Ely, who traced his descent back to Thomas of Woodstock. In France the new head of state was able to check the French and to hold Calais and the island of Jersey from attack.

  On Christmas Day, King Henry showed the first real signs of returning sanity. Two days later he sent substantial offerings to Canterbury and Westminster, a clear indication that the royal mind was awakening and beginning to function along normal lines. The queen waited for further confirmation and then on December 30 she took the infant Edward to Windsor. This time she did not stand on ceremony but, holding the prince in her arms, hurried to the cabinet of the king.

  Henry was sitting up as usual, but this time there was a difference. There was a light in his eyes which turned quickly to recognition. The queen placed their son in his arms.

  The king was still very weak and showing signs of having wakened from a long dream. But he seemed to recognize the child without difficulty.

  “What name has he been given?” he asked.

  “Edward,” replied the queen.

  The thin, grave face of the king responded with a smile. “Good,” he whispered. “That is good.”

  Soon after, he was able to converse coherently and he told Margaret, to quote from the Paston Letters, that “he never knew him till this time, nor wist what was said to him, nor wist where he had been whilst sick till now.”

  Further evidence of the clearing of his mind was provided during the day. He asked the names of his son’s godfathers and commented on the death of Cardinal Beaufort, “one of the wisest lords in this land,” and he was able to sing matins and join in evensong later in the day. Several days later Bishop Waynflete came to Windsor and spoke with the reviving monarch at some length, emerging from the chamber at the finish weeping for joy.

  Henry was so much better, in fact, and Margaret so impatient, that he was taken soon thereafter to London. Here he was led before the lords in session to declare the dissolution of the House. Margaret wanted to be free of parliamentary interference in the course of action she had decided to follow. The face of fortune had been turned from the royal pair for a long time, but now it turned to them with a smile. The queen acted with characteristic decision in taking advantage of the change. Her innocent blue eyes emitted sparks of triumph and determination and she did not propose to wait for parliamentary sanction. It is highly unlikely that she disturbed the still inactive mind of the king for advice before she began to wield the broom of change with vigorous hand. Richard of York was dismissed from the protectorate and was even excluded from the council. Archbishop Bourchier, who had been holding the post of chancellor, was wafted through the door of his temporal office. Every Yorkist official, major or minor, was sent away.

  The Duke of Somerset was released from the Tower and put in York’s place. Waynflete replaced Bourchier as chancellor. All Westminster was filled with Lancastrian supporters.

  Richard was not disposed to accept these summary proceedings. He called his supporters together, particularly the members of the powerful Neville family, and it was decided to dispute the issue by force of arms. An army of 3000 men was assembled in the northern counties and along the borders of Wales, and a march on London was begun.

  At Ware, a Hertfordshire town about twenty-five miles from London, the advancing Yorkists paused and Richard sent a letter to the king, protesting his loyalty. They were so close to the capital that there would have been small opportunity for the slowly recovering monarch to do much about this avowal. But, as it developed, Somerset intercepted the letter. The same day the royal army, consisting of 2000 men, marched out to meet the rebel forces. They came together at St. Albans, where a sharp battle was fought on May 22.

  A very large broom in the hands of a very small que
en had precipitated the start of the Wars of the Roses.

  5

  The first battle of the long drawn-out civil war was a rather muddled affair which showed little evidence of strategic planning on either side. The Yorkists came down the Great North Road in considerable haste, for they realized that sentiment in London favored them. The royalists, appreciating this also, wanted to meet the rebel forces as far away from the city as possible. They struck out at a tangent for Watford, intending to follow Watling Street to Leicester. This left the road to London wide open. But when they reached Royston, the Yorkists learned what King Henry had done. They decided to offer battle and swung westward through Ware and Hatfield to St. Albans, arriving there a few hours after the army of the king.

  St. Albans straggled along the southern and western end of a high ridge. St. Peter’s Street ran through the center of town, past Castle Inn and the abbey. Paralleling this on the east was the town ditch surmounted by a palisade, which the Lancastrians had already taken over when the Yorkists arrived. The Yorkist attack had to be launched, therefore, along the two main roads running into town from the east, Shropshire Lane and Sopwell Lane. When they came to the ditch they found the palisade swarming with the soldiers of the king. This brought them to a dead stop.

  It happened, however, that the Lancastrian leaders had massed their troops behind the palisades opposite the two main roads and had left a long space between unoccupied. This mistake was responsible for the birth of a legend, the belief held thereafter and presented in many histories, that the young Earl of Warwick was a great general. He had the good fortune to be leading his column up between the two main roads and found no opposition in his path. He took advantage of this by sending his men in to cross the ditch and climb the undefended palisades. There were private gardens on the other side, through which the eager troops plunged, coming to a brick wall which they had to batter down before reaching St. Peter’s Street. The young earl proudly led them out into the center of town, brandishing his sword and shouting, “A Warwick! A Warwick!”

  There was no trace of the enemy in that part, so Warwick divided his forces and had them wheel right and left to catch the king’s troops in the rear.

  This decided the issue. The Lancastrians had been outnumbered to begin with and the Yorkists had been recruited from men with long experience in the French wars, archers for the most part. The defending army was packed so closely into two pockets that they could not do anything. Under cover of a continuous flight of arrows, Warwick’s men took them in the flanks and proceeded to demolish them.

  This battle demonstrated the absurd pass to which chivalry had reduced the art of war. Armor had become so cumbersome and heavy that the knights had to dismount and fight on foot. The result was a complete lack of mobility in tactical operations. The brave knights had to remain where they were and wait for the enemy to attack. If the enemy also fought by the code, it would sometimes happen that the two armies would line up face to face and proceed to fight it out with sword and mace and dagger. But if one side maneuvered about to attack from the most advantageous direction, the stationary knights were badly at a loss, being unable to change their base. When the issue had been decided, the knights on the losing side could not reach the horse lines to mount and be off. All they could do was to turn at bay and face death or capture (which was often the same thing) at the hands of the victorious foe.

  The heavy losses sustained by the nobility in the battles of the Wars of the Roses were due to being thus shackled by the code. The archers and foot soldiers, wearing nothing heavier than leather jerkins, could get away from the field and scatter for safety, but the knights were anchored in muddy fields.

  King Henry had been in a bellicose mood the night before the battle. “By the faith I owe St. Edward,” he had cried, “I shall destroy them, every mother’s son! They shall be hanged and drawn and quartered!” But when the battle began, he felt in a different mood. He was not a coward but he dreaded bloodshed and would have no part in it himself. In full armor he occupied a tent under the royal standard, which had been unfurled on St. Peter’s Street. When the right half of Warwick’s column came down the road, driving all opposition before it, the royal tent was surrounded after being riddled with arrows. The king was found sitting on the ground beside the Duke of Buckingham, both of them wounded. The king had been hit in the neck by an arrow, the duke in the face. The royal guards had taken to their heels.

  “Forsooth and forsooth,” said Henry quietly.

  When Richard of York arrived, his face flushed and triumphant, the king issued a brusque order. “Stop this slaughter of my subjects!”

  Henry’s wound was attended to, it being slight, and he was led down St. Peter’s Street to the nearest house, which belonged to a tanner. Here he remained until he could be removed safely to the abbey for the night. On the way, they saw on the steps of the Castle Inn the body of the Duke of Somerset, who had fallen early in the battle.

  Henry was not treated as a prisoner. Richard of York and the Earl of Warwick knelt before him and asked to be forgiven. The king nodded gravely and said that he bore them no ill will. When sufficiently recovered from his wound, he rode to London with the victors and entered the city in great state.

  Queen Margaret, who had remained behind at Coventry with the infant prince, took him with her to the royal palace at Greenwich. With indomitable will, she began to issue calls for assistance to all in England and abroad who were favorable to the cause of the Red Rose. It was at this time that her ill wishers began to call her Captain Marguerite.

  CHAPTER V

  The Gentle Henry

  1

  THE war between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists could possibly have been brought to a quick conclusion after the victory of the White Rose at St. Albans, as Henry IV had done after the capture of Richard. If Richard of York had overcome his scruples about removing his cousin and had declared his own claim to the throne, he would have found little organized resistance at this point. He held Henry as his prisoner, and there had been heavy mortality at St. Albans in the ranks of the nobility who sported the Red Rose. The determined queen, flying for safety from Coventry with her young son, was in no position to act promptly in raising more battalions. London was loud in support of Richard, and in Parliament the Lancastrian element was not in a position to fight for a captive king.

  Parliament met on July 9 and, as York made no determined move, the loyalty of all the lords assembled was pledged to the king. Henry suffered another attack later and York was made protector when the House met again in November.

  By this time, things had settled down. The armed contingents had been disbanded; the rival roses were no longer worn on the streets. It developed that Henry’s attack was of a much less serious character. At any rate he retained sufficient sanity to be consulted on state decisions. In February of the next year, the king emerged with suddenness from his seclusion and declared himself fit to assume all his duties again. He was willing to continue Richard of York as his chief councilor, but on that point a small feminine foot came down with unmistakable vehemence. No, declared Queen Margaret, there would be no more of that. Henry was king and would rule as a king; and the Yorkist element must be removed. Henry gave in and dismissed his cousin of York from office.

  And so it went. The fortunes of war swayed back and forth. Bloody battles were fought. Sometimes the White Rose was in the ascendant, more frequently at first the Red. The king continued to suffer from attacks of his mental malady and the queen remained adamant in her attitude, refusing to agree to any concessions.

  The story of the long drawn-out struggle, if told at full length, would prove both repetitious and monotonous. The chief interest in the period lies in the cast of unusual characters who played the leading parts: Henry himself, a man of true devotion but limited mental capacity and with little steel in his composition, who would gladly have played a part of passive resistance in this cycle of violence, a medieval Gandhi; Richard of York, a second Joh
n of Gaunt in that his scruples sometimes out-weighed his ambition, but who had courage and capacity; the Earl of Warwick, showy, brilliant, lucky (at the start), who emerged as the ablest man of the day and won in history the name of the Kingmaker, a bold, aggressive leader but lacking in many of the higher qualities; Margaret, the beautiful and brilliant queen, who had more fighting spirit in her than any of the men concerned but was utterly lacking in such qualities as fairness, moderation, and foresight; the two sons of Richard of York who were both to rule England later as Edward IV and Richard III.

  Perhaps the best method to tell of this stormy period, without resorting to the tedium of chronological narration, will be to deal with these people and allow the story to emerge through the record of their activities.

  2

  Before going any further into the part that Henry VI played in the long years of war, a more complete picture should be given of the man.

  He was a second Job, as is made evident in all the stories which have been collected about him. A prelate who acted for ten years as his confessor declared there had never been a mortal sin to be forgiven. In church he never sat at his ease or got up and paced about as royal individuals with less patience did, but knelt with bowed head throughout. He went bareheaded to chapel, even when it was necessary to go by horseback. He preferred a row of crosses on the royal crown to the customary flowers or leaves. Members of the nobility were never permitted to carry their hawks into church (a common practice, for they wanted to get out into the fields immediately), and if he saw them wearing swords or daggers, he sent orders to have the weapons removed.

  His modesty and chastity were almost beyond belief in an age when all men had mistresses and sly talk of Moll Tear-sheets monopolized male conversation. Nakedness made him angry. Once at court a nobleman brought in a woman to dance in a Christmas play. Her bosom was bare and the king went at once to his chamber, muttering, “Fy, fy, for shame!”