The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  “The bishop,” says the History, in the preparation of which the honest bishop had at the least a collaborating hand, “was a man of great natural wit, very well learned, and honorable in behavour, lacking in no wise ways to win favor.” After this gentle bit of self-laudation, the report of what happened in the grim castle in the foothills goes on to tell how Morton proceeded to ply the overly proud and not too scrupulous duke “with fair words and many pleasant praises,” finally coming to this: “As for the late protector, sith he is now king in possession, I purpose not to dispute his title. But for the weal of this realm—it might yet have pleased God, for the better store, to have given him some of such other excellent virtues, meet for the rule of a realm, as our Lord hath planted in the person of your grace.”

  The Duke of Buckingham had become the second man in the kingdom. At Richard’s coronation, he bore the king’s train and almost eclipsed the royal magnificence, his badge of the flaming wheel being flaunted everywhere. He was appointed the high constable of England and given wide powers in Wales and in the western counties. But he listened to the whispered words of the bishop and decided his power was great enough to oust the new occupant of the throne and to place in his stead Henry of Richmond, now the leading claimant on the Lancastrian side. Having laid the train, Morton made his way in disguise to the Fen country, where he remained in concealment until a ship could be found to take him to the continent. There he joined Henry of Richmond at the French court and between them they spun a clever web.

  In the meantime the sadly misguided duke raised a force in Wales and proclaimed Henry the rightful king. He seems to have expected that the whole country would rise to support him.

  Other men talked but Richard acted. He sent troops to guard the fords on the flood-swollen rivers in the Marcher country and so made it impossible for Buckingham to get his small army across. After waiting for over a week, the Welsh levies lost heart and began to disperse. The duke, knowing his cause lost, fled in disguise into Shropshire where he was finally found in the hut of a shepherd. A court at Salisbury condemned him to death and he was beheaded in the market place.

  2

  The conspiracy which resulted in Richard’s defeat and death was hatched in his own household. At the coronation, Queen Anne’s train had been carried by a tall and very slender lady with long thin features and the profile of a finely cut cameo. This was Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset; in direct descent, therefore, from John of Gaunt and the family born to him out of wedlock by Katharine Swynford. Despite the austerity of her rather lovely face, she had lived an adventurous and dangerous life and had been married three times. Her first husband was Edmund Tudor, a son born to Owen Tudor, the dancing wardrobe man, and the widow of Henry V, the Fair Kate of legend and story. Margaret had presented him with one son, born posthumously, who was named Henry and was later to reign over England as Henry VII. Her second husband was Henry Stafford of the Buckinghams, and her third was the Lord Stanley whose head was damaged during the scene in the Tower when Hastings was charged with treason.

  Margaret Beaufort was the possessor of great wealth and was most fortunately of a deeply religious spirit. She spent much of her income in the support of religious institutions and at her death left her considerable estates to an educational foundation at Cambridge. She had outlived her son, so Henry VIII, her grandson, did his best to break the will in his own favor but failed in the face of a papal bull, prohibiting it.

  It was strange that this remarkable woman, so very generous and philanthropic, should have married Thomas Stanley, who was often referred to as the Wily Fox. In the course of long internal wars, such as the country had suffered, there are always certain men who prefer to follow a devious course and not stake their lives and prosperity on allegiance to one side. Of these the most conspicuous was Stanley, who had immense wealth himself in West Derby and the Isle of Man. It had been necessary for him to bring forces into the field, wearing the Red Rose, but somehow he had always contrived to get off to one side of the contesting armies and not become involved in the actual fighting. If he had lived in a later century, he would not have believed that sound strategic rule laid down by Napoleon: “Always march to the sound of the guns.”

  Henry VI’s militant queen thought of having him impeached as a traitor for keeping his force of 2000 men out of the Battle of Blore Heath. When Edward IV took the throne, the Wily Fox lined up with the winning side and was made a chief justice. Then the Kingmaker chased Edward from the country and Stanley did not delay one moment in changing back from the White to the Red Rose. When the Kingmaker was killed, one of the first to greet the home-coming Edward was the smiling and wholehearted Stanley, the master of gyrations, the baronial Vicar of Bray.

  On taking the throne, Richard made Stanley steward of the royal household and afterward constable of England, being convinced, say some commentators, that the whirling dervish would never turn against him unless he could do so with absolute safety, and thinking perhaps that he wanted him where he could be watched.

  The only clue in history to the appearance of the brave Stanley is a portrait which shows him with a long, thin face and a full beard. Did he possess the physical portliness and the outward geniality so often found in political opportunists? A strange mate, certainly, for Margaret Beaufort, with her fine spirit and her face of a dedicated martyr. But marry him she did, one of those curious matrimonial alliances which are hard to understand or explain.

  Margaret’s son Henry, in spite of the two-edged illegitimacy which clouded his bloodlines, became the leading claimant for the Lancastrians. She was fanatically devoted to his cause and became so deeply involved in the Buckingham uprising that she might have shared his fate. On Richard’s request, Parliament did no more than confiscate her estates and titles. In an excess of leniency, the king then transferred the estates into the keeping of Stanley on his agreement to keep her “in some secret place or home, without any servants or company, so she might not communicate with her son.”

  These precautions were of little avail. The undaunted Margaret began to attack her husband’s neutrality. She had been responsible for not too secret negotiations during the Buckingham upsurge by which a match had been arranged between her son and Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. With that as an objective, Stanley became convinced that his position would be sounder with a son-in-law on the throne. Still continuing to serve Richard as his confidential minister, he began to take a hand in the intrigue.

  With the Wily Fox to spin the web at the English end, and Morton at young Henry’s shoulder to manipulate things abroad, it was not surprising that very soon the country began to hear rumors of an impending invasion.

  3

  The first stage of the conspiracy took the form of propaganda. The story was spread that the two princes in the Tower had been murdered. All of England, it was asserted, was filled with indignation and horror. The only contemporary mention of these rumors is found in the Croyland Chronicle. And it may be pointed out that Morton, in the course of his hurried exit, had paused for several days in the Fen country. He may have risked a visit to Croyland in order to drop some hints in the ear of Peter Blois, the newly appointed chronicler. In the paragraphs that the latter wrote, there is a charge that, “Also he had poisoned the queen his wife.” This reference is to happenings in the first half of the year 1484. Queen Anne did not die until March 16, 1485.

  That Morton (“honorable in behavour, lacking in no wise ways to win favor”) was responsible for prompting the stories in the Croyland Chronicle is, of course, pure speculation. It acquires some merit, however, from the fact that soon after Morton arrived at the French court, having made good his escape from England, the French chancellor referred to the death of the princes in a speech to the States-General at Tours. Morton was a persistent propagandist and did his best to spread tainted tidings wherever he went.

  There was continuous speculation in the c
ountry about the relationship between Richard and the queen mother. The latter remained in sanctuary for ten months. Finally she left Westminster and took the quarters assigned her in the palace, after exacting an oath from Richard for the safety of her children. The princesses were then received at court with every evidence of friendliness and favor. The queen mother followed her surrender by writing to her son, the Marquis of Dorset, advising him to return to England. The tone of her letter was such that Dorset became convinced it would be safe for him to come back and had ridden as far as one of the French ports before an envoy of Henry of Richmond overtook him and persuaded him to remain.

  This happened after the people of England, as it is claimed, had accepted as fact that the two boys in the Tower were dead. Is it conceivable that any mother would consent to resume normal relationships with the man guilty of the murder of her two sons? Would she have done so before visual proof that the boys were alive? Tudor historians rush into the breach by asserting that Elizabeth acted under duress, that Richard held threats of reprisal over her. As it happened, Henry VII himself showed this explanation to be fallacious, as will be explained later.

  It seems certain that the queen mother’s action is an indication that she had no reason to believe at the time that her sons had been put to death. No other explanation of her conduct is even faintly believable.

  In connection with charges of murder, the motive for the crime is always of major importance. If Richard had the princes killed, it was because they had better claims to the throne than he had. But there seem to have been eleven other people alive at the time who had better claims under the law of primogeniture than Richard. Edward IV left five daughters as well as the two boys. Clarence left a son and a daughter. There were three of Richard’s older sisters still living and one of them had a son, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. If he wanted to clear his path to the throne, it would have been necessary to make a clean sweep, to remove all his sisters and nephews and nieces. Instead of this, he seems to have treated them with much kindness. After the death of his own son, for whom he grieved deeply, he first named Edward of Warwick, Clarence’s son, as his successor. Later he changed his mind and put forward John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the son of his sister Elizabeth. The reason for this was a certain cloudiness of mind in Edward of Warwick which unfitted him for the office.

  This may be the place to draw a parallel. One of the first things Henry VII did on finding the crown of gold pressed down firmly on his brow was to send for Edward of Warwick and lock him up in the Tower. Here the unfortunate youth remained for the balance of his life, there being no charge against him save that of being the son of George of Clarence. He was finally declared to have taken part in a conspiracy against Henry and was beheaded, on the sorriest of evidence. The daughter of Clarence, Princess Margaret, married the Earl of Salisbury and survived into the reign of Henry VIII. Bluff King Hal had her beheaded, in one of the most revolting of judicial murders. Richard had an illegitimate son named John, a harmless and likable lad from all reports. Henry VII had him put out of the way on a trumped-up charge of having plotted to run away from the kingdom. The writer of a comparatively modern textbook, who had no qualms at all about affirming Richard’s guilt, nevertheless began his story of the reign of Henry VII with these words, “It was the settled and considered policy of the Tudors to rid themselves of all rivals to the throne.”

  In the spring of 1484, Richard made a processional through the eastern counties, accompanied by his queen. Anne had become very thin and more wan of cheek than before. She liked to go with him wherever he went, which does not seem to point to a dislike for him on her part. When they arrived at Nottingham, the word reached them that their young son had died. They hurried to Middleham with a double sense of grief, because the ailing boy had died with neither of them beside him. Anne was so prostrated that it did not seem likely she would survive her son for any great length of time.

  Nevertheless the royal couple made a brave effort to share in the Christmas festivities at Westminster. It was during the Yuletide season that another charge was conjured up to hurl at the saddened young king. The princess Elizabeth, the oldest and fairest daughter of Edward IV, was at court and appeared at a dance in a costume exactly similar to that worn by the queen. The anti-Richard elements tried to read into this something strange and sinister. Was it not clear, they asked, that the king was setting up the gay young princess as a rival for his own consort? Did he intend to make her his second wife after Anne died, in order to prevent Henry of Richmond from claiming her?

  It seems highly improbable that the king, who was hard pressed for time to perform all the duties of his office during the brief span of his reign, would pay any attention to such purely feminine detail as what the ladies of his court were going to wear. More likely it was a sign of affection planned by the gentle queen to show her pleasure that the princesses had come out of retirement to grace the court proceedings with their beauty and gaiety. But this quite reasonable explanation was brushed aside by Richard’s critics. It was a scheme hatched in his dark and wicked mind.

  The queen died on March 16 when the sun was in eclipse. To Richard it must have seemed that nature was displaying some sympathy for his grief, which was heartfelt and excessive, but commentators see in it a proof that he had poisoned her. Immediately, the clamor of propaganda was raised against him more fiercely than ever. Had he poisoned his wife in order to get her out of the way so he could marry his young niece Elizabeth? It had been apparent to all for some time that the queen was dying from the disease which had cut down her sister, so who could think seriously that poison would be used to hasten her end?

  Immediately after the funeral, Richard summoned his council for the purpose of denying the malicious story that he thought of the princess as Anne’s successor. Later he appeared before the prominent citizens of London at St. John’s Priory, Clerkenwell, and repeated his disavowal of such a purpose, protesting his innocence of “having contemplated a marriage so repugnant to the habits and ways of the English nation.”

  Of all the charges made against him, this was the only one he faced in his lifetime and so had the opportunity of denying. What could he do to clear his name? He sent Princess Elizabeth to the castle of Sheriff-Hutton, in order to still the ugly assertions. If the bereaved king had been put on the stand to defend himself, one can easily believe his innocence would have been asserted in some such words as these, “My lords and honest citizens, I loved the lady, Queen Anne, every day of my life.”

  Now that she was dead, he made no plans to put anyone in her place. No furtive visits were paid to Sheriff-Hutton. He did not call in the ambassadors of other countries to discuss possible matrimonial alliances. He went before the House and nominated John de la Pole as his successor. It was clear he had given up all thoughts of having a son to take his place.

  It is doubtful, in fact, if these unfair charges were heard much outside the inner circle of the court, where there are always whispered undercurrents of malice and much ill-natured tattle. If the country at large had known what was being said, Richard’s conduct after Queen Anne passed away must have been completely reassuring. But in the pages of history in later centuries the charges were brought up again and again, refurbished and bolstered with labored reasoning and addled surmises.

  CHAPTER VII

  On Bosworth Field

  1

  IT IS time that the second figure in this drama, who has been kept standing in the wings, should be called out to the center of the stage.

  The word “Norman” had long since dropped from use but it seems necessary to revive it in dealing with Henry of Richmond. He was twenty-eight years of age, tall and slender like his mother. There was a hint of the Norman strain in his cold gray eyes and in the lightness of his hair which fell lankly about his brow. His nose was Norman also, unless it may have achieved its length from the Valois blood in his veins. One thing is certain: he was not a Plantagenet.

  Henry saw to it th
at England remained at peace during his reign and so brought back prosperity to the land on a sound basis. He was a good administrator and a close student of detail. His term on the throne was not marked by constitutional advances or any effort to improve the lot of the common man. But he faced certain problems with a clearness which no other king before him had displayed. There was, for instance, the absurdity of the coinage situation. The country was submerged with small money, such as pennies and farthings, and for purposes of calculation coins of account were used. Men talked of pounds and shillings but no such coins had ever been in existence. Henry saw the folly of people accumulating huge supplies of pence and he had the courage to begin the minting of actual pounds and shillings, making the Trial of the Pyx (the weighing of new money at the mint) an important function instead of a bit of ritual.

  It was because of such forward steps as these that history began to speak of him as an enlightened monarch. Some waxed enthusiastic enough to call him the Solomon of England. At the same time it can be said that no King of England acquired unpopularity with the people as quickly as he did. He was disliked personally. The common people saw early that he was devious and acquisitive to an almost unbelievable degree. If only one thing remained in the public mind about the reign of the first Tudor, it would be, of course, the story of Morton’s Fork. The second choice for this honor might be his habit of repaying expensive receptions in his honor with heavy fines, based on some never used statute or an old sumptuary law. Then there was his caution in organizing the first permanent king’s guard (how the expense of it must have irked him!) and in having a secret room constructed near his bedchamber at Windsor Castle, the knowledge of which was shared only with his valet and the builder. Finally there was the story of John Cabot.