The Third Plantagenet: George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III's Brother

by John Ashdown-Hill

  The Act also states that in his latest plot George had sought to achieve his objective by having his servants spread seditious stories. Although Thomas Burdet is not specifically said to have taken part in this activity, Burdet is named, and the sedition is then said to have been spread by George’s servants ‘of similar disposition’. Mention of Thomas Burdet was apparently considered important by the crown. The phrasing employed is vague, but it implies that Burdet spread sedition – presumably via his verses. Not surprisingly, the content of the verses is not cited – but contemporary members of Parliament may have been familiar with them.

  The lack of clarity in explaining who exactly spread George’s seditious stories (whatever they were), and how Thomas Burdet was connected with that activity, leads on to a further lack of clarity in respect of the means George had sought to employ to oust his brother. George is accused of possessing a document bearing the seal of Henry VI, which recognised him as heir to the throne if Henry and Edward of Westminster both died heirless. George probably did posses such a document. However, he is not accused in the Act of having used it in any way. Reference to it therefore seems rather like scraping the bottom of the barrel on the part of the crown, in order to produce evidence against George that could safely be cited in public. George is also said to have accused Edward of being a bastard. Surprising though it may seem that the king mentioned this publicly in Parliament, Edward (and Elizabeth Woodville) may have felt that this was the least dangerous accusation to publicise, because evidence could be produced to disprove it. George is not said to have accused the king of bigamy. But, of course, if he had raised this issue, both Edward and Elizabeth Woodville would have done everything in their power to suppress the fact.

  The Act also invites questions on three other points:

  Why is reference made to the many previous problems and disturbances of the king’s reign, and to earlier conspiracies against the king? Did Edward IV wish to present his reign as a series of disasters – or is this simply an example of the standard practice in such documents (see, for example Richard III’s titulus regius of 1484).

  Why is George said to have accused the king of using the black arts against his subjects?

  Strong circumstantial evidence (with named witnesses) is cited to show that George attempted to send his son out of the country – but did not succeed in this. Why was it considered important to mention this attempt – and to establish publicly that it had not succeeded?

  Finally, while the Act is very specific about what is to be done with George’s possessions, it says nothing about the proposed fate of the Duke himself. Indeed, there is no mention of George being sentenced to death – but presumably he was, since Edward IV was later asked by the Speaker of the Commons to take action in this respect. Parliament may therefore have sentenced George to the usual, rather brutal form of execution for a traitor – hanging, drawing and quartering – followed by a clause allowing the king to commute this sentence if he so desired. Evidence to this effect is cited in the next chapter.

  It is often stated that the Act of Attainder was passed on Friday 16 January 1477/8. That was the date on which Parliament was opened, but the surviving text of the Act itself contains no date. Once the Act had been passed (and depending on the precise date of that event) it is possible that no further action was taken immediately – except perhaps by Cecily Neville (see below). However, on Saturday 7 February Edward IV appointed his cousin, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, to the post of Steward of England with specific reference to the recent judgement against the Duke of Clarence. The king explained that:

  despite the close blood ties and the inner feelings of love, which We had and practiced to the aforesaid George in his tender age, and which naturally move Us in a contrary direction, as We understand it, the Office of the Steward of England (whose presence is required here for the execution of a Judgement which has yet to be carried out) is currently vacant.12

  He then instructed Buckingham, as the new steward, to execute the recent judgement against his brother. Buckingham had hitherto been out of favour. However, he was married to Catherine Woodville, a younger sister of the queen, who had recently borne him a son and heir, to whom the king had stood as godfather. Buckingham obviously acted efficiently in the role assigned to him, for on 11 February he was rewarded with the grant of a manor in Wales.13

  NOTES

  1. Crowland, p.145.

  2. Ibid.

  3. P. M. Kendall, Louis XI (London, 1971, 1974), p.396; pp.407–8, n.7.

  4. Crowland, p.145.

  5. FFPC, p.126.

  6. Crowland p.145, my emphasis.

  7. George may have visited Ireland in February/March 1476/7, just after the death of his wife and younger son – see above, chapter 11.

  8. RP, vol. 6, pp.193–5, ‘from the original in the Tower of London’. Abbreviations expanded without comment.

  9. John Strensham, or Streynsham. He was abbot until 1481, but it is not known precisely in which year he succeeded John de Abingdon (abbot 1442–?). ‘Abbot Strensham was godfather to Clarence’s son, Edward’. M. Hicks, in R. K. Morris and R. Shoesmith (eds), Tewkesbury Abbey: History, Art and Architecture (Hereford: Logaston Press, 2003; repr. with corrections, 2012), chapter 2, p.29.

  10. In the light of later events, in the reign of Henry VII, this allegation is particularly intriguing. For more on this, see my forthcoming sequel: J. Ashdown-Hill, The Dublin King (Stroud, 2014).

  11. Perhaps: ‘Wherfore therof, although the kynge’s Highnesse …’?

  12. RP, vol. 6, p.195, citing Rot. Pat. 17 E.IV, p.2, m.19. The original text is in Latin.

  13. FFPC, p.135.

  AN UNUSUAL EXECUTION

  George’s death has long been listed amongst the murders attributed to his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III). But of all Richard III’s imaginary crimes, this is probably the most ridiculous allegation. George was not murdered, for a legal procedure was followed. He was arrested, tried before Parliament, found guilty and attainted. The person officially responsible for his death was the king. As George Buck reported in the first half of the seventeenth century, ‘it was not the Duke of Gloucester, but the Kings implacable displeasure for his malice and treasons that cut him [Clarence] off, who could not think himself secure whilst he lived.’1

  Holinshed’s Chronicle, published in 1577 (almost a century after the event) claimed that Edward IV regretted his brother’s death, both at the time and afterwards:

  Although king Edward were consenting to [Clarence’s] death, yet much did he both lament his unfortunate chance & repent his sudden execution: insomuch that when anie person sued to him for the pardon of malefactors condemned to death, he would accustomablie saie & openlie speake: ‘Oh infortunate brother, for whose life not one would make sute!’2

  Holinshed’s use of the word ‘consenting’ implies that the real initiative came from someone else. We shall return to this point presently. Of course, Holinshed is hardly a contemporary source. However, a contemporary letter from Dr Thomas Langton also implies that the king regretted his brother’s death (see below).

  George’s execution took place privately on Wednesday 18 February 1477/8.3 In an account published first in 1516, Robert Fabyan states simply:

  Anno xvii [1477–78]

  This yere, that is to meane þe xviii daye of February the duke of Clarence and [second] brother to the kynge, thanne being prisoner in þe Tower, was secretely put to dethe & drowned in a barell of maluesye within the sayd Tower.4

  Polydore Vergil, writing in 1512–13, reports:

  Clarence … was drowned (as they say) in a butte of malmesey; the woorst example that ever man cowld remember. And as touching the cause of his death, thowgh I have enqueryd of many, who wer not of leest authorytie emongest the kings cownsaylle at that time, yeat have I no certaintie therof to leave in memory.5

  Two aspects of George’s fate apparently intrigued Vergil: first, the reason which lay behind it (whic
h may deliberately have been partly concealed); second, the form of George’s execution.

  Richard III seems to have believed that someone other than Edward IV bore the ultimate responsibility for George’s execution. In 1483, in his instructions to the Bishop of Enachden, his envoy to James, 8th Earl of Desmond, in Ireland, Richard III linked the death of James’ father, Thomas, the previous (7th) Earl of Desmond, with the death of his own brother, Clarence:

  the said bisshop shall … shewe that albe it the fadre of the said erle, the king than being of yong age, was extorciously slayne and murdred by colour of the lawes within Ireland by certain persons than havyng the governaunce and rule there, ayenst alle manhode, reason, and good conscience; yet, notwithstanding that the semblable chaunce was and hapned sithen within this royaume of Eingland, as wele of his brother the duc of Clarence as other his nigh kynnesmen and gret frendes.6

  An artist’s interpretation of the death of Clarence (redrawn by the author).

  Since responsibility for the Earl of Desmond’s execution was attributed to Elizabeth Woodville it seems likely that Richard III also believed that she was behind George’s death.7

  In the same year, the foreign agent and spy Domenico Mancini also sought information regarding Clarence’s execution – and discovered that contemporary opinion did indeed ascribe the ultimate responsibility for the Duke’s death to Elizabeth Woodville. As we have already seen, writing in November 1483, he reported that:

  the queen … concluded that her offspring by the king would never come to the throne unless the duke of Clarence were removed; and of this she easily persuaded the king … [thus Clarence] was condemned and put to death. The mode of execution preferred in this case was that he should die by being plunged into a jar of sweet wine.8

  Mancini’s report regarding the manner of Clarence’s execution was confirmed by Jean de Roye, writing about six years later.9 De Roye gives a very full and complete account of what took place, though he left blank the name of George’s burial place, and he mistakenly reported that his father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, had been killed at Coventry (presumably meaning Tewkesbury) rather than at Barnet. Interestingly, de Roye’s account, written from a continental viewpoint, assumed that the prime cause of George’s death was his desire to intervene in Burgundian politics on behalf of his sister, Margaret. According to de Roye’s account, Clarence was initially sentenced to the normal death of a traitor. However, the sentence was later commuted as a result of the urgent pleading of his mother:10

  In the said year 77 [1477/78] it came about in the kingdom of England that, because King Edward learned that one of his brothers, who was the Duke of Clarence, intended to cross the sea into Flanders to give aid and assistance to his sister, Duchess in Burgundy, widow of the said deceased last duke, this made King Edward arrest his brother and imprison him in the Tower of London, where he was detained as a prisoner for quite a long time while the said King Edward assembled his council, by whose deliberations he [Clarence] was condemned to be led from the said Tower of London, being dragged on his buttocks to the gibbet of the said city of London, and there to be cut open and his entrails thrown into a fire, and then his neck should be cut and his body made into four quarters. But afterwards, by the great prayer and request of the mother of the said Edward and Clarence, his sentence was changed and moderated, so that in the month of February of the said year, Clarence being a prisoner in the Tower of London was taken and brought out of his said prison, and after he had been confessed, was thrust alive in a cask of Malmsey opened at one end, his head downwards, and there he remained until he had given up the ghost, and then he was pulled out and his neck was cut, and afterwards he was shrouded and borne to burial in [BLANK] with his wife, sometime daughter of that Earl of Warwick who died at the Battle of Coventry [sic for Tewkesbury] with the Prince of Wales, son of the sainted Lancastrian King Henry [VI] of England.11

  That George died by drowning is also confirmed by Philippe de Commynes. Writing some ten years after Mancini, in about 1495–96, Commynes reported that ‘King Edward had his brother, the duke of Clarence, put to death in a pipe12 of malmsey because it is said he wanted to make himself king.’13 Thus we have four independent contemporary or near-contemporary sources who agree as to the manner of Clarence’s execution.14 And since what they all tell us appears to be highly unusual, there must surely be some substance underlying their accounts.

  There is genuine evidence of execution by drowning on the mainland of Europe in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.15 Later, drowning in the River Loire was used as a method of execution at Nantes during the French Revolution. We also have accounts of pirates killing their victims by making them ‘walk the plank’ – though this was probably much rarer than is popularly imagined.16 Also, drowning was long used as a means of execution in Scotland, where it was a form of capital punishment generally reserved for women. This was:

  because it was a less violent death … Although drowning was generally reserved for females, being the least brutal form of death penalty, at times a male was executed in this way as a matter of favour, for instance in 1526 a man convicted of theft and sacrilege was ordered to be drowned ‘by the queen’s special grace’.17

  The motivation behind the Scottish practice is significant, because execution by manual beheading was bloody and sometimes took several attempts. Before the introduction of the guillotine, decapitation was neither rapid nor painless. By contrast:

  drowning is quick and silent, although it may be preceded by distress which is more visible. A person drowning is unable to shout or call for help, or seek attention, as they cannot obtain enough air. The instinctive drowning response is the final set of autonomic reactions in the 20–60 seconds before sinking underwater, and to the untrained eye can look similar to calm safe behavior.18

  The allegation that the Duke of Clarence was drowned is not the only report of a death by this means ascribed to King Edward IV. Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter who, like Clarence, was a member of the royal family, since he was Edward IV’s brother-in-law and cousin,19 may have been executed by drowning in 1475, possibly on Edward’s orders.20 Moreover, earlier we encountered the death – possibly at the instigation of Edward IV’s father – of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. It is usually stated that Suffolk was killed on a ship in the English Channel, and the general assumption is that he was first beheaded and then his body was thrown overboard. However, Suffolk’s body was found later on an English beach, and he was reportedly buried, possibly at Wingfield church in Suffolk, on the orders of his widow. No account suggests that his body was found without a head (which might have made it difficult to identify). Perhaps the Duke of Suffolk was also executed by drowning.

  What emerges is a possible scenario whereby Edward IV may have regarded drowning as a less violent and more genteel form of execution than the gruesome and bloody practice of beheading. Impelled (perhaps somewhat reluctantly) to put George to death, he may have chosen not to spill his brother’s blood, in the belief that he himself would feel less guilty, and that his brother would die more quietly and gently by drowning. This is the interpretation arrived at in the nineteenth century by James Gairdner, who wrote:

  I think it is clear that Edward’s feelings were severely tried, and that, while he consented to sanction his brother’s death, he shrank from inflicting on him the shame of a public execution, which, in fact, would have reflected on the whole family. He therefore preferred a secret assassination.21

  The person immediately responsible for George’s death was his cousin, the Duke of Buckingham – Steward of England – who has also been accused by some writers of responsibility for the subsequent deaths of Edward IV’s sons, the so-called ‘princes in the Tower’. Of course there is no proof that these boys were killed, or that Buckingham was responsible, but, intriguingly, they too are rumoured to have died by being deprived of oxygen – possibly drowned in Malmsey.22

  Apparently no public statement was ever made about the nature of
Clarence’s execution. Even members of the king’s council seemed to have been ignorant of what exactly had been done. But the Tower servants probably gossiped about the strange event, so that unconfirmed reports circulated. If these reports had no basis in fact, it is difficult to imagine who would have dreamed up such an unlikely story.

  One unfortunate outcome seems to have been the creation of a myth that George was a drunkard. Another potentially unfortunate outcome is that no trace of such a means of execution would now be discernible on George’s physical remains – particularly if these have been reduced to mere bones. As the rediscovered remains of Richard III and of Edward II’s lover, Hugh Despenser, have recently demonstrated, more violent deaths are more easily verifiable. It is the fate of Clarence’s mortal remains in 1478 and subsequently that we shall explore in the following chapters.

  NOTES

  1. Myers/Buck, p.83.

  2. HCSP, p.140, my emphasis.