This Sun of York

by Susan Appleyard

  “Well, I shall have plenty to occupy myself with while you’re busy. And I suppose I’ll have to pay a duty call on the Queen and coo over the Prince. How is he?”

  “Bidding fair to becoming a spoiled, pampered brat.”

  “Oh, come now. He’s a babe in arms!”

  “You’ll see what I mean.”

  “I thought you told me Margaret was supposed to go to Windsor.”

  “The council so decreed,” York grunted. “Getting her to leave is another matter.”

  Chapter 6

  March 1454 – Westminster

  The Buckinghams were privileged to have an apartment in Westminster. The solar was a cosy room with old wood panelling polished to a soft patina, bright tapestries on the walls and lots of embroidered cushions on chairs and benches. The windows overlooked an inner courtyard.

  Anne hadn’t seen this aunt she had been named for in some time. The difference between the two sisters was remarkable. While Cecily was naturally slender, Aunt Anne was even more enormous than Anne remembered, with three chins, a bosom like a bolster and hips so wide she couldn’t sit in a normal chair. This excess weight obviously caused her some discomfort, for her breath came in a wheeze, and she had to walk with the aid of a stick.

  “Rheumatism. Particularly bad today,” she said when Cecily enquired about her health. “Enough of that.” She smiled at her niece. “Come here, my dear. Let me kiss you.”

  Anne obediently offered her cheek for a perfumed and powdered salute.

  “She looks like you, Cecily. Sit down. Will you have wine?” Lowering herself onto a settle, she heaved a breath and signalled to a servant.

  “Well watered,” Cecily replied and settled into a seat opposite. Anne perched on a stool beside her. “Margaret’s finally off to Windsor, and not before time. Her place is with her husband – like any good wife.”

  “She might as well go. She’ll get nothing from the council. Most men, including the councillors, are of the firm conviction that women are mentally, physically and emotionally unfit for the political arena, and to put power into their hands is to court disaster.”

  “Do you think most women would agree with that?” Anne asked.

  “Oh, no, child.” Aunt Anne’s eyes crinkled with amusement in their folds of flesh. “Most women are sure they can govern better than men.”

  “But only if they are better educated and can travel as freely as men. And if they stop having babies,” Cecily said. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night with a woman like Margaret in power. She doesn’t have a cool head. She’s ruled by passion instead of reason. Speaking of which, I gather she has a new passion. I was amazed at Margaret in a matronly mood.”

  “She’s going to ruin him, mark my words,” said Aunt Anne, who had the honour of being the prince’s godmother as well as a good friend of the Queen’s. “I’ve never seen a mother dote so on her child. If she doesn’t change her ways, he’ll grow up to be a little tyrant. She’ll deny him nothing.”

  “Except discipline and correction,” Cecily added.

  “Exactly. You and I are mothers, too. We supervise the upbringing of our children, of course, but we don’t play with them, we don’t cosset them. She has him on her bed, tickling his belly and making herself ridiculous.”

  Anne tried to conjure up this mental image, but it eluded her. She couldn’t even imagine her own mother doing such a thing. Cecily was pragmatic about child rearing – an arm’s-length mother.

  “Of course he is very valuable. There’ll be no more,” Cecily said.

  “True. Even she seems to believe it. But it doesn’t do to become too attached. Children are too often called to God early.”

  “And then there are the later hazards of battle and block.” Cecily frowned. “I rather think he’ll ruin her too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know how it is with some women. They’ll go to extremes to protect their young, and who else has he to protect him? Certainly not Henry. He’ll bring out the worst in her.”

  On that dire note, the sisters paused to sip their wine. Anne, possessing voracious appetites had already drunk hers and returned the goblet to the servant hoping for a refill, which hadn’t happened.

  Then Aunt Anne asked, “So, how are your husband’s affairs progressing?”

  “Parliament is not very cooperative. Everything requires a heroic struggle and the expenditure of copious amounts of patience and endurance.”

  “That business at Blackheath hurt him.”

  “That was two years ago!”

  “Two years is a piddling amount of time. Englishmen know how to hold a grudge, my dear. It was not politic to demand an audience with the King with an army at his back.”

  “And yet he was right to fear to put himself in the hands of his enemies. Look what happened when he was prevailed upon to dismiss his army. Arrested by Somerset! And how much did Henry know about that? Have you ever wondered?”

  “One can never tell with Henry. He is a reed, bending to the prevailing wind. But my point is that York betrayed the commons.”

  Cecily looked guardedly alert. She didn’t like to hear her husband criticised. “How so?”

  “They demanded his recall from Ireland. They begged him to reform the government. They gave him their trust. And what did he do but lead an army south to confront the King? We came within a whisker of civil war. That’s why the Commons are so obdurate now. They no longer trust him.”

  “The council has recommended that he be appointed King’s lieutenant, to act in Parliament on behalf of the absent sovereign.”

  “Humphrey supported him, of course, and will continue to do so as long as he stays within the law.”

  Cecily nodded. “He knows Blackheath was a mistake. But he will win in the end. He’ll get the protectorship. Because there simply is no better choice.”

  Chapter 7

  April 1454 – Westminster

  “The Commons are fed up with the present government,” the Earl of Warwick said as he and the Duke waited for their foreriders to clear the way through the snarl of traffic blocking Ludgate, much of it caused by farm carts bringing produce to market. “Everywhere there is a feeling of dissatisfaction, pessimism and desperation.”

  If a man could be said to have the pulse of the kingdom, it was Warwick. He was not averse to passing the time in taverns, listening to the woes of the common man. His lands were so extensive that he knew not only what was happening in many of the shires but also what the folk there were saying. There was widespread disorder, borne of sheer frustration with the corruption and ineptitude of those in power. The fury against Somerset, the Queen, the King’s Council and, to a lesser extent, all the petty officials that kept the wheels of government creaking along, was growing, and York’s popularity was rising in direct proportion.

  York had promised to reform the government and what could be more appealing to the common people? And what did Somerset or anyone else have to offer compared to that? Only more of the same. The representatives of the Commons who sat in Parliament were no more blind to the ills England suffered, nor deaf to York’s demands for reform than any other of their kind.

  “So why will they not confer the protectorship on you? Why these endless debates?”

  The Lords had granted York the right to act as the King’s lieutenant in Parliament, but it wasn’t enough. He still didn’t have a seat on the council and the kingdom still didn’t have a head.

  “Buckingham was right,” York said dolefully. “The Commons are holding a grudge because of Blackheath and are intent on punishing me. I expected it to be hard going, but I believe in the end they will give me what I want because there is no other choice. We must have a stable government.”

  The trouble was, Warwick reflected, that time was against him. Who could say when Henry would recover? Then all York’s program of reform would be swept away, and all the ratty little self-seekers would come rushing back in.

  After some confusion, the gate
was cleared. No one complained. Everyone understood that great lords had the right of way over farmers and their oxen. The gate was part of a prison of the same name. Philanthropic John Forster had rebuilt the gaol into a comfortable accommodation for clergy and freemen of the city fallen into debt. Looking up to the flat roof above the statues of King Lud and his sons, Warwick could see some of the prisoners taking the air. On the ground floor, also, was a space where they could exercise in inclement weather. So comfortable was Ludgate that it was said some of the inmates would make no shift to pay their debts and fines but preferred to remain where they were.

  The road went up and over the stone bridge straddling the malodorous Fleet River. On their left was the Inns of Court, which contained offices, dining halls, lecture rooms and living accommodation, where students, sergeants-at-law and attorneys lived and worked and played. The buildings and grounds were awash with dark robed young men, hurrying to lectures, standing about in groups talking, or sat in the shade of the great ash tree that fronted a building with a white winged horse above its door.

  Just past St. Dunstan’s Church another gate called Temple Bar blocked the road, and beyond that was the Strand, where many fine mansions stood between the road and the river. Glazed windows reflected the pale sunlight and clusters of chimneys rose above gabled roofs. They were built closer to the road than the river, which meant they had extensive grounds behind for service buildings and gardens. These were the city houses of many of the great lords. Essex, Arundel, Somerset, and the Archbishop of York had homes there, and beyond was the ruin of the Savoy, John of Gaunt’s great palace, burned to the ground by a London mob the previous century and never rebuilt.

  At the wide junction where the Strand met King Street, a stone cross stood, a memorial erected by Edward I to Queen Eleanor at every place his wife’s body rested on its way to London for burial.

  Ahead was Westminster Abbey, already four hundred years old, a breathtaking opus of carved figures, soaring arches, corbels and capitals, amazingly fine stone fretwork and some of the most glorious stained glass windows in England. Between the abbey and palace was Westminster Hall, home to many of the courts, as well as the Star Chamber where the council met to conduct the business of the realm. Built by William Rufus, it had been rebuilt by Richard II in the previous century, with an innovative hammer-beam roof that covered a span of two hundred and forty feet by sixty-eight.

  Parliament didn’t have a permanent home. The Lords often sat in the Painted Chamber of the palace, the Commons in various chambers or, as today, in Westminster Hall. It was a busy place. Lawyers were hurrying importantly to and fro and clogging the entrance as they consulted with clients or gave instructions to clerks. Messenger boys darted off in all directions like frenzied mice. A few food vendors pushed their way through the crowd accosting anyone who looked likely to buy a hot pie or a slab of crunchy pork rind, as well as a couple of whores hawking their own wares.

  The two lords entered to take their places, Warwick in the spectators’ gallery because the Lords were not in session, York on the dais beside the King’s throne. The chancellor’s chair was empty because Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of Canterbury, was gravely ill. This parliament had been sitting for more than a year. The members knew the procedures. When York took his seat, the noisy chamber subsided.

  The struggle was about to resume.

  One at a time, men brought in from the shires by York and Warwick and their adherents were sworn in to tell how the great lords were openly recruiting. In the north, the Duke of Exeter’s men had provoked a fight with Lord Egremont’s men, and the fact that Exeter himself had gone north gave no one confidence that he would resolve the matter. At Stamford Bridge, the wedding party of John Neville, Warwick’s brother, had been attacked by some Percy men. The feud in the west between the Earl of Devon and Lord Bonvile was escalating. There was more: corrupt sheriffs, oppression of the poor, atrocities against the weak, a proliferation of outlaws making the roads unsafe for all but large and well-armed groups.

  It went on for days, the Commons bombarded with tales of riot and disorder, corruption and oppression. When the last man had spoken, Sir John Montgomery, York’s man, asked when would the empty seats on the council be filled and something done to compel the great lords to keep the peace.

  It was the moment that York had long awaited, for which he had borne all the petty insults and innuendos, all the pointless arguments and obstacles that had been strewn in his path to impede him. Here it was. He rose to his feet, face and voice carefully neutral as he said, “Master Speaker, sirs and gentlemen of this august body, I have promised you reform. Give me the power, and I will remove all those corrupt and inept officials who are bringing our poor England to her knees, from the very top to every under-sheriff and bailiff and chancery clerk. But these things take time. I have been authorised only to preside over these meetings. I do not have the right to appoint members of the council. Only the King has that right or, in his absence, a regent or protector.” He paused for just a moment. “If you wish me to address these problems I must have the power to do so. Give me the power. Let me get to work.”

  A member for Cambridge – not a York man or a Warwick man or even a Norfolk man – punched a fist in the air. “Oh, for God’s sake, let it be done! You have seen for yourselves how becomingly his Grace of York has comported himself in this chamber. Not even the grossest insult could deflect him from his one objective: the welfare of our country in this time of crisis. His Grace of York is the only one who can provide a remedy for the disorders and riotous behaviour that break out every day and give us the government we need if our country is not to slide into anarchy. The only one! I move that his Grace the Duke of York be appointed Protector and Defender of the Realm until the King is sufficiently recovered in health to take up his duties again.”

  “I will see a show of hands,” the Speaker said, and a show of hands launched York into the protectorate.

  There were dissenters, but the applause drowned them out. York permitted himself a grim smile. Warwick cheered as loudly as anyone and pounded his neighbour on the back. As York’s star rose, so did his.

  The Duke’s smile was a little wider as they rode out onto King Street. “There’s so much to do, I don’t know where to start.”

  Warwick did. “Why don’t we start by getting rid of Somerset? An order from Parliament can’t be ignored even by that pompous prick.”

  “Aye, that would be a good start. Then there is Cardinal Kemp. I fear he is not long for this world. We must find a replacement – a man we can trust.”

  “We shall miss his wise counsel,” was Warwick’s brief eulogy.

  “I have been giving the matter some thought. Are we so short of men of ability and integrity that we must combine the offices of Archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor in one man? It is absolute idiocy, in my opinion. Both are demanding tasks and both require a man’s unstinting attention if they’re to be done properly. Besides which it is unnatural to have the spiritual and the temporal so closely combined. Not to take anything away from Cardinal Kemp, who did a fine job in both, but I intend to separate the two.”

  “Which means finding two men of ability and integrity.”

  “An impossible task, you think? As a matter of fact, I have two candidates in mind. The chancellor is easy. He must not only be a man of ability and integrity, but he must be someone I can work with, a man who will help and not impede me, and whose goals are more or less in accord with my own. His first task will be to dissolve that nightmare of a Parliament. It has been sitting for more than a year now. Far too long.” His mouth turned up at the corners. “I believe I will offer the job to your father.”

  “An excellent choice. But you’ll be accused of cronyism.”

  “I’ve been accused of worse.”

  Warwick laughed. “Why don’t we go to Baynard’s and discuss the matter further over a cup of your excellent Burgundy.”

  Back at Baynard’s Castle, they settled in the D
uke’s privy chamber with wine served in cups of Venetian glass.

  “What do you know about this business at Stamford Bridge?” York demanded.

  Warwick shrugged. “Only that we were not the instigators. It was my brother John’s wedding party, and we were ambushed. Mind you, we were well armed because we had heard there were Percy men in the area.”

  “Was anyone killed?”

  Another shrug. “A few. Mostly Percys.”

  “How did this bloody business get started?”

  “As far as I know it was back in the reign of Henry IV. The Percys had been instrumental in helping him win the throne, so he rewarded them with the wardenship of the marches of Scotland. Later he came to mistrust them, and they did in fact eventually rebel against him, so to curb their power he gave the wardenship of the west march to my grandfather, Earl Ralph of Westmoreland. Naturally, the Percys resented this, and we’ve been going at it ever since.”

  “So the feud goes back at least half a century. It has to stop, nephew. Parliament made me protector on the understanding that I would suppress these outbreaks of violence.”

  Warwick gave an impenitent grin. “The trouble is that we are taught to fight from an early age. The greater part of our education is concerned with martial skills. We are honoured if we learn to use weapons well, despised if we don’t. There are no accolades for the boy who learns his Latin or is a genius with the account books. Then when we are men, lacking a war, what is there for us to do? In the prosaic world of Parliament and council board, what use is there for the weapons we have learned to love, the skills of which we are so proud, the horse and armour that we have practically beggared ourselves to buy? Of course, we’re spoiling for a fight, uncle! And whenever the opportunity presents itself, we’re going to engage in it joyously. I’ve felt it too – that need to throw myself into a pointless melee for the sheer joy of the fight. While the law is impotent, a man can hardly be blamed for seeking his own remedy, with arms if necessary. It was different for you. When you were a young man, there was a real war to fight.”