by Hugh Bicheno
After returning to England Edmund married Eleanor Beauchamp, dowager Baroness Roos, without obtaining the required royal licence. The dates are uncertain, but it seems Edmund forced the issue by getting her pregnant. Eleanor was the middle of three daughters of the very wealthy Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and his also wealthy first wife, Elizabeth Berkeley, heiress of the baronies of Berkeley and Lisle. After Elizabeth died in 1422 Beauchamp married another wealthy heiress, Isabel Despenser, who bore him Henry and Anne.
While he lived, Warwick blocked the royal licence for Edmund’s marriage. Determined to deny his unwanted son-in-law any profit from it, he entailed his entire estate to his son Henry, depriving the daughters of his first marriage of what they (and their outraged husbands) regarded as their due inheritance from their mother. The ultimate beneficiary was Richard Neville, betrothed to Anne Beauchamp in 1434 when he was six and she was eight. He was to become Earl of Warwick by marriage and one of the wealthiest men in England after Anne’s older brother Henry died in 1446, followed by his only child in 1448.
Though his matrimonial fortune-hunting failed, Edmund ben-efited greatly from his uncle Henry’s wealth. It bought him his first independent command in March 1436, when the cardinal loaned the crown the money to equip a 2,000-man expedition to Normandy, conditional on his nephew being in command. Edmund’s role, however, proved to be less autonomous than he had hoped, as the king required him to join the Duke of Gloucester at Calais.
Gloucester, the king’s lieutenant in France following the death of his brother Bedford, thirsted to punish Duke Philippe of Burgundy, who at Arras the previous year had reneged on his treaty with England and entered into a military alliance with France. Under Gloucester’s command Edmund led damaging raids (known as chevauchées) into Picardy, the province ceded to Burgundy by Charles VII at Arras, and performed so well that Gloucester left him in command while he returned to England to gather reinforcements.
Stung by Edmund’s raids, Philippe raised a huge army, mainly Flemish militia, and besieged Calais and the frontier fortress at Guînes. Edmund conducted an aggressive defence, and thwarted an attempt to close Calais harbour with rock-filled blockships by sending men to dismantle them. When he learned that Gloucester was returning with 10,000 men, Philippe was compelled to lift both sieges and retreat south. Gloucester then embarked on a massive chevauchée into Flanders while ships out of Calais plundered along the coast, prompting a two-year revolt by the Flemish cities against Philippe’s policies, which forced him to abandon any further military action against the English.
On his triumphant return to England, Edmund was made a Garter knight and constable of the royal castles of Aberystwyth and Kidwelly in Wales. Subsequently he was made warden of Windsor Castle, where the king charged him with guarding his late mother’s lover Owen Tudor after he ‘escaped’ from Newgate prison.
For a few years Edmund achieved the remarkable feat of being highly esteemed by Gloucester as well as enjoying Cardinal Beaufort’s continuing patronage. In 1438 he was appointed governor of the county of Maine, and four years later was awarded the land rights. Along with his county of Mortain it made him the principal English lord in the area conquered from the Duke of Anjou.
This steep rise of Edmund’s fortunes increased John Beaufort’s resentment when he returned to England in late 1438. It was bad enough to have had his own career put on hold for seventeen years, but galling to find his youngest brother had flourished so outstandingly during his absence. John’s return forced his uncle to switch political and financial influence away from the abler and more charismatic Edmund during the crucial years when the cardinal emerged the winner in his long feud with Gloucester.
In the spring of 1439 the cardinal funded an expedition led by John to join Edmund in Normandy. John was made captain of the fortresses of the Cotentin peninsula in the face of a Franco-Breton offensive that captured Harfleur and Montvilliers, and besieged Avranches. In April, after the death of Edmund’s hostile father-in-law the Earl of Warwick, John became the acting overall military commander in France.
In November John returned to England, where his uncle tried to have him formally appointed the king’s lieutenant in France in succession to Warwick. Gloucester thwarted him and John was only made senior commander on a temporary basis. In early 1440 he was sent to prove himself with an army of 2,100 men, again financed by his uncle. His subordinate commanders were his brother Edmund and Lord Talbot, each married to one of the late Earl of Warwick’s daughters and fellow litigants against the terms of his will.
With Charles VII distracted by a rebellion, Edmund recaptured Harfleur and Montvilliers, stabilizing the situation in western and central Normandy. Meanwhile, on the eastern front, John led a chevauchée into Picardy. The aim was to provoke Franco-Burgundian conflict by drawing in the French, but he encountered no opposition. John could not know it, but this marked the beginning of a new strategy by Arthur de Richemont, Constable of France, designed to wear down the English without risking the new standing army he was building.
John’s chance of being appointed lieutenant in France was a casualty of Gloucester’s last attempt to discredit Cardinal Beaufort, before Gloucester was himself discredited by the prosecution of his wife in 1441. During the 1439−40 parliament Gloucester submitted an indictment of Cardinal Beaufort’s entire career, arguing it was characterized by corruption and accusing him of putting the interests of the papacy ahead of his loyalty to the crown. Unsurprisingly, given that at this point the war in France was being maintained by the cardinal’s wealth, the indictment did not prosper.
Henry VI was the first English king never to command an army in battle. He was a passionate hunter, by no means a risk-free activity, but took no part in martial tournaments. This may have been because those entrusted with his care as a minor did not dare expose him to the dangers, but the outcome was a man who regarded warfare with distaste. Henry’s parliaments increasingly took a similar view, and became less and less inclined to vote for the necessary taxes. Henry could not expect his subjects to make sacrifices for a war to which he was not prepared to commit himself.
Furthermore, after the exhilaration of Henry V’s conquest of Normandy had passed, there was scant enthusiasm among the professional fighting men for the grinding war that followed. Without much prospect of winning lands for themselves, commanders and men alike needed to be sure they would be paid, and their physical and military needs supplied, if they were to cross the Channel at all. Bedford, Gloucester and Warwick had deep pockets and could afford to advance money against sporadic royal reimbursement; John Beaufort could not.
One man who seems not to have been considered for the role of lieutenant in France was John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk and hereditary Earl Marshal of England. He suffered from ill health brought on by debauchery and was afforded little respect by his peers throughout his life. That left only one man with the rank and wealth required to replace Warwick: Richard, Duke of York, who had already served as lieutenant in France in 1436–7. Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, was appointed Captain of Calais and three years later made Duke of Buckingham.
Denied the prospect of glory and enrichment in Normandy, John and Edmund Beaufort returned to England at the end of 1440. John was made a Garter knight, and not long afterwards married Margaret Beauchamp (only distantly related to Edmund’s wife), sole heir of the barony of Bletsoe and a widow with seven children. In May 1443, at the manor at Kingston Lacy, lent by the king and close to John’s own lands in Dorset, Margaret bore him a daughter, also named Margaret, who was to become the most influential royal matriarch in English history.*1
John preferred to reside at his own Corfe Castle, which broods over the peninsula known as the Isle of Purbeck, 90 miles directly north of Cherbourg in Normandy. From there he supervised the assembly at Portsmouth of the last army he was to lead. Faced with a French offensive against Guyenne, the king agreed to a major counter-attack out of Normandy in 1443. It was the largest expedition since Glou
cester’s in 1436 and was intended to draw the French away from Guyenne and bring them to battle. It was financed entirely by Cardinal Beaufort to the tune of £22,666 [£14.4 million] on condition it was led by his nephew John.
The Beaufort expedition was a departure from the previous strategy of forcing Charles VII to negotiate by making Normandy too hard a nut to crack. Two years previously York had provided his brilliant field commander Talbot with enough men to blunt a major French offensive into Normandy. Even so, they could not prevent the fall of Pontoise, a key fortress in the strategically vital Oise valley, and the case for persisting with this strategy was decreasingly persuasive. It required more money than Henry VI could obtain from Parliament, or wished to spend, and he wanted a quicker fix.
Cardinal Beaufort’s offer to assume the entire cost of a counter-offensive in 1443 was therefore irresistible. Although it meant York’s siege of Dieppe must be abandoned, he was assured the new expedition would operate in enemy territory, outside his area of authority, and accepted that John Beaufort’s raid in force would relieve pressure on the rest of Normandy as well as Guyenne. The hope was that John could also defeat the French army in the field and force them to negotiate.
While Henry VI held Edmund Beaufort in high esteem, only their uncle’s money and influence obtained royal favour for his older brother John. Somerset was made Baron of Kendal in Cumberland with an income of £400 [£254,500], but he was not promoted to duke until his delayed arrival at Cherbourg in late August 1443. This was to grant him parity of status with York, a quid pro quo demanded by Cardinal Beaufort.
Henry V and his brothers had drawn a vigorous response from the peers summoned by Parliament for military service in France, but their successors could not. This reflected the deteriorating strategic situation, but in addition York and Somerset were not regarded as charismatic leaders. York did not actually recruit the three barons listed for 1441 – Lords Talbot, Scales and Fauconberg – as they were already in Normandy. John Beaufort’s 1443 expedition attracted no barons at all and was joined by only one banneret (a knight commanding his own company), Thomas Kyriell, and six other knights.
In sharp contrast to the speed with which Gloucester mobilized his massive 1436 expedition, those led by York and Somerset took a long time to assemble. Delay severely eroded the effectiveness of such ventures, as indentures (contracts) were for a limited time, and soldiers and horses cost much more to maintain in England and occupied France than they did in enemy territory, where they could live off the land.
Mounting a cross-Channel expedition was a major logistical challenge. Even a mounted archer needed at least two horses, esquires three and knights and above four or more. Soldiers’ stipends covered their own costs, but if the horses could not graze – for example, while waiting to board ships – they consumed tons of feed at an additional cost to the chief contractor. Shipowners, also contracted for a limited time, needed to be paid whether or not they were used to transport the expedition during the stipulated period.
John’s long-delayed expedition was a dismal failure. Forced to spend too much of his uncle’s money before setting out, he needed to replenish his war chest as soon as possible. On his way south he crossed the border into neutral Brittany to attack the town of La Guerche, which he believed was owned by the Duke of Alençon, the local French commander. Alençon, however, had sold La Guerche to the Duke of Brittany in 1429. The 20,000 saluts d’or [£2.9 million] John demanded to spare the town from being sacked were paid by the enraged duke, who sent a strongly worded protest to Henry VI.
John marched on through Edmund’s lands in Maine into Anjou, where he laid siege to Pouancé, one of Alençon’s fiefs. A small French relief force was easily defeated, but Alençon himself refused to be drawn. Despite having carted boats from Cherbourg to bridge the Loire, John flinched from crossing the river to bring about the battle that was the strategic purpose of his expedition. Instead he marched east to Rouen, paying off his troops as he went, some of whom took service with the frontier garrisons.
After a frosty reception from York, John received a copy of the Duke of Brittany’s protest from Henry VI, who ordered him to make full restitution. Compelled to disgorge whatever he had not spent, in January 1444 he returned to England in disgrace, sick, and once more in straitened circumstances. Barred from court, he spent his remaining months at Corfe and nearby Wimborne, where he died in May 1444, aged 42, probably by his own hand.
Edmund, created a marquess when his brother was made a duke, inherited the earldom and Corfe Castle, but the barony of Kendal and John’s French fiefs reverted to the crown. John’s entailed estate went to one-year-old baby Margaret, who remained with her mother. However the king broke a solemn undertaking given to John prior to his expedition, that her mother should also have the right to decide whom the child should marry. Instead, he made Margaret Beaufort the ward of his chief minister William de la Pole, at this point still only Earl of Suffolk, who promptly betrothed her to his two-year-old son John.
Edmund, to some extent, shared his brother’s disgrace at this time, and may have traded off his niece’s future in order to regain favour. On the other hand he must have secretly despised Suffolk for exploiting the situation to his own advantage, and the king for permitting him to do so. Some of Edmund’s future behaviour may have been conditioned by this sordid episode.
*1 Margaret would be married to Edmund Tudor in 1455, when she was just 12 years old. Their only child, born in 1457, was the future Henry VII.
III
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House of Valois-Anjou
In the first act of the third part of his Henry VI trilogy Shakespeare dubbed Marguerite d’Anjou the ‘she-wolf of France’. Her demonization by Tudor propagandists had its roots in the efforts of Henry VII to have his namesake Lancastrian predecessor declared a saint, which required the transfer to Marguerite of much of the blame for the catastrophes of her husband’s reign. Although the Bard did not mean it as a compliment, she-wolves are in fact admirable animals that mate for life and are fiercely protective of their young.
Thus also Marguerite, who was a loyal and supportive consort to Henry VI until it became apparent his weakness was endangering their son’s birth right, after which she felt compelled to provide the necessary leadership. Her relentless determination, and the loyalty she commanded from some seriously hard men, leads one to wonder whether her son Edward of Westminster might have made a great king.
Marguerite was born in Lorraine, the duchy inherited by her mother Isabelle in 1431. Her father was René of the House of Valois-Anjou, second son of Louis II, Duke of Anjou, Count of Maine and Count of Provence, and Princess Yolande de Aragón. Louis devoted most of his energies to wider dynastic ambitions and left the government of Anjou almost entirely to Yolande. After he died, Yolande became regent for her young sons and fought the English invasions of Maine and northern Anjou.
This she continued to do for the rest of her life, while her sons were mainly occupied elsewhere. She was also the surrogate mother of the disinherited Dauphin Charles, who married Yolande’s daughter Marie six months before he claimed the kingdom in 1422. Later, Yolande was closely involved in the emergence of Jeanne d’Arc, with whom her son René rode to the 1429 relief of Orléans, the first major French victory over the English.
Yolande recruited and ran a network of courtesans who became the mistresses of high-ranking men in the courts of Brittany, Burgundy and Lorraine, and in the French royal household. In the process of detaching Brittany from its alliance with England, she won the loyalty of Arthur de Richemont, younger brother of Duke Yann VI of Brittany. Richemont became Constable of France in 1425, with Yolande’s own subject Pierre de Brézé by his side.
In 1433, at Yolande’s instigation, Richemont and Brézé expelled Charles VII’s Grand Chamberlain Georges de la Trémoille, who had frittered away the military momentum won by Jeanne d’Arc in pointless negotiations. Richemont and Brézé were the architects of the 1435 Treaty of Arras wi
th Burgundy, which marked the definitive turning-point of the war, and of the policies that earned Charles VII the sobriquets ‘Well-Served’ and ‘Victorious’.
It would be hard to overstate how important Yolande was to the final stages of the Hundred Years War, or the significance for our story of the fact that during the last four to five years of Yolande’s life (she died in 1442), her granddaughter Marguerite came to live with her during her transition to adolescence.
Marguerite’s mother Isabelle was cast in the same mould as her mother-in-law and placed Agnès Sorel, who became the first officially recognized royal mistress, in Charles VII’s household. It was thanks to Agnès’s influence that Brézé rose so rapidly in the king’s service from 1444 until her death in 1450. In 1435 Isabelle led an army in an unsuccessful effort to rescue her hapless husband from Burgundian captivity. In return for freeing René, the Burgundians not only required a hefty ransom but also took his two sons hostage, one of whom would die in prison. Left impoverished, René and Isabelle sent young Marguerite to live with her grandmother Yolande.
Marguerite’s father René became Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence on the death of his elder brother Louis in 1434. Four years earlier he had become (by marriage and adoption) Duke of Bar and Count of Piedmont. He also claimed the kingdom of Naples, but lost it to Alfonso V of Aragón in 1442. René was also titular King of Hungary and Jerusalem, and in 1466 made a futile claim to the throne of Aragón through the right of his mother.
He went through the motions of being a prince, but after his formidable mother and wife died he devoted himself to artistic pursuits. He looks remarkably like a toad in the only portraits we have of him, but they were painted when he was older. The striking portrait of Isabelle of Lorraine in the Uffizi Gallery leaves no doubt about the source of their daughter’s looks.