Shakespeare's Kings

by John Julius Norwich

  Act V opens in London, with Humphrey of Gloucester informing his nephew of letters from the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor Albert II - who had acceded to the imperial throne in 1438 - urging the restoration of peace between England and France. To further this end, the Count of Armagnac has offered the hand of his daughter in marriage, and Gloucester warmly recommends its acceptance. Henry is unenthusiastic at the thought of 'wanton dalliance with a paramour', but characteristically agrees to marry anyone his advisers think suitable. The court then retires and the Bishop of Winchester, left alone with the Papal Legate, makes it clear that he has bought his cardinal's hat -though there is no historical evidence that he did any such thing; Shakespeare may have been misled by a somewhat unclear passage in Hall, 139, which refers to Beaufort's 'purchase' - i.e. acquisition - of a 'Bull legatyne'. In fact the cardinal had long been one of the leading churchmen of Europe, and, as we have already seen, had even been considered a candidate for the papal throne during the long-disputed election of 1417.

  The scene now shifts to France, where we see the Pucelle first forsaken by her familiar spirits - a serious challenge to any director -and then personally captured (another fiction) by the Duke of York. We also have the first appearance of Margaret of Anjou, the future Queen. Once again, Shakespeare has abandoned history altogether in the interests of his drama. The idea that Margaret had been taken prisoner by the Earl of Suffolk is little short of ludicrous, as is the suggestion that he had become infatuated by her; Suffolk's mission to France in the spring and early summer of 1444 had been undertaken at the command of the King - notwithstanding the vigorous objections of Gloucester - and was conducted with perfect propriety throughout. So too was his mission the following winter and spring (during which he was accompanied by his wife) to fetch Margaret from Lorraine and escort her to London, despite the unjustified accusations — taken up by Shakespeare in V.iii, where Suffolk and Rene (Regnier) discuss the marriage, and again in the opening scene of Henry VI Part II— of having surrendered Maine and Anjou.1

  After yet another appearance of the Pucelle — over which, once again, it is kinder to pass without comment — Cardinal Beaufort appears at the English camp to announce the decision to conclude not a two-year truce but a full treaty of peace. York rounds on him angrily ('Is all our travail turn'd to this effect?') but accepts the inevitable when he hears the terms. So, after some initial reluctance, does Charles VII, who agrees henceforth to wear his crown as Henry's Viceroy. The final scene returns us to London, where Gloucester makes one last attempt to persuade his nephew to marry the Armagnac bride rather than the

  1. See Chapter 11, p. 231.

  Angevin. But Suffolk's arguments in favour of Margaret - together with the King's own inclinations, such as they are — carry the day. Gloucester warns of coming disaster, and Suffolk brings down the curtain with a cry of ominous if ungrammatical triumph:

  Thus Suffolk hath prevail'd; and thus he goes,

  As did the youthful Paris once to Greece;

  With hope to find the like event in love,

  But prosper better than the Trojan did.

  Margaret shall now be Queen, and rule the King;

  But I will rule both her, the King, and realm.

  And so for the next five years, he did.

  King Henry VI: The Gathering Storm

  [1445-1455]

  KING.

  Thus stands my state, 'twixt Cade and York distress'd;

  Like to a ship that, having scap'd a tempest,

  Is straightway calm'd, and boarded with a pirate.

  KING HENRY VI PART II

  The truce of 1444 - which, with prolongations, continued effectively for five years - proved to be exactly what France needed. Whereas a quarter of a century before she had been largely incapacitated by a mentally unstable monarch while England was inspired to victory after victory by the greatest military leader ever to have occupied her throne, now the situations of the two countries had been neatly reversed: young Henry VI of England had proved a pious simpleton - if he were not yet clinically insane, he soon would be - while Charles VII of France, awoken to a sense of his responsibilities first by Joan of Arc, then by a number of brilliant and energetic captains and finally by his beautiful mistress Agnes Sorel, had revealed qualities of character which in his youth had remained unsuspected. He first used the breathing space to restore law and order throughout his domains; he then set about reorganizing his army, equipping it with modern artillery considerably more sophisticated than anything possessed by the English. By the time the truce came to an end, he — and it - would be ready for the last great effort: to drive his enemy back across the Channel once and for all.

  England, meanwhile, remained preoccupied with her own affairs. A chapter ended in 1447, when Duke Humphrey of Gloucester and his old antagonist the Bishop of Winchester died within a few weeks of each other. Humphrey, as we have seen, had by now lost much of his power, having never really recovered from his wife's trial for witchcraft

  in 144I . Ever since that time his nephew the King had been understandably suspicious of him, though for some years he was careful to press no charges. Not till 1447 did the crisis finally come, when Parliament met, on 10 February, at Bury St Edmunds. The Duke appeared a week later, attended by eighty horsemen. He was met at the entrance to the town and peremptorily ordered to go straight to his lodgings; and there, that same evening, a number of high-ranking noblemen arrived to put him under arrest. On 23 February he died, aged fifty-six. There were the usual dark tales of smotherings, red-hot pokers and the like, but we can probably accept the cause of his death that was officially announced at the time - an apoplectic stroke. He was buried in the abbey of St Albans, now its cathedral: probably the most cultivated man in England, but with a character so fatally flawed that it was to prove his undoing. To the young King he had been both a good example and a bad one; but Henry's life-long enthusiasm for literature and learning was almost certainly due, in very large measure, to him.

  Two months later the Duke's arch-enemy Henry Beaufort followed him to the grave. Twenty-one years a cardinal, Beaufort never became an archbishop, preferring to retain his beloved see of Winchester until his death. He was, however, the worldliest of prelates, for years dominating the political scene - despite the indefatigable opposition of Duke Humphrey - as much as he did the ecclesiastical, working for peace just as determinedly as the Duke had championed the continuation of the war, if with rather less success. Much of his immense wealth he spent on the rebuilding of his cathedral, and the re-founding and enlarging of the Hospital of St Cross, which still survives today. The sum of £2,000 from the residue of the estate he left to the King, but Henry refused it. 'My uncle,' he said, 'was very dear to me, and did me much kindness while he lived, may the Lord reward him! Do with his goods as ye are bound to do: I will not have them.'

  Government was thereafter effectively in the hands of Suffolk, now at the summit of his power. In 1447 he was successively appointed Chamberlain, Constable of Dover, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Admiral of England; in 1448 he became Governor of Calais and, on 2 July, a duke. But all too soon he ran into trouble. He continued to be blamed, however unjustly, for the loss of Maine - which had been formally surrendered in February 1448 — and of Anjou; there were difficulties, too, with Richard of York, whom the death of Duke Humphrey had brought a step nearer the throne and who now led the opposition party. It was almost certainly Suffolk who now relieved York of his command in France and had Henry nominate him royal Lieutenant in Ireland for the next ten years. Seeing this appointment -with good reason - as tantamount to banishment, a furious Richard delayed his departure for more than eighteen months. Even when he finally sailed in July 1449, there were few at court who believed that he would stay there long.

  York's place in France was taken by Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, who had succeeded his elder brother in the earldom (though not the dukedom) four years before. By this time, thanks in large measure to the continued di
ssatisfaction among the English over the surrender of Maine and Anjou—which certain garrisons, such as that at Le Mans, flatly refused to evacuate until forcibly expelled by the French — the truce was being honoured as much in the breach as in the observance; and on 24 March 1449 one of the English detachments recently expelled from Maine crossed the frontier into Brittany, stormed the town of Fougeres and put it to the sack. Charles VII and Philip of Burgundy lodged a furious protest; Somerset, however, instead of making reparation, foolishly refused to surrender the town or even to apologize for the incident; and a renewal of the war was the inevitable result.

  But it was henceforth to be an unequal struggle. The English proved no match for the revitalized French army. Verneuil fell, despite the heroic efforts of Talbot, who fought 'like a boar enraged' to relieve it; Mantes and Lisieux followed, together with a number of other important towns and strongholds, until finally in October Charles drew up his men outside Rouen, where Somerset had taken refuge. Once again Talbot set an example of endurance and courage, but this time it was the people of Rouen themselves who eventually opened their gates and on 10 November Charles, accompanied by Rene of Anjou, entered the city in triumph. March 1450 saw the arrival of reinforcements from England; but on 15 April, at the little village of Formigny some twenty-five miles north-west of Caen, the French under the Comte de Clermont virtually exterminated them. Nearly 4,000 were killed, another 1,400 taken prisoner. After this, the spirit went out of the English. Vire, Avranches, Caen and Falaise soon surrendered;

  Cherbourg fell on 12 August. In little more than a year, Henry's dominions in France had been reduced to the city of Calais - to remain for another century in English hands - and a sad remnant of Guyenne.

  Responsibility for the catastrophe rested squarely on the shoulders of Somerset. It was he, as commander-in-chief, who had permitted the assault on Fougeres; he who had refused to make reparations afterwards; he whose lack of energy, courage and leadership had led to defeat in every action in which he had been personally engaged. Yet it was not upon him but upon Suffolk that the storm broke. Long allied to the Beauforts, both in politics and also by marriage, it was he after all who had been responsible for Somerset's appointment. On 28 January 1450, accused by Parliament of having sold the realm to the French and treasonably fortified Wallingford Castle, he was committed to the Tower. Further charges followed: he had conspired to seize the throne for his son, husband of Margaret Beaufort, the infant heiress of the first Duke of Somerset; he had engineered the release of Charles of Orleans; he had forfeited Anjou and Maine, betrayed secrets to the French, failed to strengthen the English armies and antagonized Brittany and Aragon. He had promoted unworthy persons to high positions, and had been guilty of various acts of malversation and maladministration. Finally, in March, after repeated protestations of his innocence and without having been formally found guilty of any wrongdoing, he was sentenced to five years' banishment from 1 May.

  On the last day of April Suffolk came to Ipswich, where he swore a further oath on the sacrament that he was innocent of all the charges laid against him. The following morning, having written a touching letter of farewell to his little son,1 he set sail for France with two ships and a pinnace, which he sent off in advance to Calais to seek confirmation that he would be amicably received there. Almost at once, however, the pinnace was intercepted by another vessel, the Nicholas of the Tower, which had been purposely lying in wait. It then bore down on the other two ships—which seem to have offered no resistance - and took Suffolk on board. He was granted a day and a night in which to make his confession; then, on the morning of 2 May, he was rowed out in a small boat and beheaded -according to one account, with half a dozen strokes of a rusty sword. The

  1. See the Paston Letters, i, 121-2.

  body was brought back to England and buried in the family church at Wingfield, in the county which bears his name.1

  The circumstances of his murder remain a mystery. The fact that the Nicholas of the Towerwas a royal ship suggests that the crime was instigated by a person or persons of considerable influence - quite possibly Richard of York himself. As to motive, since Suffolk's career was obviously over it can hardly have been political; the obvious alternative was revenge. He had never courted favour, and had often quite unnecessarily antagonized those whom he would have been better advised to flatter or indulge. His death was largely unlamented by his contemporaries, and inspired a number of cruelly satirical verses. Later, his reputation was further stained by the certainly baseless allegations - made by both Hall and Holinshed, as well as Shakespeare - of adultery with Queen Margaret. Suffolk deserved better than this. His speech to Parliament of 22 January 1450 — to say nothing of his last letter to his son - both reveal in their very different ways a man of sincerity and genuine piety, who remained utterly loyal to his King. He gave Henry sterling service, and was ill repaid.

  All too soon, Henry himself had reason to regret Suffolk's departure. Within three weeks of the Duke's death, at Whitsuntide 1450, the almost universal dissatisfaction at the weakness and incompetence of the government had brought the people of Kent, East Sussex, Essex and Surrey to the point of insurrection. Their leader was a man named Jack Cade, of whose origins we know next to nothing; it seems clear, however, that he was by no means the uneducated thug of Shakespeare's play. The fact that after the rebellion his 'goods, lands and tenements, rents and possessions' were forfeited and his blood declared corrupt suggests that he is more likely to have been a member of the local squirearchy; and this is further borne out by the obvious willingness of many landed gentry of the same or similar class to follow his banner. It

  1. According to Hall, 'the capitayne of the same barke with small fight entered into the dukes shyppe, and perceyuyng his person present, brought hym to Douere Rode, & there on the one syde of a cocke bote caused his head to be stryken of, and left his body with the head vpon the sandes of Douer, which corse was there founde by a chapelayne of his, and conueyed to Wyngfield college in Suffolke, and there buried.' Oddly enough, however, while the collegiate church of Wingfield possesses fine tombs of his father the second Earl and his son the second Duke, of his own tomb there is ho trace.

  seems probable, too, that he had fought in the French wars, where he had acquired valuable military experience. In such circumstances it may seem surprising that he should have claimed to be John Mortimer, descendant through the Earls of March of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III. He seems to have genuinely believed this himself; he certainly had no difficulty in convincing the vast majority of his followers.

  Assembling at various points during the last days of May, the rebels - they included one knight, eighteen squires, seventy-four 'gentlemen', the Mayor of Queenborough and the Bailiff of Folkestone — marched on London and on I June pitched their camp at Blackheath. Henry, who had been attending a session of Parliament at Leicester, dissolved it at once and rode quickly to the capital, arriving six days later at St John's, Clerkenwell; and on 17 June he and his Council gave careful consideration to Cade's grievances. The King, it was claimed, had given away so many of the Crown lands that instead of living on their revenue he was forced to levy disproportionate taxes on his subjects. Moreover, those responsible for collecting these taxes bought and sold their offices instead of being appointed by Parliament. But Parliament itself was no longer properly representative, since elections were all too frequently managed by the local magnates, who imposed their own nominees. A yet greater degree of corruption was evident in the judiciary. Finally, the loss of the King's lands in France had been the result of criminal mismanagement, and the 'traitors' responsible were still unpunished. To remedy these ills the insurgents demanded that the King should resume possession of all the Crown lands; that the Dukes of York, Exeter, Norfolk and Buckingham should be relieved of their positions of power; that parliamentary elections and the administration of justice should be reformed; and that the Statute of Labourers, whereby those who demanded more than a certain
wage were savagely penalized, should be repealed at once.

  There was nothing unreasonable about any of this, and it should not have been impossible for the Council to have given a sufficiently encouraging reply to have persuaded the rebels to return contentedly to their homes. Instead, it rejected the demands out of hand and sent in the army to restore order. At this point, however, another serious mistake was made: the army was split in two. Several detachments were deputed to escort the King to Blackheath, and only a relatively small force to deal with Cade and his followers. This force pursued them as far as Sevenoaks — where, however, the rebels suddenly wheeled round and attacked, killing twenty-four of the King's men including the two leaders, Humphrey and William Stafford. When the news reached Blackheath the remainder of the army mutinied, and it was only with difficulty that Henry was able to retire with his attendant lords to Greenwich. A few days later he fled, seeking refuge at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire.

  After this, the rebellion spread rapidly: northward to East Anglia, westward as far as Hampshire and even Dorset. In Wiltshire the Bishop of Salisbury, who had officiated at the King's wedding, was seized after mass and murdered by his own parishioners. Meanwhile on 3 July the self-proclaimed Mortimer, wearing a gown of blue velvet, a gilt head-piece and the gilded spurs of a knight, made his triumphal entry into London, a sword carried in state before him. On the day following he publicly beheaded two of the King's most hated advisers - whom, as a sop to the rebels, Henry had already sent to the Tower: Lord Say and his son-in-law Crowmer, the Lord Sheriff of Kent. All might still have been well for him had he not ill-advisedly allowed the plunder of the house of the staunch Lancastrian Philip Malpas, one of the few City Aldermen to have opposed his entry. The prospect of further profitable looting encouraged the rabble to join him, while law-abiding citizens grew anxious at this new turn of events and began to withdraw their support. They appealed for help to Lord Scales and Matthew Gough, who held the Tower in the King's name; and at ten o'clock in the evening of Sunday 5 July these two advanced with their garrison in an attempt to regain possession of London Bridge. The ensuing battle continued all night; Gough was killed, but neither side could prevail over the other. Finally the rebels set fire to the bridge and withdrew to Southwark, where they broke into the King's Bench and Marshalsea prisons and released all the inmates.