by Ann Wroe
The cathedral was filled with nobles from every corner of the Empire, and beyond it. Their precedence, both in seating and in the offertory procession, had been arranged with exquisite care by nearness of blood and degree to the dead emperor. For this first Mass, ‘Richard, son of Edward, king of England’ was on the socially lower left-hand side of the coffin, among the representatives and ambassadors. He was not with Maximilian, or Albrecht of Saxony, or the archbishops. Yet he had ridden to the cathedral in the most distinguished group, headed by Maximilian and the representatives of the Kings of France, Hungary and Sicily; and as everyone stood in the church, there were dukes and bishops enough on his side. The man who went ahead of him in the offertory procession was Georges Lucq, the commander of the Teutonic Order and the Duke of Lorraine and Bar. After him came at least two lords, a canon and a count. Since so many princes had sent representatives rather than making the long trip themselves, his presence in person was noted in the official record. It is strange, in view of later opinions about him, to see him listed as ‘King Edward of England’s son in person’ and ‘King Edward’s son of England himself’, but so he appeared: the real thing, rather than the proxies that others had sent.
At the Mass of Requiem the next day, he did better in his ranking. That service included a long eulogy (an exclamation, Molinet called it) by Jehan Perger, a distinguished poet, noting Frederick’s victories and his journeys to all the Holy Places ‘where Our Saviour walked with His precious feet’. After this, the lords of the sixteen counties, dukedoms and provinces of the Empire offered at the hearse their banners, helms, shields and torches, and each province led a horse, caparisoned with livery and shying from the blaze, as far as the platform of fire. This time Richard found himself alongside Henry of Saxony and Albert, Duke of Bavaria, the emperor’s son-in-law, both right-hand-siders of the day before. After the presentation of the horses he and the other mourners, in order, walked up to do reverence and make offering again. He did so with two of Archduke Philip’s representatives, one on either side of him. They laid their purses of money on the coffin, on which Frederick’s imperial robes were now arranged, and knelt for a moment among the jewels and lights and paraphernalia of gold, as if caught inside a treasure-box of flame.
If you had watched King Edward’s son then, he would have been equally aware that he was being watched. He might have wept a little, stirred by the tears of those around him. His devotion, like his sorrow, was part-sincere, part-show; oraison très-dévote par semblant, as Chastellain remarked of Louis XI as he knelt and prayed, for a very long time, before the holy oil at his coronation. Merely to be part of such a scene, on such a scale, worked to Richard’s advantage, even if he was barely distinguished in the richness of the crowd. More or less from that moment, Maximilian adopted him.
The new emperor’s second-wife-to-be, Bianca Maria Sforza, the daughter of the Duke of Milan, adopted him also. On January 20th she reported to her father that ‘the son of King Edward’ had brought her a letter from Maximilian and a declaration of his own cause, delivered orally in his name as Bruno had delivered it at that first audience, from Jason Maynus and Baltasar Pusterla, Maximilian’s chief rhetoricians. Both the written form of the declaration and a copy of Maximilian’s letter were sent on to Ludovico Sforza. Bianca Maria had received this appeal ‘most properly’, her father told her. From Richard’s point of view, his salesmanship had now reached Milan.
His place at Maximilian’s court was soon established. On December 14th, and again on March 17th, he was a witness among other dukes to Maximilian’s grants of privileges. But March 16th saw a far more impressive sign of favour. On that Sunday in Innsbruck, exactly a week after the marriage of Maximilian and Bianca Maria (when, according to the Milanese envoy, he was showering her with presents and ‘they were sleeping together daily’), Maximilian had determined that they should go to Mass together, Bianca Maria dressed in the German fashion and wearing the beautiful crown he had given her. This was, in effect, their ceremonial displaying of themselves after their marriage. A huge company went to the church, filing in behind the unsheathed imperial sword carried by Georg of Polheim: gouty Sigmund of Tyrol in a litter, the Duchess Katarina ‘covered from head to foot in pearls’, Bianca Maria in her crown. The new Queen of the Romans was accompanied by Albrecht of Saxony and Christopher of Baden; Maximilian’s escort was the son of King Edward of England, alone. ‘[Cardinal Peraudi] and four bishops read the Mass,’ the envoy went on. ‘There was glorious organ-playing, with trombones and horns, and the singing was outstanding. At the banquet, sitting with the King of the Romans and the queen, were Cardinal Peraudi, Archduke Sigmund, the Duke of Saxony and Richard of England. Queen Bianca behaved most charmingly . . .’
So, clearly, did Richard. He sat there as Edward’s son, in his proper place at the top table, accepted. His Englishness Maximilian and Bianca Maria had to take on trust, since Maximilian admitted that he could only understand, not speak, the English he had learned from those archers. Richard’s claim, for the moment, could not count on explicit help from them. But they did not question his credentials as a prince. In his later autobiography, the Weisskunig, Maximilian remarked that nobility was as obvious as a clear and precious stone, or as a fine fruit with a delicate flavour: it shone from a man, or left a perfume about him, that could be recognised at once. It probably did no harm that Maximilian also found fair hair, like his own, ‘peculiarly beautiful’.
In the further reaches of Europe, in the shadow of the Alps, which prince this young man might actually be did not matter particularly. In terms of diplomatic games, it did not matter whether he was truly a prince or not. But that he was a prince, in his entrance and dismounting and walking and talking, was not doubted by those who met or saw him. It was because he was so plausible, as backer after backer discovered straight away, that he could be so useful.
Once Richard had returned to Flanders with Maximilian in the summer of 1494, there was no lack of opportunities to parade and shine. In mid-August he rode into Malines with Maximilian, Bianca Maria and the young Archduke Philip, making his joyous entry alongside them. All along the streets, hung with rich cloths and tapestries, stood painted stages showing live captioned tableaux from the Bible and classical mythology; there were dances, jousts and fireworks. On the 18th, the imperial party entered Antwerp to an even more sumptuous welcome. Molinet described it:it was night time, and the town was so full of flambeaux and lanterns, with so many wax torches fixed to the gates, bell-towers and houses, that it seemed as if the whole place was on fire.
Similar wonders were conjured up on the evening of September 10th at Louvain, in Brabant, when Philip took his oath as the new lord. His friend Richard, Edward’s son, escorted him, sitting on a special dais draped with cloth-of-gold beside Maximilian, the Duke of Brunswick, Albrecht of Saxony and the Archbishop of Mainz, as the privileges of Brabant ‘at great length, and in German’ were read out to the archduke. Trumpets and clarions then sounded ‘a fantastic fanfare’. At the princes’ back was the town hall, pinnacle upon pinnacle of vaulting stone chiselled like lace and floodlit with torches; before them was a crowd in which each person held a candle, like a burning sea of souls beneath the sparks of the stars. Edward’s son shone too, and the gold on him blazed, the lights and the dark both flattering and obscuring him.
Molinet recorded him again on the evening of October 5th, once more in Antwerp, at Philip’s grand entry as Duke of Brabant. As usual, the two young men rode in together. The streets had been hung again with tapestries and silk, and ‘stories’ had been installed both inside and outside the town. Among these ‘new, singular, joyous entertainments’ was a castle, six or seven feet high by as many wide, hanging in the air, with subtle machinery inside it that let off a shattering noise as the archduke passed, making everyone jump. But the firm favourite, ‘the one to which people gave the most affectionate glances’, was the story of the Three Goddesses, ‘and you saw them naked, and real live women’.
Philip, aged sixteen, was the star of this show, the new Duke of Brabant coming into his inheritance. An ‘imitation angel’ hung in the air above the market place, its wings lit up with fireworks, bringing him a sword in token of his sovereignty. But Molinet noticed particularly Richard of York, ‘really handsome’, fort gorgias, shining in splendour, surrounded pour triompher by his own courtiers and twenty archers in white-rose livery. The chronicler recorded him on the grand platform outside the town hall at around ten the next morning, after High Mass, as Philip took his ducal oaths before the people and gold and silver coins, like bright rain, were thrown down on the crowd.
Molinet, writing this scene in later years with the young man’s confession before him, claimed to be already uneasy about this Prince of England. Richard of York was perhaps just another clever contrivance, a castle in the air. Yet at the time neither he, nor most other people in town, could prove that by observing him. In the pageant that was Richard, there was an impression of expense, gilding and good workmanship that was perfectly satisfactory at a general or even a closer glance.
Henry VII, Molinet added, was astonished at the ‘state, honour, upkeep and favour’ shown to Richard by the Burgundian court. The magnificence and exaltation in themselves, as Polydore Vergil said, ‘dressed up the lie in the likeness of truth’. The young man, so patently glorying in his honours and his title, both believed in himself and drew others to believe. Henry’s envoys reported that Richard was enjoying himself as he pleased, with plenty of people to support him in his hopes of the crown and a growing crowd of recruits to help him win it. Yet his foreign favourers did not know for sure that this young man was the Duke of York. As Molinet said, they hoped he was.
From time to time, unnerving visitors from England tried to pull the pageant prince apart. In September 1493 Henry sent Sir Edward Poynings and Dr William Warham to tell Margaret, with her White Rose beside her, that this prince of hers was both sordido genere and a cooking-pot boy, and was nothing but the fruit of her own monstrous pregnancy. Margaret, furious, ‘would have done all kinds of injury to William,’ Vergil wrote, ‘if he had not taken care of himself’. The next year, Garter Herald came to tell Philip and Margaret that Richard, again present and princiant in his stillness and his gold, was fils d’ung vilain, a base man’s son. On that occasion, too, the envoys were rebuffed and their observations dismissed as evidently ridiculous.
A third incident occurred in the spring of 1495, when Sir Charles Somerset, Henry’s cupbearer and the captain of his guard, arrived in Brabant on a mission to Maximilian. Somerset was an impressive figure, the English equivalent of Monypeny or d’Aubigny, who usually went at the head of an elite guard of 100 royal archers. He was also the bastard son of Henry Beaufort, third Duke of Somerset, which gave some edge to the exchange that followed.
The English envoy was shown into the receiving chamber to find everyone together on the dais, Richard at Margaret’s side. Invited to approach, Somerset bowed to Maximilian; bowed to Margaret; bowed to Philip; but made no sign of reverence to the other person there.
Margaret bridled instantly, unable to hold back in the fierceness of her anger. ‘It seems you do not recognise my nephew Richard,’ she told Somerset, ‘since you do not deign to bow to him.’
‘Madam, your nephew Richard is long dead,’ Somerset replied. ‘And if it would please you to lend me one of your people, I will take him straight to the chapel where he is buried.’
At this point, Richard interjected. He was amazed, merveilleusement estonnez, that Somerset should think him dead. When he was enthroned in his kingdom, he told him, which he hoped would be soon, he would not forget those words; while he, Somerset, vilain menteur, base-born liar, would most painfully regret them.
Somerset apparently did not answer, and this seemed to be the end of the interview. If he had not gone to Malines with his mind made up and his story straight, nothing would have suggested to him that the young man he looked on was not a prince. He was on a dais beside princes, beautifully dressed, and he had spoken for himself with controlled flashes of anger; for that ‘marvellously astonished’ showed that he was certainly angry, or feigning to be. En princiant, [il] tenoit ses gravitez, said Molinet; he kept a solemn and impressive princeliness, as Aristotle recommended. If any aspect raised a doubt, it was perhaps the way Margaret leaped in at once to defend him, as if her sense of his honour and his identity was stronger than his own. Yet even that protection, by the dowager duchess and the doyenne of the House of York, might have confirmed the title he was claiming.
Some chroniclers thought he was frightened and demoralised whenever Henry’s envoys came to Malines, relying on Margaret to argue for him and sometimes to bundle him bodily from the room. Though the mockery made her furiously angry, Richard himself was terrified. The truth seems otherwise: he knew the forms and rituals and, by carefully observing them, he could defend himself. As long as Margaret was physically beside him, however, she saw that task as hers.
For much of his time at her court she also seems to have kept him close and apart from other people. It is easy to believe that though few were admitted to Margaret’s study – green velvet on the table, purple taffeta on the walls, a writing desk of solid silver and, behind a grille, the beautiful books laid out – he was often allowed there. He was her secret, the one she was perfectly happy not to share with Ferdinand and Isabella if they sniffed at it; he was her prize, to be produced for those she felt she could trust to support him. His public appearances, like any prince’s, were carefully staged and controlled. When Robert Clifford went to Malines, Vergil said, it was Margaret who persuaded him on his arrival that everything he had heard about Richard of York was true. She offered him the proofs herself. Only later did she show him ‘her’ Richard, as though he were a tableau arranged in an antechamber, a young prince snatched from Hell to Heaven, with the scroll of his life-history falling from his hand.
v
Through all the props and pageantry the idea gradually emerged that Margaret’s White Rose was not merely a prince, but a king. In 1493 he seemed still shy of making the claim directly. The wording on his escutcheon made him ‘prince’ and ‘duke’ only; his letter to Isabella, though filed away by the secretary with the remark ‘from Richard who calls himself King of England’, made him ‘cousin’, no more. Yet even this betrayed the first inklings of kingship. ‘Cousin’ did not mean just the thin relationship of blood that existed between Richard of York and Isabella, going back to Philippa of Lancaster, the sister of Henry IV, but the general courteous sense in which all rulers were ‘cousins’ across Europe. He had ended the letter with an almost cheeky bene valeat, ‘Hope you’re well’, rather than the usual elaborate commendation to God. As of right, he kept company with kings and considered himself one of them.
Margaret’s letter, too, traded on this theme. She asked Isabella
to make our case to your husband . . . so that once he, together with your Excellency, has recognised this man as a kinsman bound to him by laws of blood, he may do whatever he can to send him favour and help. For if, by divine assistance, he should recover his inheritance (which, with the help of the nobles of England, we hope may happen), he guarantees and promises that he shall be bound by even greater closeness, alliances, deference and love to your Majesties and Kingdoms, than was his father King Edward in time past.
Richard’s escutcheon, his signet and his seal already made play with the royal arms of England. Soon he had his own royal money, too. In 1494 silver gros coins were minted for him, apparently in some quantity as specie for his eventual invasion. They bore no king’s name; that, perhaps, was still a step too far. But the obverse carried the legend Domine Salvum fac Regem, ‘God save the King’, from the ninth verse of the twentieth psalm: a motto that Edward IV had adopted as his own. It also bore within a tressure of five curves the royal shield of England, surmounted by an arched crown, flanked by a crowned rose and a crowned fleur-de-lis. The reverse carried, within a tressure of four curves
, another rose, another lily, an arched crown and a lion of England: lots of royal symbols, as if he and Margaret could not decide which they most wanted.
Another lion of England marked the beginning of the legend on either side. The legend on the reverse was a prophecy, Mani, Teckel, Phares, a shortened form of God’s warning to Belshazzar written on the wall by the shining hand: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Here, on a silver groat, was a sharper challenge to Henry Tudor than Richard Plantagenet ever managed to deliver in person. Mene, God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it; Tekel, thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting; Upharsin, thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and the Persians. Or to me.
The device on his seal made the same uncompromising claim. It bore, under the royal arms, the inscription ‘Secret seal of Richard IV, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland.’ By 1494 he was sealing documents, and signing them too, as a king. He was now Rychard d’engleterre (another echo of Margaret, who signed herself Marguerite d’engleterre). His secret seal, used only for documents of the greatest importance, showed the royal arms of England and France again, under an arched crown. The crown enclosed more fleurs-de-lis, and crowned lions holding ostrich feathers.
His actual claim to the throne was never argued out in detail on paper, either by himself or by others. He claimed it by simple right of blood, as Edward’s son. Had you challenged him (having moved beyond more basic questions of identity), he would probably have produced a version of a famous roll of genealogy commissioned by Edward IV around 1470. This roll, scattered all over with white roses, golden crowns and the fetterlock of the Dukes of York, traced Edward’s claim to England back through his father, Richard, Duke of York, who was son and heir of Anne, daughter of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, who was son and heir of Philippa, daughter of Lionel, the second son of Edward III. It then moved back further still, in a heavy red line punctuated with red circles and boxes, through the Norman kings, the Saxon kings, the pre-Roman kings, Arthur and the sons of Noah, and ended in Eden, where Adam and Eve in their leafy aprons ate the apple under the tree.