by Ann Wroe
Among the first acts of his reign James had been happy to give safe-conducts to, and then receive, a crowd of exiled Yorkists from Margaret’s court. They were, in fact, his first foreign visitors. The safe-conducts said that James did not mind how many came or of what condition, and implied the more the merrier. They could stay for a year, ‘or longer if the king wills it’. It is not clear how long these Yorkists stayed or what they did, besides sparking a teenage king’s ardent imagination. But from then on James appeared to be shadowing the new Yorkist hope.
By 1491 his interest was shifting, or being shifted, subtly to France, where Charles was on the brink of war with Henry. A French herald was in Scotland for some weeks in the spring, and in April James IV paid £50 Scots to George Neville, ‘the English knight that was banished’. In July, when Monypeny came to escort the Scottish ambassadors to France, tapestries were hung for his reception and he was given a purple robe; when he left, on the 16th, he was paid £250. The ambassadors – chiefly Patrick Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, a favourite councillor of the king’s – stayed until November, receiving frequent letters of instruction from home. By February 1492 James was showing reluctance to ratify the seven-year truce he had made recently with England, and on the 23rd he made his first payment, of £72, to ‘the Dean of York’, an agent associated in subsequent accounts only with service to Richard. Rowland Robinson was also receiving regular payments from James for bringing the letters from Margaret in which, most probably, she was arguing Richard’s cause. When, in March, letters came from Richard himself in Ireland, these were immediately described as ‘from King Edward’s son’. By now, James did not need persuading.
By July 1493, Henry VII was aware of frequent sailings of rebels between Scotland and Flanders. Besides the seven-year truce, which had now been ratified, he suggested the possibility of an English marriage, and agreed to pay 1,000 marks for damage done by the English in the border lands. But James was not won over. Aware, it seems, of the Yorkist conspiracies growing in the south, he planned a distracting or reinforcing raid in the north. In November that year the border chiefs and their tribes poured into England to promote a rising for Richard. They had raided too early, perhaps impatient with waiting, and the movement faded away. James, meanwhile, bided his time. In 1494 he sent a large delegation to Flanders, including a herald and his chief admiral, Andrew Wood. By August that year, Henry had heard that James intended to help with the invasion of England; the next year, Scottish ships and men were apparently sent to Vlissingen. As the invasion neared, the Scottish ambassadors at Maximilian’s court showed an excitement about it, and an eagerness to ‘stir up opinion for the Duke of York’, that seemed to come from a higher source. And when Richard won no victory, or even a foothold, James’s hand of love was still extended to him.
Another subject was also in the air. For a while there had been talk of a marriage for Richard with one of the eligible princesses of Europe. Such a strategic alliance – which, in the first instance, marriage was – would add necessary substance to him. Maximilian’s daughter had been mentioned, but the thought had been taken no further: a sign, perhaps, that her father was still uncertain of the young man’s credentials. But negotiations for a wedding in Scotland had probably been proceeding for some time.
The proof of that is simple enough: Richard had no sooner arrived there, than he was married. Those who dismissed his claims thought that nothing had been arranged; he had simply fallen in love (or in lust, as André preferred) with a girl when he arrived, and asked James for her. But this was not the normal practice for princes, and he was a prince. Marriages at this level did not occur without months, more often years, of careful preparation on both sides. His portrait had probably been done with this in mind; and as he left Flanders to invade England, on fairly clear instructions to continue rather than return, his thoughts may have been set more keenly on Scotland than those around him knew.
Of his love-life before then nothing is known. It is highly likely that in France or in Brabant some young woman had already ‘taken his belt off’, as the saying was, and he hers. His sexual awakening may also have come much earlier. In Portugal, as an impressionable adolescent, he had found a court that was alive with casual liaisons and hopeless amours between the servants of the king’s and queen’s households. The Infante Afonso, at the age of thirteen, had already publicly declared himself in love. At riverside picnics, at late-night dancing parties, in the rustic lodging-houses where the pages and squires were billeted as the court travelled, a mysterious youth, ‘slim, fair and like a Frenchman’, had plenty of occasions to make conquests or to be seduced. If he was silent or inarticulate, this too, as Garcia de Resende described it, was part of the game. The court divided between those sunk in the inexpressible despair of love, cuydando (as Pero Vaz had said he was), and those who were convulsed, sospirando, with moans and sighs. Either way, the lover languished until his beloved embraced him. As Richard Plantagenet grew into princeliness he became, as all young princes did, effortlessly desirable, no longer needing to sigh for the young women who would do whatever he wanted in the baths or in bed. Yet by his last year at the court of Burgundy, when he was twenty-one and old, as a prince, to be unmarried, there was evident advantage in a more settled kind of love.
His petition to his beloved, long-arranged or not, appears to have survived in a copy in the archives in Spain. The letter is unsigned, the recipient unnamed, but internal evidence strongly suggests that it was his. It was written in the mid-1490s, in Latin, and was addressed to a young woman of high nobility in Scotland. Its preservation, and its sending to Spain, implied it was of the greatest political importance, like the love-letters also preserved there between Prince Arthur and Katherine of Aragon. In contrast to those letters, however, with their stilted expressions of regard and their sense of parents hovering, this was a work of maturity, passion and independence. The use of a Latin secretary (betrayed by his fine Italian hand) to craft the phrases and then to write them out was evidence that it came from a royal secretariat. It was not the prince’s own work, but it expressed a prince’s desires, though couched in the abject humility that was expected of lovers.
The letter may have travelled with him from Malines – kept among his papers, or pressed in a prayer-book – ready for presentation to a young woman he did not yet know; or he may have written it, with a little help, in the wake of his first meeting with her. In the letter, he had seen her and was deeply in love; but such feelings could be anticipated by young men with strong imaginations and perhaps a few details to build on. In the romances, gallants often fell in love with fair virgins they had seen only in dreams, leaping from their disordered beds to ride out over the world in hope of finding them. If Richard had not seen her, in her portrait or in life, he had dreamed her to distraction.
Most noble lady:
It is not without reason that all men turn their eyes to you; love you; admire you; honour you. For on the one hand they contemplate your twofold virtue that always makes you shine so brightly: so that no man may have before him a sweeter example of manners. Your riches are always admired, and in second place your easy fortune, which secures to you both your nobility of birth and all that goes with that nobility. On the other hand there suddenly appears that extraordinary beauty, divine rather than earthly, which testifies – as you deserve – that you were not born as humans are, but fell from heaven.
They look at your face, so bright and serene that it gives splendour to the cloudy sky. They look at your eyes, as brilliant as stars, which make all pain to be forgotten, and turn despair into delight. Lastly, they look at your white neck, easily outshining pearls; they admire your peerless brow, the glowing bloom of youth, the bright gold hair, and all the splendid perfection of your body; and in looking, they can only praise you; in praising, they can only love you; in loving, finally, they cannot but reverence you.
I shall be a happy man, perhaps the happiest, among the others who share this fate with me, if I may deserve
at last to win your love. When I embrace in my mind all those qualities of yours, I am impelled not only to love you, worship you and honour you, but love makes me your slave. Waking or sleeping, I can find no rest, thinking myself wretched since I may not be able to please your nobility, on which alone I have wished to base all my hopes.
Most noble lady, my soul, turn your eyes upon me; most piously intercede for this man who has been called your servant from the first hour he saw you; for love is not a human thing, but rather divine. Nor should it seem beneath you to obey love; for not only human Princes, but goddesses too, have bent their necks beneath its yoke.
I beg therefore that your nobility may be willing to cleave to me, who is ready to do your will in all things as long as life remains in me. And Farewell my soul and my consolation and the greatest ornament of Scotland; Farewell and again Farewell.
Although both sender and receiver spoke English, English could not do such sentiments justice. Such letters had to be in Latin, like prayers that approached the mysteries of heaven. The language of princes in love was required to be as mannered and beautiful as possible. At the same time, the letter was tentative, as courtesy dictated. He did not deserve her, and could only hope that she would notice him among the crowd of her admirers. To accept his love would be a burden and subjugation for her, depending completely on her kindness. The letter was written largely in the subjunctive, the mood of possibilities and dreams.
At times, the ritual self-abasement seemed to go a good deal too far. Repeatedly he emphasised her nobility, ‘on which alone I have wished to base all my hopes’, as if he needed her high blood to reinforce his own. He feared he could not please her and was in awe of her ‘easy fortune’, as though he himself had nothing to offer her. But this, in fact, was Richard’s case. Only he, at this time and place, combined majesty and nothingness in this extraordinary way.
He either could not yet name her, or did not yet dare to; and little in this letter, save ‘of Scotland’, and the bright gold hair, could have tied it to any young woman in particular. Even the bright gold hair was standard, preferably falling to the waist in token of virginity, and thrillingly on show. The neck was always white: as pear-blossom, as milk, as new-fallen snow, shining under the chemise or the little veil of soft white gauze that was sometimes meant to conceal it. The dint between the collar-bones and, especially, the declivity between the breasts were known to desperately arouse a man. Ideally, pale blue veins could be seen beneath that whiteness, showing where the warm blood pulsed with what might become reciprocal desire. The ‘bloom of youth’ caught a little of that, blood rising with excitement in a pretty face. All these phrases suggested he had seen her, and at close hand; yet these were also the qualities of every beautiful girl and goddess in 1495.
The phrases of love in this letter, too, were lustrous with long use: a heavenly birth, the allurements of sweet manners, the wondering of the world, the lover enslaved. A young man with his head full of poetry could produce them almost without thinking. He knew, too – as all lovers knew – that he was taking risks. Love hurt him as though he were in real war, struck with searing arrows that could not be pulled out again. He was caught in the middle of a perilous approach, wounded by graciousness and beauty and by the torment of broken nights; but quietly, insistently, by constant looking, he was attempting to negotiate the terms of a mutual surrender. His beloved was already involuntarily enmeshed with him. She was not only his consolation, but his soul. In that divine sphere where, like Our Lady, she turned the stars of her eyes upon him and interceded for his intentions, they were already one. His identity was hers, though he may not yet have known whose identity that was.
ii
Prince Richard of England reached Scotland on or around November 20th, 1495. Perhaps thirty men accompanied him as he disembarked. One Scottish historian gave him ‘an opulent equipage and honourable train of foreigners’, but not much opulence can have got through the rigours of Ireland. Though he doubtless put an elegant face on things, he was all but washed up. The Scottish accounts list payments for six servants of the Prince of England, who were clothed at James’s expense. A more tattered train of ‘Englishmen who came from Ireland’ were billeted in Ayr and Irvine as a drain on the king’s budget. German mercenaries in Richard’s train, then or later, were blamed for bringing in the pox they had contracted from prostitutes in Italy.
He was expected; perhaps because Margaret had sent word, or because Hugh O’Donnell, who was in Glasgow in July renewing old alliances, had kept the king apprised of his likely movements. James received him with great pomp at Stirling, moving across from Edinburgh the hanging tapestries, the sideboard of silver plate and the chapel gear (the vestments newly mended with gold and silk), and furnishing a large house for Richard’s use in the town. William Dunbar detested grey-stone windswept Stirling, calling it ‘purgatory’ and ‘hiddous hell’, and decrying its dull company and thin beer. Lead us not into this temptation, he prayed:
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem de Strivilling:
Sed libera nos a malo illius.
But James liked it, and was busy rebuilding the entrance gate and planning new royal quarters on the highest part of the great rock on which the castle stood, besides laying out a large garden in the ward with ditches, fish-ponds, stands of young trees, lawns and flowers. The wolves were kept at bay. Through this work-in-progress the Prince of England rode with as many as had followed him. Every castle and palace he was to visit in Scotland showed James’s enthusiasm for building and improving, an enthusiasm he also directed towards his friends.
The Scottish winter had already started: short, dim daylight hours before the torches were lit to shine on the best tapestries, the best silver, and on him. Dunbar again, still in Stirling:
In to thir dirk and drublie dayis,
Quhone sabill all the hevin arrayis
With mystie vapouris, cluddis, and skyis,
Nature all curage me denyis
Off sangis, ballattis, and of playis.
Quhone that the nycht dois lengthin houris
With wind, with hail and havy schouris . . .
My hairt for languor dois forloir
For laik of symmer with his flouris.
James had taken pains with more besides the furniture. He had been in Stirling since at least the 10th of November, checking that everything was ready. For himself, to make sure that he looked as impressive as his castle, he had ordered a new jacket, shirts of holland cloth, tippets, hats and a gold-and-silk embroidered belt. Jousts were laid on in celebration, for which the king wore a white arming doublet sewn with silk. It is hard to disentangle the costs of Prince Richard’s welcoming from the costs of his wedding, since the clerk who wrote up the accounts put everything together. They were all of a piece, an outpouring of a love that was already his.
The two young men were natural allies. James was twenty-two, only a few months older than his new friend: cultured, polyglot, athletic, musical, and apt to order four new hats on every feast day. (In 1489 he bought twenty-five: caps, bonnets, hats of beaver fur, hats with ear-flaps.) His five hawkers and their birds went with him almost everywhere, and he wore a gold whistle to call his dogs. His love affairs were famous and, despite prattling tongues, he kept his favourite mistress in grand and public estate. Generosity was natural to him; so, too, was wildness, in spending and enthusiasms and even in appearance. He kept a shaggy half-beard, showed a strange fascination for the manners of savages, and was so headstrong that John Ramsay, Henry VII’s Scottish agent, thought he was ‘far out of reason’. Clever as he was, James could be gulled too; it was in character that he never suspected Ramsay, in whom he confided, of being a spy for England.
Like Maximilian, he was a wanderer around his kingdom, casting off formality when he could. He would sometimes ride out unattended in the guise of a common wayfarer, lodging in the crofts of the poor and sleeping on their hard beds, in order to ask his lowliest subjects what they thought of their king. His pilgr
images to his favourite shrines, St Duthac’s in Ross and St Ninian’s in Galloway, were sometimes made on foot, though his Italian minstrels went along to serenade him. As in Maximilian’s case, the wanderer and disguiser in him, the risk-taking king, seems to have warmed to Richard as to a kindred soul.
Yet he was also constant, remaining loyal, in particular, to the memory of the father he had scarcely known. It was said that a little while after the battle of Sauchieburn, when no one was sure whether the king was alive or dead, James approached Sir Andrew Wood and asked him, ‘Sir, are you my father?’ The brooding sense of a father he could not forget, and whom others would not let him forget, would also have brought him close to Richard. Stirling, where they first met, had been James III’s favourite residence, and from the top of the king’s new tower a far line of trees marked the place where his father had lost the battle. A double compliment of choristers and musicians sang daily in the castle chapel for the soul of the murdered man. As a pledge that his grief and his love continued, James wore an iron belt to which he added a new link every third year. When Richard of England embraced him to seal their common cause he would have felt this belt press hard against him: beneath the shimmering damasks and velvets that his friend wore as avidly as he did, uncompromising steel.
A few days after Richard’s arrival, James asked him to address the assembled lords directly. This was probably at Perth, then called St Johnstone, on December 3rd. There, according to the chroniclers, he gave perhaps the saddest of his orations: the story of his own life, presented as a desperate search for people who would help and befriend him.