by Jones, Nigel
Now Edward knew what had to be done, and did it with the decision of an experienced ruler rather than the nineteen-year-old youth he was. He formally claimed the Crown on 4 March and no one in London disputed it. The leading Lancastrian lords were retreating north with Henry and Margaret, and given the choice of the two Edwards – the seven-year-old son of Henry and Margaret or this strapping ‘sun of York’ – Londoners did not have to think twice before deciding the new Edward IV was their man.
Edward issued commissions of array, conscripting every available man between sixteen and sixty, and within days was marching north with an enormous army. Muster rolls indicated that some 36,000 men gathered at Pontefract Castle where Edward concentrated his command on 27 March. The Lancastrians had an even larger host around York, where around 42,000 were mustered. Most of the available English peerage were here – the majority (nineteen) still on the Lancastrian side, while only eight fought for the Yorkists. It was clear that the coming battle would be a showdown in which fierce family hatreds would run unchecked, and the great dynastic question would be put to the supreme test.
The battle that followed, Towton, was the biggest, longest and bloodiest in English history – surpassing even the first day of the Somme on its casualty list. On Palm Sunday 1461, on a high snow-swept Yorkshire plateau south of York, the great Lancastrian host faced an only slightly smaller Yorkist army. Fought toe to toe without quarter, Towton ended with the Yorkists, led by the charismatic Edward, cracking the Lancastrian line and chasing them into a swollen stream which became a mass of hacked bodies so that the white water ran red for three miles. Many Lancastrian lords died in the slaughter, and the Lancastrian royal family – Henry, Margaret and little Prince Edward – fled from York as news of the disaster reached them.
The bloodbath at Towton was decisive. The Lancastrians were shattered both militarily and politically, as Edward IV’s biographer, Charles Ross, noted: ‘For most Englishmen, including a majority amongst the barons and gentry, it now became prudent and realistic to acknowledge the authority of the new king.’ Edward established his House of York on the throne with the support of most of the country – especially in the south and east. His rule, however, was far from secure. The deposed royal family and their entourage, including the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, took refuge in Scotland, where they licked their wounds and plotted their next move.
On 26 June the victorious Edward IV formally re-entered London, riding through the streets of the city amidst cheering crowds until he reached the Tower, where the royal apartments in the palace had been refurbished for their new occupant. The next night passed in the traditional pre-coronation vigil, with Edward creating thirty-two new Knights of the Bath, emphasising that although the throne was under new occupation, continuity, rather than radical change, would mark the Yorkist regime. On 28 June, Edward processed amidst more popular acclaim from the Tower to Westminster Abbey for his coronation. Edward’s character was a curious mixture of cruelty and conciliation. He could be completely ruthless when acting against his enemies. At the same time, he spared some who he might have eliminated. These even included the man who had led the Lancastrian army at Wakefield – killing his father, brother and uncle in the process – at the second St Albans, and at Towton: Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.
Following Towton, Somerset led resistance to Yorkist rule in Northumbria based on the great castles of Alnwick – seat of the mighty Percy family – Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh on the coast. Repeatedly changing hands, the castles remained a thorn in Edward’s side until Somerset surrendered all three of them at the end of 1462, on the understanding that his life would be spared and that he would give his allegiance to Edward. The king was as good as his word. In fact, better. Not only did Edward pardon Somerset, he also bestowed his favour on other members of the Beaufort family. He released Somerset’s younger brother, Edmund, from the Tower, where he had been confined since Towton, and gave lavish annuities to his mother and brother-in-law. Somerset himself was literally taken into the king’s bed in the Tower. Wonderingly, the chronicler William Gregory reported:
And the king made full much of him in so much that he lodged with the king in his own bed many nights, and sometimes rode a hunting behind the king, the king having about him not passing six horse[men] at the most and yet three were the duke’s men. The king loved him well, but the duke thought treason under fair cheer and words …
The thought of the victorious and the vanquished commanders from the great charnel house of Towton carousing between the same sheets at the Tower may seem strange, but it was common for medieval men to share a bed without there being any sexual implications. Indeed, it seems that Somerset shared Edward’s macho heterosexual tastes, and the two men went hunting for woman as well as game. The politics behind Edward’s behaviour were clear enough: as the most powerful mainstays of the Lancastrian cause, the Beauforts were well worth winning over. Edward’s support base among the nobility was still too narrow for comfort, and the Beauforts’ backing would cement his hold on power.
But the pull of Somerset’s hereditary Lancastrian loyalties proved stronger than a lads’ friendship founded on a mutual taste for the chase. Edward’s pampering of Somerset had infuriated his closest allies, such as his chamberlain, Lord William Hastings, and the mighty Warwick. But Edward stuck by his new friend. He took Somerset and 200 men of his affinity north on a peacemaking tour of Yorkshire in the summer of 1463. They halted at Northampton, the town still smarting from its sack in 1461 by Somerset’s ravaging Lancastrian army marching from Wakefield. When locals discovered ‘the false duke and traitor was so nigh the king’s presence’, their rage knew no bounds, and only Edward ‘with fair speech and great difficulty’ saved Somerset from a lynching. The king mollified the mob with a cask of wine, and while they were drinking it he smuggled Somerset to safety, sending him to Chirk Castle in North Wales.
The Northampton lynch mob proved a catalyst for Somerset. After ‘ratting’ once, now he ‘re-ratted’ and urged local Lancastrians in Wales to rebel and restore Henry VI to the throne. That luckless monarch had been left in the north after Towton by his wife, who had returned to her native France with Prince Edward to drum up support for the Lancastrians. Henry was left with a handful of diehard followers in Bamburgh Castle, where he was joined by Somerset early in 1464. But their forces numbered no more than 500 men – a fraction of the great host smashed at Towton.
King Edward was taking no chances. He knew that the trio of mighty Northumbrian castles, Alnwick, Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh – now again held by Somerset – could provide a springboard for a Lancastrian comeback. So he turned to the Tower’s armoury to find the big guns to combat the threat. He plundered the fortress’s arsenal of its five great siege guns, called Edward, London, Newcastle, Dijon and Richard Bombardel. As this formidable battery, commanded by the Earl of Warwick, creaked its slow way north along muddy roads, pulled by ox carts, Warwick’s younger brother, John Neville, was sent ahead by the earl.
Neville destroyed Somerset’s tiny army in two skirmishes at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in the spring of 1464. Somerset was captured and unceremoniously beheaded. Edward would not make the mistake of trusting a Beaufort again. Neville was rewarded by being created Earl of Northumberland, the title traditionally held by the Nevilles’ great northern rivals, the vanquished Lancastrian Percys. When Warwick arrived with his siege train the garrisons of Alnwick and Dunstanburgh took one look at the Tower’s great guns and surrendered on the promise of a free pardon without a shot being fired. Bamburgh proved a tougher nut to crack.
Warwick sent his herald forward to threaten the castle’s commander, Sir Ralph Grey:
If ye deliver not this jewel [Bamburgh], the which the King, our most dread sovereign lord, hath so greatly in favour, seeing it marcheth so nigh his ancient enemies in Scotland, he specially desireth to have it unbroken with ordinance, if ye suffer any great gun [to be] laid unto the wall and be shot, and prejudice the wall, it shall cost you t
he chieftain’s head, and so proceeding for every gun shot to the least head of any person within the said place.
But this dire threat had no effect. Grey, like Somerset, had submitted to Edward after Towton, only to revert to his original Lancastrian allegiance in 1463. He knew that his life was forfeit for this betrayal and grimly fought on. Reluctantly, Warwick gave the order for the Tower’s mighty guns to open fire. The great iron cannons Newcastle and London sent their shot hurtling into Bamburgh’s walls. The castle’s stonework flew into the sea, while the bronze Dijon, a more modern Burgundian weapon, accurately hit Grey’s bedchamber, dislodging a chunk of masonry and knocking out the commander. While Grey was out cold, his deputy, Humphrey Neville, agreed to surrender in return for a pardon, and opened the castle gates. The injured Grey was taken to Doncaster and tried before the constable of England, the sadistic John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, who ordered his immediate execution.
King Henry vanished for more than a year, leaving behind only a few pathetic belongings, including his crown and a spoon. He was sheltered by loyal northern gentry, shuttling between their homes and sometimes – appropriately for such a pious man – disguised as a monk seeking sanctuary at religious houses. In July 1465 the fugitive king was hiding at Waddington Hall near Clitheroe in Lancashire, the home of the Tempest family, under the care of his former carver and chamberlain, Sir Richard Tunstall. But one member of the family, John Tempest, did not share his relatives’ Lancastrian loyalty. Informed by a treacherous monk of the mystery guest at the hall, Tempest organised a posse. When they arrived, a furious struggle ensued. Tunstall held the pursuers off – breaking John Tempest’s arm in the process – while Henry, accompanied only by two chaplains and a single squire, made off into nearby Clither Wood. Later that afternoon Henry and his companions were caught crossing the River Ribble by stepping stones, and arrested.
Humiliatingly, Henry, wearing a straw hat in the summer heat, was mounted on a poor thin nag; his feet were bound under the stirrups by leather thongs and, lashed to his saddle with rope, he was brought to London. He was received at Islington by Warwick and led through the city’s streets towards the Tower, a placard scrawled with insults around his neck. It was a tragic and frightening return to his capital for the mentally frail fallen monarch. As the forlorn little procession rode through Cheapside, Cornhill and Newgate, ribald crowds of Londoners followed their progress, yelling abuse and hurling refuse and stones at the helpless captive. The saintly Henry heard his wife called a whore, and worse, before the Tower’s gates mercifully closed behind him, muffling the hostile jeers. It was to be his home for the last decade of his sad life.
While Henry had been on the run, the kingdom he had lost had enjoyed a brief respite from civil strife. But King Edward lapsed into idle self-indulgence now the pressure was off. His main vices were gluttony – like a Roman patrician he would give himself emetics after a hearty meal, for the pleasure of vomiting and then gorging himself all over again – and lechery. Although his greed made him obese, it was his lust that did Edward the real damage. Both vices were indulged in to the full at the Tower. The king spent more time at his castle palace than any previous monarch. It is a piquant thought that while poor, pious Henry eked out a thin existence as Edward’s captive in the Wakefield Tower, reading the Bible and his breviary, praying in his private oratory, eating the frugal meals of a prisoner, and patiently enduring his harsh lot, a few feet away, in the Tower palace, Edward was feasting and fornicating with his mistresses and cronies.
Separated by only a couple of walls, the contrast between the lives of the pathetic fallen king and his sybaritic supplanter was a painful one. Although Henry was allowed visitors – by permission of his jailers – all such contacts were carried out under the watchful eyes of five of Edward’s trusties. For company, Henry was permitted a dog and a pet sparrow. For human association, he was allowed around a dozen attendants, including a priest, William Kymberley, who celebrated a daily Mass for him. The captive claimed, probably truthfully, that so long as he was allowed the Sacraments he did not mind the loss of his earthly kingdom. Although occasionally sent wine from Edward’s cellars when the king remembered his forlorn prisoner, and granted an allowance of velvet cloth for his gowns and doublets, Henry had never been a drinker or a fashion icon. Even in the days of his pomp, his simple homespun clothes and old-fashioned square-toed shoes had been mocked by modish courtiers. So Henry stayed in his lonely Tower, as one dull day succeeded another, his thin hands joined in prayer around a guttering candle, resigned to whatever fate more worldly men had in store for him.
Edward’s lifestyle at the Tower could not have been more different. Always a lover of luxury, he had his royal rooms sumptuously redecorated; they were aptly known as the ‘House of Magnificence’. They were divided into three great chambers: an audience chamber where visitors were entertained and foreign envoys received; an inner privy chamber where private business was conducted; and finally the holy of holies – the royal bedchamber – furnished with pallet beds for the half-dozen squires and gentlemen ushers who serviced the king’s most intimate needs: holding the basin in which he washed, the towel with which he dried himself, and the pot into which he pissed. The king’s own great tester bed was made and unmade with elaborate ritual, laid with sheets of blanched linen; velvet or satin pillows and bolsters; and an ermine fur counterpane on which holy water was sprinkled before it was used – often for distinctly unholy purposes. Here, behind discreetly drawn bed curtains to ward off the Tower’s river chill, the king would spend his nights chastely with favoured male friends, or more energetically with mistresses such as Elizabeth Lucy or Elizabeth Waite, one of whom bore the lusty young king an illegitimate son, Arthur Plantagenet, destined to end his days in the Tower where he may have been conceived – and possibly a daughter, Elizabeth, too.
If Edward had kept his compulsive womanising separate from his dynastic obligations he might have secured the House of York as England’s permanant ruling dynasty. But it was not to be. In 1464 he secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of a Lancastrian knight. Rumour had it that the pretty, blonde young widow had deliberately waylaid the susceptible king by standing under a tree with her young sons, holding one by either hand. The trio made a heart-wrenching picture as she pleaded for his help, and Edward was instantly smitten. However apocryphal this story, the legend well captures Elizabeth’s calculating ability to manipulate her royal target. A commoner, a Lancastrian, three years Edward’s senior, with a tribe of twelve greedy, grasping siblings in her baggage, Elizabeth had only one thing to recommend her: the randy Edward desperately fancied her. That powerful urge overrode all political objections to the match. Why, then, did Edward not make Elizabeth his mistress as he had so many others? It was said he had wanted to do exactly that, to the extent of holding a dagger to her throat during his rough wooing. But Elizabeth was a cool customer. Like Anne Boleyn in the next century, she held out for a crown. So violent was Edward’s lust that he agreed and, despite his continuing infidelity, the union proved lasting and fruitful.
When Edward was forced to reveal his marriage to his shocked council six months later, Warwick in particular was outraged by the union with a penniless widow, whose Lancastrian father he had once insulted for his humble origins. The earl’s ire was increased as he had been in the act of negotiating a French royal match for the headstrong young king. Insultingly, after Edward made his stunning announcement, he asked Warwick personally to present the new queen to the council. As the kingdom’s richest magnate, Warwick saw himself as the power behind the throne. In his eyes, the House of York was his creation, and, fourteen years Edward’s senior, he saw him as a headstrong nephew. Now his exuberant protégé was threatening Warwick’s pre-eminence. This was intolerable.
Such were the seeds of Warwick’s discontent. Significantly, he refused to attend Elizabeth’s coronation after she had spent the traditional pre-ceremony night at the Tower in May 1465. That event was a magnificent affa
ir. The queen, her loveliness enhanced by a satin gown and an array of glittering jewels, was borne by eight noblemen carrying poles from which her carriage was slung, out of her apartment to where six white ponies were waiting to be harnessed to it. In this splendid state she was carried out of the Tower through cheering crowds to Westminster Abbey. The new queen’s avaricious relatives made haste to grab the goodies that Elizabeth’s royal match had flung their way. Her upstart father, Lord Rivers, was created Lord Treasurer and two of her five brothers were among the fifty new Knights of the Bath dubbed at the Tower in honour of her coronation. In 1467 Warwick absented himself from court altogether in protest at the advancement of the queen’s seven sisters, five of whom had made richly rewarding marriages into the peerage, some seizing partners who Warwick had marked down for marriage into his own clan.
The earl was also angry at the king’s dismissal of his brother George Neville, Archbishop of York, from the post of Chancellor. Most demeaning of all to the Neville family’s honour, Warwick’s elderly aunt, the wealthy Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, aged eighty, was hastily wed to the queen’s brother John, who was just twenty. A horrified chronicler, sarcastically calling the old duchess ‘a slip of a girl’, suggested that the Devil himself had arranged the outrageous match. Satanism, in fact, was widely rumoured to be the real reason behind the king’s infatuation with Elizabeth. The new upstart queen – in another parallel with Anne Boleyn – was said to be a sorceress who had bewitched the king. By 1469, proud Warwick had had enough and took the decisive step into conspiracy and rebellion.