Despite his efforts in besieging Guisnes, Lord Dinham was dismissed from his post as governor of Calais. On 11 March, in a sign of how few men the king could rely upon to defend the town, Richard appointed his illegitimate son John the captain of Calais and commander of its three fortresses; since John was under twenty-one, he was escorted there by Robert Brackenbury, with his authority ultimately wielded by a royal council.
If Richard was determined to prepare for every eventuality for the defence of his kingdom, he was equally convinced that he could erode Henry’s morale and support base by winning back those disaffected Yorkists who had fled in exile after Buckingham’s rebellion. Realising the potential backlash that Henry’s ill-advised declaration of his Lancastrian claim might have upon those men who had previously fought against the Lancastrian regime and whose future welfare now seemed in doubt if Henry attempted to seize the throne, Richard believed that their reconciliation to his authority would be perfectly possible, especially since he had now managed to win over Elizabeth Woodville. Issuing promises of a pardon if they might return to the fold, his offer was met with considerable success; on 12 January Queen Elizabeth’s brother Richard Woodville and John Fogge submitted themselves to the king, and were bound over for 1,000 marks to secure their pardons. Other former rebels soon followed, including Richard Haute, the Woodville kinsman Reginald Pympe, Roger Tocotes, Amyas Paulet and William Overdale. A general pardon was even offered to Elizabeth Blount and Thomas Brandon and thirty-seven men who had defected from the Hammes garrison. Robert Ratcliffe, who had sailed with Edward Woodville’s fleet in 1483, was welcomed back to England and rewarded in April 1485 for ‘good service to the king … in foreign parts’.
The greatest prize, however, came with the flight of Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset from Henry’s camp. Dorset had already received letters from his mother, pleading with him to return home. Now, faced with the prospect of his own authority over Henry being supplanted by the Lancastrian stalwart Oxford, Dorset had ‘despaired of Henry’s success’ when according to Vergil he had ‘been corrupted by Richard’s promises’. In January 1485 Dorset sent his Portugese agent Roger Machado to Flanders, with instructions to meet the commander of the Flemish armies, Jacques de Savoie, who was battling against Maximilian’s armies, possibly in the hope of securing a safe haven there. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, he fled the French court at Paris, aiming for Flanders. As soon as Henry discovered Dorset’s escape, having most likely been informed by Machado, he was ‘deeply disturbed’. Seeking Charles VIII’s permission to have the marquess tracked down, every highway was immediately searched, until Humphrey Cheyney managed to hunt down Dorset in the town of Compiègne. Cheyney managed to ‘persuade’ the marquess to return to the French court, though it would be surprising if a threat of force had not been used. Dorset’s attempted escape must have been a serious blow to Henry; for the moment, he must have been relieved that Dorset had failed in giving Richard the propaganda coup he had hoped for. More worrying, the marquess’s escape had revealed the divisions in his own camp over which he was struggling to control and maintain discipline while the prospect of French support for an invasion remained a farflung promise. Shaken by the entire episode and its potential consequences, Henry resolved that he could hardly trust Dorset again.
Confident of the appeal of his pardons, Richard even felt able to offer the same to John Morton, with the pardon granted under the Great Seal, a sign of the king’s personal commitment to forgiveness. Richard had underestimated the bishop. Morton ‘held him off by fair and wise excuses, till he had more experience of the sequel’. Meanwhile he made his way to Rome, where on 31 January his signature can be found in the register of the Santo Spirito fraternity. The purpose of Morton’s visit seems likely to have been to seek a papal dispensation from Pope Innocent VIII for a marriage between Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, since both were descended from John of Gaunt. If Morton hoped that a marriage might still one day be possible, equally he had underestimated the king, for Richard was about to move to crush any chance of Henry Tudor marrying his intended bride.
8
THE SPIRAL OF DECLINE
It had been at the Christmas festivities at court when men began to notice that something did not seem right. What caught the eye of most spectators in particular had been ‘the vain changes of dress, similar in colour and design, presented to Queen Anne and the Lady Elizabeth’. Since her release from sanctuary the previous March, Elizabeth of York had spent her days at the king’s court. Together with her sisters, described by one chronicler as ‘beauteous maidens’, Elizabeth, on the cusp of turning nineteen years old in February 1485, had grown into a tall beauty with golden hair, the image of her mother. Her striking presence was bound to have an effect, though the rumours that began to circulate were unexpected nonetheless. According to the chronicler, this ‘caused the people to murmur and the noble and prelates greatly to wonder thereat; while it was said by many that the king was bent, either on the anticipated death of the queen taking place, or else, by means of a divorce, for which he supposed he had quite sufficient grounds, on contracting marriage with the said Elizabeth’.
Part of the rumour, it seemed, would soon be proved true: it was not long after Christmas, the Crowland Chronicler recorded, that Queen Anne ‘fell extremely sick’. The queen grew increasingly frail, unable to attend functions and ceremonies at court. The disease was possibly tuberculosis, which would explain why Richard ‘entirely shunned her bed, declaring that it was by the advice of his physicians that he did so’. While Anne lay sick in her bed, rumours of the queen’s death had begun to spread. According to Vergil, the queen had confronted Richard, blaming him for spreading them. The king’s decision to ‘forbare to lie with her’ and reports that he had begun ‘to complain much unto many noble men of his wife’s unfruitfulness, for that she brought him no children’, fuelled the gossip that Richard wanted Anne dead. Yet there seems no reason to doubt the king’s genuine affection for ‘his dearest consort’ for whom, in the months of her disease, he made a grant of £300 to a university college which in the previous year he had decreed an annual Mass for their ‘happy state’. As the agony of the queen’s disease increased, Richard threw himself into the distraction of hawking, ordering commissions to be sent out on 8 and 11 March to search for falcons and other birds to be purchased ‘at price reasonable in any place within this realm’ as ‘thought convenient for the king’s disports’, as well as sending five men abroad for the same purpose.
Just after nine o’clock on Wednesday 16 March, in the south-eastern sky the morning light began to darken as the sun began to disappear behind the curved shadow of the moon’s disc, until its light had almost completely extinguished. For almost five minutes, darkness descended upon the world. An eclipse was considered an omen of the worst kind. Later that day the funereal toll of the great bell at Westminster began to resound, announcing the death of Queen Anne.
Anne was buried ‘with no less honours than befitted the interment of a queen’. Just as soon as her embalmed body was lowered into the ground, fresh rumours began to circulate that Richard hoped to marry again – this time to Elizabeth of York. Richard was forced to deny in public ‘in a loud and distinct voice’ that ‘such a thing had never once entered his mind’, with the king convening a meeting of the mayor and citizens of London on 30 March at the priory of St John in Clerken-well to denounce the accusations. The Crowland Chronicler believed the opposite to be the case, revealing that the king’s own councillors ‘very well knew to the contrary’. In particular, Sir Richard Ratcliffe and William Catesby, men ‘to whose opinions the king hardly ever dared to offer any opposition’, had warned Richard directly ‘to his face’ that if he did not repudiate the rumours that he might attempt to marry his niece in front of the mayor and commons of London, the consequences would be serve. The ‘opposition would not be offered to him by merely the warnings of the voice,’ they warned. ‘For all the people of the north, in whom he placed
the greatest reliance, would rise in rebellion against him, and impute to him the death of the queen, the daughter and one of the heirs of the Earl of Warwick, through whom he had first gained his present high position; in order that he might, to the extreme abhorrence of the Almighty, gratify an incestuous passion for his said niece’. Twelve Doctors of Divinity were summoned to assert that no dispensation would ever be granted by the pope for such a marriage, ‘in the ease of such a degree of consanguinity’. According to the chronicler, there were other reasons for Richard’s advisers to fears such a marriage: if Elizabeth ever became queen, ‘it might at some time be in her power to avenge upon them the death of her uncle, Earl Anthony, and her brother Richard, they having been the king’s especial advisers in those matters’.
The king’s denial did not prevent rumours from spreading across the country. These were clearly troubling to Richard, who was determined that they should be prevented from spreading beyond the capital. On 19 April a letter from the king, signed by him two weeks earlier, was read out at the Guildhall in York:
Trusty and wellbeloved, we greet you well. And where it is so that divers seditious and evil disposed persons both in our city of London and elsewhere within this our realm, enforce themselves daily to sow seed of noise and slander against our person and against many of the lords and estates of our land to abuse the multitude of our subjects and avert their minds from us if they could by any means attain to that their mischievous intent and purpose; some by setting up of bills, some by messages, and sending forth of false and abominable language and lies, some by bold and presumptuous open speech and communication one with another, where through the innocent people which would live in rest and peace and truly under our obeisance, as they ought to do, [have] been greatly abused and oft times put in danger of their lives, lands and goods as often as they follow the steps and devises of the said seditious and mischievous persons to our great heaviness and pity; for remedy whereof and to the intent the truth openly declared should repress all such false and contrived inventions, we now of late called before us the mayor and aldermen of our city of London together with the most sad and discreet persons of the same city in great number, being present many of the lords spiritual and temporal of our land, and the substance of all our household, to whom we largely showed our true intent and mind in all such things … where we also at the same time gave straightly in charge as well to the said mayor as to all other our officers, servants and faithful subjects wheresoever they be, that from henceforth as often as they find any person speaking of us or any other lord or estate of this our land otherwise than is according to honour, truth and the peace and restfulness of this our realm, or telling of tales and tidings whereby the people might be stirred to commotions and unlawful assemblies, or any strife and debate arise between lord and lord or us and any of the lords and estates of this our land, they take and arrest the same persons … the furnisher, author and maker of the said seditious speech and language be taken and punished according to his deserts, and that whosoever first find any seditious bill set up in any place he take it down and without reading or showing the same to any other person bring it forthwith unto us or some of the lords or other of our council …
It seems highly implausible that Richard would have wished to marry his own niece, whom he himself had declared illegitimate eighteen months before. But the king was planning to marry again, as soon as he possibly could. He was also planning for Elizabeth of York’s marriage. Already he had arranged for her sister Cecily to be married to Sir Ralph Scrope, a younger brother of Thomas, Baron Scrope who was nevertheless looked down upon as ‘a man less than her in rank’; he now began to negotiate a marriage for Elizabeth with the cousin of the Portugese king, John II, Manuel Duke of Beja who would later become King Manuel I. Less than a week after his wife’s death on 22 March Richard sent Sir Edward Brampton, a converted Portugese Jew, to the Portugese court to offer the king’s hand in marriage to King John’s elder sister, the Infanta Joana. In arranging this double marriage, Richard was conscious that he might be able to destroy Henry Tudor’s claim to be the sole descendent to the Lancastrian dynasty, since the living descendents of Henry IV’s sister Philippa, who had married John I of Portugal, were to be found in the Portugese royal family. The Portugese Council of State clearly understood the king’s reasons for the marriage, stating that the union between Richard and the infanta would unite ‘as one the party of Lancaster, and York – which are the two parties of that kingdom out of which the divisions and evils over the successions are born’. By marrying off Elizabeth of York at the same time as marrying the Lancastrian heiress Joana ‘straight away’, Richard knew that he was in reach of defeating the challenge that Henry Tudor posed; as the Crowland Chronicler observed, ‘it appeared that in no other way could his kingly power be established, or the hopes of his rival be put an end to’.
Polydore Vergil reported in the manuscript of his history that Henry was at Rouen while a fleet was still being equipped at Harfleur when the rumour reached him that Richard was planning to marry Elizabeth of York. Henry was ‘suddenly seized by anxiety’; unable to decide what to do, being ‘in two minds’, he spoke of his fears only to the Earl of Oxford. Confiding in the Earl of his ‘great quandary’, Henry understood that if Richard did marry Elizabeth, his plans for a union between the houses of Lancaster and York would be thrown into jeopardy. Henry also believed that he would be unable to marry any of her younger sisters ‘for reasons of prestige’; if he did not, however, he would face the prospect that ‘all Edward’s friends would abandon him’. It was clear that Henry, approaching his one Lancastrian confidant in secrecy, felt constrained by his Yorkist supporters, whose agenda for supporting the earl was to restore one of Edward IV’s children to the throne, rather than lend their wholehearted support to himself alone. Already the Marquess of Dorset’s attempted defection had shaken Henry’s faith in his Woodville supporters; he recognised that if Richard managed to marry Elizabeth of York, the king’s reconciliation with the Woodvilles would be complete, leaving him without any hope of claiming the throne without their support.
Oxford, perhaps with an eye for obtaining an entirely Lancastrian succession, agreed that the price of abandoning a Woodville marriage would likely result in further defections. After a protracted discussion, both agreed that ‘another marriage affinity should be sought as a way of acquiring prestige’. Their chosen candidate was Katherine Herbert, a sister of William Herbert, the Earl of Huntingdon, both of whom Henry had known growing up in Herbert’s father’s household at Raglan in the early 1460s. According to Vergil’s manuscript history, in a sentence the Italian thought later wise to delete, Henry knew Katherine ‘well and loved’. William Herbert himself had been married to a Woodville, which may have also influenced Henry’s thinking if he hoped to retain any of his Yorkist exiles. Whether Henry would succeed in gaining Herbert’s support seems doubtful. On Richard’s accession, William Herbert had been a staunch supporter of Richard during Buckingham’s rebellion. He was rewarded for his loyalty with his appointment as justiciar of South Wales and steward of the Duchy of Lancaster lands there, in addition to being appointed chamberlain of the Prince of Wales. Herbert’s elevation to royal favour was confirmed with his betrothal to Richard’s illegitimate daughter Katherine, that brought with it a landed endowment worth around £1,000 a year.
Despite the earl’s newfound favour, the Herbert family must have been aggrieved that their previous authority in Wales, when the first Earl of Pembroke had been regarded as Edward IV’s ‘master lock’, had not been restored under Richard. During the later years of Edward’s reign, the family became involved in violent clashes with the Vaughan family, and the second earl had been forced to surrender his earldom with its accompanying Welsh lands, receiving instead the title of Earl of Huntingdon, with a smaller landed endowment in Somerset and Dorset. If William Herbert had hoped to restore to his family their coveted Earldom of Pembroke, Richard’s new grants of land were instead locat
ed in the south-west, confirming Edward IV’s decision to move the family influence outside of Wales. Perhaps Henry believed that with the Earldom of Pembroke also nominally held by his uncle Jasper, he might be able to buy their support by offering to restore the family to the title.
Since his days at Raglan, Henry understood the network of alliances that the Herberts surrounded themselves with. The family were linked through marriage to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, a nobleman of a similar age to Henry Tudor; he had grown up with Northumberland as childhood friends when they had both been wards at Raglan castle. Later Northumberland had married one of Katherine’s sisters, Maud Herbert, in 1472. Henry hoped that through the prospect of a Herbert marriage and his former youthful friendship, Northumberland might come to his aid.
It seems surprising that Henry would have considered Northumberland a candidate for supporting his cause, especially since the earl had been instrumental in placing Richard upon the throne, colluding in Rivers’s execution. For his pains, Northumberland had been rewarded handsomely: appointed to the royal office of great chamberlain, he had also been rewarded with the cherished de Brian inheritance, which included lands in Devon, Dorset, Gloucester, Kent, Somerset, Suffolk and Surrey. In his homeland of the north, he was granted vast influence of power as the king’s representative as warden-general of the Marches, the office of captain of the Berwick garrison worth a staggering £5,000 a year in salary, as well as being granted the lordship of Holderness, confiscated from the Duke of Buckingham, which was worth over £1,000 a year.
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