Some Touch of Pity

by Rhoda Edwards

  When she had been close to me, I noticed Lady Margaret Beaufort was in quite alarming floods of tears, and having to snivel into her handkerchief. Her nose was very red. I had no time to ask what was the matter — I’d have preferred to give her a sharp smack across the face to stop her. I had a feeling her tears were caused by the sight of Richard being anointed instead of her wretched son Tudor.

  After the anointing, Cardinal Bourchier began Mass. During the Gloria the priests swung their censers around us, and I began to feel faint, although sitting down; the incense smoke wreathed about our faces, the light of the candles hurt my eyes. The Abbey smelt like a huge kitchen where incense, candle wax and sweating people were being slowly cooked. As I sat there I could feel my shift stick to my body, and sweat running down the back of my knees. During the Credo, the Holy Gospels were brought for us to kiss, and after the Agnus Dei, when the Pax had been given, we went together to the High Altar. When we had knelt to say our Confiteor, a silk towel was held up to screen us from onlookers. The Cardinal took the Blessed Sacrament and broke it, dividing it between us, to show that the King and Queen are united in one flesh by the bond of marriage. Then we were given wine from a chalice, to purify us. For me, this was the moment of moments in the whole ceremony, when I received the Body of Our Lord with my husband, and we were as one, King and Queen.

  After Mass we went in procession to St Edward’s Shrine, where the Cardinal took the crowns from our heads and offered them up at the altar, and put on our own crowns. Then we retired into little rooms screened off by arras. I fell into the chair set ready, no longer able to hold off faintness, exhaustion and hunger. My ladies hastened to bathe my face, and to make me drink a little wine and eat some bread, for I had touched nothing since the night before. I was stripped of the crimson robes, and immediately loaded with an even greater weight of purple velvet and ermine. When all was ready, we went in procession back to the dais in the middle of the Abbey, and then, crowned, in our purple, to Westminster Hall. Because the coronation banquet was not yet ready, we left our crowns and robes in the Hall, and went to sit for a while in a room apart. We were too exhausted to talk much. Richard looked much as a man might who had fought a long hard battle, and I did not dare look in a mirror, for tiredness spoils any looks I might have, and I had never been so tired in all my life.

  The banquet began at four o’clock, and went on for more than five hours. I shall never know how I sat through it all. The service of the courses was lamentably slow, and the food in consequence cold, but I wanted little to eat. I told my cupbearer to water the wine, for if he did not, I’d be certain to fall asleep. When the second course was served, the King’s champion, Sir Robert Dymmock, rode into the Hall, on a white horse trapped in red and white silk, the colours of England and St George. He called upon any man who disputed the King’s right to declare himself and fight, throwing down his gauntlet on the floor. At this the whole company cried out: ‘King Richard, King Richard, King Richard!’ The champion was given wine in a cup which he claimed, according to custom, and rode away out of the Hall.

  By the time the third course of wafers and hippocras was served, it was dark in the Hall, and candles and torches had to be brought in. Soon after, the feast came to an end, with every one too exhausted to endure any more, and we went from the Hall. Outside, the summer darkness fell kindly on my tired eyes, and the warm, soft air soothed my aching head. In the torchlight, we walked back to the palace. The bell boomed out the hour of ten to a city wide awake still, and celebrating our coronation with bonfires and feasting. I thought of all the Kings and Queens who had gone before, doing as we did, going from the Great Hall to their palace; the same river flowing strongly with the tide, silent but for a little lisping lap upon the walls. The black line of the Lambeth shore lay on its other side, pinpricked with light, and behind us the bell tower in Palace Yard, and the fountain that had been made to flow with wine instead of water. I asked God to grant Richard a long and successful reign, and that he should shine among the Kings who were his noble predecessors, and that I would not fail in my duty to him and to the realm. Now that the thing was done, we should forget all doubt and regret, for we were crowned and anointed, and nothing could ever undo it. So be it, ita fiat, amen.

  August–September 1483

  5

  The Common Weal

  Told by King Richard

  I trust to God sune, by Michelmasse, the Kyng shal be at London. He contents the people wher he goys best that ever did prince, for many a poor man that hath suffred wrong many days have be relevyed and helpyd by hym and his commands in his progresse. And in many grete citeis and townis wer grete summis of mony gif hym which he hath refusyd. On my trouth I lykyd never the condicions of ony prince so wel as his; God hathe sent hym to us for the wele of us al.

  Letter from Thomas Langton, Bishop of St David’s (1483)

  I’d never have thought to see John Kendal my Secretary in such a dither of excitement. He is not a man who demonstrates extremes of feeling. His letter to the Mayor and citizens of York, requesting them to prepare for our visit, overflowed with anxiety and pride, for John is a man of York himself. Kendal’s letters are a joy to receive, each one an example of the writing master’s art — his neatness and attention to detail is fanatical. He sent direct to the City on the day we left Nottingham, though I’m sure York did not need to be prompted into making us welcome. The crux of his letter — and this amused me a little — was that the men of the south would be watching and waiting to find fault with anything that was done in the north, as if York could not be expected to equal the pageantry of London. The men who served in the City levies, who came south just before the coronation, might well be smarting still from the rude scoffing of the Londoners. ‘For there come,’ Kendal had said, ‘many southern lords and men of worship, which will mark greatly your receiving their Graces.’ I have to admit, I shared his hope that they would be impressed.

  This homecoming to York was the climax of a six weeks’ progress through England, and the pageantry the citizens prepared the eleventh civic welcome, and the happiest, though this should not belittle the efforts of other towns. In Reading, Oxford, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Worcester, Warwick, Coventry, Leicester, and Nottingham I had been surprised and delighted by the warmth of my welcome. On the journey, I particularly wished to show my intent to rule with justice and mercy. In every town a special court of judges and lords was set up, over which I presided, to hear the cases of poor men who had no other means of redress, and to try the oppressors and punish evil-doers.

  This is only a beginning. When I was crowned, I swore an oath to myself that I would undertake the fifth labour of Hercules and cleanse of corrupt practices the Augean stables of public administration. This cannot be achieved entirely, I am willing to admit, but some measure of it can be done, even if it takes a lifetime. Within the government of the realm, injustice, peculation, usury, and extortion flourish; I’d die happy if I saw these things wither in my time. For this reason I had not wished to make an example of selling my good lordship, and refused the gifts of money offered by the citizens during the progress.

  I left my wife the Queen at Windsor after the coronation. She’d looked so tired and pale that I’d wanted her to rest a week or two before coming north with me. That way, she did not need to start travelling until after Lammastide, when she joined me at Warwick. She brought with her an ambassador from the Queen of Spain, a lord called Geoffrey of Sasiola. He had come in friendship, and I suspect his geniality was increased by his journey in the company of the Queen of England, whom he treated in his grave Spanish manner as if she were made of glass.

  During the happy interlude of the progress, it would have been easy to forget how many clouds lie upon England’s horizon. In France, the old enemy, King Louis, is dying, and too busy begging the Almighty to prolong his life to trouble us much, which is as well, for we are in no position to trouble him. At the beginning of August, I received a note from him, short and off-hand to
the point of rudeness, as is his way. I sent him a reply, pointing out that while willing to observe the truce between us until it expired next April, I’d be obliged if he’d make clear whether the terms of the truce regarding English ships trading to France were still valid, because the attacks by French pirates had rendered them nonsense. If the crafty old spider thinks he may deceive me as he did my brother, he will have to think again, and if he makes rude gestures to England, he will be paid back in his own coin. To give this point, I had a letter delivered to him by a stable groom — Kendal remarked that next time it might be a dog boy from the kennels, for Louis cares more for dogs than men.

  In view of King Louis’s precarious hold on this world, the position of his nearest neighbour, the Duke of Brittany, becomes even more uncertain. A week after the coronation, we discovered that Elizabeth Woodville had hatched yet another plot, this time to smuggle her daughters out of Westminster Sanctuary and send them abroad, to Sir Edward Woodville in Brittany. The eldest, Bess, she had promised in marriage to Henry Tudor, the Lancastrian pretender. The Woodvilles would treat with the Devil himself if it benefited them. Before, Elizabeth acknowledged Tudor for what he is, an unknown adventurer. What right has he? Son of the bastard half-brother of Henry VI, Edmund Tudor — not even Harry V’s half, but the mad, sickly blood of his French Valois wife, who was served by some Welsh squire — and, through his mother Lady Margaret, descended from a Beaufort bastard of John of Gaunt. His claim to the throne of England is far inferior even to that of my cousin Harry Buckingham. Even the title he uses, Earl of Richmond, is spurious, belonging to his mother only. If Elizabeth wishes to aid her sons, then she seems to have allied with a man who is as much their enemy as he is mine.

  The conspirators who carried her letters were caught within a week. While staying at my friend’s house of Minster Lovell, just after we left Oxford, I wrote to the Lord Chancellor, asking him to make the usual arrangements for their trial by a commission of lords. There is danger in these meddlings of a foolish woman. Elizabeth may try to have her sons ‘rescued’ from the Tower by raising a rebellion in the south. Rivers had a following in Kent, the lord Marquess in Devon and Somerset, and their minions Cheney and Stonor in Wiltshire and Berkshire. The last thing I want is an attack on London and the Tower, like Fauconberg’s in 1471; those who hold the Tower and London are well on the way to holding England.

  This convinced me that the best policy would be to remove my brother’s sons from the Tower, to keep them from the hands of my enemies. Tudor dreams of invading England, Elizabeth Woodville dreams of revenge, and I’ve no urge to be a three-month wonder. I decided that the boys should be sent to a secret, country place, and guarded by my most trusted servants. The north has many such places and men. Sir Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower, is also Constable of Barnard Castle in Teesdale, which might prove a suitable place.

  I entrusted the moving of the children to Sir James Tyrell for several reasons. He had been my faithful servant for a dozen years; his duties as Master of the Henchmen make him responsible for the boys in the household; he travels frequently unremarked as Master of the Horse, and is discreet and resourceful. A servant was sent to London to arrange the business with Sir Robert Brackenbury. Later Sir James set out from Warwick to fetch the children, and bring them north. He is now back in York.

  It is no use pretending they do not gnaw at my conscience, those two children, who must suffer so cruelly the bitterness of the dispossessed. The very thought of them brings a dark mood on me, and I wonder if by my acceptance of the crown, I have not condemned them to death already. Children are not too difficult to guard, but when they are young men, others may try to use them against me, as pretenders to the throne, and then there will be only one end — the block.

  One pretender is enough for the present. As I have said, we are in no position to make war on anyone, though perhaps the time to strike at France is not so far off. I’m not much older now than Harry V was at Agincourt, and see no reason why I should not bear the rigours of a French campaign better than he; I’ve been trained in a hard school.

  Strange, to think that this summer I might have spent in much the same way as the last seven, in keeping the Border against the Scots. A letter had arrived from King James, asking for an eight months’ truce, as a preliminary to a longer peace. No one would be more pleased to see an end to Border forays than I, but it is impossible to rely on a King who is kicked about his realm like a football by his own nobles. His faithless brother, the Duke of Albany, took refuge at my court, to await a further chance of scoring off the King. Henry Percy of Northumberland, who has had ample opportunity to observe the weaknesses of the Scots, said, ‘Will your Grace treat with poor Jamie? I think, Richard, that Albany means to cause trouble again.’

  ‘I’ll accept his offer in good faith,’ I said, ‘but we must be prepared for his inability to enforce a truce on his unruly subjects. I’ve a feeling you’ll be kept busy, Henry; it’s a relief to know I have a Warden on the Marches who knows the Scots as well as I do.’ Though he preened himself under this small piece of flattery, I was well aware that he wanted more. He had hoped to take my place as the King’s Lieutenant in the north, but since I have found him a man lacking in decision, I intended my nephew Lincoln to head my son the Prince’s council, because he seems to possess the qualities for the job, and to make Lord Dacre my deputy on the West March. Percy’s nose may be put out of joint, but he can no doubt be appeased by other means.

  ‘Does your Highness have any intentions to replace the late King’s council in the Marches of Wales?’ He tried to make this sound a disinterested enquiry, but I knew that finding himself restrained from a complete rule in the north, he was jealous of Harry Buckingham’s position in Wales.

  I gave him a straight answer. ‘My mind is not yet made up on what is best for Wales. The King needs a strong deputy there, of course, and I think the Duke of Buckingham will serve me well in that capacity for the time being.’ I turned to my Welsh Bishops, Richard Redman of St Asaph, and Thomas Langton of St David’s, for their opinions. They are two of the best of the churchmen in my service, though neither is any more Welsh than Percy or I, both being north-country men from my own county of Westmorland. Redman, in particular, I have a great admiration for; he combines the office of his bishopric with that of Abbot of Shap, and the burdensome duties of visitor of all the Premonstratensian houses in England and Wales. He looks like the rest of his family, big, burly Westmorland squires from the hill country, and is one of the most energetic, efficient and moral men I know. There can be scarcely a highway in the land he has not travelled in the course of his duties, undeterred by dangers and bad weather, or a monastery that he has not visited in person.

  He said, ‘A council of lords may well be the answer in Wales. Some answer is certainly needed there. I hope, your Grace, that we may be able to do as I have done at my cathedral of St Asaph, and build a new edifice from the ruins of the old.’

  ‘You think as I do, my lord Bishop,’ I said. ‘I hope Dr Langton is in agreement.’

  ‘In view of my recent appointment, your Grace,’ he said, smiling, ‘I am willing to rely on the judgement of my brother of St Asaph. I must confess I tend to forget that I am a newly made Welshman!’

  I thought that I could offer Harry Buckingham many trustworthy advisors, to help him bring Wales into some sort of order. Though he is largely untried in government, he has shown himself willing and talented, and left me indebted to him; I am hopeful of his success. Though I have much liking for him, I will have to take him on trial for a time; it is Wales itself that will make or break him.

  ‘If I may divert your Grace into lighter matters,’ Dr Langton said, ‘I have discovered several young boys in my diocese with singing voices of incomparable beauty. The Welsh may present us with many problems, but they can compensate us with their singing. I’m sure that some of them could join the choir of the royal chapel, and it would be a pleasure to send them where they will be app
reciated.’ He obviously intended to compliment me on my taste in music, which pleased me, for I would like it to be said that the King’s choir was the finest in the land.

  I thought then of my own son, who can sing tolerably well if required, but would not, alas, ever attain the standard of the chapel royal. When we departed from Nottingham, he travelled from Middleham to meet us at Pontefract. We did not reach the castle until after dark on St Bartholomew’s Day. The Prince, I was told, had been sent to bed at his usual time of eight o’clock, and informed that we would not arrive until the following day. Anne said, ‘We’ll see him in bed, just for a little while,’ and looked at me, knowing that I, any more than she, would not leave greeting our son until morning.

  At the door of his room, I told our ladies and gentlemen to wait outside, for the Prince is only just seven, and would be sleepy and not ready to play his part before strangers. The servants in the room were nervously waiting, wondering whether to wake him. His eyes must have been open, for, as he turned, the light from the door, which stood ajar, fell on his face. He sat up and saw us. He threw back the covers and jumped out of bed in a single, flurried movement, and rushed across the floor. Before he could land headlong against our legs, he remembered his manners, and who he was. He stopped and knelt down in front of us, quite naked, concealing his private parts with his hands, for his mother’s benefit, and said in a voice with a halt and a question in it, ‘My lord father is the King’s Grace now, and my lady mother the Queen…’ He couldn’t manage any more, but stared, tongue-tied, at me, as if he’d expected me to be wearing a triple crown at least, like his Holiness the Pope, and his mother to be garlanded with roses like the Blessed Virgin Herself. His eyes were the size of plates, his mouth very slightly open, revealing that since we saw him last, he had lost two milk teeth in front.