Henry

by Starkey, David

  * * *

  Warbeck is – and was – an enigma. Prince? Pretender? Puppet? Pawn? He meant different things to different people; there may have been times when he himself was unsure who and what he really was.

  Above all, he assumed a very different importance on either side of the Channel. For Henry VII, Warbeck was a dagger thrust at his very heart. For Charles VIII, he was a mere counter in Anglo–French relations. The result was that each monarch misjudged, almost comically, the reactions of the other. Charles’s initial support for Warbeck had been intended to deter Henry from interfering with his takeover of Brittany by marrying its young duchess, Anne. Instead, it drove the English king to his full-scale invasion of France in 1492. Henry’s peace terms of course required Charles to renounce all aid to Warbeck. But this too backfired. Fearing that they might be handed over to the English, in early December Warbeck together with his handlers and followers managed to escape across the French border to Malines (Mechelen in Flemish) in the Netherlands. There they found, to their delight and Henry VII’s chagrin, a very different patroness to the fickle and calculating Charles VIII.

  For Malines was the principal residence of Duchess Margaret of York. Her husband Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, had died in 1477, leaving her childless, rich and unfulfilled. But her life found new meaning with the fall of the house of York in 1483–85. Thereafter, the grand passion of her life, which she pursued recklessly and with unrestrained partisanship, became the restoration of her family to the English throne. To achieve this, she would do anything and use anybody.

  Now providence, it seemed, had placed the ideal weapon in her hands, and she greeted Warbeck’s arrival like manna from heaven: ‘[I] embraced him,’ she wrote, ‘as an only grandson or an only son’ – the son, of course, that she had never had. She gave him a bodyguard, clad in the Yorkist livery of murrey and blue, an official residence and a high-ranking official to manage his affairs.

  Relations between England and the Netherlands were close, and news of Warbeck’s reception as duke of York spread like wildfire in England. If Margaret believed him to be her nephew Richard, it seems to have been reasoned, his claims must be true. And if Warbeck’s claims were true, then he, and not Henry VII, was rightful king of England.

  Even the leading officers of Henry VII’s own household were persuaded, and by early 1493 were giving their support to Warbeck’s cause. John Ratcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, the lord steward, committed himself in January. Then, in March, Sir William Stanley, the lord chamberlain and Henry’s saviour at the battle of Bosworth, threw his massive weight behind the conspiracy.

  Henry VII, who had at least an inkling of these machinations, now faced a pincer movement as domestic treason threatened to combine with foreign invasion. One of his first responses, strikingly, involved Henry.

  On 5 April 1493, Henry, as the king’s secundogenitus (‘second-born’) son, was made lord warden of the Cinque Ports and constable of Dover Castle. The joint position, which was responsible for England’s first line of defence against cross-Channel invasion, had been left vacant since the death of the previous holder, the earl of Arundel in 1487. It is easy to see why it needed filling as a matter of urgency to deal with Warbeck. But why the not-yet-two-year-old Henry? Was he simply a suitable dignified front for his deputy, Sir Edward Poynings, who was one of the strongmen of the regime and would do the real work?2

  Or had it already been decided that the Tudors would deploy second son against pseudo-second son: Henry against Warbeck?

  In fact the feared invasion did not happen, since Margaret alone did not have the resources to support one. She was rich and influential, but she was not the acting ruler of the Netherlands. That was Maximilian von Habsburg, archduke of Austria and, as king of the Romans, quasi-elective ruler of the confederation of German states known as the Holy Roman Empire. As if all that were not enough, Maximilian had married Charles the Bold’s only child by his first marriage, Mary. Mary had died in 1482 at the age of only twenty-five, leaving two children of the union: Philip the Fair, for whom Maximilian was acting as regent of the Netherlands, and Margaret.

  Maximilian was Henry VII’s intended ally in the war against France. Indeed, it was Maximilian, rather than Henry, who had been personally injured by Charles VIII’s coup in seizing Brittany. The Duchess Anne, whom Charles had married, had already been betrothed to Maximilian; similarly, Maximilian’s daughter Margaret was herself betrothed to Charles, and on the strength of that had already been sent to live at the French court as the prospective queen of France. But, despite the double insult of losing a wife and having his daughter repudiated and returned home like unwanted goods, Maximilian came to terms with Charles. Instead, his venom over the affair was redirected against his erstwhile ally, Henry VII.

  This meant that when Warbeck was sent to meet Maximilian in Germany, he got almost as warm a welcome from him as he had from Margaret herself, and was received with royal honours. These were redoubled the following year when Maximilian returned to the Netherlands to present his son Philip, who at sixteen had attained his majority, to his subjects as their duke. Ceremony after ceremony unrolled, each grander than the last: at Malines in August, at Louvain in September and finally at Antwerp on 24 October 1494. Throughout, Warbeck was treated as king-to-be of England. It was at Antwerp that the display reached its peak: his bodyguard of twenty archers wore the badge of the white rose, while the façade of his lodgings was hung with the royal arms of England, with an explanatory Latin inscription underneath: ‘The arms of Richard, prince of Wales and duke of York, son and heir of Edward IV, sometime by the grace of God, king of England, France and lord of Ireland.’

  This insolent display was too much for a couple of Englishmen loyal to Henry VII. They armed themselves with a pot filled with night-soil and flung the stinking contents at Warbeck’s lodgings, before making good their escape.3 This small, if highly effective, piece of private initiative set Malines in uproar, and an innocent English bystander was stabbed to death for no other reason than his nationality. Across the Channel, however, Henry VII was preparing a much weightier official response.

  ‘Oyez, oyez, oyez!’ cried the heralds in early October 1494 as they issued the challenge to two days of martial sport: the first day to be a joust, in which the opposing knights charged at each other with wooden lances; the second a tournament, in which they fought, also on horseback, with heavy swords. A third day’s sport was soon added, making the tournament the most ambitious to be held in England since the palmy days of Edward IV’s reign. The heralds’ cry went up in three several places: in the king’s great chamber at the ancient royal palace of Woodstock, to the north of Oxford, where the court was then staying; at the fair in the town; and again in the city of London.

  But the cry was also intended to echo round Europe, and ‘all comers of what nation so ever they be, as well [Henry VII’s] subjects as other’ were challenged to respond. For the joust was to celebrate the forthcoming creation of the real duke of York, as opposed to the mere pretender of Malines.4

  Henry, the second son had acquired a dynastic purpose at last.

  The background was the disputed inheritance of Richard of Shrewsbury, second son of Edward IV. Before Richard, the usual title of the king’s second son was not York but Clarence. The title of duke of Clarence had first been given by Edward III to his second son Lionel in 1362. It had been revived for Henry IV’s second son Thomas in 1411, and again for Edward IV’s next brother, George, in 1461.5

  But with the birth of Richard of Shrewsbury the tradition was broken. George, duke of Clarence was still alive and had a son, the earl of Warwick, who could be expected to inherit the dukedom. Edward IV, who was the son, great-nephew and great-grandson of successive dukes of York, and had briefly borne the title himself before his accession, was also anxious to preserve the family ‘name’. The result was the decision to create Richard of Shrewsbury duke of York at the age of only eight months.

  The ceremony took place on
28 May 1474, the day after parliament had been prorogued for Whitsuntide, and was followed by a splendid joust. A year later, the boy was made, in quick succession, knight of the Bath and knight of the Garter. In 1478, following his child-marriage to the heiress of the Mowbrays, he was given the great and ancient office of earl marshal, which his wife’s family had held in hereditary succession. Finally, in 1479, he followed in the footsteps of his namesake and grandfather Richard, duke of York, and was made lord lieutenant of Ireland.6

  The reasons for following the single precedent of 1474 and creating Henry duke of York, rather than the many and making him duke of Clarence, can be summed up in one word: Warbeck. But perhaps there were more positive motives at work as well. For, as the success of Warbeck’s impersonation showed, loyalties to the house of York were still alive and well. Why not make a fresh attempt to incorporate them within the house of Tudor? And who better to do it than Henry? He was close to his mother, Elizabeth of York; he took after his Yorkist grandfather, Edward IV; even his principal residence, Eltham, was one of Edward IV’s favourite palaces. At least it was worth a try – after all, in the face of the threat posed by Warbeck, almost anything was.

  Warbeck is also why Henry VII decided to do more than simply slip Henry into Richard of Shrewsbury’s shoes. Richard of Shrewsbury’s accumulation of titles, offices and honours was impressive. But it had also been random and piecemeal. Henry VII would go one better: his second son would be inducted into his inheritance in a single, coherent programme of ceremony. There is evidence as well of unusually thorough preparation. Who was responsible for the detail we do not know. But there is no doubt that the inspiration came directly from the king. He kept a watchful eye throughout, and when anything threatened to go wrong, intervened swiftly and decisively himself.

  He had to. For he was not only seeking to outdo the Yorkist court, he was also competing directly with the Burgundian. In the last half-century or so, the Burgundian court had reinvented court ceremony and chivalric display as political weapons. Now, with the Burgundian support for Warbeck, these weapons had been turned against Henry VII. Time after time in the summer of 1494, as Maximilian had given Warbeck an honoured place at an entrée or an oath-taking ceremony, he had increased Warbeck’s standing in the eyes of Europe and diminished Henry Tudor’s.

  It was now time to strike back, and Henry’s creation as duke of York provided the means.

  The decision had been taken in the late summer. At that point the royal household split into two: part remained with the king at Woodstock; part joined Henry at Eltham.7 This sort of division frequently happened under Henry VII. The king could not, of course, be in more than one place at a time. But his household could be. And that was the next best thing. For the household did more than look after the king’s domestic arrangements and royal ceremony. It was also a sort of ministry of all the talents, and the department of everything else. This meant that it was fast, responsive and able to tackle the king’s principal concern of the moment – whatever and wherever it might be.

  And in the autumn of 1494, that meant Henry’s creation as duke of York.

  The household with the king at Woodstock was in overall charge. It was there, for instance, that ‘letters missives’ and ‘writs’ were directed to those who had been chosen ‘to give their attendance upon our dearest second son the Lord Henry for to take with and under him the noble order of knight of the Bath’. On 2 October the writs were forwarded in a batch to Robert Lytton, the under-treasurer of the exchequer and himself one of those nominated, together with a covering letter under the ‘signet’, the smallest and most personal of the royal seals. This instructed Lytton to ‘send [the writs] forth in the haste ye goodly may’ to the addressees. But first he was to keep a formal record of the writs ‘for our interest in case any of them do default in that behalf’.8

  The king’s ‘interest’ lay in the fines that would be due from any of those nominated who refused to take up the order of knighthood at the king’s command. At first, this sounds like a typical piece of money-grubbing by the notoriously tight-fisted Henry VII. But, most likely, his intention was to secure not the largest amount in fines, but the best possible turnout for his son. And he succeeded: twenty-two of those chosen answered the summons; the remainder ‘were pardoned or at their fines’. The number and quality of the knights attracted attention, as was also intended, and Sir John Paston’s London agent sent him a full list, headed by ‘My Lord Harry, duke of York’.9

  * * *

  There is no such documentation for the activities of the household at Eltham. But it seems clear that it had two principal tasks. The first was to turn Eltham from a staging-post for the royal nursery into the seat of a new royal dukedom. The second was to prepare Henry himself for his forthcoming creation. And there was plenty to do. After all, it was little more than a year since he had been weaned. Now he had to ride, to walk, to bow, and to stand still; to memorize and repeat a strange oath; to wear robes, coronet and sword; and, most difficult of all perhaps, to remain awake through days of interminable ceremony.

  And he had to be confident enough to do all this in public, under the relentless scrutiny of thousands of pairs of eyes. Henry’s every move would be watched by the city chroniclers, the recording heralds, the man in the street and – no one quite knew where or who or how many – Warbeck’s adherents.

  The ceremonies had been timed to coincide with the great feast of All Saints on 1 November. This was one of the four crown-wearing days at court, when royal ceremony was at its most splendid and the court at its fullest. It would be all the fuller for Henry.

  On 10 October, Henry’s father, mother and grandmother left Woodstock and began a slow and stately return to the capital. They took a week, with halts of a day or two at Notley Abbey near Thame, High Wycombe and Windsor. On the seventeenth, they reached Henry VII’s favourite residence at Sheen. Here they stayed for another ten days before leaving by boat early in the morning of the twenty-seventh, arriving at Westminster in time for dinner.

  Forty-eight hours later, on the twenty-ninth, the king sent formally to summons his second son from Eltham. Henry’s initiation into public life had begun.10

  He began by making his formal entrée into London. The day for this had also been chosen to coincide with an occasion of major pageantry in the civic calendar, since on 29 October each year the newly elected lord mayor of London went in state to Westminster to be sworn in before the barons of the exchequer. The swearing-in took place in the morning. This left the ‘mayor, the aldermen and all the crafts in their liveries’ plenty of time to return to the City and get themselves in place to welcome Henry.

  He arrived at 3 o’clock. He was accompanied by many ‘great estates’ or high-ranking noblemen, while the city in turn received him ‘with great honour [and] triumph’.

  One would expect no less, since the City then, like the City now, knew how to put on a show. But, case-hardened to spectacle though he was, the author of the Great Chronicle of London was impressed. It was not the pageantry that caught his eye, however, despite the many attendant ‘lords and gentlemen’. It was Henry.

  As the chronicler noted with surprise, Henry rode through the City ‘sitting alone upon a courser’. Henry was always to be an excellent horseman, and his royal studs played an important part in improving the quality of English horseflesh. But in this first public display he excelled himself. For the boy riding by himself on the great warhorse, through narrow, potholed streets and between cheering crowds was not ‘four years or thereabouts’, as the chronicler thought. He was scarcely three years and four months old.11

  Henry continued his solo display by riding along Fleet Street, through Temple Bar, the gateway which marked the limit of the City boundaries, into The Strand and King Street before crossing the large open space of New Palace Yard to reach Westminster. It was here, in this supreme theatre of royal ceremony, that his brother Arthur had been created prince of Wales and his sister Margaret christened. Now it was
Henry’s turn.

  First came his introduction to the ceremonies of the court. At dinner on 30 October Henry, together with the most important of those who were to be knighted with him, performed the honorific services for the king at table. One ‘took the assay’ or tasted the king’s food; a second carried his soup; then, when the meal was done and the king was ready to wash his hands, a third bore the water and a fourth the basin. Finally, Henry gave his father the towel on which to dry himself.

  By a happy coincidence, this was both the most honourable and the lightest task. Even so, he must have practised hard during the preceding weeks at Eltham: to hold the elaborately folded linen on his arm, to bow, to proffer it, to receive it again, to back away from the royal presence – and to do it all in the right order and with due decorum.

  This moment in the king’s chamber at Westminster was, of course, only the start of Henry’s training in protocol. But he was a fast learner, and soon knew the rules as well as any gentleman usher. On the other hand – unlike many princes – he never became their victim.

  Etiquette, he thought, existed for him; not he for etiquette.

  As the short, early-winter day drew to an end and night fell, it was time for the rituals proper of Henry’s knighthood to begin. First came the eponymous ceremony of the bath. Twenty-three baths, one for each postulant knight, together with their adjacent beds, had been set up in and around the Parliament Chamber. Henry was undressed and placed in his bath, which consisted of a barrel-like wooden tub, lined and draped with fine linen. Then the earl of Oxford as lord great chamberlain ‘read the advertisement’ or formal admonition of knighthood to him: be strong in the faith of Holy Church; protect all widows and oppressed maidens; and, ‘above all earthly things love the king thy sovereign lord and his right defend unto thy power’.