The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain

by Wilson, Derek

  The second phase lasted from February 1461 to April 1464. Margaret marched south, defeated a Yorkist army at the Second Battle of St Albans and rescued her husband from the Yorkist camp. She expected then to take possession of London, but the citizens refused to open the gates to her, fearing looting by her ill-disciplined troops. Meanwhile, York’s son, Edward, Earl of March, had defeated Margaret’s allies in Wales and the border at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross. The queen headed north to gather her supporters there and to do a deal with the Scots. Edward marched into the capital, which welcomed him. He declared Henry unfit to rule and had himself crowned as Edward IV. He then set out to encounter the Lancastrian army, and his decisive victory at Towton, Yorkshire, confirmed his hold on the crown. Margaret and her family took refuge with their Scottish allies.

  During the third phase, which lasted from May 1464 to March 1470, Margaret, who was determined to regain the throne for her husband and her son, negotiated with the Scottish regent, Mary of Gueldres, and her French relative, Louis XI. She was prepared to barter away Berwick and Calais. However, Edward outmanoeuvred her by agreeing truces with both countries, and Henry VI was forced to take refuge in Northumberland. The new regime gradually extended its authority northwards. The Battle of Hexham in May 1464, at which several Lancastrian lords and knights were slain, was a major disaster for Henry’s cause. He was captured in July 1465 and taken to the Tower of London, where he was held in comfortable captivity.

  That would probably have been an end of the war had there not now been a rift within the Yorkist ranks. Edward had relied heavily on the support of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, a wealthy, energetic and charismatic nobleman who enjoyed considerable influence, but, once ensconced, the new king was determined not to be dominated by the earl.

  According to Raphael Holinshed, the 16th-century chronicler whom Shakespeare took as his main authority for the English history plays, during one of the battles when things were going badly for the Yorkists, Warwick killed his own horse and swore to King Edward: ‘Let him flee that will, for surely I will tarry with him that will tarry with me.’ This embodies the heroic, chivalric image of Richard Neville that colours one interpretation of his life. Another sees in his scheming and changing of sides proof that the earl was nothing but a self-serving, over-ambitious opportunist. Whatever view we take, we can see Warwick as the embodiment of the chaos and contradictions of the age.

  By the time he was 21 years old Richard Neville (1428–71) had become, by inheritance and marriage, England’s premier earl and the richest. As such he was destined to play an important role in the dynastic conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York. He supported Richard of York and proved himself bold and courageous in battle. He was appointed captain of Calais in 1455, which gave him command of England’s only standing army, and he gained a reputation on both sides of the Channel as a charismatic and ostentatious military leader. With troops from the Calais garrison he made a valuable contribution to Yorkist success in the early stages of the war. Edward IV owed his throne to Warwick and amply rewarded his henchman with grants of land confiscated from dead or disgraced Lancastrians. He was close to the king and involved in major policy decisions.

  The two men disagreed over foreign policy and over Edward’s choice of bride. While Warwick was negotiating a French marriage for the king, Edward secretly married the Lancastrian widow, Elizabeth Woodville, and began to bestow honours on members of her family. Warwick plotted with Edward’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence, defeated the king at the Battle of Edgecote Moor (26 July 1469) and took him prisoner. But by now the country was in such turmoil that the imposition of a third king was out of the question. Warwick transferred his allegiance to the Lancastrians and planned a fresh campaign with Margaret in France. In October 1470, while Edward was busy suppressing a Lancastrian rising in the north, Warwick gained control of London, freed Henry VI and proclaimed his rule to be resumed (this was known as the ‘Readeption’ of Henry VI). Edward fled to Burgundy, where he gained the support of Duke Charles. He landed in Yorkshire in March 1471 at the head of an Anglo-Dutch army and faced Warwick at Barnet in a battle that was decided by confusion caused by heavy fog. Warwick was killed trying to escape (14 April). He died, a victim of his own pride, of Edward’s ingratitude but, above all, of the political morass into which England had sunk.

  Margaret and Prince Edward had, meanwhile, landed in the west and were busy rallying support in Wales and Gloucestershire when Edward confronted them at Tewkes-bury (4 May). Here the Lancastrian force was annihilated. Prince Edward was killed, and most of Margaret’s noble supporters either died in battle or were executed immediately afterwards. Ten days later, Henry VI was murdered in the Tower of London to prevent any further outbreaks of Lancastrian support.

  EDWARD IV, EDWARD V and RICHARD III 1471–85

  After half a century of governmental breakdown, baronial strife and dynastic uncertainty the country needed internal and external peace and a firm hand on the tiller, and Edward IV certainly settled things down for a dozen years. However, following his death at the age of 41 his family managed to tear itself apart, provoke fresh conflicts and pave the way for a challenge from a minor branch of the Lancastrian dynasty, something which had up to that moment seemed inconceivable.

  Beyond central politics profound changes were taking place in these years. Commerce – especially the trade in woollen cloth – flourished, and a wealthy capitalist, mercantile class emerged. Renaissance influences from the continent began to affect cultural life and provoke new patterns of thought. But most revolutionary of all was the appearance of cheap books from the new print shops, which brought the world of ideas within the reach of many more people.

  1471–8

  The death of Henry VI and several of the leading Lancastrian magnates persuaded many of the late king’s supporters to abandon their cause and offer their loyalty to Edward. Margaret of Anjou was kept in confinement in London until 1476, when, as part of a treaty with Louis XI, she was ransomed for 50,000 crowns and allowed to retire to France. Among the few Lancastrians not reconciled to the regime were John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and the Tudor brothers, Edmund and Jasper, the sons of Owen Tudor resulting from his scandalous marriage to Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois. Henry VI had decreed Edmund’s marriage to the 12-year-old Margaret Beaufort, daughter of his favourite, the Duke of Somerset, who could trace direct descent from John of Gaunt. The only son of this marriage, Henry Tudor, might thus maintain a claim to the crown through the female line. De Vere fled to France, and Jasper Tudor took his nephew (Edmund had died in 1456) to Brittany. After a failed attempt at invasion in 1474, de Vere was taken prisoner and lodged at Hammes Castle near Calais.

  Edward now had little to fear from malcontents who could mount a challenge in the name of a rival with a good claim to the crown, but nevertheless, one feature of his diplomacy involved trying to have the Tudors returned to England. Edward still had to cope with the issues that had concerned his predecessors for a century or more: establishing control over the great magnates, recovering lost lands in France, keeping the royal finances on an even keel and preventing parliament from interfering with his choice of councillors. However, the birth of a son, Edward, in 1470, and another, Richard, in 1473, secured the future of the dynasty – or so it seemed.

  Edward’s popularity derived both from his restoration of firm government after decades of chaos and also from his own persona. He was a handsome, well-built man and, at 6 feet 3 inches, tall by the standards of the day. He was also affable, outward-going and cultured. Edward was responsible for the building of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, a fine example of the Perpendicular Gothic that was emerging as an English style quite distinct from that prevailing on the Continent. He was a king who worked hard and played hard, indulging to the full his fleshly appetites. Queen Elizabeth bore him ten children, and he had at least two others by a succession of mistresses. Edward well understood the importance of display. He spent
lavishly on furniture, plate, tapestries, jewels, clothes and other adornments, and he revelled in tournaments and other court entertainments. All of which, of course, cost money. One foreign observer described how the king could charm his subjects into parting with their taxes – he referred to it as ‘plucking the feathers from his magpies’ – but taxation was not the only means this intelligent king employed to fill his coffers. Edward turned kingcraft into a business, exploiting all opportunities to raise capital.

  Edward faced other problems within his own family. His brothers, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, resented the power of the queen’s Woodville family. The royal brothers also fell out among themselves. Clarence had been forgiven for his involvement in Warwick’s treason, but Edward continued to be wary of him. Clarence also disputed with Gloucester the division of the Lancastrian spoils, and in 1471 this led to an unseemly squabble. Clarence took custody of Warwick’s younger daughter, Anne, in order to appropriate the lion’s share of her father’s vast estates. Richard, for the same reason, wanted to marry Anne.

  The issue was decided by the council in March 1472 by a compromise that satisfied neither brother. Edward had not abandoned the hope of regaining England’s continental possessions and, to this end, maintained his alliance with the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany. A plan to invade France in 1473 was aborted, and another in 1475 had to be abandoned due to lack of support from Burgundy. However, the presence of an English army in his kingdom did persuade Louis XI to pay Edward to take it away. By the terms of an agreement reached at Picquigny in August 1475 Edward scooped a pension of £10,000 a year and a down payment of £15,000. Taken together with his other profitable enterprises, this enabled the king to live without parliamentary taxation until 1482.

  Trouble between the brothers flared up again in 1477 when, following the death of Clarence’s wife, the king vetoed his ambitious remarriage plans. Matters came to a head in May 1477, when one of Clarence’s retainers was executed for imagining the king’s death by necromancy. The duke took this as a personal affront and had the man’s protestation of innocence read to the council. The king was furious at this questioning of royal justice and had Clarence arrested, although it is more than likely that Woodville antipathy was behind this attempt to remove a vociferous opponent of their supremacy. The following January the Duke of Clarence was tried by a parliament summoned for the purpose. It had been packed with the king’s supporters but, even so, Edward found it difficult to obtain the desired result. Within the confines of the Tower, Clarence was done to death.

  Exactly what form Clarence’s secret execution took has never been established beyond doubt. However, the rumour that he was drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine was in circulation at a very early date.

  1479–83

  In 1480 Edward, irritated by Scottish cross-border raids, prepared for a major campaign. Richard of Gloucester, who was heavily involved in restoring law and order in the north, made a sally into Scotland in 1481 (intended as the precursor of a full-scale invasion the following year) to set upon the Scottish throne the Duke of Albany, the discontented brother of King James III. By an agreement made at Fotheringhay in June Albany agreed to restore Berwick and to do homage to Edward as his overlord. Edward was too unwell to undertake the campaign himself, and it was Richard who invaded the Lowlands and occupied Edinburgh. However, by this time, the Scottish brothers had made up their differences, and at the same time, Edward’s continental diplomacy came unstuck when Louis XI and the Duke of Burgundy signed the Treaty of Arras (March 1482).

  All that Edward’s diplomacy and threats of war had achieved was a temporary improvement in the finances of the crown. This had been valuable in the work of restoring stability in England, but it left the international situation much as he had found it in 1471. That stability was now threatened again. In the spring of 1483 the king fell ill, possibly as a result of over-indulgence, and he died on 9 April, bequeathing the crown to his 12-year-old son. Once again England faced the prospect of rule by a minor.

  1483–5

  The king’s sudden death set a power struggle in motion. Edward IV died at Westminster with his wife and her close relatives around him, but his heir, Edward V, was at Ludlow with his uncle, Earl Rivers. Richard of Gloucester was at Middleham in the Yorkshire Dales. Both parties immediately set out for London for both needed to secure the person of the young king. Richard intended to take up the role of protector, which he believed was his by right, but the Wood-villes planned to establish a regency council of which Gloucester would be only one member. It was in their interests to have the young Edward crowned as quickly as possible so that they could begin to issue instructions in his name. This Richard was determined to prevent, and on 28 April he intercepted Earl Rivers and his charge. The earl was sent north to Pontefract Castle and was discreetly executed. Richard took control in the capital and lodged the king in the Tower, where he was joined in June by his younger brother.

  The rival groups spent the next weeks building up their support, but Richard was quicker, more efficient, more thorough and more ruthless. He carried out a purge of the council, claiming that his victims had plotted against him and the king, and on 22 June his own accession was publicly proclaimed, on the grounds that Edward’s sons were bastards. On 6 July he was crowned as Richard III. His motives were probably a mixture of ambition, contempt for the Woodvilles and concern for the good government of the country. Handing power to a child in the control of an upstart clique who lacked the support of England’s political elite seemed a certain way to return the country to the situation that had existed during the worst days of Henry VI’s reign. Richard could justify his usurpation to himself, if not to everyone else.

  Richard’s callously efficient seizure of power was probably his undoing, especially when the rumour spread that he had had his young nephews murdered in the Tower (there was no word of their being seen after mid-July). In the autumn one of his own allies, the Duke of Buckingham, rose against him, calling for people to rise in the name of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond (a fact that may indicate that he believed the ‘Princes in the Tower’ were now dead). This revolt quickly fizzled out, but it was precursor to more widespread opposition to the new regime.

  Destiny seemed to be closing in on Richard. In April 1484 his only son died, and his wife survived this tragedy by less than a year. His attempt to have Henry Tudor apprehended in Brittany failed, and Henry was able to escape to France where he was supported by King Charles VIII. He steadily gained credibility as a potential rival, and several influential figures crossed the Channel to join him. Richard, meanwhile, gathered as much support as he could and even sought a rapprochement with the Woodvilles. However, in September 1484 he reluctantly agreed a truce with the Scots in order to leave himself free to face the expected challenge from Henry Tudor.

  Henry landed in south Wales on 7 August 1485 and began his march eastwards, picking up fresh adherents along the way. The king summoned his nobles to join him with their armed retainers and was able to gather an army of more than 10,000 men with which to confront the rebel force of some 5,000 at Market Bosworth in Leicestershire on 22 August. The overwhelming odds should have ensured victory for Richard, but he could not rely on some of his captains, such as the Earl of Northumberland, who waited to see how the battle would turn out before committing themselves. There is no clear account of the Battle of Bosworth, and existing reports contain conflicting details but three facts are beyond dispute: Northumberland refused to commit his troops; Lord Stanley, after keeping his men at a distance, went over to Henry’s side; and Richard III met his end in a death-or-glory charge upon the standard of his opposite number. According to one colourful account by a Spanish servant in Richard’s entourage, the death of the last Plantagenet occurred in this manner:

  Now when Salazar … who was there in King Richard’s service, saw the treason of the king’s people, he went up to him and said, ‘Sire, take steps to put your person in safety, without e
xpecting to have the victory in today’s battle, owing to the manifest treason in your following.’ But the king replied, ‘Salazar, God forbid I yield one step. This day I will die as king or win.’ Then he placed over his head-armour the crown royal, which they declare be worth 120,000 crowns, and having donned his coat of arms, began to fight with much vigour, putting heart into those that remained loyal, so that by his sole effort he upheld the battle for a long time. But in the end the king’s army was beaten and he himself was killed … After winning this victory Earl Henry was at once acclaimed by all parties. He ordered the dead king to be placed in a little hermitage near the place of battle, and had him covered from the waist downward with a black rag of poor quality, ordering his top be exposed there for three days to the universal gaze.1