Of Virtue Rare

by Linda Simon

  *

  The white rose was borne by Richard, duke of York. York, “perceiving the king to be no ruler, but the whole burthen of the realme to reste in direction of the queene … began secretlie to allure his friends of the nobilitie; and privilie declared unto them his title and right to the crowne, and likewise did he to certaine wise governours of diverse cities and townes. Which attempt was so politikelie handled and so secretlie kept, that provision to his purpose was readie, before his purpose was openlie published.”[21]

  York’s intrigue was greatly aided by the general antipathy of the populace toward Margaret of Anjou. Though her marriage to Henry VI had at first been hailed as an English victory, there had been major territorial concessions for the marriage and peace. It had soon become apparent that England had gained nothing and lost much when the French princess wed the king.

  Eight years of marriage had made Margaret a disillusioned woman. She was described by the chronicler Holinshed as “a woman of great witte, and yet of no greater wytte than of haute stomacke … desirous of glory and covetous of honor; and of reason, pollicye, counsaill, and other giftes and talentes of nature belongyng to a man, full and flowyng of witte and wilinesse she lacked nothing, nor of diligence, studie, and businesse she was not unexperte; but yet she had one poynt of a very woman, for, often tyme, when she was vehement and fully bente in a matter, she was sodainly, like a wethercocke, mutable and turnyng.”[22] Though her emblem was a daisy and her badge a white swan, Margaret of Anjou was seen not as an example of femininity but as a ruthless, strident, and temperamental virago. One poet, writing in the 1460s, went so far as to suggest that all of the king’s troubles came from his marriage.

  I wedded a wyf at my devyse,

  That was the cause of all my mon …

  Sum tyme I roode in clothe of gold so red,

  Thorow-oute ynglond in many a town;

  Alas, I dare nowth schewe now my hede —

  Thys world ys turned clene uppe so down![23]

  In 1453 the king fell ill with a mysterious and still-inexplicable malady. Completely withdrawn from the world, Henry sat motionless, his eyes downcast, unable to speak or acknowledge any communication. The queen acted decisively.

  Item, the Queene hathe made a bille of five articles desiryng those articles to be graunted; wherof the first is that she desireth to have the hole reule of this land; the second is that she may make the Chauncellor, the Tresorere, the Prive Seelle, and all other officers of this land, with shrieves and all other officers that the Kyng shuld make; the third is, that she may yeve all the bisshopriches of this land, and alle other benefices longyng to the kynges yift; the iiijth is that she may have suffisant lyvelode assigned hir … But as for the vth article, I kan not yit knowe what it is.[24]

  Margaret of Anjou was determined to exercise her rights as queen of England. “The Quene is a grete and strong laboured woman, for she spareth noo peyne to sue hire thinges to an intent and conclusion to hir power.”[25] But the rule of the land did not go to Margaret; instead, events favored a man she distrusted and despised: the ambitious Richard of York. Margaret’s wrath was intense. Yet she could not change Parliament’s decision.

  The queen almost despaired over maintaining her own position. Her desperation became even more profound in October 1453, when at last she presented Henry VI with a child. With her husband still in his trancelike state, she alone took responsibility for naming the heir. As Margaret Beaufort would do four years later, she gave her son the name of an English king — but not that of her husband. She called the infant prince Edward.

  The child was brought to his father by the duke of Buckingham, but Henry made no response. Then Margaret broke in, took her son in her arms, and thrust him before the unseeing eyes of the king, pleading with him to bless the child. “But all their labour was in veyne, for they departed thens without any answere or countenaunce savyng only that ones he loked on the Prince and caste doune his eyene ayen, without any more.”[26]

  The birth of the child spurred Margaret’s ambitions and threatened to thwart York’s. The heir stood between him and the throne, even if he succeeded in overthrowing the king. York knew, however, that many would not sanction another reign by a minor, remembering the dissension among those who had attempted to rule in Henry VI’s name for twenty years. York used his protectorate to gather strength and support for his faction.

  In January 1455, Henry recovered as suddenly as he had fallen ill.

  Blessid be God, the Kyng is wel amendid, and hath ben syn Cristemesday; and on Seint Jones Day commaunded his awmener to ride to Caunterbury with his offryng, and commaunded the secretarie to off re at Seint Edward. And on the Moneday after noon the Queen come to him and brought my lord Prince with here; and then he askid what the princes name was, and the Queen told him Edward; and then he hild up his handes and thanked God therof. And he said he never knew him til that tyme, nor wist not what was seid to him, nor wist not where he had be whils he hath be seke til now. And he askid who was the godfaders, and the Queen told him; and he was wel apaid.[27]

  Word that the king had regained his sanity spread quickly. Margaret Beaufort and her family were relieved both of their anxiety about the king and their concern about retaining Lancastrian rule. But they were aware that the government had weakened during Henry’s illness. York had become especially angry with Margaret’s uncle Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Somerset had long been in the king’s favor, but during York’s protectorate, York himself had taken over the government of Calais from the duke, charging him with unconscionable conduct, for which he was imprisoned. Henry was quick to release his aide and kinsman, and pardoned him, but felt it necessary to strike a compromise with York by fining both men. This was an attempt to reconcile what he saw as mere political rivalry.

  Margaret Beaufort, learning of the incident from those close to her uncle, probably thought the king naïve. York was evidently intent on proving that Somerset and other Lancastrians in the king’s retinue were no less than traitors. He had the support of two noblemen — the earl of Salisbury and the earl of Warwick — and many believed he was in command of sizable troops. It was probably no surprise to Margaret when she heard that York had presented Henry with a letter of ultimatum: “We wyll not now cesse for noon such promysse, surete, ne other, tyl we have hem wych han deserved deth, or elles we to dye there fore.”

  In a rare show of strength, Henry replied that he could judge the Yorkist traitors for himself. “I shall destrye them every moder sone, and they be hanged, and drawen, and quartered, that may be taken afterward, of them to have ensample to all such traytours to be war to make ony such rysyng of peple withinne my lond …”[28]

  On Thursday, May 22, 1455, in a field near the Abbey of St. Albans, York and his men confronted the king and his army. The exchange of letters pointed to one end only.

  Rather then they shall have only Lorde here with me at this tyme [wrote Henry], I shall this day, for her sake, and in this quarrell my sylff lyve or dye.

  York replied:

  The kyng … will not be reformed at our besechyng ne prayer, ne wylle not understonde the entent that we be comen heder and assembled fore and gadered at this tyme; but only ys full purpose, and there noon other wey but that he wole with all his power pursue us, and yf ben taken, to geve us a shameful deth, losyng our lyvelode and goodes, and our heyres shamed for evere. And ther fore … better yt ys for us to dye in the feld then cowardly to be put to a grete rebuke and asshamefful deth; more over, consederyng yn what peryle Inglonde stondes inne at thys owre, therefore every man help … to redresse the myscheff that no regneth, and to quyte us lyke me in this querell.[29]

  Neither side believed itself to have any choice. Each side believed it was fighting for the survival of the country. The battle of St. Albans stands as the first in the long feud between the roses.

  The Lancastrians were outnumbered. Some said three thousand assembled with Henry against five thousand with York. But the battle was won more b
y strategy than by number. The earl of Warwick broke the king’s ranks with a strong assault and blockaded the town’s marketplace. Four in the king’s bodyguard were killed by arrows, and Henry himself was slightly wounded in the shoulder. When the Lancastrians fled, defeated, Henry was given sanctuary in the abbey.

  Casualties were few, considering the number of soldiers involved. Perhaps sixty died — and among them was the duke of Somerset, Margaret Beaufort’s uncle and the man York most hated. After the battle, York, Salisbury, and Warwick came to the king and knelt humbly before him. Their mission, they said, was solely to oust traitors from the king’s council. They begged for forgiveness. And Henry forgave them. York was made constable of England; Warwick was awarded Edmund Beaufort’s post in Calais.

  But York was ambitious for greater power than that of constable. He did not disband his followers, was seen almost constantly in armor, and began to assemble a battery of weapons. Nevertheless, despite his antipathy to the Lancastrians, when Henry again lapsed into a state of mental collapse in October 1455, York was again named protector by Parliament.

  This time he insisted not only on more power but on greater remuneration. His call for more money probably reflected a grievance against the king for sums owed him for his service in France, large sums that had not been paid, although Edmund Beaufort received his promised fees. He also insisted that his protectorate continue after Henry regained his sanity: Parliament alone would decide when he could be dismissed. The last provision led many to believe that the duke planned to assemble considerable Yorkist support in Parliament.

  Predictably, the queen was incensed by York’s new accession to power, but she could do nothing except try to rally supporters to her own cause. Among the strongest were Edmund and Jasper Tudor, and it was while in the queen’s service in Wales, in fact, that Edmund fell ill and died. Margaret of Anjou’s supporters, however loyal, could not equal the Yorkist strength. When Henry regained his sanity early in 1456, he acceded to the duke’s demands by appointing him chief councilor. The queen vehemently opposed her husband’s display of weakness and left the court in anger, withdrawing with her young son to the palace at Greenwich. There she established a court of her own and conferred with trusted advisers about strategy for ousting York and his men from the king’s government.

  Margaret, as queen, had the power to assemble an army and direct it to battle. The peculiar character of the Wars of the Roses came not only from the independent military powers of the king and queen, but from the power of any nobleman to hire and maintain a private army to do his bidding. Such armies were ubiquitous in England during the fourteenth and most of the fifteenth centuries. They were possible because of the curious practices of livery and maintenance, which resulted in the proliferation of what were, in effect, adult gangs.

  Livery and maintenance provided for the hiring of mercenaries, who would be given a badge, sign, or costume associated with one or another of the noblemen. The badge might come from the family’s coat of arms, like the planta genesta of York or the white swan of Margaret of Anjou or the portcullis of the Beauforts. Once these mercenaries were under contract, they were maintained by the lord to fight for any grievance or cause that he deemed worthy of battle, raid, pillage, or even merely a procession to show force.

  The practices had long been discouraged and even outlawed by generations of rulers. In reality, private armies flourished, and nobles believed themselves powerless and vulnerable without their aides. Over a hundred years earlier, in 1327, Edward III had sent out an edict prohibiting his peers from maintaining armies: “Because the king desires that common right be administered to all, to rich as well as to poor, he commands and forbids that any of his councillors or of his household or any of his other ministers or any great man of the realm, by himself or through another … shall take upon them to maintain quarrels or parties in the country, to the disturbance of the common law.”[30]

  Again in 1390, Edward Ill’s nephew Richard II had found himself dealing with the same problem. Instead of advising only his peers of his prohibition, he had included clergy as well:

  Whereas by the laws and customs of our realm, which we are bound, by the oath made at our coronation, to preserve, all our lieges within the same realm, as well poor as rich, ought freely to sue, defend, receive and have Justice and Right, and the accomplishment and execution thereof, in any our courts whatsoever and elsewhere, without being disturbed or oppressed by maintenance, menace, or in any other manner … We have ordained and strictly forbidden by the advice of our great council that no prelate nor other man of Holy Church nor bachelor nor esquire nor other of less estate give any manner of such livery, called livery of company to knight or esquire if he is not retained with him for the term of his life, for peace and for war, by indenture, without fraud or evil device, or unless he be a domestic and familiar, abiding in his household … And that none of our lieges, great nor small, or what condition or estate he be, whether he be of the retinue of any lord or other person whatever who belongeth not to any retinue shall not undertake any quarrel other than his own, nor shall maintain it, by himself nor by other, privily nor apertly.[31]

  Richard had called for the removal of all livery within ten days of his proclamation. His edict was largely ignored.

  Interestingly, Richard differentiated between livery and maintenance and indenture, which was the means by which the king himself recruited soldiers. Contracts were made with commanding officers for a certain number of troops to be delivered up to the king when necessary. The officers, in turn, made a contract with each soldier, stipulating the term of the agreement and the fees involved. The contract was inscribed, in duplicate, on a piece of parchment, which was then cut in an irregular pattern between the two inscriptions so that each half matched only the other and no other contract. The toothed pattern gave the contract its name: indentures.[32] While indentures would enable a nobleman to recruit his own army, the caliber of soldier would be far different from that assembled by livery and maintenance. Indenture tended to produce a retinue of professional soldiers; livery and maintenance gave rise to rowdy rabble.

  Now, in 1461, Henry VI confronted the problem again:

  No lord, spiritual or temporal, shall from henceforth give any livery or cognisance, mark or token of company, except at such times when he has a special command from the king to raise people for the king’s aid, to resist his enemies, or to repress riots within his land … Also, that no lord … shall knowingly receive, keep in his household or maintain thieves, robbers, oppressors of the people, those guilty of manslaughter, ravishers of women, and other open and notorious perpetrators of misdeeds, against the law … upon penalty of the king’s great displeasure and the perils that may ensue therefrom.[33]

  Henry’s proclamation was disregarded, as those of his predecessors had been. The practice of livery and maintenance had served the nobility too well to be laid aside. If Henry had been a strong leader with aggressive policies, his opposition could not have mustered the power it had by the late 1450s. But Henry was clearly ineffectual against his political opponents. His efforts at compromise were often ludicrous, and none was as widely derided as his declaration of Love Day on March 25, 1458.

  Love Day was an optimistic medieval custom designed to heal wounds and effect reconciliation. On March 25, Henry invited the rival factions to walk arm in arm to St. Paul’s Cathedral. A grand procession was led by the opulently robed king, wearing his crown, followed by the queen on the arm of Richard, duke of York. Behind them trailed a long parade of mutual enemies, hand in hand. One poet spoke for the king’s naïve hope:

  At Poules in London, with gret renoun,

  On oure ladi day in lente this peas was wrought;

  The Kynge, the Quene, with lordes many oone,

  To worship that virgine as thei ought,

  Wenten a procession, and sporiden right nought,

  In sighte of all the Comynalte,

  In token that love was in herte and thought.
<
br />   Rejoise, Anglond, in concord & unite.

  Another poet more accurately perceived no concord and unity in England, only

  ffayned frenship & ypocrisye;

  Also gyle on every side,

  With murdre & much pride;

  Great envy & wilfulnes,

  With-out mercy or rightwysnes;

  The cause is for lak of light …[34]

  IV - Troublous Times

  THE “LAK OF LIGHT” that darkened England in the late 1450s worried and frightened Margaret Beaufort. Despite the protection of her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor, and despite the thick walls of Pembroke, she knew that another marriage would best secure the future for herself and her son. Her large inheritances made her less interested in accruing wealth than in aligning herself with a family whose influence and power would not be threatened by the Yorkists. Margaret chose, finally, to marry Sir Henry Stafford, whose family carried on the title of duke of Buckingham.

  From the mid fourteenth century, the Staffords had been noted statesmen and soldiers in the service of a succession of kings. They had married with other wealthy and important families, and their inherited land and incomes made it possible for Humphrey Stafford, the first duke of Buckingham, to be among the richest and most powerful landlords when he came into his mother’s legacy in 1438. Unlike many of the nobility, Stafford did not choose to take sides when the Wars of the Roses began in 1455. Though he never shrank from war and was remembered for particular virulence in the fight against Joan of Arc in the late 1420s, he determined that it was probably wise and in his best interests to remain outside the conflict. Still, he was a confidant of Henry VI and was never far from the important court happenings. He was occupied, too, with his own family and the marriages of his many children. His eldest son, Humphrey, married a cousin of Margaret Beaufort’s, the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. His third son, Sir Henry Stafford, in 1459 ended Margaret’s widowhood of just three years.