by Linda Simon
Realizing Buckingham’s weak affiliation with Richard and his desire for ever more power, Morton and Bray led him into conversations that broached the delicate subject of rebellion. They found an attentive listener. Soon Buckingham knew as much as they wished him to know about a plan, already unfolding, to place a new king on the throne.
He learned that there were to be five uprisings across the south and west of England around the end of September 1483. At the same time, Henry Tudor was to sail from Brittany and lead a rebellion to defeat Richard. Buckingham was intrigued and saw reasons to believe that the rebellion, if under the correct command, could be successful. But he was not fully convinced that Henry Tudor, a man virtually unknown in England, could be placed on the throne.
One day as he rode to Shrewsbury, he met his aunt Margaret Beaufort on the road from Worcester to Bridgenorth. On her way to pay homage at the cathedral in Worcester, she stopped to talk with the young duke. Margaret knew from Reginald Bray that Buckingham was interested in her plan, and she knew, too, that he had some reservations. He had hinted to Morton and Bray that he, not Henry Tudor, was better suited to take the crown from Richard III. He was, after all, a well-known leader, the king’s closest aide, and unquestioned ruler in a vast area of the country. Margaret Beaufort had no patience for this arrogance. She reminded him that both she and her son stood between him and the crown, that the plan in which he might be allowed to participate was of her devising and would not be taken over by a brash young duke. She assured him that she would see to it that her son won the throne to which he was entitled as a direct heir of Edward III through John of Gaunt, through John Beaufort, and through herself. If Buckingham had any doubts about the rebellion, they vanished after his conversation with Margaret. When he returned to Brecon, he defected from his king.
According to plan, Buckingham would lead “a great power of wild Welshmen” across the Severn from Wales into England. There, they would be joined by a contingent of other rebels ready to participate in the insurrection. But troops were difficult to assemble, and whatever mercenaries Buckingham could find were not sympathetic to any cause but the fattening of their own purses. They did not know why they were suddenly fighting the newly installed king and had no interest in the proposed usurpation. When the Severn flooded, leaving the troops without supplies, food, or the prospect of receiving the rest of their wages at the time promised, they scattered and fled, abandoning Buckingham to fight virtually alone. Even John Morton, realizing that the plan had — for a time, at least — failed, fled to his see at Ely.
Completely forsaken, Buckingham went into hiding. On October 15, 1483, he was officially proclaimed a rebel, and a hefty reward was offered to anyone who would turn him in. Bondmen would be set free; freemen would be given £1000. The reward was enough to cause one of his own servants, Ralph Banester, to betray his master to the sheriff of Shropshire.
Base Banester this man was nam’d,
By this vile deed for ever sham’d.
“It is” quoth he “a common thing
To injure him that wrong’d his king.”
Thus Banester his maister sold
Unto his foe for hiere of gold …[80]
On all Souls’ Day, November 2, 1483, on a new scaffold that Richard had ordered constructed, Buckingham was beheaded.
*
The insurrection has been thought proof that the two heirs by birthright to the legacy of Edward IV were already dead. The mystery of the “little princes in the tower” has inspired much historical debate. Were they dead? Who killed them? Some believe that Buckingham himself, though no stranger to murder, was appalled when he learned that the princes had died on orders from the king. He could not bear the idea that two innocent lives were sacrificed in one man’s quest for power, and that deed itself turned him from support of Richard. But others argue that Buckingham may have been the murderer, acting on his king’s orders, with little remorse.
The fate of the princes inspired many rumors. At the beginning of their imprisonment in the Tower, they were sometimes seen playing together on the grounds. Gradually, they were seen less and less frequently, and then not at all. They may have been killed, but it is just as likely that they were moved, perhaps far from London, where the sight of their boyish sporting could not evoke sympathy.
Not until the next century did a shocking story circulate about the princes. This version of their fate was told by Thomas More, who received his information directly from his mentor and guardian, John Morton. More insisted that his tale was based “not after every way that I have heard, but after that way that I have heard by such men and by such means as me thinketh it were hard but it should be true.”[81] According to More, Richard III assigned one of his most trusted knights, James Tyrell, to do away with the children. Tyrell hired Miles Forest, “a fellow fleshed in murder,” and John Dighton, “a big, broad, square, strong knave,” to carry out the crime. One midnight, the two men stole into the boys’ bedroom, quickly swaddled the children in their blankets, and pressed their feather pillows against their faces until “stifled, their breath failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into the joys of heaven …”[82] Tyrell, after inspecting the bodies, ordered them to be buried under the stones at the foot of the stairs outside the White Tower. In 1674, two bodies were indeed found in a wooden chest below the stone staircase. Two and a half centuries later, the skeletons were examined by archeologists and appeared to be of two children, one about thirteen, the other ten. It was impossible to determine how long they had been buried. There is still no proof that the princes in the Tower were ever murdered, nor is there proof that Richard III killed them.
It may have been true, however, that after Buckingham’s failed insurrection, Richard’s personality underwent a profound change. He may have been shocked enough by the betrayal of his friend to mistrust everyone and fear for his own security. More maintains that after the princes were killed, Richard “never had quiet in his mind; he never thought himself sure. Where he went abroad, his eyes whirled about; his body privily fenced, his hand ever on his dagger, his countenance and manner like one always ready to strike again. He took ill rest a nights, lay long waking and musing, sore wearied with care and watch, rather slumbered than slept, troubled with fearful dreams, suddenly sometimes started up, leaped out of his bed and ran about the chamber; so was his restless heart continually tossed and tumbled with the tedious impression and stormy remembrance of his abominable deed.”[83]
His worries, though, may have come not from his guilt but from external threats. Though Buckingham’s rebellion had failed, word could not be brought quickly enough to Henry Tudor to keep him from fulfilling his role in the plan. The king, learning of the approaching danger from some of Buckingham’s men, amply fortified Poole Harbor in Dorset. In mid-October, Henry Tudor sailed from Brittany, across the Channel, toward Poole. Intimidated by the ominous reception, he turned back at once. Richard’s watch immediately sent word to the anxious king that the invasion had been thwarted. But Richard III knew that Henry Tudor would not remain in exile forever. Even if her son was frightened by the king’s show of strength, Margaret Beaufort was not.
In January 1484 Richard took the drastic step of attainting Margaret Beaufort, “mother to the king’s great rebel and traitor, Henry, earl of Richmond,” asserting that she “conspired and committed high treason, especially by sending messages, writings and tokens to Henry, stirring him to come into the realm to make war; and has made chevisancez of great sums of money in the City of London and elsewhere to be employed in treason; and has conspired and imagined the destruction of the king and was asserting and assisting Henry, duke of Buckingham, in treason.” Only because of Richard’s abiding trust in Stanley was the punishment mitigated. “It is ordained and enacted,” Richard declared, “that she shall be disabled in the law from having or inheriting any lands of name of estate or dignity, and shall forfeit all estates whatsoever, which shall be to Thomas Lord Stanley for the term of his life and
thereafter to the king and his heirs. Any estate she has or are held to her use, of the inheritance of Thomas Lord Stanley, shall be void.”[84] Stanley was ordered to keep his wife sequestered on his estates, away from accomplices with whom she could trouble the realm. While Richard openly asserted that Henry Tudor was “a Welsh milkesop, a man of small courage, and of lesse experience in martiall acts and feats of warre,” he was clearly afraid of the young man’s potential power — and especially that of his mother.
In effect, Richard was condemning Margaret Beaufort to exile within her own country, ordering her to be cut off from financial sources and political aid. Like Margaret of Anjou when she was forced to flee to France, Margaret Beaufort was to lose all power once she was deemed a pariah. Richard counted on Stanley’s loyalty and Margaret’s obedience both to her husband and to the king.
But Margaret had never been submissive to her husband, and she would take no orders from the king. Though she was not permitted to communicate with anyone, she assembled about her a small group of confidants with whom she continued her intrigues. Besides Reginald Bray, there were Christopher Urswick, a priest who served as Margaret’s chaplain; an aide, Hugh Conway; and her personal physician, “a grave man and of no small experience,”[85] Dr. Edward Lewis.
Lewis was most trusted. Even Urswick, who had been recommended by him, was told of Margaret’s plot only “after an oath of him to be secret taken and sworne.” Urswick was to bring messages to Henry in Brittany. Conway was to procure and deliver funds. Lewis was given the most delicate and vital assignments.
Before Buckingham’s proposed insurrection, Lewis was sent to a powerful Welsh lord, Rhys ab Thomas, to effect a reconciliation between Rhys and Buckingham, a man Rhys saw as an interloper and tyrant in Wales. Without Rhys’s support, it would have been impossible for any man to march troops through Wales; his own forces were strongly unified and powerful. Lewis was the one man who could successfully realize the reconciliation: he had been tutor to Rhys and remained a trusted friend. Lewis told Rhys nothing of the plan to bring Henry Tudor to England; only of Buckingham’s role and the need for Rhys’s cooperation. Even then, Rhys was suspicious of the project, until a brash act on the part of the king himself changed his mind.
Richard III, overly concerned with loyalty, especially from Wales, demanded a pledge of fidelity from Rhys and also insisted that he send his only son, Grufydd, as a hostage to the court. The keeping of hostages was not unknown, and the handing over of one’s son was, indeed, the ultimate proof of loyalty from a subject. But Rhys declined to part with the child. He wrote to Richard that the five-year-old child was too young to leave his mother. His son, he continued, was “the onlie prop and support of my house nowe in being … And lastly, Sir, I may well call him the one half of myself, nay to speake more trulie the better parte of me, so that if your Majestie should deprive me of this comforte, I were then divided in my strength …”[86]
Rhys was annoyed at having been suspected of disloyalty, and Lewis’ arguments seemed sensible. It was difficult to avoid falling under the spell of the glib physician. Described as “an active stirring man, of strong abilities,” Lewis was a smooth orator. He was “a man of readie witt, cleare judgment, and well redd in the liberall sciences, as having had most of his breeding in Italie, in the universitie of Padua.”[87] His patients included highborn ladies and gentlemen. One of those patients much interested Margaret Beaufort.
After her son’s aborted attack on England, Margaret realized that extensive support would be needed when another landing was made. No longer could she rely on a commander like Buckingham if the troops were untrained and unruly. More important, she did not want the insurrection to begin yet another series of battles in an extension of the Wars of the Roses. She firmly believed that the Wars must at last be ended and that the surest way to effect any alliance between opposing sides was by a marriage. If Henry Tudor was to carry on the Lancastrian claim to the throne, he must be united with the Yorkists.
To that end, Margaret sent Lewis on a crucial errand. He was to visit a patient, Elizabeth Woodville, and obtain her cooperation and her support of Henry’s insurrection. Not only did Margaret want the Woodville forces behind her son, she wanted Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s eldest daughter, betrothed to Henry. At last, Margaret believed, the red rose and the white would be joined, and the ugly Wars ended.
No one suspected that Lewis, when he visited Elizabeth at Westminster, came for any reason other than the health of the former queen. He did not tell her that he had been sent by Margaret Beaufort; he presented the plan as if it were his own. “You know verie well, madame,” he told her, “that, of the house of Lancaster, the earle of Richmond is next of bloud, (who is living, and a lustie yoong batcheler,) and to the house of Yorke your daughters now are heires. If you could agree and invent the meane how to couple your eldest daughter with the yoong earle of Richmond in matrimonie, no doubt but the usurper to the realme should be shortlie deposed, and your heire againse to her right right restored,”[88]
For Elizabeth, the plan offered the only hope of her release from virtual imprisonment. No one would ask for the hand of her daughter if her daughter were an outcast. However distasteful the “lusty young bachelor” may have been to her, Elizabeth immediately agreed to Lewis’ proposal and suggested that he go, as a diplomat, to Margaret Beaufort to sound her out.
In Brittany, at the cathedral of Rennes, on Christmas morning of 1483, Henry Tudor swore that he would marry Elizabeth of York. His supporters, Lancastrians who had followed him into exile, knelt around him on the church pavement and paid homage to him as if he were already king of England. But a thorny path lay before him.
In August 1483, the French king, Louis XI, died. His heir, Charles VIII, a boy of thirteen, was weak and ill. The government was taken over by Charles’s decisive older sister, Anne, wife of the lord of Beaujeu. Her foreign policies were to affect the welfare of Henry Tudor, still in exile in Brittany.
Anne was determined to conquer Brittany and incorporate the duchy into the kingdom of France. Though Duke Francis had managed to keep Louis XI at bay, he saw the dead king’s daughter as a serious threat. More important, his aides feared the twenty-two-year-old woman. Especially influential was a former tailor who had risen to the position of treasurer, Peter Landois.
Landois wanted desperately for Brittany to remain independent and understood that the aid of England would be enormously valuable in the inevitable conflict with France. He approached Richard III with the plan to surrender Brittany’s treasure — the hostage Henry Tudor — in exchange for England’s support. Duke Francis, ill at the time of the secret negotiations, knew nothing of the betrayal.
But Lancastrians with Henry soon heard disquieting rumors. Word was sent to John Morton, then in Flanders, and soon Christopher Urswick, who was with him, was dispatched with a message: Henry must quickly escape into France. Henry then sent Urswick on to France, where he obtained permission for Henry to enter the country.
Landois, at the same time, was preparing to turn over Henry to the English who had been sent to retrieve him. Henry had to devise a plan that would enable both himself and the rest of his party to escape unharmed. He sent a group of supporters, led by his uncle Jasper, to pretend to seek out Duke Francis, then recovering in a town near the French border. Their progress would not be suspect, and they would soon be near enough to Anjou to cross over to safety. Henry, following later, set out on pretence of visiting an English friend not far from Vannes, where he had been living. Instead, he withdrew into a wood, disguised himself as a servant, and barely had crossed to France when Landois’s men, suddenly suspicious, reached the border.
By October 1484, then, Henry found himself in France, protected by a regime he did well to distrust. He begged for aid — money, men, and ships — to sail to England, but the French had not yet decided whom to support. They wanted English aid to Brittany completely cut off and feared that Richard’s negotiations with Landois might still achieve
a solid pact, despite the loss of the hostage. For nearly a year, Henry in France and his mother in England were kept wondering about the fate of their plans.
Richard, meanwhile, saw many of his own hopes dashed. In April 1484, his only son and heir, eleven-year-old Edward, died. The following March his wife died, overcome with grief and weakened by tuberculosis. Now there was no royal heir and no hope of an heir. Rumors abounded that Richard intended to marry Elizabeth of York, his niece, and the talk reached even Henry Tudor. The loss of Elizabeth of York as a wife would have meant a severe blow to Henry’s insurrection. It mattered to neither Henry nor his mother whether he married Elizabeth or her sister Cecily, who was mentioned in the bargain in case Elizabeth died before the marriage could take place. All that did matter was the union with a Yorkist, and Elizabeth, as the daughter of the still-beloved Edward IV, was by far the best choice. Henry Tudor well knew that many of his aides supported him only because he would one day bring a Yorkist to the throne.
Richard’s suit of Elizabeth of York failed, and the king turned to the nobility in a last effort to gain the support he so vitally needed. He had never courted the nobility with favors and rewards. Unlike his brother Edward, he seemed not to realize that the support of the important magnates was continuously necessary. When he did bestow grants, he simply partitioned off lands that came into the royal holdings but usually had small value. In August and September of 1484, he gave several awards to those who had helped him in the retaliation against Buckingham. To Richard Radclyff “for his good service against the rebels” he gave Margaret Beaufort’s land in Lincoln, which had a yearly value of £24; to Edward Brampton, lands in Northampton that brought in £20 a year; to John Pykeryng, land in Essex that earned slightly more than £26. When Richard finally decided on an heir, choosing John de la Pole, the earl of Lincoln and the son of his sister,[89] he bestowed Margaret Beaufort’s estate on the twenty-year-old, property that was to revert to the crown when Stanley died.