by David Field
The foreigners were even less welcome in York than Lovell’s forces had been the previous year, and therefore turned south, intent on seizing Newark Castle, while Henry entered Nottingham, where he was joined by a sizeable force donated by his stepbrother Lord Strange. The two armies raced towards each other across rural Nottinghamshire, and the rebels set the battle agenda by encamping on a hill outside the village of East Stoke.
Both Henry and the Earl of Oxford had recent experience of fighting an enemy with high ground advantage, and while Henry hung back with his bodyguard, Oxford repeated his triumph of two years previously, checking the downhill charge of the enemy, then countering it with his own attack. This battle was considerably longer than the one at Sutton Cheney, lasting for a brutal three hours, at the end of which half the enemy force lay dead, and among the fallen were most of the rebel leaders, including the Earl of Lincoln. Lord Lovell was last seen urging his horse in retreat across the Trent, and was never heard of again. If Henry recalled his own words on the previous battlefield that ‘This must never happen again’, he had clearly not chosen to honour them.
Henry rejoined his family at Lincoln, where prayers of thanksgiving were offered, before the royal caravan turned north once more and progressed through Yorkshire and the Scottish Borders, if only to demonstrate that the rebellion had been unsuccessful.
Elizabeth’s coronation followed in November. Henry ensured that the splendour of this ceremony more than made up for its delay. The celebrations and pomp occupied, in total, four days, beginning with a stately river procession by barge from Greenwich to the Tower, where Elizabeth was formally welcomed by Henry. Symbolically, the barge in which she was carried was decorated as a giant Welsh dragon that belched fire ahead of it into the Thames as it glided sedately downriver.
Two days later, the people lining the streets to Westminster Abbey gasped in awe at the sheer beauty of the woman who was about to be crowned by the Archbishop. She was dressed from head to foot in a long, damasked, cloth of gold kirtle, over which was a matching mantle etched with ermine, and with gold tassels hanging almost to her knees. Her rose-gold hair swung freely under a cluster of gems that would shortly be replaced by a crown. In attendance upon her were her half-brother the Marquis of Dorset, recently released from the Tower after he had sworn further allegiance, and her sister Cicely, three years her junior but just as beautiful and, by her recent marriage, now Viscountess Welles.
Henry and his mother had no wish to distract attention from Elizabeth and hid themselves away in a closely latticed box set high in the wall between the altar and the pulpit, from where they beamed down happily on the proceedings. But Uncle Jasper was there, as High Steward of the entire production, and handed the crown to the Archbishop, who then symbolically placed it on Elizabeth’s head to cries of ‘Vivat Regina!’ from the enthralled congregation. Jasper was also the co-ordinator of the two days of feasting that followed, in company with his wife, the newly crowned Queen’s Aunt Katherine, Duchess of Bedford.
Once the festivities had finally come to an end, Jasper’s presence was once again required in the Great Council that had been meeting on and off throughout the entire coronation distractions, since there were urgent matters of State that Henry wished to have resolved.
He had learned valuable lessons from recent events, not the least of which was that while domestic security must always be a priority, he could not ignore the possibility of rebellions against his rule being fermented and launched from abroad, most notably Ireland, Burgundy or France. Ireland was a long-standing thorn in Lancastrian flesh, since the Earl of Kildare, the most powerful noble in this outpost of nominal English rule, had for many years enjoyed carte blanche from Yorkist monarchs, and had grown to enjoy, and profit from, his dominance of all the lands around him. But the Council was divided on how he should be dealt with for his part in the Simnel rebellion.
‘If we invade now, with half his soldiers fertilising Nottinghamshire soil,’ Oxford urged Henry, ‘we can add his corpse to the collection, and hang him high from Dublin Cathedral.’
Henry’s face set in a stubborn frown, and Morton, who knew the King’s mind better than most, offered an alternative.
‘It might be better to have such a powerful landowner on our side, enforcing the King’s peace at his own expense, in return for a merciful pardon.’
‘Leaving him free to interfere again, whenever some harlot’s offspring who resembles a royal prince chooses to tilt for the throne?’ Oxford countered.
Jasper was the one who found the compromise.
‘Let us send emissaries bearing a royal pardon, and confirmation that his lands remain his own unless he supports further rebellion.’
Morton could see a further advantage in this proposal.
‘Let us also demand that he hand over a substantial sum of money in security of such good behaviour, to be forfeit if he renege on his oath of fealty.’
Henry’s face lit up in a smile. ‘And what do we do with the money if he does not prove disloyal?’
It was Morton’s turn to smile. ‘If he does not prove disloyal, then he will in due course die without the bond being relinquished from the royal coffers. It can be worded so that the bond is not repayable to his estate, but that our debt dies with him, in accordance with the law of the realm.
‘The Pope might even be persuaded to excommunicate him in advance, for any treason he displays to the English crown,’ Morton added, and the matter was settled.
This left for discussion matters across the Channel. The remaining English foothold on the continent was still the fortress at Calais, of which Jasper, Duke of Bedford, was the Lieutenant, and from which armed expeditions could be launched inland to both Burgundy and Paris, and Henry was all for expressing his displeasure at the recent meddling of Dowager Duchess Margaret of Burgundy by raising an army to invade the duchy. However, Jasper persuaded him that he could ill afford to equip an army for such a venture, and that the presence of English soldiers once again on French soil — that they would need to cross to enter Flanders from Calais — could provoke Charles VIII, whose assistance had been invaluable to Henry when he had mounted his own invasion of England two years previously.
But, reluctant as Henry and Jasper might be to fight battles outside their own still far from secure kingdom, events that were about to unfold would leave them with little option but to commit troops in lands that Henry for one had hoped never to have to revisit.
VI
‘What am I to do, gentlemen?’ a perplexed and sorely troubled Henry asked his Great Council at the start of a hastily-summoned meeting at Westminster in November 1487.
Henry’s successful invasion of England two years previously had been down to two nations that appeared to be destined for direct conflict, and somehow he had to choose which of them to support. On the one hand was the ailing Duke Francis of Brittany, to whom Henry owed so much for his generous hospitality during his many years in exile, while on the other was the full might of France, whose Regent, Anne of Beaujeau, had willingly provided some of the troops who had given their lives at Sutton Cheney.
Only months previously, Duke Francis, aware that his days were numbered, had begun negotiations for his heiress, the Duchess Anne, to marry Maximilian of Germany, who would be likely to inherit the Holy Roman Empire upon the death of his father Frederick III. The Regent Anne of France had other ideas, however, and was insisting that the Breton heir marry her brother, the future King Charles VIII of France, and was mobilising her forces to invade Brittany in order to ensure that this occurred. Francis was anxious to call in all his debts, and had sent emissaries to the court of Henry VII to jog his memory. However, Henry now had his own throne to defend, he was short of money, and he was anxious to expand trade with various commercial powers across the Channel.
‘We cannot afford to antagonise France at this time,’ Morton insisted. ‘And yet the Pope would wish us to side with the Holy Roman Empire.’
‘But we owe so much
to Duke Francis,’ countered Giles Daubeney, who had been one of those sharing Henry’s later years in exile after he had fled to Brittany after the disastrous Buckingham Rebellion.
‘What do you think, Uncle?’ Henry asked Jasper. ‘You were with me all those years in Brittany, and you also recall the Duke’s generosity to us for all that time — surely we cannot desert him, now that our fortunes have so improved, and it is he who now needs our help?’
Jasper looked enquiringly across at John Dynham, Lord High Treasurer. ‘Would Parliament be likely to grant us the money? And can we afford it if it will not?’
Reginald Bray snorted loudly. ‘After the sums the Duke of Bedford here spent on the Queen’s coronation last year, the Household could not afford to send a herring boat, still less a fleet of ships.’
‘The last time His Majesty and I travelled to Brittany, it was in such a vessel,’ Jasper joked, looking sideways at Henry, who turned pale at the mere memory, and added another argument to the mix.
‘We surely cannot let France extend its northern shores any further west, thereby acquiring ports from which it could do grievous damage to both our military ships and our trading vessels?’
Henry had only recently persuaded Parliament to enact legislation that vastly improved England’s trading profits — and, coincidentally, the customs dues flowing into the Household Chamber accounts — by insisting that both imports and exports to Flanders and Brittany, two of its most important trading partners, could only be carried on English ships, at least half of whose crews must consist of English sailors. The point was well made, and it fell silent until, as was becoming customary, the diplomatic mind of Chancellor Morton came up with a workable compromise.
‘Might I suggest, Your Majesty,’ he said quietly, ‘that you send a token force to assist the Duke, while sending me, or one of my staff, to act as mediator between the two nations?’
‘That sits well with me,’ Henry agreed, after a brief period deep in thought. ‘The Duke and the King are the two persons in Europe to whom I am most obliged for the happy position in which I am now placed. As a common friend to both, I cannot sit by and watch while they lock horns in such a way that one of them must prevail at the expense of the other. It shall be as Morton suggests — but no more men than can be dispatched without the need to seek special taxes.’
The Council dispersed, but Henry asked Morton and Bray to remain for refreshment in a smaller chamber while they considered other weighty matters. As they helped themselves from a platter of fish, washed down with small beer, Henry asked for an account of how matters stood with regard to the ingathering of money into the royal household, via the estates, and the improvements in law and order that he had demanded.
‘The matter of enforcement is much improved, Your Majesty,’ Bray assured Henry, ‘and yet it could be better. There is still corruption in various quarters, as those who are charged with the duty of reporting chargeable events do not always do so. I have reason to believe that, by this means, we are deprived of at least one fifth of the potential income to the Household.’
‘By whom are these sums collectible?’ Morton enquired.
‘The feudal overlords, in the main,’ Bray advised him. ‘But at the very top of the collection chains of the large baronial estates are the very overlords Your Majesty sought to restrain under the recent laws against livery and maintenance. It is clearly in their interests to maintain the old ways, remain silent on matters of maintenance, and simply pocket the revenues otherwise due to the Crown, and this unfortunately provides a precedent for those at the head of the estates that have fallen into the Household.’
Henry tutted and reached for the beer jug. ‘What of the new justices of the peace that we have appointed? Do they not discharge the duties with which they are charged?’
‘It is too early to tell, Your Majesty,’ Bray replied. ‘They are but recently installed in office, and as long as they remain unremunerated for their duties it is all too tempting for them to accept bribes and other inducements.’
Morton had been listening to this exchange with mounting irritation, and could no longer withhold his opinion. ‘This is surely treason, Your Majesty? They are office-bearers under the Crown, and if they decline — or even delay — to perform their office, they are denying your prerogative right and power.’
‘May they be fined for such malfeasance, say you?’
‘Most certainly, Your Majesty,’ Morton assured him.
‘See to it without delay,’ Henry ordered Bray, who was looking increasingly uncomfortable, ‘and as for the feudal overlords who withhold money due to the nation — if not the actual Household — then we must consider arraigning them for treason.’
‘Or might we simply not fine them, or seek bonds for their future good behaviour?’ Morton suggested. ‘By those means you will collect more revenue for the Household, while making the same point, namely that your laws must be obeyed.’
‘Can we rely on our King’s Bench Justices to bring in true bills against them?’ Henry asked doubtfully. ‘And by what law do we have them brought to court? Is it not better that it be treated as a Chancery matter?’
‘There is yet another avenue that might be explored, Your Majesty,’ Morton advised him. ‘Since not all the laws of this realm proceed via Parliament, and since you are the fount of all justice, there is the matter of the Royal Prerogative.’
Henry frowned. ‘The people would see me as worse than Gloucester in those uncontrolled days in which he put to death whomsoever he chose, without recourse to the law,’ he objected.
‘No, Your Majesty,’ Morton insisted, ‘with respect, there is no valid parallel or comparison. The King has always possessed prerogative power in matters not reserved for Parliament. It is essential that such authority be recognised and obeyed in times of urgent national necessity, such as foreign invasion. You would simply be reminding the nation that in your hands remains a discretionary authority to uphold the peace and good order of the realm. And what could be said more to touch and concern the good order of the realm than bringing the powerful lords to heel in the matter of moneys due to the Exchequer?’
Bray spoke in support. ‘The Chancellor has a valid argument, Your Majesty. What is more, armed more publicly with Your Majesty’s prerogative writ, I could probably increase revenues to the Household by a considerable sum — a sum you may need if you are to send fighting men to Brittany in support of Duke Francis.’
Henry thought for a few moments, then nodded his royal approval. He looked back at Morton. ‘Does this prerogative of mine have a court of law for its enforcement?’
‘No, Your Majesty, but it could be introduced as we sit here. After all, it would not need the consent of either House, since it proceeds from your royal authority.’
The reference to where they were sitting set Henry’s mind on another track. He looked up at the vaulted ceiling of the small chamber in which they were met, with its gold stars set in a canopy of blue, in a mirrored reflection of the floor of the larger Painted Chamber, which was still a royal bedchamber when the King and Queen were in residence.
‘This very chamber would serve our purpose, would it not?’ Henry suggested. ‘All we would require, as I see it, would be Justices from King’s Bench brought in to try those powerful nobles whose very status would be likely to overawe lesser judges, but who would hesitate to be seen to be partisan towards them with the King or Chancellor also sitting in judgment.’
‘I think Your Majesty has grasped the point to perfection,’ Morton concurred.
Henry continued to think aloud. ‘This chamber is still known by its Latin name of camera stellata. My Latin was ever lacking, Morton — how does that best translate?’
‘“The Chamber of Stars”, Your Majesty — no doubt a reference to the magnificent ceiling above us.’
‘“The Star Chamber” has a neater ring to it,’ Bray added.
Henry smiled again. ‘Very well — our new prerogative house of justice shall be
known as “The Star Chamber”. Bray, find us a suitable case to begin with, that we may show these over-weaning barons that there is no hiding place from royal justice. The King shall have his rights.’
Within a week, Bray had found the Star Chamber’s first victim, a minor knight who had continued to insist that his small retinue wear his colours in public during a time of peace. He was fined forty marks by a court consisting of the King, his Chancellor, and two King’s Bench Justices who had been drawn aside by Morton ahead of the proceedings and left in no doubt as to where their loyalties lay. Then they successfully prosecuted a Lincolnshire duke who had failed to pay into Exchequer both the sum due upon the majority of his first-born son, and the fee payable for consent to the marriage of one of his daughters to a neighbouring earl.
Within two months, the list of those awaiting judgment was such that weeks at a time had to be set aside for hearings, all of which went in favour of the Crown. An additional bonus, for Bray, was the noticeable increase in eagerness to pay relatively small amounts into the Household for similar feudal dues payable in estates ruled directly by Henry, and by February of 1488 it was possible to fund a token expeditionary force under Lord Scales to travel to Brittany in support of Duke Francis. In the meantime, Chancellor Morton negotiated safe passage through Normandy to Paris for a group of his senior emissaries to parley with the Regent Anne, and her brother, the impending King of France, regarding their intentions towards the proposed marriage of Anne of Brittany into the House of Valois.
All came to nothing, as French forces rode virtually unopposed across the borders of Brittany in July of 1488, and defeated the mixed Breton and English forces twenty miles north-east of Rennes. Employing a strategy well learned from his stepfather Earl Stanley, Henry publicly disowned the English troops who had fallen in the battle. Within two weeks of the defeat, Duke Francis died, leaving his daughter Anne to inherit, as Duchess of Brittany. However, without support from abroad, it looked increasingly likely that Anne would be transported back under French military escort to a forced marriage to Charles VIII of France.