by David Field
Henry could no longer sit on the fence, and in February of 1489 he signed the Treaty of Redon, which committed six thousand English troops, under the command of Lord Giles Daubeney, to Brittany’s aid. However, the treaty was more form than substance, since the troops were to be paid for by the Duchess Anne, despite the fact that a specially called Parliament in January had granted taxation finance for the venture. Henry was content with the precedent thereby set, that his Parliament would finance armies for overseas campaigns when they could be persuaded that it was in the nation’s best interests to do so, particularly since it had taxed the nobility especially for that purpose, and had agreed to continue to do so in subsequent years, should circumstances so require.
Significantly, forces were also sent by Maximilian of Germany and by the increasingly powerful force in southern Europe, Spain, which was slowly forming into a single nation as the result of inter-marriages between the royal houses of Castile and Aragon. After landing at Calais, and before marching west to Brittany, Daubeney, under special orders from Henry, had committed one-third of his force to the banner of Maximilian in order to lift the siege of Dixmunde by the Flemish, as part of the Holy Roman Empire’s ongoing warfare with Burgundy, with which Henry had a score to settle after the recent meddling of its Yorkist Dowager Duchess Margaret.
In Brittany itself, the commanders of the three supporting forces never saw eye to eye on matters of military strategy, and it was with a sense of sad inevitability that Brittany prepared for annexation by France, and the marriage of Duchess Anne to King Charles.
In the meantime, Henry had matters of a personal nature to occupy his attention, since the Queen was once again expecting his child. Although the young Prince Arthur was thriving in his nursery at Farnham, and had been created Duke of Cornwall on the day of his birth, Henry and Elizabeth were hoping for another son, to reinforce the dynasty and act as a reserve heir, should anything happen to their firstborn. As she had previously, the Queen withdrew to Eltham Palace for much of her confinement, leaving Arthur to be fussed over, and competed for, by his rapidly ageing nurse, Elizabeth Darcy, and his paternal grandmother Margaret, the King’s Mother. However, it was agreed that the birth itself would take place in Westminster Palace, where the royal physicians could be more swiftly assembled from their various residences in and around the city.
Within days of receiving the good news of his Queen’s second pregnancy, Henry was sharply reminded that there were still pockets of Yorkist sympathisers who did not take kindly to be being ruled by a Lancastrian. The tax levied by Parliament to finance the military support for Brittany, which in the event had not been required anyway, was resisted in parts of Yorkshire, where royal taxation commissioners sent to collect the sums due were subjected to verbal abuse, sullen silence, or missiles intended to send them back south. Henry ordered Percival, Earl of Northumberland, to justify his status as maintainer of the King’s justice in the north, and he was brutally done to death during a riot on 28th April.
Henry wasted no time in marching north in retribution, and entered York a month later in company with his uncle Jasper, in his role as Earl Marshall of England, and an impressive array of armed soldiers. Heads rolled, necks were suspended in nooses, and heavy fines were imposed on even minor offenders in the show trials that followed, but Henry was still minus a Northern Marcher Lord. In an inspired fit of generosity, and in order to underline the mercy he could show to the truly repentant who were prepared to bow the head and bend the knee, he replaced Northumberland with Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. Thomas had acted as deputy to his slain father, the Duke of Norfolk, in Richard’s defeated army, but had long since been pardoned, and was now appointed as the first President of the Council of the North, in a further indication by Henry that he would brook no more nonsense from that region of his kingdom.
In a short meeting ahead of a scheduled session of the Star Chamber, Henry and Morton were congratulating themselves on how the new jurisdiction was proving so successful. Not content to rest on his laurels, Morton had another strategy in mind.
‘Your Majesty, there is a young lawyer in my office called Edmund Dudley, and he has, at my request, devised a strategy that might be employed to ensure a further means of both raising revenue and holding powerful nobles in check.’
‘Speak further,’ Henry encouraged him.
‘It was, you will recall, during our discussions following the Simnel matter that we took to considering ways of holding the Earl of Kildare to account for any future actions he might take against the security of your throne?’
‘Yes, I recall some talk of a bond,’ Henry reminisced, ‘although in the event he foreswore to enter into one, being content only to bow his head in the face of excommunication.’
‘Quite so,’ Morton confirmed, ‘but the thought came to me that others might be persuaded to come to heel by extracting such a bond, which could be made non-returnable should they die without forfeit thereof. You recall, Your Majesty?’
‘Indeed I do,’ Henry replied with a faint smile, ‘but few would be so incautious as to enter into such a recognisance as would deprive their heirs of an inheritance of any size.’
‘Quite so,’ Morton agreed, ‘and this was the task I put to my man Dudley, that he might come up with a form of words that would have that effect, but might be so devious and convoluted that its true import was not immediately obvious.’
‘This would surely reek of fraud,’ Henry objected, ‘and would be no more worthy of your high office than it would of my honour as monarch.’
‘I also share that reservation, Your Majesty,’ Morton was anxious to emphasise, ‘but while seeking to penetrate the conundrum, Dudley had another idea. Instead of holding the sum handed over in recognisance in some dusty box, we should employ it to generate further monies, in the manner of merchants investing in goods.’
Henry was puzzled by what was being suggested, and frowned as his brain tried to come to grips with it. ‘You are suggesting that we launch some sort of trading venture?’
‘No, Your Majesty, although that would be one option. My suggestion — or perhaps, more truly, Dudley’s suggestion — is that we loan the money to others who seek to launch such ventures.’
‘I know enough of our laws to condemn that as usury — as would many others,’ Henry frowned. ‘And indeed, if I am correct, previous Popes have declared it to be a sin.’
‘Indeed, you are correct, Your Majesty,’ Morton conceded, ‘but in Flanders and other parts of the Low Countries, as indeed in Germany, there is a different religion abroad, based upon a rejection of the infallibility of the Church of Rome. Usury is not regarded by them as a sin, and in towns such as Antwerp and Bruges there are merchant houses in which money can be left securely in deposit, and returned, much enlarged, at a later date.
‘For example, on my last mission into France, I diverted to Bruges, where I was assured that the sum of a thousand marks, if deposited today, could be returned within a year with one hundred marks in addition, as a fee for the use of the money. Sir Reginald advises me that he could make five thousand pounds available from the Household at a week’s notice, and by my calculation, I could, by such means, return to him, in a twelve-month, five and a half.’
‘If I understand you aright,’ Henry said, ‘it is your counsel that we make a separate account of money handed over by rich nobles by way of bond, employ it in the manner you suggest in order to earn for ourselves the fee for its use, then return the sum first lodged if it be not forfeit in the meantime?’
‘Precisely, Your Majesty.’
Henry chuckled. ‘I shall instruct Sir Reginald to make over the sum of one thousand pounds only, in order to test the wisdom of your proposal. Should it be successful, this man Dudley of yours may be brought to Court, that we might employ his fertile brain in other such schemes.’
‘Gladly, Your Majesty,’ Morton smiled reassuringly as he bowed out of the presence.
It was noticeable that thereafter, thos
e nobles hauled before the Court of Star Chamber, in addition to being forced to hand over sums of money that they had sought to hide from royal eyes, were in addition ‘bound over in their own recognisance’ by a sum of money to be handed to the Treasurer of the Household within twenty-eight days, which would be forfeit if any further transgressions were discovered. Those who had the temerity to enquire why the money was not payable to the Exchequer were tartly advised that they had been adjudged by a court that acted in pursuance of the royal prerogative, and that it was against this that they had been found guilty, and to this that they must give recognisance.
The royal child was born on 28th November 1489, and it was a girl. She was named Margaret, after her paternal grandmother, and the following day, amid much ceremony, her older brother Arthur was invested as Prince of Wales. Early in the New Year, following the precedent he had set in the north, and in case his uncle felt slighted by the investiture, Henry appointed Jasper President of the Council of Wales and the Marches.
Two years later, the royal heralds were again set the task of announcing to the excited crowds gathered outside Greenwich Palace on 28th June 1491 that the country had a new male prince, a second heir to the throne named after his father Henry. He was consigned to the royal nursery with his older siblings, four-year-old Arthur and their sister Margaret, now in her second year.
In what some might have regarded as indecent haste, Elizabeth again fell pregnant within months of Henry’s birth, and she was heavy with child when Henry was urgently required to turn his attention once more to events across the Channel.
Another pretender had emerged from the shadowy legend of the Princes in the Tower, and this one was to prove more of a threat than Lambert Simnel had done, given Henry’s meddling in foreign affairs.
VII
Charles VIII of France might still be a youth of twenty, but his sister Anne, still acting as his Regent, was far from impressed by Henry’s interference in Brittany, particularly after she had given him troops to support his invasion of England, from which only a precious few had returned. Also with a slow-burning angry fuse pointing in his direction was Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the last of the York dynasty, who had so enthusiastically sought to destabilise the Lancastrian English monarchy with the aid of Lambert Simnel. Henry had added to his sins, in Margaret’s eyes, by allowing his troops to be employed by Maximilian of Germany in his long feud with Burgundy, and she was the very person to approach when it looked as if there might be a more valid claimant to the throne of England, in the person of a son of the late Edward IV.
Rumours were still abounding regarding the ultimate fate of the two royal princes in the Tower, Edward, Prince of Wales and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York. The one certain fact was that they were no longer in the Tower, and the most popular theory was that they had been conveniently murdered. But for whose convenience? Richard of Gloucester clearly possessed the earliest reason for disposing of rival claimants to the crown, and most people at the time were disposed to believe that he had ordered their murder, if he had not carried it out by his own hand. But had their disappearance not also benefitted the incoming Henry of Richmond, who was rapidly becoming the unpopular King Henry VII?
And who was to know for certain that both boys were dead, and that one of them had not escaped abroad until he was old enough to return and point an accusing finger at his usurper? If he had, what would he look like now? Would he resemble his late father King Edward IV, or would the eight years that had intervened since he had last been seen — and even then only by Tower guards — have altered his appearance so much that it would be impossible to tell? These — and other conjectures — bubbled back to the surface in late 1491 when rumours reached England that a young man called Perkin Warbeck was being hailed in Ireland as Richard, Duke of York, long ago mourned as lost forever.
Warbeck’s earlier years were shrouded in mystery, but it was beyond contest that having been brought up in Antwerp, he had entered the service of a silk merchant who took him, as part of his household, to Cork, in Ireland, where those who saw him, richly dressed as befitted his office, took him for a high-born scion of the House of Plantagenet. Although he tried to deny it, this was all the incentive required by the Earl of Kildare to stir up more trouble for the English monarch who had called in the Pope to threaten him with excommunication, and following discreet enquiry abroad, the young man was presented at the court of Charles VIII of France by an Irish noble in the pay of Kildare. English spies across the Channel picked up the rumours, and relayed them back to the English Court, which was soon abuzz with the news.
Late one evening, Henry sat alone in his robing chamber to the side of the royal bedchamber, head bent over the Household accounts that he taken to initialling personally on a weekly basis, after they had been meticulously scrutinised by Reginald Bray. Queen Elizabeth had been prepared for bed by her ladies-in-waiting, but instead of slipping behind the rich hangings that shrouded the four poster feather bolster, she walked through the main chamber into the one in which Henry sat, in front of a candle burning brightly on the small desk he had installed there.
‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true?’ Henry asked, half distracted from the task in hand.
‘That my brother Richard is still alive, and received at the court of France?’
Henry sighed. ‘You should not listen to the tittle-tattle of your Ladies. It is a rumour only — or, if not a rumour, then the boy must be another imposter like the one who is currently sweating out his days in the kitchens.’
‘How can you be so certain that Richard is dead?’
‘Your uncle murdered him — it is generally known.’
‘But,’ Elizabeth persisted, ‘that too is surely only a rumour. How can you truly know that this boy in Paris is not Richard unless…’ she continued falteringly, ‘unless it was you who had him murdered?’
Henry looked up from his accounts, and glared back at his wife. ‘You would accuse me of such a thing? What ails your senses, woman?’
Elizabeth advanced slowly towards him, carrying her bible, which she held out for him to take. ‘I wish you to swear on this holy book that you had nothing to do with the death of either of my brothers, as is now being rumoured around the city.’
The colour slowly drained from Henry’s face as he took the book from her.
‘It has come to a sorry pass,’ he muttered, ‘when idle rumour can cause such distrust between those joined together in matrimony. However, since it would seem that my word alone is not sufficient, I will grant your request.’ He placed both hands around the bible, looked her firmly in the eye and intoned, in a voice flat with distaste, and devoid of any emotion, ‘I swear upon my immortal soul, and on the immortal souls of my mother, my wife and my two children, that I am innocent of the blood of either of the royal princes consigned to the Tower by Richard of Gloucester.’ He handed back the bible, then looked back down at the rolls on the table. ‘I shall be some time with these important accounts. You may take yourself to bed. Do not trouble yourself to remain awake.’
Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, her teeth over her bottom lip in a sign of regret. She began to hold out her hand towards him, in the hope that he would enfold her in his arms and reassure her that something important had not just been lost, but realising that the figures he was studying on the rolls were momentarily of more interest to him than she was, she stepped slowly backwards towards the chamber door and withdrew.
Long before the rest of the Great Council assembled, Henry had been deep in conversation with his Lord Privy Seal, the gifted clergyman Richard Foxe, recently consecrated Bishop of Bath and Wells. He was valuable to Henry in two main ways; first of all, he cost nothing, since his ecclesiastical stipend ensured him all the material comforts to which he was accustomed, but secondly he was a superb diplomat who maintained a network of spies all over mainland Europe, from whom Henry gathered most of his intelligence.
Henry had first made his ac
quaintance in Paris during his last year in exile, where Foxe had also been in hiding from Richard III. Since then, he had repaid Henry’s protection and preferment by acting as Morton’s deputy in diplomatic matters, requiring retainers posing as part of his household to obtain as much intimate information as possible regarding those with whom he had been sent to negotiate. Foxe had often returned from such expeditions with fewer staff than he had set out with, leaving his own men in positions from which they could, through Foxe and sometimes Morton, continue to pass information back to Henry’s ears.
Henry was in urgent need of more information regarding the young man who was now recognised — and feted — at the French Court as Richard of York, and potentially Richard IV of England. It was May 1492, another royal child was expected within weeks, and Henry was impatient to learn all he could about the young man at the court of Charles VIII who was causing such unrest among Henry’s Courtiers, and fanning the smouldering embers of Yorkist resentment up and down the nation.
‘The story he tells, Your Majesty,’ Foxe advised Henry in the lowered voice that came so naturally to him when he was not in the pulpit, ‘is that one night two men came to the chamber in the Tower where he was lodged with his older brother, Edward, and took the brother into an adjoining chamber from which could be heard the dreadful sound of the boy being smothered or choked. Then, according to the boy’s account, the man who was holding him took pity on him, and smuggled him out of the Tower, and from thence to a boat moored lower down the river, from where he was spirited away to Flanders, to live with a wealthy merchant. He claims to have forgotten much of his early life apart from that fateful night in the Tower, and to have learned to speak Flemish with such fluency that he now has to be coached in his English.’