Henry VII

by S B Chrimes

  By the time the parliament was dissolved on 22 February, four bills of attainder had been passed, penalizing one hundred and four persons.2 Among these were Henry of Richmond himself, his uncle Jasper, and his mother Margaret Beaufort, as well as John Morton, bishop of Ely, Lionel Woodville, bishop of Salisbury, and Peter Courtenay, bishop of Exeter, and also Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, and certain others who were successful in fleeing in time and who either had already or were soon to join Henry abroad.1 How many of the total number attainted actually suffered the death penalty is unknown.2 A few were subsequently pardoned, and the more important people were either not in the realm at the time of the attainder or were able to escape in time. The chief schemer on behalf of Henry - his mother Margaret - was available, but was spared the ‘great punishment of attainder’ and suffered only the forfeiture of her titles and estates, the latter of which were transferred to her husband Thomas, Lord Stanley,3 with reversion to the king and his heirs. The comparative leniency with which Richard III treated Margaret Beaufort is remarkable. As a means of conciliating Lord Stanley no doubt the measure commended itself, even though at the last it proved to be unavailing. The ‘good care and trust’ which Richard III stated he had in him would not hold him when, on Bosworth field, Stanley saw a chance to make himself the stepfather of a king.

  Henry of Richmond’s expedition, supported and financed as it had been by Duke Francis, abortive and ineffective as it had proved to be, naturally did not improve relations between England and Brittany. But some time elapsed before Richard III could again bring pressure to bear upon the duchy to surrender Henry’s person. The events of November 1483 brought in a phase of acute maritime friction between the two countries, and Richard III sought, it seems, to penalize Brittany by encouraging naval hostilities against Breton ships and ports.4 When that phase should be concluded, the time would return for a further effort to secure Henry.

  In the meantime Richard III aimed at undermining the potential strength of Henry’s position. Before the parliament was over it seems Richard III assembled nearly all the lords spiritual and temporal and caused them to take an oath of adherence to his son Prince Edward should anything untoward happen to himself.5 But this effort at securing the succession was frustrated by Edward’s death, probably on 9 April. Before that event Richard III had played another card, and had come to terms with the dowager Queen Elizabeth. He persuaded her to come out of sanctuary with her daughters, and made promises for their welfare in writing under sign manual, 1 March.1 This agreement meant, so far as Henry was concerned, that the daughters might not be available should the time come for him to fulfil the oath to marry one of them that he had solemnly taken at Rennes on Christmas day; and that Queen Elizabeth might try to induce her son, the marquis of Dorset, to desert Henry and his cause. The first of these dangers did not, as it turned out, materialize, but the second up to a point did.2

  Richard III’s preoccupation at home and the ill will and friction between England and Brittany appear to have delayed any overt action on his part to obtain the surrender of Henry’s person until after June 1484. It was necessary first to come to a pacification with Brittany. On 8 June an agreement was reached to abstain from hostilities from 1 July until the following April, and on 26 June Richard III agreed to supply Brittany with a thousand archers for use in the defence of the duchy.3 Whether or not the matter was broached in some secret negotiations, the scheme arranged with Peter Landois, the treasurer of Brittany, who was the effective head of the government of the duchy during a period when Duke Francis was incapacitated, must presumably have been concocted at about this time. Landois apparently succumbed to Richard III’s blandishments, not because of any hostility he felt towards Henry, but because by gaining the king of England’s support he hoped to strengthen his own position vis-à-vis the Breton nobility, among whom he was highly unpopular. Being for the time in control, he agreed to surrender the person of Henry.4

  How it was that John Morton who had fled to Flanders got wind of this plot and was able to send warning to Henry remains a mystery, but this signal service, which must be understood as equivalent to saving Henry’s freedom and life and all that depended thereon, was one that Henry could never forget and could not fail to endear Morton to him should he become king. Morton entrusted the message to Christopher Urswick, Margaret Beaufort’s confidential agent, who had recently joined Morton in Flanders, and advised Henry, then at Vannes, to escape into France. On receipt of this message, Henry at once sent Urswick to the French court to gain permission to enter France, which was readily obtained.

  There then followed the extraordinary sequence of events which enabled Henry to escape in the nick of time. Henry devised a stratagem which brought him and many of his party to safety. He arranged to send the ‘English nobility’ who were with him to call upon the duke, at that time residing near the borders of Anjou, ostensibly to plead Henry’s private cause with him, but secretly told his uncle Jasper, who was to lead the mission, to take the whole party over into France when they approached the frontier. This they did, and Henry himself, a day or two later, accompanied by only five servants, pretended to set out to pay a visit to a friend at a neighbouring manor. No one suspected him of any ulterior design as a large number of English were left in Vannes. But after journeying for about five miles, he withdrew into a wood, changed into a serving man’s clothes, and followed one of his own servants, who guided him with the maximum speed into Anjou, where he joined his advance party. Landois had intended to seize him four days later but on learning of his flight, he sent out troops in all directions to find him, and he had scarcely been an hour in Anjou before some of them reached the border. When the news of Henry’s arrival reached the French Council of Regency, orders were issued on 11 October for the honourable reception and escort of him and his party, and financial provision was made for immediate necessities.1 A valuable prize had come into France’s possession,2 even though it would take time to decide how it could be put to the most profitable use.

  The Englishmen left in Vannes, said to number about three hundred, were now in jeopardy and feared for their safety. But Duke Francis recovered from his incapacity at the right moment, and learning of these events, was enraged at Peter Landois’s scheme and, shocked by the episode, sent to Vannes for Edward Poynings and Edward Woodville to come to him. He gave them money to defray the costs involved and told them to conduct all the English party to Henry in France. Henry was naturally overjoyed at this handsome treatment, and returned thanks to the duke with promises of requital in future.

  But the turn of events, unpredictable to Henry as yet, was destined to make it more difficult for him to requite the favours shown to him. For from now on his fortunes and prospects depended entirely upon what degree of goodwill and support he could get from the government of France, and that in its turn depended on the extent to which Henry could be used as a pawn in the unfolding crisis in the relations between France and Brittany. This was the all-important question, and Henry could have had very little, indeed, so far as can be seen, no chance of the necessary amount of support, unless the regency government of France saw a feasible opportunity for using Henry’s aspirations and pretensions as a means of embarrassing Richard III of England and preventing him from going to the aid of Brittany in the forthcoming struggle with that last of the independent duchies of France. The circumstances which in fact made such an opportunity possible were peculiar and complicated, but require some consideration, for without them Henry Tudor’s fate might well have been that of a penurious exile for the rest of his life.

  Richard III had been crowned king on 6 July 1483, and Louis XI died on 30 August that year. The succession in France of Charles VIII, Louis XI’s only son, at the age of thirteen, changed the face of international politics at once, gave rise to a regency government in France, and brought into the foreground the problem of the fate of Brittany in the predictable event of the death of Duke Francis II without male heir. That France, in these circumsta
nces, would seek by all possible means to acquire the duchy, was obvious to all; equally obviously neither England nor the Austrian Hapsburg archduke, Maximilian, then regent of the Netherlands for his son Philip, could view such an aggrandizement of France and such change in the international balance, without grave concern and apprehension. What was not predictable was the fact that the policies of the minority Council of Regency in France would be virtually directed for some years by that remarkable young states-woman, the eldest child of Louis XI, Anne of Beaujeu, who at the age of twenty-two now became the dominating figure in the government of France, ruling her young and somewhat wayward brother Charles VIII, pulling the strings in the council through her husband Pierre de Bourbon, lord of Beaujeu and heir to the duchy of Bourbon, and setting her impress upon the course of French politics and government for ten years. She was, as has been justly said, ’vray image en tout du roy son père’, but without his cruelty, hypocrisy, and cunning. It was a cardinal objective of her policy to ensure that Brittany in due course should become part of the kingdom of France. It followed that if Henry Tudor could be used to contribute to that end, then he would be so used.1

  Only four days before the death of Louis XI, Duke Francis of Brittany instructed his envoy George de Mainbier to negotiate with Richard III with a view to securing his support against France in the coming struggle. Ostensibly in reply to Richard III’s overtures made to the duke as early as July, the ducal envoy was to raise matters of wider import than those mentioned in Richard III’s instructions to his ambassador, Dr Thomas Hutton.2 De Mainbier was to apprise Richard III that Louis XI had several times since the death of Edward IV requested the duke to deliver to him the person of Henry Tudor, and had made great offers to that end, which the duke had refused to accept, lest by doing so he should injure his own friends. But now Francis feared that Louis XI would make war upon him, so that he might be compelled to surrender Henry. To avoid such a regrettable necessity, he now sought military aid from Richard, without, however, offering to yield Henry into Richard’s hands.3

  Richard III, however, did not at this stage comply with Francis’s proposals, and later in the year came the duke’s support for Henry’s abortive expedition to England in connection with Buckingham’s rebellion. Naturally, Richard III did not view the Breton share in this enterprise with any favour, but he was able to persuade Landois to agree to surrender Henry. Landois’s compliance, although dictated partly by a desire to strengthen his own position, nevertheless was also partly inspired as a means of getting support for Brittany in the menacing situation in which it now found itself. A number of Breton lords were now in a state of rebellion, and had appealed to the Beaujeu regime to come to their aid, with a view both to procuring the downfall of Landois and to coercing the duke into revising his policies. In this situation, Landois not only sought to win over Richard III, but also sought to enter into negotiations with Archduke Maximilian and took the drastic, and in the long run, disastrous step of trusting Louis, duke of Orléans (the future Louis XII), chaffering and malcontent as he was with the French regime, to come to the aid of Duke Francis. Louis of Orleans’s intervention in Brittany further bedevilled Franco-Breton relations, but before long helped to determine the attitude of the Beaujeu regime towards Henry Tudor, after his providential escape into France.

  Very soon after that event, the Archduke Maximilian sought to take advantage of the possibilities of embarrassing France by aiding Brittany, and sent an embassy to Richard III, fortified with instructions of enormous length.1 Richard III had previously expressed his willingness for Maximilian to mediate between himself and the duke of Brittany if the latter would surrender the English refugees. Maximilian was now eager for an alliance with England, and his envoy was to explain to Richard III the intricacies of the archduke’s policy, with a view to persuading Richard to join in hostilities against France, which Richard could do best by going to the aid of the duke of Brittany. If Richard complained of what had taken place in Brittany regarding the person of Henry and the other fugitives, both when they were in Brittany and since they had left it, the best thing would be for negotiations to take place, and if the duke of Brittany were content to ‘leave the party’ of the earl (of Richmond) and no longer support him, then Maximilian would act as the duke’s pledge and surety.

  Whether any substantial threat to France would have materialized from these plots may be doubted, but in the circumstances Henry’s unexpected flight into France was a not unwelcome event. No hasty decisions, however, could be reached, for the regime for many months had its hands full with domestic as well as foreign politics. The regime had to establish itself firmly, and in the process was obliged to call the States-General which met on 15 January 1484 and lasted in session until 13 March.2 However, because the Beaujeu regime wished to avoid the Orléanist influences predominant in the Paris region, the seat of the government was moved temporarily to Montargis, an obscure small town in the diocese of Sens, and it happened to be at this place that Henry, who was there attending the French court, received news that not only encouraged him, but must also have considerably improved his not very impressive stock in French estimates.

  When the rest of his following from Brittany joined him, Henry sought an interview with Charles VIII, then at Angers. Henry now, it seems, adopted the posture of rightful claimant to the throne of England - as indeed he must if he were to gain active support - and talked of his ‘nobility’ and their call to him to ‘return’ to his kingdom, and of their abhorrence of the tyranny of Richard III. Charles VIII, or the regime through him, vaguely promised and showed goodwill, but could not take any rash actions at this stage. The court moved on to Montargis, and later to Paris, taking Henry with them. Some twelve months were to elapse before Henry found himself in a position to take any positive steps to stage a second expedition.1

  But whilst still at Montargis, Henry unexpectedly had good reason to be, as Vergil said, ‘ravished with joy’. For he gained as a recruit to his party no less a person than John de Vere, thirteenth earl of Oxford, who, after ten years’ confinement in Hammes Castle, suddenly escaped and joined Henry, bringing with him such valuable additional supporters as James Blount, the captain of Hammes Castle, and Sir John Fortescue, the gentleman porter of Calais.2 The acquisition of so experienced a soldier and faithful Lancastrian as De Vere was very solid grounds for joy, for, as Henry perceived, many of his existing supporters had sided with Edward IV in the past and had come over because of the turn of events in England, but since 1470 De Vere had never submitted to the Yorkists, and was an experienced man to whom he might ‘safely commit all things’. With such a recruit, Henry might indeed ‘begin to hope better of his affairs’.

  He continued to press his suit with Charles VIII’s council and while at Paris further recruits joined him; some who came over from England, and some who were studying in Paris, presumably at the university. Among the latter was a certain man ‘of excellent wit and learned’, by name Richard Fox, whom Henry at once received into his ‘privy council’. For the rest of his long life, Fox was destined to remain at the centre of Tudor affairs, and to grow great in that service.1

  Henry’s potentiality as a rival to Richard III thus grew, slowly, but ominously, and as the months passed, Richard Ill’s apprehensions became more intense. Well they might, for no sooner had he come to his agreement with Queen Elizabeth than his own dynastic hopes received a shattering blow. His only son and heir apparent Prince Edward died about 9 April 1484, aged seven. There would be no hope for Richard III of having an heir apparent of even this age for many years, and still less hope when his wife Queen Anne also died, on 16 March 1485. Doubtless in these circumstances Richard’s thoughts turned in the direction of making a second marriage and also of preventing any of Edward IV’s daughters from marrying Henry of Richmond at a future date. It does not follow that he seriously supposed that these two thoughts could be fused into one thought, by himself marrying the eldest or any of the daughters, still less that the de
mise of his own queen was induced by any action of his own. The possible coalescence of all these thoughts into one gave an opportunity for rumour and propaganda that was not lost on his opponents at the time and later on. But the probabilities of the matter are all to the contrary. Richard Ill’s agreement with Queen Elizabeth was reached before his son died, and a year before his wife died, and cannot have been reached with the contingencies of their deaths in mind. When Queen Anne had died, his thoughts may have turned in the direction of Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth, but such a project was a non-starter, since Richard’s title to the throne itself depended upon his own declaration of the bastardy of Edward IV’s children, and he could hardly have strengthened his position by marrying a ‘bastard’ niece, even if it were possible to make a canonically valid marriage out of such a project. The fact was that by April 1485 Richard had reached a dynastic impasse; he married no one and did not, as he might easily have done, cause any of his surviving nieces to be married so as to prevent Henry’s policy from ever being fulfilled.2 All that he could do, as the months passed, was to take such military precautions against Henry as he could. As early as 7 December 1484, he publicly announced the danger, and issued his first proclamation against Henry Tydder and others. Henry, the public were told, had taken upon him the name and title of royal estate, to which he had no shadow of right, had abandoned all claim to the crown of France, and present and former English possessions in France, as a means of furthering his ends, and all the king’s subjects were commanded to be ready in their most defensible array to do his highness service in war when called upon.1

  But it was another six months before a second proclamation in similar terms was issued, and eight months before the threat became actual.