by Thomas Penn
On the morning of Saturday 13 February, a group of men were brought to the Tower of London under heavy guard. They included two big fish: the great East Anglian nobleman John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and his son and heir Aubrey, together with a number of their ‘feed men’ or paid retainers. All were charged with plotting to kill Edward.
On the face of it, Oxford’s involvement in the conspiracy was surprising. A half-hearted Lancastrian at best, he was in persistent ill-health; before Towton he had been unhesitatingly identified by the Yorkists as ‘neutral’, guaranteed to stay at home, since when he had apparently adapted to the new regime with ease. His oldest son Aubrey, however, was different. One of Margaret of Anjou’s most charismatic courtiers, he still apparently held a flame for her; so too did retainers of Oxford’s like Sir Thomas Tuddenham, once Henry VI’s treasurer, whose notorious gang was responsible for recent disturbances in East Anglia, and on whom Montgomery had been keeping tabs. Nevertheless, it was Oxford’s own seal that had been stamped on a set of incriminating letters addressed to Henry and Margaret, which one of his messengers, in a fit of conscience, had brought to Edward.
Opening the letters, gently warming the wax and sliding a horsehair under it to preserve the seal unbroken, Edward’s agents found details of an elaborate plot. Either Oxford would link up with Somerset’s seaborne invasion, using a site on the isolated east Essex coast as a beachhead, or, he would march north as part of a Yorkist army to combat Scottish and Lancastrian forces, before turning on Edward and murdering him and his men.25
Edward’s response was deliberate. The letters, copied and resealed, were handed back to the messenger, who in turn delivered them to the exiled Lancastrian court in Scotland, before returning to Edward with Henry’s incriminating reply. The man Edward entrusted with the operation – who was, probably, a hawk-like presence in the room when Oxford’s letters were unsealed; who was dispatched to Oxford’s Essex headquarters of Hedingham Castle to round up the conspirators; and who presided over their trial – was John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester.
Sent to Rome by Henry VI on papal business some three years previously, Tiptoft had deliberately failed to fulfil his mission. A Yorkist by temperament and marriage – he had married Warwick’s sister Cecily – Tiptoft had remained in Italy, staying out of the escalating civil conflict in England and indulging his scholarly interests. A cosmopolitan student of the humanae litterae, the reinvigorated study of classical letters, he browsed bookshops, attended lectures by some of the finest scholars of the age and moved in rarefied intellectual circles, all the time keeping up with the disturbing developments in England through his agents. Finally arriving in Rome, he set about representing not the Lancastrian government, but Edward IV’s fledgling regime. After delivering an oration in front of the papal Curia, his Latin so beautifully turned that it reportedly moved Pope Pius II to tears, he was called home in the summer of 1461 by Edward, eager to take advantage of Tiptoft’s abilities.
If Tiptoft’s learning had instilled anything in him, it was not the vaguely progressive, reforming spirit that often animated the writings of humanistae, but humanism’s related focus on strong, ordered government. As his secretary John Free put it, trying to explain away his master’s prolonged stay in Italy, his learning would help the state regain its former strength. Immediately admitted into Edward’s inner circle, Tiptoft showed a pathological interest in putting theory into practice. On 7 February 1462, precisely in order to prosecute Oxford and his accomplices, he was appointed constable of England.26
The constable presided over all aspects of military behaviour. His appointment was not permanent, but took place during exceptional moments: royal marriages, for instance, when he acted as a martial master of ceremonies, organizing tournaments and wargames; and in states of emergency – such as civil war – when security was prioritized over normal legal procedures and when the constable’s tribunal, the court of chivalry, was called on to judge acts of treason against the king.
If the conditions for this court’s operation were exceptional, so too was its process. In ruling on crimes that contravened the ‘law of arms’ – the laws of chivalry, of which the king was the ultimate arbiter – it followed its own guidelines and customs rather than those of common law. Although legally constituted, with powers defined by statute, many found its workings disturbing. With no due process, no formal indictments or juries, the constable’s court was the supreme expression of the royal will, handing down a verdict ‘ordained’ in advance by the king. Given that the king needed no other information to reach a verdict than his own definition of what constituted a treasonable act, in disturbed times this glorified kangaroo court was a godsend to the monarch.27
In the prevailing climate, the conviction for treason of Oxford, his heir and their co-conspirators was inevitable. Their beheadings at the Tower were spaced out over three days, for the benefit of a fascinated, horrified crowd. In a concession to his infirmity, Oxford was led slowly to his execution by two clerics.
There was something particularly shocking about these killings. In part this was down to the spectacle itself, with father and son beheaded together – a ‘piteous sight’, murmured one onlooker. But what caused the most widespread disgust was the apparently unnatural, un-English nature of Tiptoft’s verdict: one based not on English law but foreign legislation, ‘the law of Padua’. In fact, Tiptoft had stuck rigidly to the letter of the ‘law of arms’, which was based on the international civil law that he had, indeed, studied extensively at Padua, one of Christendom’s pre-eminent seats of legal learning. In the retelling, this became garbled. It was, perhaps, an understandable mistake, especially given that Tiptoft, with his Italianate ways, didn’t perhaps seem entirely English himself.28
Edward rapidly disposed of the earl of Oxford’s lands, now forfeit to the crown: the lion’s share was granted to his youngest brother Richard, to bolster his underwhelming property portfolio. Of Oxford’s four surviving sons, Edward handed control of the oldest, the nineteen-year-old John, to Warwick. Always on the lookout for attractive marriages for his family, Warwick soon set Oxford’s heir up with his youngest sister Margaret. After all, in the fullness of time, an opportunity would almost inevitably arise to claw back the earl’s forfeited title and estates.
Meanwhile, in what seemed a particularly callous act on Edward’s part, he handed control of two of Oxford’s younger sons to their father’s executioner. Maybe it was just a question of convenience. Tiptoft, as constable of the Tower, was already the boys’ gaoler; indeed, he also had custody of another prisoner there, the Lancastrian heir to the earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy. Quite how Tiptoft benefited from the arrangement was unclear. As younger sons they would hardly have inherited much; nor did Tiptoft have any children of his own for them to marry. Perhaps he just relished the chance to give the boys a rigorous classical education.29
That spring, the game of cat-and-mouse continued. With Scotland still backing the Lancastrians, Edward put pressure on the kingdom, funding dissident Scottish nobles to stir up unrest, while Warwick sent bands of English raiders across the border. When in April Margaret of Anjou sailed to France, attempting to secure the backing of Louis XI, an increasingly beleaguered Scottish government shouldered aside the pro-Lancastrian Bishop Kennedy and reached out to the Yorkist regime. A three-month truce was brokered: breathing space, of sorts.
Meanwhile, Edward energetically continued to fulfil his promise to restore law and order, making a judicial progress through eastern England. At Leicester that Easter, he dispatched a series of fundraising letters, outlining the dangers of Lancastrian invasion in lurid detail. Money was not as instantly forthcoming as it had been in the seismic early months of 1461, when London’s panicked corporation had extended credit to Edward and Warwick hand over fist. Though sympathetic, the city’s collective finances were hardly unlimited. So Edward cast his net more widely, focusing on the people at the top of London’s financial food chain – the merchants of high net worth
who, individually and in syndicates, might be persuaded to invest in the crown in return for trading privileges and access to the heart of royal power. He was also establishing warm relations with the community that, isolated and threatened in recent years, had been heartened by Edward’s willingness to throw England open to foreign investment: Italy’s merchant bankers. On 17 March, Edward agreed a substantial loan of £2,000 with the Bruges and London branches of Christendom’s greatest bank, the house of Medici. The funds went to plug the vast deficit owed to the Calais garrison – but they didn’t go very far. At Edward’s accession, the garrison’s backdated wages stood at a colossal £37,000. While this was hardly Edward’s fault, the restive garrison’s commitment to the Yorkist regime was already fraying at the edges.30
With its immense economic, strategic and military value to England, Calais had long been coveted by the kings of France. That June, following talks with Margaret of Anjou, Louis XI publicly announced his backing for the Lancastrians. At the heart of his commitment was a secret agreement that, should Margaret fail to repay his loans within a year of Henry VI regaining the throne, Louis would receive Calais. As French troops raided deep into the enclave, the Calais garrison’s loyalties began to unravel in the face of Margaret’s promises of ‘much silver’ in return for opening the gates to her. Over the summer the Yorkist regime scrabbled for control, negotiating emergency loans from the city of London and ordering a general mobilization; in London’s port, forty ships commandeered by John Tiptoft rode at anchor, ready to transport a relief force across the Channel. In mid-September the disaster was averted. A deal to pay off the garrison’s debts was thrashed out with the help of the Staple, the powerful syndicate of Calais wool merchants. The Staple would fulfil the garrison’s backdated wages; in return, Edward handed them a raft of trading privileges, including the right to collect customs revenues, until the debts were paid off.31 It was a price worth paying. Edward could now focus on the Lancastrian invasion that everybody said was coming.
On Saturday, 30 October, news arrived in London from the northeast: Margaret of Anjou, her general Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset and their forces had made landfall. It was a modest army. Louis XI’s enthusiasm had quickly dissipated when a Yorkist fleet burned and looted its way along the north-western French coast in retaliation for his proclaimed support for Lancaster, and he hadn’t even paid for the eight hundred French mercenaries Margaret had recruited.32
The Lancastrians, though, were relying on local loyalties. Yorkist control of the northeast was barely skin deep and, as Lancastrian banners were raised, people quickly rediscovered their former allegiances. The commanders of the great fortresses of Alnwick, Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh, who had pledged loyalty to Edward, declared for Margaret. From these formidable bases, the Lancastrians started raising support across the region.33
Edward’s response was decisive. Four days later, amid a frenzy of mobilization and fundraising – with memories of Margaret’s advance on London the previous year still fresh, the city now stumped up with alacrity – he was on his way north.34
The army that streamed up the Great North Road early that November, banners and standards flying, was a massive demonstration of the authority of Edward’s rule. At Towton, some eighteen months before, his army had included the retinues of perhaps eleven lords. Now there were thirty-eight – the vast majority of England’s nobility – and hundreds of knights and gentlemen. From lords Hastings and Herbert to the young Lancastrian-turned-Yorkist nobleman Anthony Woodville and seasoned fighters like Sir John Astley – a veteran jouster on whom an admiring Edward had conferred the Order of the Garter earlier in the year – it was a formidable expression of chivalric loyalty to the house of York. Indeed, this was a campaign that no self-respecting knight would want to miss. With rumours that a Scottish army was on the march to support Lancaster, the coming encounter would very possibly play out the endgame of Yorkist prophecy, one that would see the final destruction of Lancaster and the ultimate victory of York, under whose rule England, Wales and Scotland would be united.35
Hovering on the margins of this charmed circle was a man whose reputation for unpredictable brutality went before him. After fighting in France, Sir Thomas Malory had served as MP for his native Warwickshire before the increasingly unstable political situation had brought a latent psychopathy bubbling to the surface. After an eighteen-month rampage, much of it directed against the great Lancastrian nobleman the duke of Buckingham, Malory had been locked up on multiple charges, including extortion, criminal damage, cattle rustling, rape and attempted murder. Spending the next few years in and out of prison – some of his escapes involved armed breakouts, in another he swam a moat – Malory got drawn into the dynastic conflict, his fortunes attached to York and Warwick. Barely a week before Edward’s army marched north, he had walked into the Chancery offices in Westminster Palace to receive the official paperwork for his general pardon, which he then presented at the court of King’s Bench in the adjacent Westminster Hall; there, all pending charges against him were dropped.36 There was no doubting the timing of his pardon.
Perhaps more than most, Malory saw the squalid savagery of recent times through rose-tinted lenses: in his eyes, vendettas, turf wars and atrocities, informed by the world of chivalric romance, acquired an epic grandeur. In years to come, his spectacular retelling of the Arthurian myths, the Morte d’Arthur, would be inflected by his own experiences of civil conflict. As he wrote about the death of Sir Lancelot, he made the dying knight insist on being buried at his great stronghold of Joyous Gard – at which point Malory paused, apparently trying to recollect a half-forgotten memory. ‘Some men’, he added, said that Joyous Gard ‘was Alnwick,’ – where Malory was deployed alongside his commander, Anthony Woodville – ‘and some men say it was Bamburgh.’37
In times of cross-border tension and war with Scotland, the city of Newcastle, the coal- and wool-exporting port on the River Tyne, doubled as an operational headquarters, supply and munitions dump. North of there, England gave way to a more nebulous zone: the Anglo-Scottish Marches. To a stranger, the first impression was of remoteness; a bare, treeless landscape through which feuding clans moved and in which the king’s writ had only the most tenuous purchase. In his memoirs Pope Pius II recalled how, journeying through the region as a young man, he had spent a traumatic night abandoned by his hosts, who slept in a fortified tower for fear of Scottish raiders, and who left him only with two, apparently eager, ladies for company. Although the women of the region were ‘fair, charming’ and, Pius twinkled, ‘easily won’, he rebuffed their advances. Around midnight, there was uproar outside: Pius feared the worst. One of the ladies explained that nothing was wrong and that some friends had just popped round – a happy outcome which, he felt, was ‘the reward for his continence’. The following day Pius reached Newcastle, ‘a familiar world and a habitable country’, where he was able to exhale.38 To anybody planning a military campaign, Northumberland was a similarly daunting prospect.
Late that November, with promised Scottish reinforcements failing to materialize, and their chances of success against Edward’s army looking vanishingly small, Margaret’s troops retreated. Re-embarking for Scotland, they ran into storms. Four hundred French mercenaries took refuge on the tidal island of Lindisfarne, where they were slaughtered by Warwick’s men. Margaret’s ship went down with ‘much of her riches’, she and Henry managed to scramble onto a fishing boat and made it to Scottish-controlled Berwick.39
Edward’s men now found themselves with a rather different proposition to the short, victorious war that they had envisaged. Hunkered down in the string of fortresses stretching north along Northumberland’s coastline, the remnants of the Lancastrian forces, under the command of Somerset and his captains, were prepared to hold out until relief arrived. The Yorkists now had to deal with the prospect of lengthy sieges and the possibility of a rampaging Scottish army turning up; meanwhile, a harsh Northumbrian winter was setting in. Edward himself was absent.
Reaching Durham on 30 November, he had come down with measles and was confined to bed, feverish and covered in spots.40
As the sieges got under way under Warwick’s energetic command, it was instantly apparent that the Yorkist army was hopelessly under-resourced. With little artillery, Warwick’s only option was to starve the castle’s occupants into submission – a reasonable strategy but for the fact that the besiegers themselves were low on food. Even on the march north, Edward had run short of cash to pay for wages and supplies; further loans from London, extracted by the ever-persuasive George Neville, were little more than sticking plasters.41 As December deepened, visions of chivalric glory dissipated; the morale of the Yorkist soldiers, ‘grieved by cold and rain’, plummeted. Based at the supply depot in Newcastle, John Paston wrote home to Norfolk asking his brother for money to cover his men’s wages. All Christmas leave, he reported, had been cancelled and all demobilization forbidden: anybody who tried to desert or ‘steal away’ could expect to be ‘sharply punished’. Paston signed off, with a wistful sense of missing Christmas at home, ‘make as merry as you can’.42
Then, on Christmas Eve, a tremendous gift arrived. An envoy came to Warwick’s camp from the Lancastrian general Somerset, proposing terms of surrender. Warwick and a convalescent Edward jumped at the offer.43 It wasn’t entirely unexpected, as rumours of Somerset’s disaffection with Lancaster’s cause had been circulating for some months. He had made contact back in September about the possibility of ‘coming to grace’ with Edward, but the Lancastrian invasion had strengthened his resolve; now, with Margaret and Henry VI long gone and the promised Scottish army failing to materialize, disenchantment had set in. On 29 December, along with his fellow commander Sir Ralph Percy, Somerset surrendered the castles of Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh, and gave himself up.