The Brothers York

by Thomas Penn

  Produced by the finest studios in Flanders, these massive, luxurious manuscripts were works of art in their own right. With vividly ornamented initials, liberally scattered with Gruuthuse’s arms and motto, their borders were a profusion of illuminated foliage and wildlife. Exquisite page-length illustrations depicted scenes from religion, history and chivalric romance: of knights wandering the Middle East, of loyalty and love, of glorious deaths in great battles. One manuscript, a History of Jason and the Golden Fleece by the Burgundian cleric and writer Raoul Lefèvre, recounted the tale of the Greek hero who journeyed through foreign seas and hostile lands, seeking the fleece whose possession would allow him to claim the throne that was his birthright. For the Burgundian dukes, this myth was the greatest of quests, one embodied by their own chivalric order, the Golden Fleece. As a member of the Order himself, it was no surprise that the manuscript was one of the finest in Gruuthuse’s collection; neither would it have been a surprise if he had shown the book off to Edward, an inspiring example of what the chivalric brotherhood could achieve.33

  As Gruuthuse himself drummed up support for Edward among his fellow Burgundians, the Yorkists wrote letters, petitioned, bargained, raised loans and organized. Anthony Woodville was soon deep in talks with the civic authorities about fitting out a fleet. Edward managed to convince the Hanse merchants to loan him a number of ships: a feat of persuasion that owed as much to the Hanse’s loathing of Warwick as to Edward’s capacious promises, which included the full reinstatement of their trading privileges in England. Funds began to roll in from towns and cities across the Low Countries, including the ports of Middelburg and Veere, in exchange for similar guarantees. Money also came in from those who, having already invested heavily in Edward, had every interest in seeing him back on the throne.34

  Richard, meanwhile, rode some sixty miles south, to the city of Lille. There, on 12 February, he joined his sister Margaret, bringing her news of the developing plans. Although, as duchess of Burgundy, Margaret had officially kept her distance from the exiles in the months following their arrival, she had maintained constant secret contact. Now, as Edward prepared to invade England, his sister’s dual Anglo-Burgundian identity made her an unparalleled asset: indeed, as he headed to Bruges that January following his rapprochement with Charles, his own first stop en route had been Margaret’s household at Lille.

  It wasn’t simply Margaret’s fundraising abilities that made her invaluable to Edward’s cause – though her energetic lobbying soon bore fruit in a substantial loan from a syndicate of Dutch towns. For Margaret, Warwick’s regime threatened the destruction of both her blood family and, in Burgundy, her adoptive one. Reuniting her three brothers was now her great priority, and she made ‘great and diligent’ efforts to prise the errant Clarence away from Warwick and the Lancastrians and back to the family, sending a stream of agents into England. Her efforts dovetailed with those of William Hastings, who was masterminding Edward’s efforts to reach out to Clarence and other disaffected elements within Warwick’s administration.

  Through all the upheavals of recent years, Warwick and Clarence had never expressed any beef with Hastings, who, despite being Edward’s closest friend, had achieved the remarkable feat of never appearing on the rebel lords’ lists of corrupt advisers. It was true that Warwick and Hastings, brothers-in-law, were close, and the pair had overlapping interests; neither had Hastings benefited from a close relationship with Queen Elizabeth’s family. Besides which, Hastings’ reputation as a likeable, honest and plain-dealing man went before him; his voice seemed to carry with it a candour and trustworthiness lacking in others.

  That February, then, Richard’s journey to Lille was not – or not only – about a reunion with a sister whom he had not seen for almost three years; it was about making sure Margaret’s activities were closely aligned with those of Edward and his people. As they all knew, Clarence was ready to be turned.35

  In the first weeks of January 1471, Warwick had his hands full with the war he had promised Louis XI. Overseeing the fitting-out of a fleet in the Cinque ports, and co-ordinating the first strikes into Burgundian territory by the Calais garrison – ‘I will come and serve you as soon as I possibly can against this blasted Burgundian’, he assured Louis – he was out of London much of the time. The earl’s multitasking was beginning to take on a frenetic air. Unable to ask Parliament for money, and with credit from a sceptical mercantile community scarce, he was unable to commit himself in the way that Louis wanted; moreover, with rumours of Edward’s planned invasion gathering strength, he was also mustering troops for home service. In a telling sign of his inability to rely on wider noble loyalties, Warwick entrusted the task of mobilizing defence forces to a mere seven lords, including himself, across the entire country. In his absence, the regime’s nominal figurehead in Westminster and London was Clarence. But by this time, Clarence was feeling distinctly like a fish out of water.36

  As Lancastrian exiles trickled back into England in anticipation of the return of Margaret of Anjou and her son, a nagging sense of his own vulnerability had begun to settle in Clarence’s mind. Men intimately associated with the house of Lancaster, like the recently returned duke of Somerset, barely bothered to conceal their loathing. People were, Clarence felt, disrespecting him, looking down on him, treating him with ‘great suspicion and disdain’, even ‘hatred’.

  This disrespect took on a distinctly practical form. The earl of Ormond’s son, in begging his father not to hate Warwick too much, pointed out that Warwick had gone out of his way to restore property to those Lancastrians whose lands had been annexed by Edward back in 1461 and redistributed it to his own supporters. Foremost among those beneficiaries, of course, was Clarence, whose vast estates had been carved out of a variety of confiscated lands. For diehard Lancastrians, a political map of England had no Clarence in it at all. If that map were now to be restored, the physical foundation of Clarence’s power would disintegrate completely.

  There were some safeguards for Clarence against predatory Lancastrian rivals. The Angers agreement stipulated that, unless Clarence received compensation in full for any lands restored to Lancastrian claimants, he could keep them – which, given that the new government had nothing with which to compensate him, seemed reasonable security. But from the moment Henry VI had been restored to the throne, the pressure on Clarence’s interests had started. It had come from a predictable source: the Beaufort family. Despite the act of Parliament confirming Clarence’s possession of the earldom of Richmond, its previous incumbent Henry Tudor – or, more to the point, his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, a diminutive twenty-seven-year-old who doted on her only son – wanted Richmond back.

  Tudor’s Lancastrian credentials were impeccable – if, that was, you discounted the flaw of bastardy that by act of Parliament had barred his mother’s Beaufort family from ever laying claim to the throne. Among his cousins was the duke of Somerset; his uncles included Jasper Tudor, with whom the thirteen-year-old boy had travelled up to London that October, and Henry VI himself. Later that month, at the bishop of London’s palace, Henry Tudor was presented to the tremulous king. Decades later, it was said that Henry VI had detected kingliness in him, going so far as to say that both ‘we and our adversaries’ – the houses of Lancaster and York – ‘must yield and give over the dominion’ to his nephew: in other words, that Henry Tudor would be the boy to unite the warring factions of England. Though that account may have been sprinkled with more than a little mythologizing Tudor stardust, the encounter was a statement of intent on the Beauforts’ part.

  That autumn, as the Beauforts lobbied intensively for the earldom’s return – Lady Margaret, not for the last time, pulling the strings – Clarence received a barrage of approaches on the topic, among which were no fewer than six visits from Henry Tudor’s stepfather. On 24 February, with Clarence worn down, the parties settled on a fudged compromise: Henry Tudor would inherit the earldom of Richmond on Clarence’s death. Neither side was particularly h
appy. Tudor was unlikely to get his hands on his estates for some time – unless, of course, something happened to Clarence. This unpleasant episode drove home to the duke the precariousness of his position in the new dispensation: what could happen to his Richmond estates could happen elsewhere. His growing sense of isolation only increased with the behaviour of all the Lancastrian families close to Henry VI, his wife and son. They were, he felt, constantly ‘labouring’ – scheming – ‘among themselves’. All of this, Clarence was sure, led only in one direction: a growing and ‘fervent’ conspiracy to destroy him ‘and all his blood’. Clarence was right to be paranoid. He was convinced that Lancastrian families like the Beauforts did ‘not in any way have any righteous title’ to the English crown. But then, they thought much the same about him.37

  As a source close to Edward in exile put it, Clarence had begun to wake up to the fact that he was worse off in the new regime than he had been under the old. With the prospect of a ‘mortal war’ looming between the two sides, the division between him and his exiled brothers now made the disintegration of the house of York a distinct possibility. Even should Clarence emerge from the fratricidal showdown alive, he would be of no use whatsoever to the new Lancastrian regime that he had helped to bring into being: indeed, he would be in ‘as great, or greater danger’ than he was already. As Yorkist agents picked up on Clarence’s increasing openness to suggestions that his quarrel with his brothers was ‘unnatural’ and ‘against God’, the channels of dialogue began to open, ‘by right covert ways and means’.38

  Although Clarence’s relationship with Edward had splintered almost beyond repair, he had never lost contact with the women of his family. His first contacts with the exiles had come through the likes of his mother Cecily – who, as she had done in the crisis months of 1461, had remained entrenched and defiant at the family home of Baynard’s Castle – and his eldest sister Anne, for whom the new regime had meant the doubly grim prospect of having to give up her lover, Edward’s chamber servant Thomas St Leger, for her volatile Lancastrian husband Henry Holland, duke of Exeter, newly returned from exile. Other tracks of communication came through the loyalist Bourchier brothers: the Cardinal Archbishop Thomas Bourchier, that most dextrous of Yorkist mediators, who a decade previously had persuaded Edward’s father Richard of York to retract his claim to the throne; and his older brother Henry, Edward’s household steward. The previous October both men had been arrested, then released; both were now in close communication with Clarence.39

  On 27 February Warwick left London for Dover to await the arrival of Margaret of Anjou and her son, who were again trying to make the crossing to England. Warwick’s feelings about their impending arrival were probably mixed. On the one hand, they could lend his regime the credibility it continued to lack in the eyes of the Lancastrian nobility; on the other, their presence alone might begin to erode his authority. For now the question remained moot: Warwick ‘tarried at the sea side’ until it became clear that bad weather had once again prevented Margaret and her son from leaving port. Whatever was going on in Warwick’s mind, something decisive had shifted in Clarence’s. Whereas he had acted as Warwick’s proxy in the capital during the earl’s earlier absences, in late February he left the poisonous atmosphere of London, heading west to his Somerset estates. He had had enough.40

  On 18 February Edward and his group of exiles left Bruges on the first stage of their journey back to England. Away at the port of Vlissingen, on Walcheren island, four large ships rode at anchor, provided, fitted out and provisioned by the energetic Gruuthuse and his influential father-in-law Henrik van Borsselen, who had loaned Edward his own ship, the Antony, and whose web of contacts had helped broker Edward’s agreement with the apparently irreconcilable Hanse. In the fleet now assembled at Vlissingen were fourteen heavily armed Hanse warships. Having pursued Edward into exile, the Hanse were now tasked with carrying him back safely across the North Sea and for ‘fifteen days after’ – in case the invasion went badly and a swift getaway was needed.41

  Edward’s departure from the city that for the previous five weeks had been his adoptive home saw the king at his crowd-pleasing best. He left Bruges on foot, through streets packed with well-wishers, acknowledging the applause and roars of encouragement. Passing through the great gate of Dampoort, he walked the next five miles, the crowds milling around him, urging him on. At Damme, he and his men continued their journey by boat, weaving through the complex of canals and out into the North Sea, round the coast to Vlissingen and their waiting fleet.

  The mobilization of Edward’s invasion force had been rapid: barely six weeks. It was an impressive achievement, though one made easier by the fact that Edward’s force was small; it numbered barely two thousand men, who, though ‘well chosen’, were hardly enough on their own to regain a throne. Edward’s success would be heavily reliant on attracting loyalties in England – which, despite the assurances his agents had obtained, were by no means a given.

  Impatient to get going, Edward and his close companions boarded the Antony on 2 March. While ‘the wind fell not good for him’, he refused to disembark.42 Nine days later, the exceptionally stormy season, which had stymied Margaret of Anjou’s two attempts to return to England, abated. On the 11th, seizing this window of ‘good wind and weather’, Edward’s fleet weighed anchor and, sails spread, headed out of Vlissingen and into the open sea, west, heading for the Norfolk coast.

  A week later Ferry de Clugny, a Burgundian diplomat with vast experience of English affairs, wrote to a friend with news. After optimistic updates from the Burgundian frontline against the French, where the Burgundians had mounted a successful counter-offensive – everything was going well, Clugny opined, and the war would soon be over – he remarked that Edward had left Flanders. While Charles the Bold had thrown money at Edward’s invasion, Clugny continued, he wasn’t sanguine about Edward’s chances: ‘England is opposed to him’, Clugny ended hesitantly; ‘I hope this thing is over quickly.’ As news of Edward’s quest to regain his throne filtered out of Burgundy and through Europe, the Milanese ambassador Bettini summed up his prospects pithily. It was, he wrote, difficult to leave a house by the door and then try to go back in through the windows: ‘They think he will leave his skin there.’43

  11

  The Knot is Knit Again

  The storms had slackened enough to allow Edward to leave Vlissingen, but they soon returned. Driven towards the East Anglian coast by gale-force winds, his fleet was quickly in trouble. A ship full of warhorses foundered and all the animals were lost – though, on the plus side, the foul weather kept hostile ships in port. On 12 March 1471, barely a day after leaving Vlissingen, he dropped anchor off the north Norfolk port of Cromer and sent a reconnaissance party ashore to check out the lie of the land. It soon returned. The news was bad. Anticipating Edward’s landing, Warwick had rounded up the leading men of the region whom he suspected of Yorkist sympathies, chief among them the duke of Norfolk, taken them to London and locked them up. In their place, watching and waiting, were the forces of the Lancastrian John de Vere, earl of Oxford. Changing his plans, Edward headed north, back into the storms: that night, his fleet was scattered. Two days later, Edward’s ship the Antony limped alone into Ravenspur, on the Holderness coast of north Yorkshire, the same port where, back in 1399, Henry of Bolingbroke had returned from exile to claim the throne as the first Lancastrian king, Henry IV.1

  Taking Hastings and a small bodyguard, Edward disembarked and found shelter in a ‘poor village’ a couple of miles inland. Overnight, the winds slackened. The following morning the rest of his men came ashore; not long after, contingents from the other ships, many driven onto the north bank of the Humber Estuary, began to appear. They had been astonishingly lucky: not a single vessel had been lost. Soon, the whole force was assembled, including Richard with his three hundred men and Anthony Woodville, who had landed some thirteen miles away at a small fishing village called Paull.

  As Edward knew, the local popul
ation was ‘evil disposed’ towards him. Though the carnage of Towton was now a decade ago, it lingered in the memory and everybody knew somebody who had died there: mostly on the Lancastrian side, fighting for Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. Since then, the Nevilles had imposed themselves on the region, and Warwick’s agents had been through the area in recent weeks, whipping up anti-Yorkist hostility. Riding warily inland, Edward’s scouts reported back that armed groups – totalling, they guessed, some six thousand men – lay in wait along the road to York, some forty miles away; the nearest town, Hull, had also been ordered to resist him. At which point, Edward swallowed his regal pride and changed his story. He had returned, he proclaimed, not to regain the throne but simply to claim his patrimony as duke of York.

  It wasn’t a new tactic. Henry of Bolingbroke had used it when launching his bid for the throne seventy-two years previously. Such a move allowed potential supporters to rally to Edward without committing treason; by the same token, it gave those who had been ordered to resist him every excuse to stand off. Although Edward’s two thousand troops numbered substantially fewer than the local forces, they were heavily armed, well drilled and came with a formidable reputation, while the cash and promises of future reward that Edward threw around helped potential combatants to make up their minds.

  Anybody seeking control of the northeast needed York, the powerful, prosperous city at its heart. Edward made his way directly there. As he approached, York’s authorities repeatedly told him support was out of the question. Hiding his growing anxieties – if his plans were to succeed, the city’s backing was crucial – Edward convinced a civic deputation to admit him and a small group of his advisers for talks. Once inside the walls, he put on a consummate show of deceit: sporting an ostrich feather, Edward of Lancaster’s badge; repeatedly and publicly proclaiming the names of King Henry and his son; and – to show York’s mayor and aldermen he meant what he said – swearing on the gospels to be faithful to Henry VI and the house of Lancaster. As one chronicler grumbled, Edward was prepared to swear to anything, ‘forgetting all religion and honesty’, to get what he wanted.2