by David Field
Elizabeth was slowly and carefully disrobed by her ladies-in-waiting, one of whom was Katherine Hussey, the young wife of Sir Reginald Bray, who had progressed through Margaret Beaufort’s household at Coldharbour, and had formed a natural bond with her new employer while she had occupied her rooms there. This disrobing was done in a side chamber to the Painted Chamber in which the bed had been carefully made and inspected well in advance. Elizabeth was then led slowly into the Chamber in her richly embroidered nightdress, and put to bed. A few minutes later, Henry entered in a nightshirt down to his knees, on which was embossed the Tudor Rose that been so in evidence during the wedding and the feast that had followed. He was accompanied by several of his grooms and a handful of selected musicians who blew and drummed his progress towards the royal bed.
Then they all withdrew, once they had witnessed Henry sliding into bed alongside his bride, still dressed in his nightshirt. Once the room was empty, Elizabeth coyly raised her nightdress over her head and slid it to the floor, then turned and smiled at Henry.
Henry grinned back as he slid across the bed and pulled her towards him.
V
A royal wedding was one of the major occasions in the regal calendar upon which a king could create new nobles. However, Henry had already determined on a policy of breaking the power of such nobles as already existed, mindful of the role they had played in the dynastic struggles that he hoped to have put to an end. It was, therefore, hardly to be expected that Henry would create any more powerful nobles, but it caused considerable surprise, and not a little unease among his more senior advisors, when he released Henry Percy, Fourth Earl of Northumberland, from the Tower of London, as a gesture of mercy and magnanimity on the occasion of the royal wedding.
The Percys had been among the most powerful earls of the realm for as far back as anyone could remember, and there were many who counselled Henry that he was showing too much mercy to a potentially powerful enemy. Henry’s response was that by his inaction on the battlefield, Percy had demonstrated an underlying loyalty to the House of Lancaster, and had, in his own way, delivered victory to Henry.
Not content with releasing him, Henry sought to play upon his anticipated gratitude by appointing him Lord Warden of the Tower from which he had so recently been released, and also Lord Warden of the East and Middle Marches, which made him responsible to Henry for holding back the Scots not only in his traditional lands of Northumberland, but also further north, all the way to the border at Berwick on Tweed. By the time that Henry had decided to test the wisdom of this decision by progressing north in order to sniff the air for whiffs of disloyalty, other matters were preoccupying his mind.
For the first few weeks after the royal wedding, the prurient tittle-tattle running through the kitchens and stables of Westminster Palace had been that the King and his bride were early to bed and late to rise, and that the new lady of the house was always smiling, and with a rosy glow around her countenance. A few weeks later, the talk among her ladies-in-waiting was of her occasional light-headed spells, and her inability to hold down even the light curds that were offered to her after rising for the day. By the end of April a royal physician, Thomas Linacre, had confirmed what hitherto had only been whispered conjecture — the Queen was with child.
It was decided that Elizabeth would retire to Eltham for her pregnancy. Henry occupied much of his time consulting genealogists and reading Geoffrey of Monmouth’s writings on the legendary King Arthur, the Welsh-born hero of the now almost mythical Camelot. This ancient palace was believed to have existed at Winchester, to which Elizabeth was sent as her time grew near. Henry was further heartened by reading that according to the legend, the fabled King Arthur would return to claim England when a red pennant became joined with a white one; the imagery was too specific to be ignored, and if the queen gave birth to a son and heir, there was never any doubt in Henry’s mind that he would be named Arthur.
Margaret of Beaufort took charge of the domestic arrangements for Elizabeth’s ‘lying in’, which took place at St Swithin’s Priory, Winchester, where in the early hours of the morning of 20th September 1486, Arthur was born, a month premature. Church bells were ordered to be rung around the nation to peal out the joyful tidings that the succession was secured, and that England would shortly have a new Prince of Wales.
While Henry had been absorbed in all these domestic triumphs, others had been casting a jealous eye on his initial success. Yorkist ambitions had not yet been completely suppressed. Not all of those who had taken the field against Henry south of Sutton Cheney had either died or been captured. Two in particular had escaped, and had successfully sought sanctuary in Colchester Abbey. The first of these was Francis, Lord Lovell, a die-hard Yorkist and former Lord Chamberlain to Richard III, who was not related to Sir Thomas Lovell, Henry’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, but who fumed at the success that seemed to have followed Henry Tudor after the battle. Because of the danger that he still posed to Henry’s throne, he was one of those attainted by his first Parliament in November 1485. Lovell’s companion in sanctuary was Humphrey Stafford of Grafton in Worcestershire, also under an attainder that had not yet been acted upon. Both men believed that Henry was too soft to retain his crown, and that out in the free world there must be many resentful Yorkists who would rally to the first standard raised in rebellion.
Both men slipped out of sanctuary in early April 1486, and sought to promote an uprising that would commence at opposite ends of the country, and meet in the middle. Lovell headed north, where he remained convinced that he would find support among the traditional enemies of Lancaster, the people of Yorkshire. Stafford concentrated instead on his family connections in the West Midlands, and was initially successful in raising a small force that he intended to take north to join up with the army raised by Lovell that had failed to materialise.
When news first reached Henry that a rebellion of sorts had been launched, Henry let it be known that he was about to ride north to swat away this inconsequential fly in the royal ointment, and sent Jasper, Duke of Bedford, ahead of him with a pannier full of pardons for all those, apart from Lovell himself, who were prepared to walk away from the uprising before it began. As a result, long before Henry entered York on 20th April 1486, Lovell had considered discretion the better part of valour, and fled to Flanders.
Humphrey Stafford and his unwise brother Thomas had similarly miscalculated the strength of Lancastrian support in the western counties, and when Henry turned south-west in a show of force, they fled into sanctuary at Culham Abbey, south of Oxford.
At Kenilworth, Henry sat with John Morton, considering his options. He was anxious to make an example of Stafford, who was — at least in theory — still available for punishment other than the inevitable execution of the existing attainder that would drop his estates into Henry’s pocket, and no-one could better advise him regarding the laws of sanctuary than the clergyman who was so highly regarded by the Pope, and who was an expert on canon law.
‘Is it not a sin to violate sanctuary?’ Henry asked.
‘Not necessarily, Your Majesty. Since your accession has been blessed by the Pope himself, and since these men sought to act in violation of that blessing, would you not be merely upholding a Papal Bull by removing them from sanctuary?’
‘Would the Pope not seek to excommunicate me?’
‘I would seriously doubt that, Your Majesty, particularly were I again to travel to Rome and assure him that you sought only to uphold his holy will. In any case, it may be that we could hide the royal hand from such a procedure.’
Henry looked at Morton in surprise. ‘You know of those who would conduct such an action?’
‘I am sure that they could be found, Your Majesty. It would simply be a matter of ensuring appropriate financial reward.’
Henry thought briefly, then smiled back at Morton. ‘Do it, Morton — whatever the cost.’
A few nights later, a man named John Barrowman was richly rewarded for breaking down
the sanctuary door, together with an accomplice, and dragging out the loudly protesting Stafford brothers into the welcoming custody of a group of royal retainers who conveyed them to the Tower. They were placed on trial for treason, and the Justices of the King’s Bench, who knew a popular ruling when they made one, found them both guilty. Humphrey Stafford was executed at Tyburn on July 8th, although his brother Thomas was pardoned. There was the predicted outcry over the violation of sanctuary, but, as anticipated by Morton, the Pope settled the matter by issuing a Bull that made the nice distinction that once a man had left sanctuary and committed more treason, he could not lawfully return to it. This fitted the Stafford case admirably, while at the same time acting as a deterrent to others who might be of like mind.
At approximately the same time, in another part of Oxfordshire, the next challenge to Henry’s throne was being carefully prepared, and this was to prove more threatening. An ambitious Oxford priest named Richard Symonds had among his pupils a young man of lowly origins who bore a striking resemblance to at least one of the young Yorkist princes believed to have been murdered in the Tower. His name was Lambert Simnel, and Symonds considered that his prospects of acquiring the Archbishopric of Canterbury that was his fervent dream might be well bolstered by bringing his young pupil to the attention of those who could employ his remarkable appearance in order to place him on the throne.
There had been much speculation regarding the ultimate fate of the two royal princes, and Symonds’s first thought, after he had schooled the young Simnel into Courtly manners and bearing, was to pass him off as the younger of the two, Richard, Duke of York. But then came a second rumour, regarding the escape of ten-year-old Edward of Warwick, nephew of the late King Richard, whom Henry had also cautiously imprisoned in the Tower, and Symonds set about persuading Simnel that he was that heir to the throne. He was soon to be assisted in this by an incautious, and uncharacteristically provocative, action by Henry himself.
By February of 1487, when Henry held a meeting of his Great Council at his royal palace at Richmond, he already had a well-developed network of spies and informers assembled by Morton and Bray, in order to keep themselves abreast of developments that they might report to the King in order to further justify the preferment shown them. By this means, Henry was advised that Francis Lovell, who had escaped to Flanders following his failed uprising the previous year, had the ear of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of the late King Edward IV, and that between them they were plotting to restore the York line to the throne of England, using a surviving member of its line as the rallying figurehead.
It was also rumoured that just such a contender had recently appeared in Ireland, claiming to be Edward of Warwick. The Earl of Kildare had fared well under Yorkist patronage, and was anxious to prevent Lancastrians overrunning his country and suppressing Irish ambitions to remain independent of the English crown. He would be just the sort of military supporter any Yorkist pretender could rely upon, and if the Irish joined with the Burgundians, Henry’s crown would be in considerable peril.
Margaret and Henry were sitting alone in his withdrawing chamber at Richmond Palace, after the latest news had reached their ears.
‘It is concerning, is it not, that your royal son and heir now has his inheritance put at peril by these disturbing rumours?’
‘They may yet prove to be just that — rumours,’ Henry sought to reassure her.
‘But such wickedness — and so close to the nursery.’
Henry stopped, the goblet halfway to his lips. ‘What mean you? What is so close to the nursery?’
‘The plotting and scheming — as if she has not been honoured and rewarded enough. And she a former Queen who should know only too well how unstable one’s throne can be.’
‘What former Queen? You do not refer to the Queen Dowager, the mother of my royal bride?’
Margaret allowed her face to fall, as if in embarrassment. ‘You did not know? Oh, please forgive me — I assumed that Sir Reginald — or perhaps John Morton — would have advised you already.’
Henry was now completely hooked, and Margaret knew it.
‘Advised me of what?’ Henry demanded, now thoroughly concerned.
‘Well, obviously, given that Edward of Warwick is her nephew by marriage, and that Margaret of Burgundy was once her sister-in-law, and given that the Yorkist cause is not completely played out...’
‘You are trying to tell me that the Queen Dowager plots against my own throne? And her daughter sharing the throne with me?’
‘She has not yet been through her coronation,’ Margaret reminded him.
‘But Elizabeth Woodville is your close friend, is she not?’
‘She was — once,’ Margaret conceded. ‘But that was when she felt threatened, first by Warwick, and then by Gloucester. I can only offer you my deepest apology if, by feigning to be my friend, she has insinuated her own daughter onto the throne, in order that you might be eased from it. It was, after all, she who said and did nothing when Gloucester showed your wife so much attention while you were still in Brittany. She clearly sees herself as a manipulator of thrones, and obviously resents my own preferment through your kindness. If the young Warwick were returned, and a Regent were required until he came of age, who would be more obvious than Elizabeth Woodville?’
‘As ever, I am in your debt,’ Henry said as he took her hand and kissed it. ‘I must confer with Sir Reginald, to see if there be any truth in these vicious rumours.’
When confronted, Bray confirmed what Margaret had said.
At the meeting of the Great Council, Henry announced to its astonished nobles that the Queen Dowager Elizabeth Woodville was to be stripped of all her lands, and was to be allowed to retreat to the Abbey of Bermondsey, where she had accommodation rights as a widow of the House of York that had so generously endowed it over the years. The lands themselves were to be passed, in return for a relatively modest annuity, to her daughter Elizabeth, which of course meant that they would fall to Henry. The amazement and confusion with which this news was received by the nobles was nothing compared with the outburst from Elizabeth of York when she learned what Henry had done, and the grooms listening surreptitiously at the royal bedchamber door were well rewarded for their prurience by the sound of a dreadful argument in heated voices.
‘You would ever listen to your mother ere taking the counsel of others.’
‘It was not my mother who warned me of it, but one of my most trusted advisers.’
‘Everyone knows that your mother is your most trusted adviser, and that she comes before your wife, whom you never even consulted before disgracing my dear mother so publicly.’
‘Would I put my mother before my Queen?’
‘Your bed partner, you mean! I am no more Queen than that bedpost! You delay to have me crowned, for reasons that escape me. Have I not already produced a royal heir? Have I not freely and lovingly given of my body? Am I not worthy of having a crown placed on my head?’
Henry promised to take urgent steps towards a coronation for ‘Queen Elizabeth’, but before that could happen he was advised that the Earl of Lincoln, to whom he had in many ways been more generous than Elizabeth Woodville, had fled from court and taken ship for Flanders. Before leaving, Lincoln had cunningly confided to close friends that he was in fear of his life, since if the King could do what he had just done to the Queen Dowager, who had evinced no threat to him, what would he be likely to do, in his increasing paranoia, to someone whose very continued existence was the greatest threat to his throne?
It was soon brought to the royal ear that Lincoln had joined the escaped Lord Lovell in Burgundy, where they both had the ear of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the aunt of the young boy who was being proclaimed as the lawful King Edward VI of England. She was also the aunt of the Earl of Lincoln, and a disturbing Yorkist power-base was rapidly being assembled.
Henry’s reactions to the situation that he now faced were two-fold. First of all, once it beca
me clear that this new treason was based on the assertion that the young boy now being paraded around the streets of Dublin was Edward of Warwick, Henry ordered that the real Edward be taken from the Tower and led through the streets of London. He also put all the sea approaches from Flanders under constant watch, with beacons ready to be lit at the first sign of an invading naval force and commissioned two land armies — one under Uncle Jasper, and the other under his victorious commander-in-chief of two years previously in Leicestershire, the Earl of Oxford. For good measure he imprisoned in the Tower the Marquis of Dorset, Elizabeth Woodville’s son by her first marriage, who Henry suspected of being part of the widespread plotting that his fevered brain was imagining.
Next, he renewed his insurance policy with God by visiting the Shrine at Walsingham on Easter Monday, before renewing his contract with St. George on his feast day at Coventry. During the same ceremony, he had Morton, in his Archbishop’s robes, read out to the congregation the Papal Bulls that confirmed Henry’s right to the throne, along with that of his lawfully wedded wife, and add some additional drama to the proceedings by cursing ‘with bell, book and candle’ anyone who sought to oppose the Pope’s will.
On 5th May it was confirmed that a force of some 2000 German mercenaries hired by Margaret of Burgundy had accompanied the Earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovell to Dublin, where later that month Lambert Simnel was crowned as King Edward VI. Henry moved behind the walls of Kenilworth Castle and sent for his wife and mother to join him, before convening a council of war upon receipt of news of the long-expected landing in Lancashire. The Earl of Oxford was given, at his own request, overall command of the royal army that proceeded north once it was learned that the invaders had crossed the Pennines and were heading for York.
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.