Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (31 page)

Henry Tudor’s limited claim to the throne was well understood by contemporaries on the Continent. As Commynes stated, ‘Tudor was a member of the house of Lancaster, but he was not the closest claimant to the crown, whatever one may say about it, at least as far as I understand it’. Molinet remarked how Henry ‘was quite far removed from the crown of England regarding his bloodline’ yet he commented that ‘however[,] he aspired to it very strongly later’. If Henry himself had doubts about the wisdom of claiming the throne both so directly and under false pretences, he remained silent: it was, he possibly considered,
a price worth paying. Instead, buoyed on by Oxford and, according to Molinet, Thomas Stanley, who said that there were ‘great and powerful lords, with others in great quality, allied together’ who ‘promised to make him the King of England would he go to Wales with an army’, caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, Henry seems to have been convinced by his inflated claim to the crown. The previous year, when he had embarked upon his first attempt at seizing the throne, there had been no mention of the royal title in Henry’s correspondence, with the earl signing the receipt for his loan from Francis II as simply ‘Henry de Richemont’. Now, sending out letters to England and Wales to those he hoped would support his cause, he inscribed them with the royal style ‘H.R.’ and sealed them with his own official signet. His readers could be under no doubt of Henry’s royal pretensions:

For someone seeking the crown, as Henry’s letter patently made clear, Henry Tudor was prepared to make a radical break with tradition; neither Henry Bolingbroke in 1399 nor Edward IV in 1471 had declared their real intentions in advance of their landing, merely stating that they wished to be restored to their noble titles. Only Richard of York had been bold enough to assert his claim to the throne, a rash move that had backfired upon the duke. As his letter stated, Henry
planned to invade England at some stage ‘to the furtherance of my rightful claim due and lineal inheritance of the crown’; perhaps Henry had managed to agree a compromise with the Beaujeu regime, avoiding the ridiculous charade that he should be considered Henry VI’s son, something which would have undoubtedly destroyed any shred of credibility in Henry’s cause, but by claiming ‘lineal inheritance’ this would allow the French to continue their deception in their own minds. For Henry, and the audience who would have read the letter, it could only have meant his Beaufort descent through his mother, meaning a restoration of the Lancastrian dynasty. The wisdom of putting his claim into writing, at the same time as setting out the nature of that claim, would soon be questioned.

For Richard, whose nervousness about his rival’s movements had increased since Henry’s arrival in France, effectively placing him out of reach, discovering news of the letters provided the king with an opportunity to turn Henry’s grandiose claims into his own propaganda attack. In August 1484 the king had hoped quite literally to bury the memory of the Lancastrian dynasty, ordering the body of Henry VI to be exhumed from Chertsey Abbey, where pilgrims had steadily flocked, convinced of the dead king’s saintly powers, to be reburied at St George’s chapel in Windsor. When it was disinterred, Henry’s body apparently smelt ‘very pleasantly scented’; it was ‘certainly not from spices’, one commentator observed, ‘since he was buried by his enemies and butchers’. Leafing open the corpse’s shroud, it was found to be ‘for the most part’ uncorrupted, ‘the hair in place, and the face as it had been except it was a little sunken, with a more emaciated appearance than usual’.

Richard now hoped to bury Henry Tudor’s chances of gaining support, exploit the uncertainties surrounding the Welshman’s true intentions, that must have been circulating both at court and in the country at large: if Henry claimed rightful inheritance to the throne by his Lancastrian descent, would his succession mean that the clock would be turned back to 1471, or even earlier to 1460, annulling all royal grants of land and gifts of office that had taken place during the intervening years under the Yorkist dynasty? And what price would the French place upon their support of the young pretender? The last time France had sheltered the Lancastrians in exile, the cost had been
the secret treaty of Chinon in 1462, in which the Lancastrians were willing to surrender Calais to the French in order to gain their support. Would Henry now do the same? No one could be sure exactly what shady deals might have been arranged in the anterooms of the French court.

On 7 December, Richard ordered his chancellor to prepare a proclamation against Henry Tudor. For the first time Richard was prepared to acknowledge the seriousness of the threat that his rival posed. Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, John, Earl of Oxford, Sir Edward Woodville and Jasper Tudor were all named as ‘rebels and traitors disabled and attainted by authority of the high Court of parliament’, adding for effect that ‘many be known for open murderers, adulterers, and extortioners contrary to truth, honour and nature’. Having ‘forsaken their natural Country’, the proclamation continued, they had first sought protection from the Duke of Brittany, yet somewhat bizarrely, the proclamation declared they had promised the duke ‘certain things which by him and his counsel were thought things too greatly unnatural and abominable for them to grant, observe, keep and perform. And therefore the same utterly refused.’ In this rewriting of history, the rebels, ‘seeing that the said duke and his counsel would not aid and succour them nor follow their ways’, had chosen to depart in secret to France, where they had come ‘under the obeisance of the king’s ancient enemy Charles, calling himself King of France’. They now intended, Richard alleged,

According to the proclamation, Henry was prepared to give up all English claims to Normandy, Gascony, Calais, Guisnes and Hammes to France. If this was not enough, for good measure Richard was determined to play on the fear of the instability and terror that a forthcoming invasion might bring: ‘the said Henry Earl of Richmond and all the others the king’s rebels and traitors aforesaid have intended at their coming to do the most cruel murders, slaughters, robberies and disherisons that ever were seen in any Christian Realm’. If these ‘inestimable dangers’ were to be ‘eschewed … to the intent that the king’s said rebels and traitors may either be utterly put from their said malicious purposes or soon discomfited if they enforce to land’, the king’s subjects were ‘like good and true English men to endeavour themselves at all their powers for the defence of themselves, their wives, children, goods and inheritances against the said malicious purposes and conspiracies which the ancient enemies of this land have made with the king’s said rebels for the final destruction of the same land as is aforesaid’. Meanwhile, the proclamation ended on a note of reassurance, Richard as sovereign and ‘a well willed, diligent and courageous prince … will put his most royal person to all labour and pain necessary in this behalf for the resistance and subduing of his said enemies, rebels and traitors to the most comfort, weal and surety of all and singular his true and faithful liegemen and subjects’.

The following day, despite the obvious difficulties that the wintry weather might bring to the proceedings, commissions of array were issued to most English counties, ordering that men be ready prepared upon half a day’s notice in case a sudden alarm was raised of the rebels’ invasion, with separate orders going out to the commissioners to perform a military census of the their local regions, with specific instructions set down from the king that ‘they on the king’s behalf thank the people for their true and loving dispositions shown to his highness in the last year for the surety and defence of his most royal person and of this his Realm against his rebels and traitors, exhorting them so to continue’, before requiring that the commissioners should each ‘diligently enquire’ of every bailiff, constable and any other officer of towns or villages within their local area ‘the number of persons sufficiently horsed, harnessed and arrayed as by every [one] of them severally were granted to do the king’s grace service before the old commissioners whensoever
his highness should command them’. Meanwhile coastal towns such as Harwich were placed on alert, with their defence being committed to Richard’s loyal supporters.

For the moment, as musters began to be taken across the country, Richard was determined to enjoy the Christmas celebrations that year. As the twelve days of festivities passed, few failed to notice not only the luxury and the splendour of the celebrations, including the Crowland Chronicler, who observed that ‘during this Christmas feast too much attention was paid to singing and dancing and to vain exchanges of clothing between Queen Anne and Lady Elizabeth’. For the Epiphany celebrations, Richard himself took a ‘distinguished part’ in the festivities, appearing wearing his crown in the great hall at Westminster, ‘as though at his original coronation’.

The same day, as he returned to his chamber, Richard was informed by his ‘naval spies’ that ‘in spite of his royal power and splendour, without any doubt, his enemies would invade the kingdom or make an attempt, as soon as the summer came’. Hearing the news, in a somewhat odd reaction, perhaps hiding his own anxieties, according to the Crowland Chronicler, Richard was apparently delighted, wanting ‘nothing better than this’ since he declared openly, victory ‘would put an end to all his doubts and misfortunes’.

During the winter of 1484 and approaching 1485, Henry waited anxiously. Contrary to his initial hopes and warm words from Charles VIII, at the French court it was proving difficult to garner any kind of support that he might have previously hoped for. Having told his English supporters in exile that he intended to once more cross over the Channel as soon as he possibly could, further delay was scarcely an option. Polydore Vergil later related how, in order to reassure them, Henry ‘was compelled to go and make earnest suit to every man particularly’. Yet Henry knew that while the French remained uncertain whether to support a fresh invasion, he would have little chance of success.

Charles VIII and his Beaujeu government had more pressing matters to deal with than preoccupy themselves with Henry’s cause. Internal strife within France persisted as the tensions between Anne of Beaujeu and Louis of Orleans mounted. In early 1485 the Beaujeu
government had been forced to leave Paris to establish their court at Montargis, leaving the capital in the hands of Louis of Orleans, who had begun to mount an increasingly hostile campaign against Anne of Beaujeu. In January Orleans announced his intention of ‘liberating’ Charles VIII from his sister Anne. French resources were also being drawn increasingly into Flanders, where since the death of Mary of Burgundy in 1482 the three Flemish towns of Ghent, Bruges and Ypres had gained physical control of the infant Archduke Philip, ruling the country in his name to the exclusion of Maximilian of Austria’s claim to be regent of the region. Tensions remained high between both sides until war finally broke out in January 1485. A French army was sent into Flanders under Philippe de Crevecoeur, seigneur d’Esquerdes.

Desperate not to be left behind, Henry tagged along with the court and ‘sought there to bring to pass his suit’, requesting once again that Charles ‘take him wholly to his tuition, so that if he and his confederates should be in safety they might all likewise also acknowledge the same received at his hand’. Henry’s pleading worked: on 20 January Charles wrote from Montargis, stating that recently there ‘came before us our very dear and well-beloved cousin Henry of Richmond, requiring help to recover the Kingdom of England which belongs to him, and considering the proximity of lineage between us, considering that it is the person in the world who has the most apparent right to the Kingdom of England, we will cater for him and his people for the time he spends here, and take the decision to help him in his business and deeds, which may amount to a large sum of money’.

Still, there was to be no guarantee of men, or money for that matter, without a royal decree and the permission of the Parlement in France. Henry’s uncertainty would for the moment continue, as he agonised over his future direction; the chronicler Adrien de But caught the mood of speculation when, describing the mustering of an army under Esquerdes, he observed how some thought that it might be used for an attack on Calais, while others held that it was to assist Henry Tudor in his mission. In the end, it was sent to reinforce the Flemish towns against Maximilian.