Richard The Chird (4 page)

In the spring or summer of 1459 Richard was thrust into the world beyond the horizons of the fens. The Queen's party were

beginning to prepare for open war. York felt his situation to be so dangerous that he no longer trusted the defenses of Pothering-hay Castle. Richard and his brother George, surrounded by a strong escort, set out on a journey across the heart of England. From the marshy flats of the Nene they made their way through the great forest of Rockingham to Market Harborougtu Then their way lay across the rolling country of the Midlands. There would be a cautious detour around Coventry, with scouts dispatched from the main escort to look out for ambushes. At Coventry an army was gathering beneath the banner of the King. No doubt, Richard spent a night at Warwick Castle, home of his cousin, the Earl, whose adventures as Captain of Calais he would know by heart. After passing Kidderminster, the cavalcade took its way through the woods and the river valleys of Shropshire. Past the triple hills of Clee, Richard came at last to the ridge on which stood the village of Ludlow. Beyond, on its western lip, was planted a massive castle. Then the ground fell steeply to the gorge of the river Teme. 13 *

Riding through the eastern gate of the outer fortifications, Richard found himself in a courtyard some five acres square. In the northwest corner rose the castle proper, its moat and wall dominated by an ancient keep with its own walled bailey. Across the castle courtyard a great range of halls and chambers stood against the outer battlements on the northern rim of the ridge.

Little Richard now met for the first time his two eldest brothers, Edward, seventeen, and Edmund, a year younger. They were belted earls—Edward of March and Edmund of Rutland—and in Richard's eyes, men. Doubtless he often watched, in awe, as they practiced the manage of axe and sword. It was likely that their father would soon need their stout young arms. When spring passed into summer, the outer courtyard swarmed with men and horses as the retainers of the House of York came in with armor on their backs. Lord Clinton appeared with his followers, and Lord Powis, Sir Walter Devereux, and other knights and squires. Messengers galloped in and out. In late August came word that the Earl of Salisbury was marching to join them with all his power, and that his famous son Richard, Earl of Warwick, would

soon arrive with a band of warriors from the garrison of Calais. 14

On September 25 Richard watched his uncle Salisbury ride into the courtyard at the head of his Yorkshiremen. Pennons waved; clarions sounded a triumphant note. Soon the boy saw, however, that wounded men lay in the baggage carts; gashes showed on armor; the footmen were sweating and weary. It was his first sight of men who had endured the storm of battle. Perhaps from an unobtrusive corner of the council chamber he heard Salisbury tell the tale to his father and mother.

In the preceding May, Margaret and her little Prince Edward had traveled through Lancashire and Cheshire, rallying the gentry to her cause. By early summer the royal standard was set up at Coventry and an army was gathering. When the Queen got word of Salisbury's march, she sent Lords Audeley and, Dudley to intercept him.

Finding his way barred at Blore Heath, near Market Drayton, by an army much larger than his own, Salisbury had drawn up his men in the shelter of a wood and grimly awaited the onslaught. His archers and his men-at-arms fought so fiercely that the royal host was thrown back with heavy losses; Lord Audeley was slain and Lord Dudley taken prisoner. When night fell, Salisbury marched around the enemy and came safely to Ludlow.

A few days later Richard beheld the arrival of Salisbury's son Richard, Earl of Warwick, and his troops from Calais, which were commanded by a renowned captain and pirate, Andrew Trollope.

Beneath the splendor and excitement of this martial assemblage in the halls of his father, the little boy doubtless felt the tension, lurking in faces and voices, of men confronting a mortal struggle. He would hear harsh words of the Queen, the French woman who was gathering a host to destroy the House of York. At the age of seven he was learning that the world was dangerous, even as, gazing at the bright, confident face of his elder brother Edward, he was beginning to sense the; valor and pride of the high blood from which he sprang.

Early in October the news at last arrived that the host mustered at Coventry in the King's name was beginning to move to-

ward Ludlow. When word came that the army had reached Worcester, the Yorkist lords sent a petition to the King protesting their loyalty and desire for peace. The court party countered by publishing the offer of a general pardon to all who would desert York's cause, and with spread banners the King's host continued its westward advance. The Duke, caught on the horns of his dilemma, dispatched a second petition. Ignoring it, the royal army swept into Leominster and turned north toward Ludlow, less than thirty miles away.

The road to Leominster left Ludlow by the Broadgate, crossed the Teme on a fine stone bridge (still standing), and ran south through a narrow valley of meadows. These are hemmed on the west by rising ground and on the east by the river—for the Teme, after flowing eastward past the heights of Ludlow, bends sharply to the south. On these Ludford meadows the Yorkists had now established their camp, protected by an earthwork which blocked the valley and the road.

On the afternoon of October 12 the banners of the royal host appeared down the valley—a force probably twice as large as York's—and the King's men camped less than a mile away. When night fell, Andrew Trollope and the Calais garrison provided little Richard with his first lesson in the bitterness of betrayal. Suddenly they swarmed across the earthwork and fled to the King and the King's pardon. It was a dreadful blow: Trollope knew all the plans of the Yorkist leaders; his men were among the best-trained soldiers in the army; this wholesale desertion chilled the hearts of the rank and file.

York, Warwick, and Salisbury held a desperate consultation with their chief captains—torches flaring in the great chamber of the castle, servants running to fetch meat and beer at the command of Duchess Cicely, and Richard and George looking on no doubt from a corner, as a dozen men in full armor hurriedly debated the issues of life and death. There was no solution but the hard recourse of flight: Cicely must be left with her two small boys to the mercy of the court; the remainder of the army would have to disperse in the darkness as best it could. The Duke of York, his sons Edward of March and Edmund of Rutland,

Warwick, and Salisbury took horse and with a small escort galloped westward into the night.

When the troops of the King stormed triumphantly into the undefended town the next morning, they found Cicely, Duchess of York, and her sons Richard and George courageously awaiting them on the steps of the market cross. If Cicely had hoped to protect her helpless townsfolk, her effort was vain. She and her boys were hustled off to the royal camp. Ludlow was pillaged as if it were a French town; after the drunken soldiery had looted dwellings and outraged women, they robbed the castle to its bare walls. 15 *

The Duchess and her boys were taken to Coventry, where a Lancastrian Parliament promptly attainted York, Salisbury, Warwick, and their chief followers, and declared their estates forfeit to the Crown. King Henry was able to perform one act of kindness, however: he granted the Duchess of York a thousand marks a year to maintain herself and her children. She was put into the custody of her sister, the Duchess of Buckingham. A little before Christmas, Richard and George and their mother took up their life as prisoners of the Crown upon one of Buckingham's manors. 16 * One chronicler reports that Cicely was "kept full straight and many a great rebuke." 1T Richard was seven years and two months old. Of his father and his brothers he had heard nothing since they vanished into the night, hunted men.

The fugitives, in fact, were doing very well. Somewhere in Wales they had separated. The Duke of York and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, struck westward to the coast, found a ship, and sailed for Ireland. York was received at Dublin "as if he were a second Messiah." Native chieftains and the English settlers alike rallied to his cause. Royal writs commanding his arrest were ignored and their bearers executed. The Irish Parliament recognized York as the virtual ruler of Ireland and declared that only those writs of the English King which were approved by the Parliament would have force. 18

The Earls of Warwick, Salisbury, and March had fared no less well though their journey was more hazardous. Reaching the Devon coast after many perils, they managed to purchase a ship.

On November z they were warmly welcomed at Calais, which, under the governance of one of Salisbury's brothers, had remained loyal to its Captain, Warwick.

As soon as the court discovered the whereabouts of the fugitives, it dispatched Richard, Lord Rivers, to Sandwich to prepare a fleet of ships for an assault on Calais. Warwick, however, knew all about Rivers' plans from the men of Kent who daily crossed the Channel to swell his ranks. In the early morning of January 7, a small detachment of Warwick's men swooped down on Sandwich, captured the fleet of the King, surprised in their beds Lord Rivers, his wife, and his son Sir Anthony Woodville, and carried ships and captives triumphantly back to Calais. "As for tidings," one of the Pastons wrote soon afterward, "my Lord Rivers was brought to Calais and before the Lords with eight score torches, and there my Lord of Salisbury rated him, calling him knave's son, that he should be so rude to call him and these other lords traitors, for they shall be found the King's true liegemen when he should be found a traitor, etc. And my Lord of Warwick rated him and said his father was but a squire and brought up with King Henry V, and since then himself made by marriage, and also made Lord, and that it was not his part to have such language of lords, being of the King's blood. And my Lord of March rated him in like wise." 19

In the early spring Warwick dared to sail to Ireland in order to concert measures with York for the invasion of England. The King and Queen moved about the Midlands, harassed and fearful, aware that the Lords of Calais and the Duke of York would soon make a descent upon their shores but, as usual, paralyzed by indecision, incompetence, poverty, and unpopularity. Bills and posters attacking the court appeared on church doors and town walls; ballads were sung in the streets praising the Calais Earls and praying for their quick return; rhymesters appealed to Providence to restore the Duke of York. . . .

Send horn, most gracious Lord Jhesu most benygne, Sende hoom thy trew blode unto his prop re veyne, Richard, duke of York, Job thy servaunt insygne. . . . 2a

Meanwhile, Edward, Earl of March, young though he was and in the thick of great affairs, had concerned himself for the welfare of his two little brothers. Not long after he had landed at Calais, he sent a message to his kinsman the Archbishop of Canterbury, begging him to befriend Richard and George. The boys were accordingly taken into the Archbishop's household. Richard would be put rigorously to his books, and it is perhaps here that he began to learn that handsome Italic script that appears in sorne of his later autographs. If the boy was permitted to read romances, he doubtless found no hero to match his brother Edward and no tale to compare in suspense with the drama of his family's fortunes. 21 *

As spring turned into summer, all England, including a small scholar named Richard Plantagenet, looked for the coming of the Yorkist lords.

In rainy June weather—the worst summer weather in a century —they came. 22 Landing at Sandwich on June 26 with an army of some two thousand men, the Earls of Warwick, Salisbury, and March headed for London, gathering followers as they advanced. On July 2 they were welcomed into the city. Pausing only long enough to establish a siege of the Tower, which held out for King Henry, and to borrow a thousand pounds from the magistrates, the Earls marched northward to meet the royal army. They found it entrenched in a bend of the river Nene, just south of Northampton. Mistrusting the issue of the day, the Queen and her son had remained at Coventry.

On the rain-soaked afternoon of July 10, the Yorkists assaulted the royal entrenchments. This time it was a wing of the Kino-'s army that suddenly changed sides and permitted a flood of men to pour across the earthworks. The Earls won the field in less than an hour. The Duke of Buckingham, who had commanded the royal host, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Lords Beaumont and Egremont lay dead in their smashed armor. Henry the Sixth was captured in his tent. Treated like a king, he was conducted to London on July 16. Two days later the Tower surrendered, and within a week the Yorkist lords had established a government

It was not until September 15 that the Duchess of York, ac-

companied by Richard and George and their sister Margaret, arrived in the city. Within a few days she received a message from her husband, who had landed at Chester. The indomitable Cicely at once hurried off to join him, in a chariot covered with blue velvet and drawn by eight coursers. The children remained in London.

Busy though the Earl of March was with affairs military and political, he now came every day to visit Richard, George, and Margaret in the temporary lodgings he had found for them. 23 It may have been this small domestic idyll which wrought upon Richard one of the master experiences of his life. Edward shone with the blaze of mighty affairs and was the companion of paladins. Yet he took care to watch over his brothers and his sister, regaling them with tales of his adventures, warming them with his affection and his greatness. How could there be anything better than to follow forever and to serve this wonderful brother, so splendid, so kind?

The \Vlieel of Time

DUCHESS OF YORK: My husband lost his life to get the Crown,

And often up and down my sons were tossed

/SUDDENLY the wheel of time was speeded up and the wheel ^N of fortune spun dizzily. On October 10 Richard saw his fa-^-^ ther enter London like a king, the full arms of England inscribed upon his banners, trumpets and clarions proclaiming the triumph of his arrival and a sword borne upright before him. It was indeed with kingly thoughts that the Duke had come. During his past months in Ireland he had found a solution to his dilemma: Queen Margaret could be got rid of only by removing Henry too. After greeting the city magistrates, York rode through London to Westminster and entered the Painted Chamber, where the Lords were assembled. He strode directly to the throne, hesitated, finally put one hand upon it and announced that he had come to claim the crown by hereditary right.