The Last Plantagenets (52 page)

The once lovely Margaret of Anjou emerged from the tower a middle-aged woman. The years and the strains of war had taken their toll. Her shoulders and neck had thickened, her hair was streaked with gray, her eyes were red from weeping. Her cheeks had enough lines to bear some resemblance to the charts of battlefields on which she had fought.

Edward considered the possibility of executing her to still forever her vitriolic tongue, but concluded that the chivalrous record of the Plantagenets must not be stained by the death of a woman. Accordingly she was sent from one dismal castle to another although the rigors of her confinement were gradually reduced through the mediation, it was said, of Queen Elizabeth. Finally she came to Wallingford, one of the large stone strongholds on the Thames, where she was in the
charge of the dowager Duchess of Suffolk. The duchess was very kind to the unfortunate captive and kept her comfortably on the five marks a week allotted by the chancellery for the ex-queen’s upkeep. She was still there when word came that arrangements had been made for her to be ransomed and sent back to France.

She knew it was not going to be a joyous homecoming, in fact no homecoming at all. She had lived in England so long that the memories of her girlhood had grown shadowy; and, of course, the dust of her two men would remain forever in English ground. To make matters worse, it had been necessary for her father, blithe Duke René, to diminish further his domain by selling Provence to Louis XI to raise the ransom money. That wily monarch had waited patiently for the chance, his covetous hands twitching for the satisfaction of grasping that beautiful southern land. He had bided his time with rather more than his usual patience (and of that he had more than any other man) and had not stepped in until misfortunes had begun to thicken about the aging René.

The latter took enough time from his new young wife and his endless preoccupation with his painting (he had now gone into murals) and his musical compositions to make a “deal” with the watchful Louis. He sold Provence for the sum of 50,000 crowns, which amount was to be used for the ransom of Margaret. Louis, who could act with lightning speed when his terms had been met, made an agreement immediately with Edward of England. The first installment, a fifth, was paid to Edward on November 3, 1475, and in January of the following year the disconsolate widow arrived at Dieppe. It was demanded of her that she sign away all her rights before being set free. With a resignation which showed how completely her spirit had been broken, she signed her name to a brusque document which began:

I, Margaret, formerly in England married, renounce all that I could pretend to in England by the conditions of my marriage, with all other things there to Edward now king of England.

This humiliating step having been taken, she proceeded with a train consisting of no more than three ladies and seven gentlemen to the domicile which had been selected for her, the manor of Reculée. There is nothing on record to show that she ever saw her father in the flesh, although he wrote her fond letters and tried to assure her future by grants which were summarily revoked by the French king. As a result, Margaret had to subsist on a pension which Louis granted her in return for another document in which she surrendered all her rights of succession to the lands and honors of her father and mother.

Reculée lay no more than a league away from Angers, where all her final misfortunes had begun. Did Louis cast his mind back over the time when he had exerted so much pressure to arrange the meeting with the confident Warwick in the latter city? If he did, it would be with a sense of satisfaction over the results of those protracted and difficult negotiations. Warwick was dead and England was too exhausted to cause him, Louis, a single night of sleeplessness or concern. Burgundy was being dealt with to his own advantage. And here was the firebrand queen, broken in spirit and content to live on the pittance he allowed her. The plans laid at Angers had proven most successful from his standpoint.

Margaret remained several years at Reculée, where she found it necessary to provide for the wants of a number of exiled Lancastrians. Her health was permanently impaired, and one French historian draws a most dire picture of her appearance—“eyes hollow, dim and perpetually inflamed, her skin disfigured with a dry, scaly leprosy.” This was an exaggeration, but there could be no doubt that she showed signs of the approaching end.

Finally she left Reculée and took up her residence in the castle of Dampierre, which was close to the city of Saumur. This ancient town on the Loire River was famous for its churches and for the Maison de la Reine Cécile which her father had built. It is doubtful if she ever visited the town or saw the house her father had fashioned with such genuine care. Her life was spent in poverty, as the parsimonious king was apt to delay the payments due her and even, on occasions, to overlook them entirely.

Some believe she had a hand in the intrigues and preparations which led to the victory of Henry of Richmond at Bosworth and his elevation to the throne as Henry VII. This is highly improbable. She had lost her position of influence and her will lacked the iron inflexibility of her earlier years. She was not concerned over the throne of England since it could not be her son who would sit there under the Leopard banner. All interest in worldly affairs seems to have deserted her. Did she ever think of the needless prolongation of the war because of her fierce determination, of the terrible battles which were nothing less than mass murder, of the tens of thousands of widows who had been left to mourn their dead as she herself was now doing?

The household at Dampierre was a sorry one. A few exiles still remained with her, but she kept so strictly to her own rooms that they never saw her. Hopeless, dispirited, they sat about in glum groups and talked of the losses they had sustained in the Lancastrian cause. If they
walked in the meager gardens, they had no eyes for the red roses growing there. These had become symbols of the blank future stretching ahead of them.

On August 2, 1482, Margaret made her will, a pitiable document in which she left what little she had to those about her and to provide for the payment of her debts. This done, she was content to take leave of life. On August 25, Margaret, “formerly in England married” and now in France a widow, with only one painting (not of her father’s work) on the wall above her bed to represent the arms of England, the queen of sorrows and enmities who had shown so much of the heroic in her will to fight, passed quickly away.

T
HE reign of Edward IV was a short and not in any sense a glorious one. He seemed to have expended all his great energies in the struggle to obtain the crown and then to have settled down into indolence. He led one expedition into France, which came to nothing, largely through the apathy of his ally, the Duke of Burgundy. He then changed sides and allied himself with Louis XI of France, which proved to be a great mistake. Louis kept none of his promises except the payment of a yearly pension to Edward. The English king enlarged the chapel at Windsor by erecting an altar to the memory of a holy man from the north, one Father John Shorne, whose most spectacular exploit was immortalized by three lines printed on the wall:

The king raised funds by a system of benevolences, each person of property being asked to contribute voluntarily to the royal purse. He was so popular, particularly with the ladies, that most of the payments were made willingly enough. One rich widow, who had been asked for twenty pounds (she must have been very rich indeed), doubled the amount on being kissed by the king. This popularity involved him in a sharp exchange of views with Isabella of Castile. It had been thought he might marry the fair Isabella, and negotiations had been under way before Mistress Woodville fluttered her eyelashes to such good effect. The Spanish queen, quite obviously, was both disappointed and mortified.
She wrote a tart letter to the Spanish ambassador about Edward’s preference for “a widow-woman of England.”

The wives of London, to say nothing of the unattached generally, could not resist his gift for conveying a hint of a secret liking by a mere glint in his eye, by the casual touch of an arm or shoulder in passing, by the intimacy with which he addressed them. Jane Shore, the wife of a goldsmith, became his mistress quite openly, but even this evidence of royal preference does not seem to have diminished the infatuation of the others.

Queen Elizabeth bore the king ten children, only three of whom appear permanently in history—a daughter Anne and two handsome sons. The royal couple seemed to be happy enough, in spite of the king’s flagrant philandering. The queen was content to live in high state and to be more demanding of outward respect than any daughter of a hundred kings. She dined alone in a stately chamber, with a lady of highest rank sitting under the table at her knee, and her own mother, the duchess Jaquetta, standing behind her to hand the fine lace serviettes. Elizabeth’s chief concern still seemed to be the advancement of her sisters and brothers. The Woodvilles became the most cordially hated family in the kingdom. She even strove to marry her favorite brother to the daughter of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, who succeeded her father. But Mary of Burgundy would not consider a match which she considered demeaning.

The one incident of Edward’s short reign which stays in the memories of men was the execution of his brother, George of Clarence, and the manner thereof.

Three sons of Richard of York had survived the wars: Edward IV, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The role of George had been an inglorious one, a combination of treachery and self-seeking. In physique and appearance he was a reduced reflection of his massive and debonair brother, the king, not as tall, not as strong, not as handsome. The resemblance went no further. Clarence had none of Edward’s ability. He was envious and conceited, and full of the belief that so many younger sons in royal families have held, a firm conviction, in fact, that he was capable of making as good a king as his older brother. A born intriguer, he was also a man of furious temper.
Finally he was capable of the basest treachery as he had shown in several crises of the war.

Although they continued to feel some affection for this weak and unstable brother, it is certain that neither Edward nor Richard could dismiss from their minds his joining with Warwick to oust the former from his hard-earned throne. The second turning of his coat, to line up on the Yorkist side for the final stages of the war, had served as additional proof of his lack of honor and conscience. Before the last battle at Tewkesbury, there had been rumors afloat that he was ready to make a third shift and appear again with a Red Rose in his helmet. Everything he did in the last days of the fighting was under the close scrutiny of his brothers.

Even with peace established and the Lancastrian leaders dead or out of the way, Clarence continued in his favorite role of troublemaker. He was bitterly against the queen and the Woodville family. In this he was on the right side of the fence, but his feeling against them could be attributed largely to personal interests. It irked his proud spirit to see the brothers of the queen holding national posts which he believed should belong to him. His acquisitiveness led him to quarrel bitterly with his younger brother, Richard, over the division of the Warwick lands, and this was doubly unwise, for he needed friends to stand by him and Richard had always been the stoutest in his defense.

The death of his wife Isabel, the daughter of the Kingmaker, was a blow which caused him seemingly to lose his head. He had loved her very much and was certain that she had been poisoned, an explanation continually accepted in those days when the nature of disease was so little understood. One of his wife’s attendants was the widow of Roger Twynyho, whose name was Ankarette. This unfortunate woman was accused of serving her mistress a drink of ale mixed with a “venymous” poison. Clarence did not wait for any adequate investigation to be made but had her arrested without a warrant. The prisoner was taken to her native county of Warwick and put on trial. Word of the headlong course taken by the king’s brother reached Westminster and a writ of certiorari was issued to stay proceedings. It did not reach Warwick in time. The woman had been convicted at one hasty sitting, with Clarence in court, and executed immediately.

One victim was not enough to satisfy the rage of the bereaved Clarence. One John Thursby was charged with poisoning the infant son of the duke. After a trial as hasty and unconstitutional as the first, he was convicted and hanged.

A wave of indignation swept over the country, for a fair trial was the one right to which Englishmen clung above all others. The duke’s
enemies at court were not content to let the matter rest without action. They adopted much the same method by extracting a confession by torture from a man named Stacy, who was supposed to be a dealer in black magic, that a friend of Clarence, Thomas Burdet, had been using incantations and other devices to cause the king’s death. Stacy and Burdet were hanged together at Tyburn, protesting their innocence to the end.

The victims in this unsavory chapter seem to have been innocent bystanders of low degree who were unfortunate enough to stand within reach, but Edward may have believed that Clarence had set Stacy and Burdet to the task of encompassing his death. Certainly he was now convinced that his brother should no longer be allowed to display his lack of scruples and discipline. Clarence was summoned to appear before the king in London.

It has already been explained that Clarence had advanced himself as a candidate for the hand of Mary of Burgundy, although so newly a widower himself. This was going directly contrary to royal policy. Edward was now determined to maintain a firm alliance with France and he was furious when Clarence blundered into things, to afford Louis of France an excuse to delay in carrying out the obligations he was committed to by his treaty with England. It no longer needed the whispering of the Woodvilles in the royal ear to convince Edward that George of Clarence would be a troublemaker as long as he lived.