The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain (23 page)

1455-71

In March 1455 summonses went out for a parliament at Westminster to which the Duke of York and his allies were not invited. They responded by marching from the north at the head of an army to claim their right, and at St Albans in Hertfordshire on 22 May 1455 they met the king’s force. The resulting First Battle of St Albans was little more than a skirmish, but it was important for two reasons: the Duke of Somerset was killed, and it was the first battle of the Wars of the Roses.

The events of the following years were complex. The civil war involved not only rivalry for the crown between the supporters of the white rose and the red, but also private feuds between noble families and clashes of territorial ambition, often involving the participants changing sides in order to secure personal advantage. There were three main phases to the war.

For most of the period from May 1455 to December 1460 the government was hampered by rivalries that did not break out into open hostility but that prevented the reforms that were necessary. York remained the major influence in the council, while Margaret, with the king and the infant prince in tow, spent much of the time on royal estates in the Midlands, where she felt secure. When parliament was summoned to meet at Coventry the Yorkists usually absented themselves. When it met in London Lancastrian attendance was light. Henry drifted in and out of sanity. York assumed the protectorate
again for three months from November 1455, but with Margaret dominating her husband his position was meaningless. The political and dynastic position was a mess, and neither side was ready to take the drastic action necessary to create stable and effective government. In late 1459 a parliament at Coventry laid charges against the Yorkist leadership, and this precipitated another slide into armed conflict. Henry had, by now, become nothing but a cipher, and his mental disintegration in 1460 was permanent. In his name Margaret instituted what amounted to a reign of terror, using spies, informers and inquisitorial methods to force the obedience of a populace who had no respect for their sovereign. In a battle at Northampton on 10 July 1460 the king was captured and taken to London, and on 30 October he accepted a constitutional settlement decreeing that, after his death, the Duke of York would inherit the crown. York’s triumph was short-lived, however: on 30 December he was killed at the Battle of Wakefield, and his army scattered.

The second phase lasted from February 1461 to April 1464. Margaret marched south, defeated a Yorkist army at the Second Battle of St Albans and rescued her husband from the Yorkist camp. She expected then to take possession of London, but the citizens refused to open the gates to her, fearing looting by her ill-disciplined troops. Meanwhile, York’s son, Edward, Earl of March, had defeated Margaret’s allies in Wales and the border at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross. The queen headed north to gather her supporters there and to do a deal with the Scots. Edward marched into the capital, which welcomed him. He declared Henry unfit
to rule and had himself crowned as Edward IV. He then set out to encounter the Lancastrian army, and his decisive victory at Towton, Yorkshire, confirmed his hold on the crown. Margaret and her family took refuge with their Scottish allies.

During the third phase, which lasted from May 1464 to March 1470, Margaret, who was determined to regain the throne for her husband and her son, negotiated with the Scottish regent, Mary of Gueldres, and her French relative, Louis XI. She was prepared to barter away Berwick and Calais. However, Edward outmanoeuvred her by agreeing truces with both countries, and Henry VI was forced to take refuge in Northumberland. The new regime gradually extended its authority northwards. The Battle of Hexham in May 1464, at which several Lancastrian lords and knights were slain, was a major disaster for Henry’s cause. He was captured in July 1465 and taken to the Tower of London, where he was held in comfortable captivity.

That would probably have been an end of the war had there not now been a rift within the Yorkist ranks. Edward had relied heavily on the support of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, a wealthy, energetic and charismatic nobleman who enjoyed considerable influence, but, once ensconced, the new king was determined not to be dominated by the earl.

According to Raphael Holinshed, the 16th-century chronicler whom Shakespeare took as his main authority for the English history plays, during one of the battles when things were going badly for the Yorkists, Warwick killed his own horse and swore to King Edward: ‘Let him flee that will, for surely I will tarry with him that will tarry with me.’ This
embodies the heroic, chivalric image of Richard Neville that colours one interpretation of his life. Another sees in his scheming and changing of sides proof that the earl was nothing but a self-serving, over-ambitious opportunist. Whatever view we take, we can see Warwick as the embodiment of the chaos and contradictions of the age.

By the time he was 21 years old Richard Neville (1428–71) had become, by inheritance and marriage, England’s premier earl and the richest. As such he was destined to play an important role in the dynastic conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York. He supported Richard of York and proved himself bold and courageous in battle. He was appointed captain of Calais in 1455, which gave him command of England’s only standing army, and he gained a reputation on both sides of the Channel as a charismatic and ostentatious military leader. With troops from the Calais garrison he made a valuable contribution to Yorkist success in the early stages of the war. Edward IV owed his throne to Warwick and amply rewarded his henchman with grants of land confiscated from dead or disgraced Lancastrians. He was close to the king and involved in major policy decisions.

The two men disagreed over foreign policy and over Edward’s choice of bride. While Warwick was negotiating a French marriage for the king, Edward secretly married the Lancastrian widow, Elizabeth Woodville, and began to bestow honours on members of her family. Warwick plotted with Edward’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence, defeated the king at the Battle of Edgecote Moor (26 July 1469) and took him prisoner. But by now the country was in such
turmoil that the imposition of a third king was out of the question. Warwick transferred his allegiance to the Lancastrians and planned a fresh campaign with Margaret in France. In October 1470, while Edward was busy suppressing a Lancastrian rising in the north, Warwick gained control of London, freed Henry VI and proclaimed his rule to be resumed (this was known as the ‘Readeption’ of Henry VI). Edward fled to Burgundy, where he gained the support of Duke Charles. He landed in Yorkshire in March 1471 at the head of an Anglo-Dutch army and faced Warwick at Barnet in a battle that was decided by confusion caused by heavy fog. Warwick was killed trying to escape (14 April). He died, a victim of his own pride, of Edward’s ingratitude but, above all, of the political morass into which England had sunk.

Margaret and Prince Edward had, meanwhile, landed in the west and were busy rallying support in Wales and Gloucestershire when Edward confronted them at Tewkes-bury (4 May). Here the Lancastrian force was annihilated. Prince Edward was killed, and most of Margaret’s noble supporters either died in battle or were executed immediately afterwards. Ten days later, Henry VI was murdered in the Tower of London to prevent any further outbreaks of Lancastrian support.

EDWARD IV, EDWARD V and RICHARD III 1471–85

After half a century of governmental breakdown, baronial strife and dynastic uncertainty the country needed internal and external peace and a firm hand on the tiller, and Edward IV certainly settled things down for a dozen years. However, following his death at the age of 41 his family managed to tear itself apart, provoke fresh conflicts and pave the way for a challenge from a minor branch of the Lancastrian dynasty, something which had up to that moment seemed inconceivable.

Beyond central politics profound changes were taking place in these years. Commerce – especially the trade in woollen cloth – flourished, and a wealthy capitalist, mercantile class emerged. Renaissance influences from the continent began to affect cultural life and provoke new patterns of thought. But most revolutionary of all was the appearance of cheap books from the new print shops, which brought the world of ideas within the reach of many more people.

1471–8

The death of Henry VI and several of the leading Lancastrian magnates persuaded many of the late king’s supporters to abandon their cause and offer their loyalty to Edward. Margaret of Anjou was kept in confinement in London until 1476, when, as part of a treaty with Louis XI, she was ransomed for 50,000 crowns and allowed to retire to France.
Among the few Lancastrians not reconciled to the regime were John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and the Tudor brothers, Edmund and Jasper, the sons of Owen Tudor resulting from his scandalous marriage to Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois. Henry VI had decreed Edmund’s marriage to the 12-year-old Margaret Beaufort, daughter of his favourite, the Duke of Somerset, who could trace direct descent from John of Gaunt. The only son of this marriage, Henry Tudor, might thus maintain a claim to the crown through the female line. De Vere fled to France, and Jasper Tudor took his nephew (Edmund had died in 1456) to Brittany. After a failed attempt at invasion in 1474, de Vere was taken prisoner and lodged at Hammes Castle near Calais.

Edward now had little to fear from malcontents who could mount a challenge in the name of a rival with a good claim to the crown, but nevertheless, one feature of his diplomacy involved trying to have the Tudors returned to England. Edward still had to cope with the issues that had concerned his predecessors for a century or more: establishing control over the great magnates, recovering lost lands in France, keeping the royal finances on an even keel and preventing parliament from interfering with his choice of councillors. However, the birth of a son, Edward, in 1470, and another, Richard, in 1473, secured the future of the dynasty – or so it seemed.

Edward’s popularity derived both from his restoration of firm government after decades of chaos and also from his own persona. He was a handsome, well-built man and, at 6 feet 3 inches, tall by the standards of the day. He
was also affable, outward-going and cultured. Edward was responsible for the building of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, a fine example of the Perpendicular Gothic that was emerging as an English style quite distinct from that prevailing on the Continent. He was a king who worked hard and played hard, indulging to the full his fleshly appetites. Queen Elizabeth bore him ten children, and he had at least two others by a succession of mistresses. Edward well understood the importance of display. He spent lavishly on furniture, plate, tapestries, jewels, clothes and other adornments, and he revelled in tournaments and other court entertainments. All of which, of course, cost money. One foreign observer described how the king could charm his subjects into parting with their taxes – he referred to it as ‘plucking the feathers from his magpies’ – but taxation was not the only means this intelligent king employed to fill his coffers. Edward turned kingcraft into a business, exploiting all opportunities to raise capital.

Edward faced other problems within his own family. His brothers, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, resented the power of the queen’s Woodville family. The royal brothers also fell out among themselves. Clarence had been forgiven for his involvement in Warwick’s treason, but Edward continued to be wary of him. Clarence also disputed with Gloucester the division of the Lancastrian spoils, and in 1471 this led to an unseemly squabble. Clarence took custody of Warwick’s younger daughter, Anne, in order to appropriate the lion’s share of her father’s vast estates. Richard, for the same reason, wanted to marry Anne.

The issue was decided by the council in March 1472 by a compromise that satisfied neither brother. Edward had not abandoned the hope of regaining England’s continental possessions and, to this end, maintained his alliance with the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany. A plan to invade France in 1473 was aborted, and another in 1475 had to be abandoned due to lack of support from Burgundy. However, the presence of an English army in his kingdom did persuade Louis XI to pay Edward to take it away. By the terms of an agreement reached at Picquigny in August 1475 Edward scooped a pension of £10,000 a year and a down payment of £15,000. Taken together with his other profitable enterprises, this enabled the king to live without parliamentary taxation until 1482.

Trouble between the brothers flared up again in 1477 when, following the death of Clarence’s wife, the king vetoed his ambitious remarriage plans. Matters came to a head in May 1477, when one of Clarence’s retainers was executed for imagining the king’s death by necromancy. The duke took this as a personal affront and had the man’s protestation of innocence read to the council. The king was furious at this questioning of royal justice and had Clarence arrested, although it is more than likely that Woodville antipathy was behind this attempt to remove a vociferous opponent of their supremacy. The following January the Duke of Clarence was tried by a parliament summoned for the purpose. It had been packed with the king’s supporters but, even so, Edward found it difficult to obtain the desired result. Within the confines of the Tower, Clarence was done to death.