Wars of the Roses (20 page)

Suffolk later claimed that Bishop Moleyns urged Henry to agree to the French demands, but the Bishop declared on his deathbed that Suffolk himself had been the one to persuade the King. The extent of Suffolk’s involvement in the matter is now never likely to be established, but ultimately, of course, the responsibility for the decision was Henry’s. There is no doubt that he and his Council were conscious of just how aghast the people of England would be when they learned that their king had blithely ceded the hard-won counties of Maine and Anjou back to the French. And it was because of this awareness that, in conveying their acceptance of the terms,
Henry and his councillors insisted that the agreement be kept a secret until the matter was a
fait accompli
, which would not be for some time to come. It was hoped that by then the English would be able to see the benefits of an alliance with France. Above all, Gloucester must not know of the agreement.

Suffolk was thus empowered to agree to the cession of Maine and Anjou in return for the English being allowed to retain Aquitaine, Normandy and all the other territories conquered by Henry V. At the same time Henry VI agreed to waive Margaret’s dowry and undertook to pay for the wedding out of his own privy purse. Already, anticipating a happy outcome to negotiations, he was making strenuous efforts to raise money for this purpose. Meanwhile, at Tours, Suffolk was arranging a two-year truce; the demands of King Charles were such that a peace treaty was not possible at this stage. The marriage, however, was to be a steppingstone to such a treaty, or so it was hoped.

Throughout the negotiations, Margaret was at the castle of Angers with her mother. In early May both ladies travelled to Tours where they were lodged with King René in the abbey of Beaumont-les-Tours. Here on 4 May, Suffolk visited them to pay his respects to his future queen, and apparently he was much impressed with her beauty and her bearing. On the 22nd the Treaty of Tours was signed, providing for the marriage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou and including a secret clause committing the English to the surrender of Maine and Anjou. René had at the last minute appealed to the clergy of Anjou, who granted a tenth and a half of their revenues to provide the bride with a trousseau and pay for the betrothal celebrations.

Two days later Margaret and Henry VI were formally betrothed at Tours. The occasion was celebrated with magnificent festivities at court, with King Charles and King René leading the nobility of France in procession through the city. The papal legate, Piero da Monte, Bishop of Brescia, officiated at the ceremony and Suffolk stood proxy for King Henry. Afterwards a banquet was held at which Margaret was accorded all the honours due to a queen of England.

Back in England, on the 27th, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, died unexpectedly at Wimborne in Dorset, and was buried in the nearby Minster. There were rumours that, unable to come to terms with his humiliating failure in France, the Duke had taken his own life. He left no son, but an infant daughter, Margaret Beaufort, born on 31 May 1443, through whom the Tudor sovereigns would ultimately inherit their claim to the throne of England. Margaret became
a ward of Suffolk, who later brought her to court and made plans to marry her to his son, John de la Pole.

Somerset was succeeded, not as duke but as earl, by his brother Edmund Beaufort. Now aged about thirty-seven, Edmund had been created Earl of Dorset in 1442 and Marquess in 1443. His meteoric rise was due in no small part to the efforts of his uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, who meant to ensure that his policies and family ambitions would survive his own death. As with his brother, Edmund was deferred to as a prince of the blood royal, and as such he rapidly became very influential at court, where he stood in high favour with the King. In the years to come, the new Earl of Somerset would play a central role that reflected the dynastic and political importance of the Beauforts in the history of the fifteenth century.

The death of Somerset also brought his ally Suffolk to greater prominence. Suffolk had enjoyed the confidence of Henry VI for more than a decade, and during those years he had grown rich and powerful, having created a widespread network of support within the royal household and the country at large by ensuring that his supporters were preferred to influential positions, both in local and central government. His influence over the royal household was so great that in 1445 he was able to exert it in favour of the appointment of his ally, Adam Moleyns, to the see of Chichester. Moleyns was not the only bishop who owed his mitre to Suffolk.

The main beneficiary of Suffolk’s influence with King and Council was Suffolk himself. By 1444 he was the King’s chief political adviser. He genuinely supported the peace policy, but this, and his obvious self-interest and political inconsistencies, had made the commons loathe him and refer to him as ‘Jackanapes’. The Burgundian chronicler Georges Chastellain describes Suffolk as a second king. Certainly he was in control of the King’s prerogative of patronage. He was jealous of his power and suspicious of his fellow magnates, and was prone to make accusations against his political rivals without first obtaining proof of their alleged misdeeds. He may well have supported Beaufort in poisoning the King’s mind against Gloucester by insinuating that Gloucester’s ambitions were dangerous.

Suffolk’s had not been the only star to rise. By the mid-1440s certain noble families such as the Nevilles and their rivals the Percies had expanded their influence and grown powerful, as had those families who were related to the King – the Beauforts, the Staffords and the Hollands. Henry VI, whose immediate family consisted of his uncles Gloucester and the Cardinal and his Tudor half-brothers, relied on the extended Lancastrian family to bolster his throne, and
to its members he assigned the chief posts at court and in his household.

In the 1440s Henry showed his favour to his kinsmen by creating dukedoms for them: the Beauforts became dukes of Somerset, the Staffords dukes of Buckingham, and the Hollands dukes of Exeter. With only a very few exceptions dukedoms had hitherto been reserved for immediate members of the royal house, but there was ample and worrying evidence that these new dukes now regarded themselves as royal princes.

On 27 June 1444 Suffolk returned to London, where he was received with great rejoicing. The Treaty of Tours and the truce were laid before Parliament for ratification; Gloucester’s party made loud protests about both, but Duke Humphrey himself voiced no criticism, and even made a speech in Parliament thanking Suffolk for arranging them, in the belief that both truce and marriage had been negotiated on terms advantageous to England and without making any substantial concessions. Henry VI rewarded Suffolk by raising him to the rank of marquess.

It was some time before arrangements were made to escort Margaret to England. There was an exchange of cordial letters between the sovereigns of England and France, and Charles VII prepared a safe-conduct for Margaret to carry on her journey. On 7 November, Suffolk again crossed to France, with an embassy as splendid as the one he had led before, and accompanied by the earls of Shrewsbury and Salisbury, and also by his wife, Alice Chaucer, who was to act as principal lady-in-waiting to the Queen on the journey home. After arriving in France, Suffolk travelled to Nancy, arriving there in January.

Margaret had probably spent the intervening months at the French court, which in February moved to Nancy for her proxy wedding. In March, Charles VII and King René arrived, fresh from successfully suppressing a Burgundian-inspired revolt by the citizens of Metz, and shortly afterwards the proxy ceremony took place. Again Suffolk represented his sovereign, and Louis de Herancourt, Bishop of Toul, officiated. The bride wore a gown of white satin embroidered with silver and gold marguerites, her emblem, and marguerites appeared everywhere, on clothing, hangings, canopies and banners.

After the wedding a ceremonial banquet was held, attended by the King and Queen of France, the Dauphin, King René, and a host of French lords. The feasting continued for a week, accompanied by miracle plays and eight days of tournaments, hosted by René and presided over by Charles VII’s mistress, Agnes Sorel, as ‘the Lady of
Beauty’. All combatants wore garlands or devices of marguerites in honour of the bride, and her champion Pierre de Brézé broke a lance with Suffolk.

At the end of the festivities, it was time for Margaret to leave for England. Two miles from Nancy Charles VII formally took leave of her, saying he feared he had done nothing for her by placing her on one of the greatest thrones of Europe for it was scarcely worthy of her. Then he commended her to God, and uncle and niece wept bitterly on parting. At Bar-le-Duc Margaret said farewell to her parents; it was an emotional leave-taking, and René was so overcome that he could not speak.

On 15 March, Margaret entered Paris where, on the following day, she received a stately welcome at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Later that day her brother, John of Calabria, formally delivered her into the safe-keeping of Suffolk. The Duke of York, who had come with an escort of six hundred archers, came forward to bid her welcome on behalf of King Henry, and presented her with a palfrey caparisoned with crimson and gold velvet sewn with golden roses, a gift from her husband. Cannon saluted and church bells pealed as the Queen’s cavalcade rode through Paris.

On the 17th the Duke of Orléans rode with the English to Poissy on the Norman border, whence York escorted them by river to Rouen, the English capital in France. The next day, Margaret arrived in Pontoise, and was York’s guest at two state dinners; relations between the thirty-three-year-old Duke and the fifteen-year-old Queen were noticeably cordial, and there was no hint of the deadly enmity that would one day divide them.

Parliament had voted £5,129.25.5d. (£5,129.12) against the cost of bringing the new queen home to England, and the Council had dispatched an escort of fifty-six ships. Not surprisingly, expenditure exceeded the available funds by about £500. On 3 April, Margaret’s party came to Harfleur, whence they travelled along the coast to Cherbourg, where the English fleet awaited them.

Prior to their departure, Suffolk did his best to prepare Margaret for her future role and advise what was expected of her. He was concerned, however, about her poverty-stricken state. Henry VI might have been content to take a queen without a dowry, but there had been complaints in England that for all René’s magnificent titles he had ‘too short a purse to send his daughter honourably to the King, her spouse’. Gloucester had openly deplored the lack of dowry and had accused Parliament of having ‘bought a queen not worth ten marks’.

René had provided his daughter with a trousseau of sorts. A furrier
had supplied 120 pelts of white fur edging for robes, and a merchant of Angers had provided eleven ells of violet and crimson cloth of gold at thirty crowns per ell, plus a thousand small pieces of fur. But that was about all. Before she left France, Margaret had been obliged to pawn some silver plate to the Duchess of Somerset so that she could pay her sailors’ wages; she then had to buy cheap, second-hand plate at Rouen with which to replace it. But at least she was well provided with attendants, for her household and escort comprised five barons and baronesses, each paid a daily rate of 4s.6d. (22½p), seventeen knights at 2s.6d. (2½p) each per day, sixty-five squires at 18d. (7½P) and 174 valets at 6d. (2½P) each, as well as 1200 other persons at least, including yeomen and sumptermen.

The crossing to England was terrible: the sea was turbulent and the rolling of the ship made Margaret ill. On 9 September her ship, the
Cock John
, was beached at Porchester, Hampshire, but no reception awaited the Queen’s arrival because she had not been expected. The mayor and other local worthies, apprised of her coming, hastened to lay carpets on the beach, while large crowds gathered to greet her, but Margaret was too sick to walk, and Suffolk was obliged to carry her ashore. Her clothes, according to the assembled dignitaries, looked like rags. The Duke carried her to a nearby cottage, where she fainted, and she was later taken to a convent to recuperate. The next day, however, she was sufficiently restored to be rowed in state to Southampton, where she was saluted by seven Genoese trumpeters from the decks of two galleys. Suffolk was now so concerned at the Queen’s lack of decent apparel that he immediately summoned a London dressmaker, Margaret Chamberlayne, to attend her.

Henry could not wait to see his bride. The Milanese ambassador records that he dressed as a squire,

Their meeting was destined to be further delayed, however, because soon after arriving at Southampton Margaret fell ill again and was taken to another convent to be nursed. Henry wrote to the Lord Chancellor: ‘Our dear and best beloved wife the Queen is yet sick of the labour and indisposition of the sea, by occasion of which the pox been broken out upon her, for which cause we may not in our own person hold the feast of St George in our castle of Windsor.’ Fortunately, Margaret recovered within a few days, and spent her convalescence planning her trousseau with the dressmaker. The King, meanwhile, rewarded the master of the
Cock John
with an annuity of twenty-one marks for life for having ‘conveyed his beloved consort safely to England’.