Wars of the Roses (55 page)

Queen Margaret was at this time trying to interest the Duke of Brittany in supporting the Lancastrian cause. Pembroke persuaded him to give ships and men for an invasion of Wales, and was allowed to gather his fleet at St Malo, whence he sailed in March, under the command of Alain de la Motte, Vice-Admiral of Brittany. But news of the suppression of the Lancastrian risings in England made Pembroke turn back, and the projected invasion of Wales never took place.

Nevertheless, information wrung out of captured Lancastrian agents convinced the government that something important was afoot. On 1 April the renowned Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth, ignoring his pardon from King Edward, rode to Bamburgh and offered Henry VI his sword. Despite the setbacks he had received in recent weeks, Henry was in an optimistic mood, believing that his restoration was imminent.

Warwick had advised King Edward that the only way to establish order in the north was to convert the truce with the Scots into a permanent peace. The Scots were willing to parley, and in April the King sent Montague north to escort their envoys to York. But Somerset, Roos, Hungerford, Humphrey Neville, Sir Ralph Grey and Sir Ralph Percy set a trap for him, concealing eight men with spears and bows in a wood near Newcastle to prevent him from reaching the envoys at Norham. Montague had been warned and neatly avoided the ambush, pressing on only to find Somerset and his companions with 500 men-at-arms confronting him on Hedgeley
Moor between Morpeth and Wooler on 25 April. A brief but fierce battle took place. Roos and Hungerford, realising that their side was losing, withdrew from the mêlée, but Sir Ralph Percy fought on to the end, when he was mortally wounded and died in the field alongside most of his men. His death was a serious blow to the Lancastrian cause: many north countrymen had supported it out of loyalty to him.

The battle ended with Montague scattering Somerset’s army. Afterwards, he rode on to Norham, collected the Scottish envoys and escorted them to York, where a fifteen-year truce was agreed upon. Somerset and his remaining companions had meanwhile rejoined Henry VI in Tynedale, where they sat fast and planned their next strategy.

E
dward IV had other preoccupations at this time. He had fallen in love with a most unlikely – and unsuitable – partner. Elizabeth Wydville, the eldest daughter of Earl Rivers, was twenty-seven; she was four years Edward’s senior and a widow. Her husband, Sir John Grey of Groby, had been killed fighting for the Lancastrians at St Albans, leaving her with two small sons, Thomas and Richard. The elder boy had inherited the manor of Bradgate in Leicestershire from his father, and there Elizabeth had been living.

Elizabeth had once been one of Queen Margaret’s ladies-in-waiting, which firmly placed her in the wrong camp to start with. She was of medium height, with a good figure, and she was beautiful, having long gilt-blonde hair and an alluring smile. Edward was oblivious to the fact that she was also calculating, ambitious, devious, greedy, ruthless and arrogant.

By 1464, his subjects were concerned that he had been ‘so long without any wife, and were afeared that he had not been chaste in his living’, according to ‘Gregory’. He had not been chaste, but this was one woman who was not prepared to fall into bed with him and then be discarded. Whatever ruses he employed, she foiled them all and held out for marriage. Yet she was a commoner, and no king of England had married a common subject since before 1066.

Before long, Edward became obsessed with Elizabeth’s cool beauty. Many lurid tales were told of his courtship, even one that, as he tried to rape her, she seized a dagger and made as if to kill herself, crying that she knew herself unworthy to be a queen but valued her honour more than her life. ‘Now take heed what love may do,’ wrote ‘Gregory’, ‘for love will not cast no fault nor peril in nothing.’ Edward’s proposal of marriage was a triumph for the ambitious Elizabeth, for love rarely figured in the unions of kings. Mancini
observed that in his choice of wife the King was ‘governed by lust’. His decision to marry this commoner from a Lancastrian family was an impulsive one and was unlikely to have resulted from a plan to build up a new faction at court to counterbalance the power of the Nevilles. That came later.

The Wydvilles were an old Northamptonshire family, said to be descended from a Norman called William de Wydville, and Elizabeth’s father and grandfather had been loyal servants of successive Lancastrian kings. Lord Rivers had started his career as a country squire, but had improved his social standing and caused a tremendous scandal by marrying Bedford’s widow, Jacquetta of Luxembourg. After their marriage they became known as the handsomest couple in England and produced fourteen children. In the reign of Henry VI Rivers had allied himself with Suffolk and the Beauforts, and he also had connections with the influential Bourchier and Ferrers families. The family seat was at Grafton in Northamptonshire.

Rivers and his eldest son Anthony were cultivated men of many talents and were respected abroad as knights of valour, Anthony especially excelling as a jouster. Mancini describes Anthony as ‘a kind, serious and just man. Whatever his prosperity he injured nobody, though benefiting many.’ Pious and even ascetic, he loved learning, and his treatise
The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
was the first book to be printed by William Caxton.

For all this, Elizabeth was not a suitable bride for a king whose marriage was a matter of national importance, and in choosing her Edward IV showed appalling political judgement and irresponsibility. By marrying her he gained no financial or political advantage, and threw away the chance of making an advantageous foreign alliance. That he was aware of the unsuitability of the match is proved by the fact that he arranged for his wedding to take place in the strictest secrecy.

At the end of April 1464 the King was riding north to deal with the Lancastrian rebels. On the way he stopped at Stony Stratford, near Northampton, where he ordered the sheriffs of sixteen counties to have all men between sixteen and sixty ‘defensibly arrayed’ and ready to join him at a moment’s notice. Then, before dawn on 1 May, he rode secretly to Grafton, pretending he was going hunting. There, early in the morning, he was married to Elizabeth Wydville in a small chapel called the Hermitage, tucked away in the nearby woods. Recent excavations there have revealed tiles bearing white roses and the heraldic shield of the Wydvilles. The only witnesses were the unknown priest, Elizabeth’s mother, the Duchess of
Bedford, two gentlemen, and a young man who helped the priest to sing. After the ceremony Edward and his bride went to bed to consummate their marriage, but then he had to return to Stony Stratford. That night he came back again, and his new wife was secretly smuggled into his bedchamber by her mother. He stayed for four days, ostensibly receiving routine hospitality from Lord Rivers and the Duchess, although at night, again with Jacquetta’s connivance, Elizabeth came to his bed. Before long, this idyll had to end, and by 10 May Edward had ridden to meet his forces at Leicester.

In the three weeks since his defeat at Hedgeley Moor, Somerset had regrouped his army and recruited more men in the north. He then marched south, determined to restore Henry VI, who was then staying at Bywell Castle. But Montague, who was marching to meet this new threat, had at least twice and possibly as many as eight times more men – Warkworth claims he had 10,000, although modern historians estimate perhaps 4000 to the Lancastrians’ 500 – and was ably supported by Lords Greystoke and Willoughby.

The two armies came face to face on 15 May at Hexham, south of the River Tyne. Somerset’s men encamped in a large meadow enclosed on three sides by a river and steep, wooded hillsides. The Duke believed this to be a good defensive position, but in fact it was to prove a deadly bottleneck, as Montague’s men, coming upon them suddenly, blocked the only exit and charged headlong into the meadow. Somerset’s army panicked at the sight, and fell into disarray. Many scrambled up the hillsides and fled into the woods; they later had no choice but to surrender. Those who stood their ground and stayed to confront the enemy were cut down mercilessly or taken prisoner. Somerset himself was captured, and his army annihilated, thus effectively crushing Lancastrian resistance in the north for good.

The Yorkists spent the next few days hunting down the Lancastrian lords who had fled the field. Immediately after the battle, in accordance with the King’s wishes, Montague ordered the execution of Somerset and other captured peers. The Duke was beheaded and his remains interred in Hexham Abbey. He had never married, and left only a bastard son, Charles Somerset, who became the ancestor of the dukes of Beaufort. Somerset’s brother, 25-year-old Edmund Beaufort, styled himself Duke of Somerset after the Duke’s death, but was not formally confirmed in the title and spent the next few years in Burgundy, fighting as a mercenary for Duke Philip.

On 17 May Roos, Hungerford and three others were beheaded at Newcastle. The next day Montague rode south to Middleham Castle, where he ordered the executions of Sir Philip Wentworth and three Lancastrian squires. Sir Thomas Finderne and Sir Edmund Fish met the same fate in York, while others captured at Hexham were tried and convicted of treason in a court presided over by the Constable of England, the sadistic John Tiptoft. All were put to death, and Sir William Tailboys followed them to the scaffold a few weeks later.

Henry VI had narrowly avoided being captured by the Yorkists after Hexham. Enemy soldiers were already on their way to Bywell Castle when a messenger brought news of the Lancastrian defeat, and the King made such a precipitate departure that he left behind his helmet, surmounted with a crown, his sword, his cap of estate, armour and other valuables. One chronicler observed with irony that ‘King Henry was the best horseman of the day, for he fled so fast that no one could overtake him.’

Thereafter he remained a fugitive for over a year, hiding in safe houses in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Lake District. It is impossible to make a chronology of his movements, for few are known – unlike his wife’s, his adventures are poorly documented. His only companion was his chamberlain, Sir Richard Tunstall. At one time, they disguised themselves as monks and stayed in a monastery in Yorkshire, and they are also said to have hidden at Bolton Hall near Sawley in the West Riding, where a well is named after them, and it is claimed Henry left behind a boot, a glove and a spoon, which are now in the Liverpool Museum; however, since none of these predates the sixteenth century, the tale of his lodging there may be spurious.

In gratitude for his services, Edward gave Montague the earldom of Northumberland and granted him most of the ancestral lands of the Percies. Alnwick Castle, however, was still occupied by the Lancastrians, but on 23 June Warwick appeared before it with an army and demanded its surrender. The garrison agreed, on condition their lives were spared, and Alnwick fell to the Nevilles.

The capitulation of Dunstanburgh and Norham followed in late May, then there remained only Bamburgh, in which Sir Ralph Grey, Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth and others had barricaded themselves after Hexham. Warwick’s army arrived there on 25 May and sent Chester Herald to proclaim a free pardon for the garrison if it surrendered. Grey was exempt from this, however, because he had turned his coat too often. King Edward did not want the castle damaged by artillery, and Warwick warned Grey that every shot
fired by his great iron guns, ‘Newcastle’ and ‘London’, that caused such damage, would be paid for by the head of one of the defenders. Grey still refused to open the gates, so Warwick resorted to bombarding the castle with his own guns. Great chunks of masonry crashed into the sea below, while shot from a brass cannon called ‘Dijon’ demolished Grey’s room and he was knocked unconscious by falling stonework and left by his men for dead. Very soon the walls were breached and the victorious Yorkists surged in and occupied the castle. Neville and the garrison were allowed to go free, but Grey, in a daze, was taken prisoner and brought south to stand trial before the notorious Tiptoft, who had him beheaded.

The fall of Bamburgh deprived the Lancastrians of their last power base in the north. There now remained just one bastion of enemy resistance and that was Harlech Castle in Wales, which had been providing safe asylum for Lancastrian refugees since 1461. ‘This castle is so strong that men said that it was impossible to get it,’ wrote ‘Gregory’. In the autumn of 1464 Edward IV appointed Lord Herbert constable of Harlech Castle, charging him to take it for the Yorkists and allocating him funds of £2000 for the purpose. Herbert began a prolonged siege, but still the enemy remained unharmed behind Harlech’s forbidding walls, confident that Pembroke would come to their relief. This part of north-west Wales had remained largely Lancastrian in sympathy, and Pembroke was a local hero. In their songs the bards anticipated his return, when he would restore Henry VI and trounce the Yorkists. In fact, Pembroke was in the north of England and would soon go abroad to canvass the support of the princes of Europe. Nevertheless, Herbert was going to have a long wait.

The cost of suppressing Lancastrian resistance had been exorbitantly high and Edward’s subjects were deeply resentful of the heavy taxation he had imposed upon them, and unhappy when he debased the coinage, believing it would cause ‘great harm to the common people’. The promised golden age had still to arrive.

For almost a year now Warwick had been negotiating with Louis XI for the marriage of King Edward to Bona of Savoy. Warwick believed that a firm alliance between England and France, sealed by a royal marriage, was the only way to prevent the slippery King of France from a future show of friendship towards the Lancastrians, while Louis, for his part, wanted to consolidate the truce of St Omer with such an alliance. Warwick was due to go to St Omer in October for another peace conference, and hoped to conclude the negotiations then.