Wars of the Roses (62 page)

On 14 April the King came from Wells to Exeter to find his quarry were beyond his reach. Baulked of bringing them to justice, Edward marched east along the coast to Southampton, where he commanded Tiptoft to sit in judgement on the men who had been captured in Warwick’s ships. Twenty gentlemen and yeomen were hanged, drawn and quartered, but what appalled the watching crowds was that, after they were dead, on Tiptoft’s orders their corpses were beheaded and the naked torsoes hung up by the legs. Stakes, sharpened at both ends, were forced between their buttocks, the heads being impaled on the protruding ends. Warkworth says that ‘for ever afterwards the Earl of Worcester was greatly hated by [the people] for the irregular and unlawful manner of execution he had inflicted upon his captives’.

Meanwhile, Warwick had appeared before Calais, which was under the command of Lord Wenlock. Twelve hours before Warwick’s arrival, Wenlock had received orders from Edward IV not to allow ‘the great rebel’ to land, and instead of according Warwick the welcome he had expected, fired guns on him. The Earl had always looked upon Wenlock as his most trustworthy lieutenant, and his apparent disaffection was a severe blow.

For a time Warwick’s ship remained at anchor before Calais; then, on 16 April, Isabel went into labour. Despite Warwick’s entreaties,
Wenlock would still not let them land, and even when her pains grew severe and there were obstetrical complications he remained obdurate. Although personally sympathetic to the Duchess’s plight, Wenlock’s loyalty to the King prevented him from disobeying Edward’s orders, though he did contrive to send Warwick two flagons of wine for his daughter and a secret message to say that, if the Earl and his party were to sail around the coast, land in Normandy and then obtain aid from Louis XI, he, Wenlock, and the Calais garrison would support him.

Fortunately for Isabel, her mother was a skilled enough midwife to assist her during a very difficult delivery, but she could not save her baby. The sex of the child is still subject to dispute: it was either an unnamed, stillborn son, or a daughter named Anne who died immediately after birth. The tiny corpse was taken ashore at Calais and buried there, and Warwick then sailed on towards Honfleur, harrying and capturing Breton and Burgundian merchant ships as he went.

Warwick’s timely arrival in France gave Louis the opportunity to put into action the plans he had long been devising. Warwick and Clarence anchored off Honfleur on 1 May, and were formally welcomed by the Admiral of France and the Archbishop of Narbonne, as Louis’s representatives. They had been commanded by the French king to tell Warwick that he would do everything in his power to help him recover England, either by arranging an alliance with the Lancastrians, or by any other means that Warwick might suggest. Either would suit Louis’s purpose of driving a wedge between England and Burgundy, but he wanted the decision to attempt a Lancastrian restoration to be Warwick’s.

Warwick responded, asking for an audience, but before the King would grant one, he insisted that the captured Burgundian ships must be secreted away where they could not cause him any embarrassment. Burgundian spies had soon apprised Duke Charles of their capture, and he warned the French king that he intended to launch an attack on Warwick and Clarence as soon as he could find them, whether it was on land or sea. If Louis aided them, he would be breaking the terms of the Treaty of St Omer.

Louis was still hoping to bring about a reconciliation and alliance between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou that would lead to the restoration of Henry VI to the English throne. He invited both Queen Margaret and Warwick to visit him at Angers, although initially Warwick declined to accept. The Milanese ambassador to France reported: ‘The Earl of Warwick does not want to be here when the Queen arrives, but wishes to allow His Majesty to shape
matters a little with her and move her to agree to an alliance between the Prince, her son, and a daughter of Warwick.’ After some persuasion, however, Warwick agreed to meet Louis, who promised to see him separately and to act as mediator.

On 8 June, Louis received Warwick first, at Amboise on the Loire, Clarence being present at the audience. Warwick knew he was in a desperate situation, and had by now persuaded himself that the only way out was to abandon his plan to put Clarence on the throne and ally himself to the Lancastrians. He therefore indicated that he was willing to link his fortunes with those of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, and was ready to fight for them, while Louis told him he would press Queen Margaret to pardon him and guarantee him a prominent role in the government of England, should their plans come to fruition. Louis could be very persuasive, and Warwick allowed himself to be convinced. The French king promised a fleet of ships, men and money for the recovery of England, if, as soon as victory was his, Warwick would undertake to bind England in a treaty of peace with France and aid Louis in his proposed offensive against Burgundy. Warwick was happy to go along with this, particularly when Louis suggested that the alliance with Margaret be sealed by the marriage of Edward of Lancaster to Anne Neville.

Louis had made it clear to Warwick that he thought Clarence was unreliable and that his own plan to restore Henry VI stood a better chance of success than Warwick’s original scheme to place Clarence on the throne. Clarence was not a fool, and very quickly realised that he was to play no part at all in the French plan save that of supporting Warwick, and that his father-in-law was less interested in making him king than in serving his own interests.

At about this time, Louis wrote to Margaret, proposing that she sign a thirty-year truce between France and the House of Lancaster in return for his promise to help Henry VI recover his kingdom. Margaret readily agreed, and as a compliment to his new allies Louis chose Prince Edward as godfather to the son that Queen Charlotte bore him at the end of the month. Meanwhile, in England, Edward IV was raising men for the defence of the south against a possible invasion by Warwick and Clarence.

Soon after meeting Warwick, Louis received Queen Margaret at Amboise, and wasted no time in coming straight to the point: with his help the Lancastrians had a good chance of overthrowing Edward IV, but this could only be achieved with the assistance of Warwick, and he asked the Queen seriously to consider allying herself with the Earl since he was the only man who could win England for her.

Margaret was shocked, then horrified, then furious. When she
could speak, she produced a whole tirade of arguments as to why such an alliance was impossible. Louis waited until the storm had passed and heard her out patiently, then told her bluntly that her arguments might be valid but, if she was to regain her husband’s throne for him, she should put her personal feelings aside and adopt a pragmatic attitude. If she could not do this, then he could not support her. According to a report in the Harleian MSS, ‘the Queen was right difficult’, saying that ‘King Henry, she and her son had certain friends which they might lose by this mean, and that might do them more harm than the [good] that the Earl might bring. Wherefore she besought the King that it would please him to leave off.’ Warwick, she cried,

Louis persevered, and Fortescue added his own pleas, perceiving that this alliance was the only way of restoring Henry VI. The Milanese ambassador reported that ‘His Majesty has spent and still spends every day in long discussions with the Queen to induce her to make the alliance with Warwick and to let the Prince go with the Earl to the enterprise of England. Up to the present the Queen has shown herself very hard and difficult.’ Eventually, though, she allowed Louis to overrule her objections and consented to grant Warwick an audience, saying she would let him have her final decision after the interview. She would not agree in any case to the Prince accompanying Warwick, despite Louis’s arguments that his presence would inspire the people of England to rise in favour of Lancaster. She feared to expose her son to the risks that such an expedition must necessarily attract, though Louis was relentless in insisting that there was no question but that the boy should go. Again, Margaret said she would defer any decision on the matter until she had seen Warwick.

On 15 July, the court moved to Angers, where the Countess of
Warwick and her daughter Anne were formally presented to Queen Margaret. It cannot have been a comfortable meeting, given Margaret’s hostility towards Warwick. Worse was to follow, for later that day Louis told her that the Earl was ready to agree to a marriage between Anne and Prince Edward. At this, Margaret exploded. ‘What!’ she cried. ‘Will he indeed give his daughter to my son, whom he has so often branded as the offspring of adultery or fraud?’ And she ‘would not in any wise consent thereunto’, alleging she would gain more advantages by marrying Edward to Edward IV’s heiress, Elizabeth of York – through such an alliance, the House of Lancaster would regain the throne on Edward’s death providing he had no son to succeed him. And she produced for Louis to see a letter she had received from England the previous week, offering the hand of the Princess Elizabeth for Prince Edward.

Louis reported all that Margaret had said to Warwick so that he could marshal his arguments, and on the evening of the 22nd the Earl was at last ushered by the King into the frigid presence of the Queen, and abased himself on his knees, ‘addressing her in the most moving words he could devise’, according to Chastellain, ‘begging forgiveness for all the wrongs he had done her, and humbly beseeching her to pardon and restore him to her favour’. The Harleian MSS account reports him conceding ‘that by his conduct King Henry and she were put out of the realm of England’, but excused this by saying he had believed they ‘had enterprised the destruction of him and his friends in body and in goods, which he had never deserved. He told her he had been the means of upsetting King Edward and unsettling his realm’ and promised that he would in future ‘be as much his foe as he had formerly been his friend and maker’. He now offered himself as a true friend and subject of King Henry.

The Queen, however, ‘scarcely vouchsafed him any answer, and kept him on his knees a full quarter of an hour’. Seeing that matters were not going as he had planned, King Louis stepped in and offered personally to guarantee the Earl’s fidelity. Margaret demanded that Warwick publicly withdraw his slanderous remarks concerning the paternity of her son, which he assured her he would do, not only in France, but also in England when he had conquered it for her. At length, after much persuasion, the Queen pardoned Warwick.

Louis then brought in the Earl of Oxford, who received a much warmer reception. Margaret forgave him also, saying that his pardon was easy to purchase, for she knew well that he and his friends had suffered much for King Henry’s quarrels.

The next three days found Louis, Margaret and Warwick busily
negotiating the terms of their alliance. After prolonged discussions, the Queen finally agreed to the marriage of Prince Edward and Anne Neville, although she said she would not allow it to take place until after Warwick had proved his loyalty by taking the field against King Edward, and it should not be consummated until England was mostly conquered. The Prince must therefore remain in France while the Earl invaded England.

Louis promised for his part to provide money, soldiers and a fleet of ships. All the parties were aware that Henry VI would never be fit to rule England again, so Margaret agreed that, when he ‘took joyful possession of England again’, Warwick would be named Regent and Governor of England. Should Henry die before the Prince attained his majority, Warwick would become his guardian. And if the Prince should die without heirs, ‘then the kingdom should pass to Clarence and his heirs for ever more’.

It was also agreed that Exeter, Somerset ‘and all the knights, squires and others who had been exiled or dishonoured in the cause of King Henry, should come back to England and retake possession of their property’. Finally, England would join France in an offensive alliance against Burgundy.

The accord between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou astonished observers in Europe. Commines observed that Margaret had consistently condemned Warwick as the man who had worked to dethrone and imprison Henry VI, and was now marrying her only son to ‘the daughter of him that did it!’

On 25 July 1470 Prince Edward was betrothed to Anne Neville in Angers Cathedral. ‘Today,’ observed King Louis, ‘we have made the marriage of the Queen of England and the Earl of Warwick.’ The ceremony took place in the presence of the King of France, King René, Queen Margaret, the Duchess of Clarence and the Earl and Countess of Warwick.

Nothing is recorded of the feelings of the young couple concerned. The chronicler John Rous describes Anne Neville as ‘seemly, amiable and beauteous, right virtuous and full gracious’, but these were the routine courtly compliments to be expected of one who had great respect for her family. Queen Margaret had no doubt been the bogey of Anne’s childhood, and yet now she was being made to do all reverence to this formidable woman who was her future mother-in-law, and who had made it quite clear that she did not want Anne for her son but had only agreed to their marriage as a means of restoring the House of Lancaster to the English throne. Nor was the sixteen-year-old Prince the most prepossessing of bridegrooms, having a notorious penchant for war and violence, and carrying on his
shoulders all the grudges of his mother and her desire for revenge on their enemies.

They could not as yet be married because they were cousins in the fourth degree, both being great-grandchildren of John of Gaunt, and a dispensation from the Pope had to be applied for. It was vital that the Pope be made to see the urgency of the matter, but to speed up the process took money. Louis had therefore procured a loan from a merchant in Tours to pay whatever bribes were needful, then dispatched his envoys to the Vatican. After the betrothal ceremony Anne was committed to the safe-keeping of Queen Margaret.