Wars of the Roses (71 page)

Henry VI’s reign had been one of the most catastrophic in England’s history, yet after his death his reputation grew steadily. Tales of his piety and holy life spread rapidly, and were just as rapidly embellished. Within weeks of his death, pilgrims were hastening from all over the kingdom to pray at his tomb, many from the north of England where Lancastrian sympathies were still strong. It was said in those parts that Henry had died a martyr. Soon he was venerated as a saint, and 155 miracles were said to have taken place at his tomb, most of them cures for the sick. Croyland says that ‘the miracles which God worked in response to the prayers of those devoutly seeking his intercession are witness to his blameless life, the extent of his love for God and the Church, of his patience in adversity and his other outstanding virtues’. People forgot that Henry had failed them in nearly every way that mattered – as king, as warlord, and as the fount of justice – and remembered only his virtuous life and the fact that he had bequeathed to them two enduring monuments to his piety and love of learning – Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge.

In 1484, Richard III, apparently with the aim of making reparation for Henry’s murder, ordered his reburial to the south of the high altar in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Rous says that when the King’s body was exhumed after lying for thirteen years at Chertsey it was found to be virtually incorrupt. The face was skeletal and sweet-smelling – ‘certainly not from spices, since he was buried by his enemies and tormentors’ – a sure sign of sanctity. The body was reverently laid to rest in a vault beneath a plain stone slab near the tomb of Henry’s great adversary, Edward IV. In recognition of the common people’s devotion to ‘Saint’ Henry, King Richard ordered that his armour, robes and other possessions be displayed near the tomb as relics; Stow records that his crimson velvet cap was considered an effective cure for headaches. An iron alms box bearing a gothic ‘H’ was set up for pilgrims, and still remains in place today.

By Tudor times, Henry VI’s saintly reputation had grown immensely, and people forgot that he had been a weak king who was responsible for decades of misrule and the loss of England’s possessions in France. John Blacman’s memoir was written in this climate, and for centuries was accepted as a reliable account of Henry’s life. Only recently has its veracity been called into question. It was in fact written to support Henry VII’s campaign to have his uncle formally canonised; it would have been beneficial to the image of the new dynasty to have a Lancastrian saint among its forbears, but despite strenuous efforts on the part of Henry Tudor, the campaign was unsuccessful. In England, however, up until the
Reformation, people continued to venerate Henry VI. As his cult spread, the room in the Tower in which he had met his end was converted into a shrine, and was also visited by pilgrims. The shrine was dismantled by Henry VIII’s commissioners in the 1530s, but ever since then, each year on the night of 21 May, the governors of Eton College have placed a sheaf of lilies and red roses on the traditional site of Henry’s murder.

Margaret of Anjou did not remain long in the Tower. Elizabeth Wydville pleaded with her husband to mitigate the severity of the former queen’s imprisonment, and Edward IV, who could never resist his wife’s importunings, soon ordered Margaret’s removal to the more congenial surroundings of Windsor Castle, where she remained under house arrest until 8 July 1471, when she moved to Wallingford Castle. This was an act of kindness on Edward’s part, for Wallingford was near Ewelme, the Oxfordshire home of Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk, one of Margaret’s closest friends. Alice was appointed by the King to be her guardian and was paid five marks a week for her expenses.

In 1476, after the Duchess’s death, Margaret was ransomed by Louis XI and returned to France, where she was maintained by her father. After René’s death in 1480, she lived in very reduced circumstances, subsisting on a meagre pension provided by King Louis. She died in great poverty after a short unspecified illness on 25 August 1482 and was buried in Angers Cathedral.

Anne Neville became, in 1472, the wife of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to whom she bore one son, Edward of Middleham, who died in childhood. Two years after Richard became King, Anne herself died, possibly of tuberculosis or cancer, in 1485, at the age of twenty-nine.

George, Duke of Clarence was executed for treason in 1478; he died privately, in the Tower of London, probably – at his own request – by drowning in a butt of Malmsey wine. His wife, Isabel, had died in childbed in 1476.

After learning of Henry VI’s murder, Jasper Tudor fled to Henry Tudor in France, to begin fourteen years of exile. After Henry became King in 1485, Jasper was created Duke of Bedford and married Katherine Wydville, dying in 1495.

Sir John Fortescue was pardoned after he had written a treatise upholding Edward IV’s claim to the throne and abjuring his former writings; he was made a member of Edward’s Council and died around 1477–9. King Edward also pardoned Dr John Morton, the
Earl of Ormonde, Sir Richard Tunstall, young Lord Clifford and Sir Henry Vernon.

From 1471 to 1483 Edward IV ruled England firmly and well, unchallenged by any. In 1473, the birth of another son, Richard, to Elizabeth Wydville made the House of York seem almost invincible. But when Edward died suddenly, in 1483, and his twelve-year-old son Edward V succeeded him, a power struggle erupted between the Duke of Gloucester, whom Edward had designated Protector of England, and the Wydville faction. Gloucester emerged the victor from this, imprisoned the boy king, deposed him, and had himself crowned Richard III, all within three months. He then almost certainly arranged for young Edward and his brother to be murdered in the Tower of London. This made him so unpopular that within two years both he and the House of York had been overthrown by Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII after winning the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

‘Time has his revolutions,’ wrote a seventeenth-century Lord Chief Justice, Sir Ranulph Crew,

1
Lancaster and York

2
The Beauforts

3
The Tudors

4
The Nevilles

5
The Wydvilles

6
The Dukes of Buckingham and Exeter

7
The Bourchiers

8
The Percies and the Cliffords