Richard The Chird (49 page)

Henry Tudor was well served, by friends and by fortune. While negotiations were going on between Richard and Landois' envoys, John Morton, living in Flanders, got word of what was afoot. He sent Christopher Urswick to warn Henry of his danger. As soon as Henry, who was staying at Vannes with some three hundred followers, heard the news, he dispatched Urswick to the French court to seek permission for the English exiles to take refuge in France. This being readily granted, Henry put into immediate execution the plan he had concocted with his chief supporters. These, headed by Jasper Tudor, left Vannes, ostensibly as an embassy riding to consult Duke Francis, who happened to be staying in a town close to French territory.

SUMMER

When the "embassy" neared the border of Brittany, they suddenly turned south and galloped safely into Anjou. Two days later Henry Tudor rode out of Vannes with only five servants, saying he was going to visit a friend who lived not far off, "and because an huge multitude of English people was left in the town, nobody suspected his voyage." When he had left Vannes well behind him, he turned off into a wood and quickly changed clothes with one of his servants; then he rode hard for the border, frequently altering his route in order to throw off pursuit, and halting only when it was necessary to feed and rest the horses. Scarcely an hour after he had crossed into Anjou, the men Landois had sent in pursuit arrived at the frontier town through which he had passed. The rank and file of the exiles who had been so ruthlessly abandoned fared better than might have been expected. When Duke Francis temporarily recovered his wits, he reprimanded Landois for his action, and supplied the English at Vannes with the means of rejoining their master. By the time the French court removed from the Loire valley to Paris in the fall, Henry Tudor and his band of exiles were in hopeful attendance upon it. 13 *

Whatever disappointment Richard felt at Landois' failure, he did not permit it to affect his diplomacy. When, a few months later, Duke Francis sent an envoy to seek a more permanent agreement, Richard willingly extended the truce to endure until I492. 1 * Allied to Brittany and maintaining a friendly neutrality as regards Maximilian and his rebellious Flemish cities, he was able to strengthen the sinews of English trade and concentrate his naval power against the sporadic challenges of the French.

Richard's greatest diplomatic success during this year lay in inducing the Scots to seek a genuine treaty of peace and amity. Scotland presented the most pathetic spectacle of the European scene — a political landscape as murky and barren as the Hebrides in November: a weak King, perpetually squabbling nobles, paralysis of policy. Scotland was ineluctably sliding towards Flodden Field and John Knox. In the summer of 1483, King James had made conciliatory overtures but permitted hostilities to continue. Both the overtures and the warfare were renewed in I484. 15

But the reverse which Richard's men administered to their northern neighbors this summer, coming atop the defeats Richard had been inflicting upon them for the past three years, finally drummed into the hardest-headed Scots that they must make peace.

When, in July, James III sent his counselor Lord Lyle to seek terms, Richard commissioned only a squire to go to Scotland; but once he was certain that the Scots were in earnest, he made clear his eagerness to set the two kingdoms at peace. He proposed an honorable treaty to be cemented by a marriage alliance; and this offer being at once accepted by King James, he prepared to greet the Scots envoys with all courtesy and dignity. It was an impressive embassy which rode down from Edinburgh at the beginning of September: the Earl of Argyll, Chancellor of Scotland, the Bishop of Aberdeen, Lords Lyle and Oliphant, and a long train of officers and attendants. They were met on their journey by a delegation of English lords and royal councilors escorted by a body of knights, and on the afternoon of Friday, September 11, the splendid cavalcade entered Nottingham. 16

In the same vein of pomp Richard received the Scots next morning before High Mass. He was enthroned on a dais in the great hall of Nottingham Castle. Over him blazed his canopy of state. The greatest powers of his kingdom were grouped around him—Norfolk, Northumberland, and Stanley, Chancellor Russell, the Earls of Shrewsbury and Nottingham, the Bishops of St. Asaph's and Worcester, Sir Robert Percy, Comptroller of his Household, his councilors William Catesby and Sir Richard Rat-drffe, and the Chief Justices Bryan and Husee. Beyond them in ranks stood the Knights and Esquires of the Kong's Body and the royal henchmen, captained by Sir James Tyrell. The Scots ambassadors walked through this splendid assemblage to make their obeisances before the throne, presented their credentials, and Master Archibald Whitelaw, King James' secretary—a man who twenty-five years before had been an envoy from James II to Richard's father—stood forth ami delivered a Latin oration resounding in praise of the King of England. Then he knelt before

the dais to deliver up the commissions for the treaty of peace and the marriage, crusted with the wax and tape of the Great Seal of Scotland. These Richard graciously received and handed over to Chancellor Russell, who brought the ceremony to an end by pronouncing an address of welcome to the Scots.

On Monday, September 14, the negotiators set to work. Their task was light, for the parties were in hearty agreement; and it remained only to establish the machinery for redress of future grievances and to arrange the terms of the marriage settlement. Shortly thereafter King Richard made proclamation that a truce of three years had been signed with Scotland and that the amity of the two nations was sealed by an agreement that Anne, Richard's niece, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, should wed James, Duke of Rothesay, heir to the Scots throne. If they wished, the friends of both parties were to be included in the truce. Richard nominated the Kings of Spain and Portugal, the Dukes Maximilian of Austria, his son Philip of Flanders, and Francis of Brittany. The Scots likewise named Brittany, as well as the Kings of France and Norway. 17

This firm accord with a neighbor who had been troubling the northern counties for five years was the best fruit of this laborious summer. The very movements of the King suggest the intensity with which he applied himself to his problems. Leaving Nottingham at the end of April, he spent the first days of May at York. From there he went sadly with his Queen to Middleham. He could not afford, or perhaps endure, to linger long. He would never see Middleham again. On May 16 he was at Durham, whence he journeyed to Scarborough to supervise the fitting and manning of his fleet. By June 8 he was at Pontefract to meet the Breton ambassadors- The middle of the month found him at York. Then he returned to Scarborough, where he remained throughout the first part of July, perhaps in this interval taking command of the naval expedition which defeated the Scots. By July 21 he had gone back to York and was establishing the Council of the North, a governing body which would endure for almost two centuries. Then, toward the end of the month, he went south by Buckden and Stamford to London, where he

remained throughout most of August. 18 * By the twenty-sixth he had started northward again to meet the Scots envoys at Nottingham, and here he continued to hold his court throughout September and October. Then he came south once more by Melton Mowbray and Peterborough and Buckden. It was November before he finally returned to the palace of Westminster. In the first year and a half of his reign he had spent less than eight months in his capital. 19

About a month later royal officers laid their hands upon two traitors to the Crown whom they had long been hunting, John Turburvyle and William Colyngbourne. Of Turburvyle little is known. The fate of Colyngbourne, however, received much attention, probably because of the impudent lampoon he composed against King Richard's government. Subsequent to Buckingham's rebellion, the trial of Colyngbourne is the only arraignment for treason of which the London chroniclers give any notice.

Colyngbourne was a Wiltshire gentleman who had been an officer of the King's mother. Early in 1484, if not previously, he had gone into hiding when it w r as discovered that he was an agent of Henry Tudor's. The indictment now brought against him— the particularity of which seems to indicate his guilt—charged that he had committed two treasonable offenses in London during

o

the month of July. On the eighteenth he had fastened to the door of St. Paul's a seditious rhyme:

The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our dog Rule all England under an Hog.

The publicity this mocking doggerel attained obscured the second charge, which was far more deadly, that on July 10 he had offered one Thomas Yate eight pounds to bear a message to Henry Tudor urging him to land in the south of England in the fall and advising him to tell the French court that the English King would only trifle with their envoys since he meant to make war on France.

On November 29 Richard appointed to hear the case a commission of great dignity: the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earls of Nottingham and Surrey, Viscounts Lovell and Lisle,

three barons (including Lord Stanley), Sir William Husee, and four other justices of King's Bench. The trial took place at Guildhall in early December. John Turburvyle was sentenced to prison. Colyngbourne was convicted of treason and condemned to death. He was executed in the fashion which this age, and the next, reserved for traitors. At Tower Hill he was hanged on a new pair of gallows, and then, Fabyan records, he was "cut down, being alive, and his bowels ripped out of his belly and cast into the fire there by him, and lived till the butcher put his hand into the bulk of his body, insomuch that he said at the same instant, C O Lord Jesus, yet more trouble,' and so died. . . ." *»*

About the time that Colyngbourne and Turburvyle were arrested, Richard's mind had been further troubled by news from across the Channel. Apparently he had been receiving conflicting reports during the late summer and fall—that Henry Tudor had been warmly welcomed by the court of France, that the court was so divided by rival interests that he could get no promise of aid. But now came the unpalatable tidings from Calais that the greatest Lancastrian leader yet alive had escaped from custody and joined the Tudor. 21

John de Vere, late Earl of Oxford, had been imprisoned since 1474 in Hammes Castle, of which James Blount was Lieutenant. Henry Tudor's reception at the French court had caused Richard to become concerned for the safety of Calais and its protecting forts, Guisnes and Hammes. In August he bade the Cinque Ports be ready to assist in their defense. Knowing that Oxford would deliver Hammes to the Tudor's French friends if he had an opportunity, and, perhaps, being informed that Blount was on suspiciously cordial terms with his prisoner, he gave orders on October 28 that the Earl was to be conveyed to England by William Bolton, a yeoman usher of the Chamber. But Oxford had indeed persuaded Blount to join his cause, and the pair of them now fled to Paris, When Lord Dynham sent a detachment from Calais to investigate the situation at Hammes, they were refused admittance. By the middle of December, the men of Hammes, fearful perhaps of being held responsible for Oxford's escape,

were withstanding a siege by Dynham's troops. After Richard offered a full pardon to the garrison and to Biount's wife, however, it appears that the soldiers willingly resumed their duties, But he hastened to replace the men of Guisnes with a fresh force and to supersede its ailing Lieutenant, Lord Mount joy, who was James Blount's brother, by that trusted Knight of the Body Sir James Tyrell. 22 *

Stung by Oxford's escape and the treachery of Blount and Colyngbourne, chafing to take action against his enemies, Richard, on December 3, ordered his Chancellor to publish a proclamation against Henry Tudor and his followers, in which all the King's subjects were commanded to be ready to resist the rebels. On December 8 he issued fresh commissions of array, most of them to the same men who, the preceding May, had been appointed commissioners. Ten days later he dispatched further commissions ordering a military census of the lords and gentry, which was to record how many men each could call up at half a day's notice. 23

It was midwinter. No invasion could be expected for months. By his proclamations and commissions Richard only reminded his realm—a land grown weary in the last decades of summonses to arms—that his throne was not secure and that peace was not yet to be hoped for. Rumors were whispered that the Princes had been done to death; Henry Tudor was -working upon old discontents and Lancastrian leanings; allegiance and justice were proving to be elusive game. There were facts, consequences, that even willingness and will could not circumvent as readily as the anxious heart desired. The King who would rule by desert rather than hold his throne by die most expedient way was becoming a hostage to his own feelings.

Christmas

Princes have but their titles for their glories % An outward honour -for an inward toil . . . So that y between their titles and low name, There V nothing differs but the outward -fame.

SO APPROACHED the Christmas season of 1484, with yeomen of the Crown riding in all directions from London bearing martial commissions, proclamations against the rebels, and sundry warnings to the coast towns to ready their defenses; with King Richard at Westminster, unquiet of heart and straining to slake his frustration in action; w T ith the King's council so busy that until the beginning of the new year it could not spare one of its clerks, John Harrington, to York, where he was also clerk of the corporation. The King covered his cares with a mantle of splendor for the celebration of Christmas; the opulence and power of his estate were certified in richness of gowns and gorgeousness of ceremony. True to his oath, he saw to it that the daughters of Edward IV were worthily entertained and appareled. The eldest, Elizabeth—tall, with long, golden hair—was attired in robes as magnificent as the Queen's. 1

No revelry could long distract the sober King, however. His anxieties reached deeper than Henry Tudor and the state of his kingdom. His wife Anne, for all the gaiety of her dress, was fast failing. The tireless, robust Kingmaker had brought forth two delicate daughters. Isabel had died before she was twenty-four 4 probably of tuberculosis. The same disease was now ravaging Anne, crushed in spirit by the death of her son. Richard could not look at her without realizing that she was doomed. The strains under which he labored began to be intensified by a despair for which there was no remedy. 2 *