The Life and Times of Richard III (4 page)

In such pass time, in most secret manner, upon the first day of May, King Edward spoused Elizabeth, late the wife of Sir John Grey, knight, which before time was slain at Towton or York Field, which spousals were solemnised early in the morning at a town named Grafton, near Stony Stratford; at which marriage was no persons present but the spouse, the spousess, the duchess of Bedford her mother, the priest, two gentlewomen, and a young man to help the priest sing. After which spousals ended, he went to bed, and so tarried there upon three or four hours....

Elizabeth, considering herself too good to become the King’s whore, had the guts to turn down his advances and, like Anne Boleyn in the succeeding century, her scruples were rewarded with a Crown.

By any standards it was an amazingly tactless union. The Yorkist Queen was the widow of a Lancastrian knight, Sir John Grey, with two children of the same age as Edward’s brothers. Far more important was the fact that it scotched the delicate negotiations that Warwick had set in motion for a marriage alliance with Europe’s master diplomatist, King Louis XI of France. Such a match had obvious advantages for both parties. Edward’s marriage to a French princess would knock away the last prop of Queen Margaret’s hopes, and leave the King of France free to swallow up the two great ducal fiefs of Brittany and Burgundy. No family in England was more appreciative of the benefits of an advantageous match than the House of Neville, and Warwick rightly regarded the King’s marriage as an affair of State rather than of the heart.

It rapidly became apparent that the Queen’s relatives were no sluggards either when it came to playing the marriage game. Within fifteen months of Edward’s revelation at Reading, the Earl of Arundel’s heir, Lord Herbert’s heir, and the twelve-year-old Duke of Buckingham were snapped up by three of the Queen’s sisters, and one of her sons had taken the Duke of Exeter’s heiress to the altar. The most notorious match was reserved for Elizabeth’s brother John: in the words of a contemporary chronicler, ‘Catherine, Duchess of Norfolk, a slip of a girl of about eighty years old, was married to John Wydeville, the Queen’s brother, aged twenty years; a diabolical marriage.’ To give Warwick his due, he was less upset by the advancement of the fecund Woodvilles than by the more basic differences in foreign policy which the marriage revealed. He himself escorted Elizabeth into the abbey chapel at Reading for her ceremonial recognition as Queen of England, and, according to one source close to the Court, ‘the Earl continued to show favour to the Queen’s kindred, until he found that her relatives and connections... were using their utmost endeavours to promote the other marriage, which in conformity with the King’s wishes eventually took place between Charles [of Burgundy] and the Lady Margaret [Edward’s sister]’.

The Woodville affair could be pardoned as an indiscretion, but Edward’s plan to ally England with Burgundy was in direct contradiction to his own plans for a
rapprochement
with France. It rapidly dawned on Warwick that Edward was no longer his protégé. Affable as ever, the King avoided a direct confrontation with the Earl, but while Warwick continued his negotiations with Louis, Edward calmly pressed on with his own plans. For a time it seemed as if England had two masters, each bent on his own course. In the spring of 1467 two rival embassies visited Westminster, headed by the Bastard of Bourbon for France, and the Bastard of Burgundy for his master, each dangling marriage treaties and trade agreements. Sir John Paston wagered three marks that Philip of Burgundy’s son Charles would not marry Margaret within two years. But Edward had his way, and the marriage treaty was finally ratified in March 1468.

Edward’s preference for Burgundy was not just a whim designed to show his independence of the Earl. Edward still called himself King of France. Memories of the Hundred Years’ War were fresh in English minds and Louis had lent Margaret his most able general to reconquer the Crown for Lancaster. He had good reason to suspect that Louis’s friendship could prove as dangerous as his enmity. Burgundy, on the other hand, was England’s traditional ally and trading partner, and Duke Philip had shown his friendship in 1461 by sheltering the Yorkist refugees.

Warwick did not take his defeat lightly. In June 1468, as he rode with Edward, George of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester to escort the future Duchess of Burgundy on her bridal journey to Margate, a new scheme was already half formed in his mind. The Nevilles had made one King: why not another? Edward had betrayed his trust, but his brother Clarence might prove more easily led – particularly if he was married to Warwick’s nubile fifteen-year-old daughter Isabel. Edward had already incurred Clarence’s resentment by vetoing this particular match, and other Yorkist magnates might well lend a hand if Warwick’s
coup
promised an end to the ambitions of the voracious Woodvilles.

From the summer of 1468 to the spring of 1469 an uneasy truce prevailed as Warwick’s plan matured. The country at large was well aware of the Earl’s disaffection and particularly of his contempt for the Woodvilles. Robert Fabyan reported that

...many murmerous tales ran in the city atween th’earl of Warwick and the queen’s blood, the which earl was ever had in great favour of the commons of this land, by reason of the exceeding household which he daily kept in all countries wherever he sojourned or lay, and when he came to London he held such an house that six oxen were eaten at breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat, for who that had any acquaintance in that house, he should have had as much sodden and roast as he might carry upon a long dagger.

Edward’s troubles began, early in 1469, with a series of mysterious risings in the North and Midlands, inspired by a rebel who called himself Robin of Redesdale. The size of Robin’s army and the anti-Woodville slant of his proclamations were clear signs that he enjoyed the support of a more powerful backer. Somebody was also spreading the rumour that Edward was a bastard, in which event not he but George, Duke of Clarence, was rightfully King of England. In June Edward, accompanied by the Duke of Gloucester, set out to investigate the risings. Unaware that real danger threatened, he took with him only a small army and dawdled on the way. As soon as the King was safely out of reach, Warwick and Clarence slipped across the Channel to Calais and on 11 July George Neville, the Archbishop of York, officiated at Clarence’s marriage to Isabel Neville. In the meantime Edward had realised that Robin of Redesdale’s army was very much larger than his own and had fallen back on Nottingham. Warwick recrossed the Channel and marched north to join forces with Robin’s men. Edward sat tight waiting for a relieving force under William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, to join him at Nottingham. On 26 July, however, Pembroke’s troops were crushed between the two rebel armies of Robin and Warwick near Banbury and cut to pieces. After writing a farewell note to his Woodville wife, Pembroke himself was executed at Warwick’s orders: ‘wife, pray for me and take the said order [of widowhood] that ye promised me, as ye had in my life my heart and love’.

Edward was completely outmanoeuvred. He now faced the choice of plunging the whole country into renewed anarchy or of total surrender. The course he took revealed him as a master of political strategy. He dispersed his army, allowed the Woodvilles to scatter for cover, and calmly awaited his captors. Gambling on the assumption that Warwick would not dare have him killed, he knew that public sympathy would rally to him as the news of Warwick’s treachery spread through the country. Within a few months the kingmaking Earl found himself at an
impasse.
His rebellion had sparked off a chain of minor disturbances which he could not put down without the King’s authority. Even Warwick’s brother John, the newly created Earl of Northumberland, refused to co-operate. By the end of September Edward was in a position to summon his supporters to his prison at Pontefract, and return to London with George Neville, his episcopal gaoler, trailing disconsolately behind him, ‘Peace and entire oblivion of all grievances upon both sides was agreed to. Still, however, there probably remained, on the one side, deeply seated in his mind, the injuries he had received and the contempt which had been shown to majesty, and on the other: “A mind too conscious of a daring deed”’ (Croyland Chronicle).

*

Edward’s bloodless counter-coup marks an important stage in the career of his youngest brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, now just celebrating his seventeenth birthday. In the years between leaving Middleham and Warwick’s rebellion, we catch only a few brief glimpses of him. In 1466 he attended the installation of George Neville as Archbishop of York, and sat at table with the ladies at the sumptuous banquet which followed. Warwick himself served as steward. The menu, which represented the labours of 62 cooks, included 104 oxen, 6 wild bulls, 4,000 sheep, calves and pigs, 500 stags and 400 swans, and was washed down with 300 tuns of ale and 100 of wine. As a
pièce de résistance
the guests demolished a marzipan sculpture of St George lancing the dragon.

In February of 1467 Richard’s name was joined with Warwick’s and Northumberland’s in a legal commission to hear cases at York: in June 1468, he is mentioned again as a member of his sister Margaret’s nuptial train on its way to Margate. But it was in 1469 that his adolescence ended, and he was called to take up offices which held more than mere ceremonial significance. The events of that summer showed that Richard, despite his close association with the Nevilles, was deaf to the blandishments that had seduced his brother Clarence. Shortly after Edward’s return to London the seventeen-year-old Duke of Gloucester was appointed Constable of England, and received a generous grant of land, including the castle of Sudeley in Gloucestershire. An uprising in Wales provided him with his first independent military command. Under his leadership the rebel-held strongholds of Carmarthen and Cardigan were retaken before the year’s end. In the spring of 1470 Richard was further rewarded with numerous grants and offices which conferred on him wide authority throughout Wales.

The Welsh rising, however, was a sideshow: in the early spring of 1470 it was still the Earl of Warwick who occupied the centre of the political stage. No one could seriously have expected his formal reconciliation with the King to offer anything more than a breathing space. During Edward’s captivity he had put to death the Queen’s father, Earl Rivers, and one of her brothers at Warwick Castle. This act, even more than his rebellion, committed him to try again, if only to save his own neck from Queen Elizabeth’s vengeance.

In February rebellion raised its head again in Lincolnshire. Its leaders, Lord Welles and Sir Thomas Dymmock, were quickly brought to heel by promises of a royal pardon, but Welles’s son, Sir Robert, remained at large, defying the King in the name of the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick. By 12 March Edward’s army was at Stamford, only a few miles from Sir Robert’s forces. Warwick and Clarence were on their way from Coventry, ostensibly to help the King. But, before Warwick could join his forces to either side, the Lincolnshire rebels were put to flight at the battle known as Lose-Coat Field, and Sir Robert was a prisoner in Edward’s hands. Sir Robert’s confession confirmed the King’s suspicions: the rising had been Warwick’s work.

His treason unmasked and his Lincolnshire allies routed, Warwick cast about for other allies, first his own brother the Earl of Northumberland, then the Lancashire magnate Lord Stanley. Both turned a deaf ear. With the wretched Clarence still in tow, he fled south to the Devon coast and there boarded a ship for France. It was time to cash in on his friendship with King Louis. Embarrassed at first by the arrival of these uninvited guests, Louis soon rallied to evolve a scheme worthy of his diplomatic talents. If he could team up the fugitive Yorkist Earl with the exiled Lancastrian Queen in a successful bid to unseat King Edward, he would not only have his peace with England but also sever the English alliance with Burgundy. The reconciliation of two such bitter enemies was a formidable challenge to Louis’s powers of persuasion: ‘the queen was right difficile and showed to the King of France... that with the honour of her and her son, he nor she might not, nor could not pardon the said Earl, which hath been the greatest causes of the fall of King Henry’. Nevertheless, Margaret’s thirst for revenge on the House of York overcame her loathing for Warwick and on 22 July 1470, she formally accepted his submission at the cathedral of Angers. Three days later the pact was sealed with the betrothal of the Queen’s sixteen-year-old son, Edward, to Warwick’s younger daughter, the fifteen-year-old Anne Neville. The Duke of Clarence, a willing enough stooge in his time, was quietly jettisoned with the promise that he would succeed to the throne if Edward and Anne failed to produce an heir.

Warwick’s landing in Devon on 13 September was well timed, since it caught Edward in the north of his kingdom. Already accompanied by John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford and by Jasper Tudor, the Kingmaker was soon joined by John Talbot, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Stanley. But once again there was to be no battle, thanks to another important defection from Edward’s camp. Earlier in the year the King had tried to reconcile the powerful Lancastrian Percy family by restoring to it the earldom of Northumberland, which he had earlier bestowed on John Neville. In return John was asked to make do with the marquisate of Montagu. In response to this imagined slight the Marquess now decided to throw his lot in with his brother Warwick and almost succeeded in capturing the King at Doncaster. In the nick of time Edward rode away with a small band that included his brother Richard, his brother-in-law Anthony, Earl Rivers, and his Chamberlain, Lord Hastings. He commandeered a flotilla of fishing boats at the East Anglian port of Lynn and sailed for Burgundy. In London King Henry VI was hastily released from the Tower – ‘not so cleanly kept as should seem such a Prince’ – and dressed up in a blue velvet gown to receive the Kingmaker’s homage. In the following month Edward’s Queen Elizabeth gave birth to her first baby boy, Edward, in the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where her husband’s flight had compelled her to take refuge.