The Life and Times of Richard III (6 page)

BOOK: The Life and Times of Richard III
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With the extinction of the House of Lancaster and the disgrace of the Nevilles, only one great magnate was left in the North. Edward had restored Henry Percy, barely in his twenties, to the earldom of Northumberland in 1470. The last four generations of Percies had died in civil wars, the last two in the Lancastrian cause. Clearly the time had come to appoint a strong man who could both fill the vacuum left by the Nevilles, and balance the dubious loyalty of the young Earl of Northumberland. Richard’s headquarters were to be at the familiar castle of Middleham, which was granted to him along with the former Neville lordships of Sheriff Hutton and Penrith, and the whole of Warwick’s holdings in Yorkshire and Cumberland. Two important offices further buttressed his power: the stewardship of the duchy of Lancaster beyond the Trent, and the wardenship of the West Marches towards Scotland, with final authority over Henry Percy, who was Warden of the Middle and Eastern Marches. His former Welsh offices were, in the meantime, transferred to the young William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (later Earl of Huntingdon).

The summer months passed as Richard reviewed his new estates and conducted a short foray against the Scottish border raiders, but in the autumn he hurried back to London on family business. Prior to his departure Richard had sought and obtained the King’s permission to marry Anne Neville. Only sixteen years old, the Kingmaker’s daughter was already the fatherless widow of a Prince, although it is unlikely that the marriage was ever consummated. From Richard’s point of view the young cousin who had watched him learn to hunt and joust at Middleham was an ideal bride. The marriage would discharge a debt of honour to the family which had taken him into their household. On a material level, it would confirm him in his title to Warwick’s northern possessions, and bring him a share of the even more extensive Beauchamp estates which Warwick had held in his wife’s right.

It was the question of Anne’s inheritance which now sparked off an ugly quarrel with Clarence. As the husband of Warwick’s elder daughter, Isabel, Clarence had hoped to appropriate the whole of the Beauchamp lands which belonged properly to his mother-in-law, Anne Beauchamp. Even this princely inheritance – more than one hundred and fifty manors scattered throughout the country from Devon to Durham – was a meagre consolation for the crown Clarence dreamed of wearing, and he did not intend to share it with his younger brother.

When Richard arrived at Clarence’s lodgings to claim his prospective bride, he was told to keep his hands off her. Richard appealed to the King, who ordered Clarence not to interfere with the proposed marriage. Clarence retaliated by persuading Anne to dress up as a kitchen maid, and concealed her in the household of a friend. Like most of Clarence’s schemes, the ruse was soon uncovered, and Richard had her removed to the sanctuary of St Martin’s. At this point the King intervened to mediate between the brothers before the affair got out of hand. Both put their case at a Council meeting, where even the lawyers were surprised by the subtlety of their arguments. In point of fact, Clarence had no case at all: he was not Anne’s guardian in any legal sense, and the girl’s mother was still alive, immured in the sanctuary of Beaulieu Abbey since the battle of Tewkesbury. Nevertheless, Edward found it politic to soothe Clarence’s ruffled feathers and a compromise was reached. Richard’s marriage was to go ahead, but he was to receive only a part of Warwick’s personal holdings, while the rest, including the Countess’s inheritance and the earldoms of Warwick and Salisbury, was reserved for Clarence. In addition, Richard was induced to give up to Clarence his office of Great Chamberlain.

Although Anne and Richard were cousins, the marriage was quickly celebrated without the formality of a papal dispensation, and the couple retired to Yorkshire. Early in 1473 the Duchess of Gloucester gave birth to a son who was christened Edward. Four months later Richard persuaded the King – despite vehement protests from Clarence – to allow his mother-in-law to leave Sanctuary unharmed and to join the household at Middleham.

The Clarence-Gloucester quarrel exhibits all the worst features of a private baronial feud blown up into a threat to public order by the irresponsible behaviour of those involved. Richard’s considerate treatment of the Countess of Warwick and his subsequent attempts to obtain a pardon for George Neville, the Archbishop of York, show that his motives, at least, were tempered by some concern for the family under whose roof he had grown up at Middleham. But it is hard to find any redeeming features in Clarence’s behaviour. He was bent on making trouble, even though he had acquired the lion’s share of the Warwick inheritance. In 1472 and 1473 rumours again linked his name with Louis XI, who sponsored an unsuccessful invasion led by that most tenacious of all Lancastrian supporters, the Earl of Oxford. When the Earl landed at St Michael’s Mount in late September 1473, Clarence was breathing dark hints of treason and vengeance. In London Sir John Paston reported that the King’s entourage sent for their harness to prepare for the worst: ‘the Duke of Clarence maketh himself big in that he can, showing as he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester. But the King intendeth to be as big as they both and to be a stifler between them. And some think that under this there be some other thing intended, and some treason conspired.’

The crisis was happily averted – or at least postponed – by the failure of Oxford’s attempted invasion. He never got further than St Michael’s Mount, where he was bottled up until Edward induced him to surrender in February 1474. Clarence was not called to account for his treasonable posturings: the King patiently agreed to look into his grievances, and a fresh division of the Warwick estates was submitted to Parliament for approval.

The long-term consequences of this episode were by no means exhausted, but towards the end of 1474 a more important enterprise overshadowed the affairs of the kingdom. Edward IV had decided to settle accounts with Louis XI, and was preparing to lead an invasion of France in the following spring. Since 1461 Louis had sanctioned one attempt after another against the Yorkist throne: first, Margaret of Anjou’s, then Warwick’s and now Oxford’s. Edward did not seriously contemplate the reconquest of a kingdom at least four times as populous as his own: but in concert with Louis’s arch enemy, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, he could inflict a punishing blow which would restore England’s initiative in foreign policy and avenge the endless humiliations of Henry VI’s reign.

Edward’s enterprise was first mooted in 1472, and Parliament had already voted a special tax to pay the wages of thirteen thousand archers. Efforts to collect this tax foundered on the stubborn resistance of ‘the generality of his said commons’, and the King was compelled to resort to the equally unpopular but more effective practice of raising benevolences. These loans-on-demand, voluntary in theory but difficult to refuse in practice, were begged or bullied from all men of substance –
£
30 from the Mayor of London,
£
10 –
£
20 from the Aldermen and
£
4 11s 3d, ‘the wages of half a soldier for a year’, from the head commoners. One merry widow from Suffolk was rewarded for her
£
10 by a royal kiss, and promptly doubled her contribution.

The army was raised by means of indenture – a contract whereby the principals bound themselves to supply an agreed number of men at an agreed fee. Richard, as the second man in the kingdom, indented for one hundred and twenty mounted lances and one thousand archers – about one-tenth of the host that embarked for Calais in June 1475. Louis’s adviser, Philip de Commynes, described it as ‘the most numerous, the best disciplined, the best mounted and the best armed that ever any king of that nation invaded France withal’. The French Court was close to panic: an Italian envoy reported that ‘his Majesty is more discomposed than words can describe and has almost lost his wits. In his desperation and bitterness he uttered the following precise words, among others, Ah Holy Mary, even now when I have given thee 1,400 crowns, thou dost not help me one whit.’

Nevertheless, divine intervention was at hand. Twelve months previously the Duke of Burgundy had bound himself to join Edward with a force of ten thousand men not later than 1 July 1475. But for months past he had been embroiled in the schemes of his eastern neighbour, the Holy Roman Emperor, and when he finally presented himself on 14 July, his promised army was busy pillaging Lorraine. ‘God,’ as Commynes remarked, ‘had troubled his sense and his understanding.’

Prospects of a second Agincourt were receding fast, and on 11 August they were blighted by a second disappointment. The Count of St Pol, who had promised Charles and Edward the important town of St Quentin, closed the gates and fired on the English as they advanced to take possession. On the same day the Duke of Burgundy took his leave, ostensibly to collect his army for an assault on Champagne. For Edward this was the last straw: the following day he opened negotiations with Louis. Too much of a realist to hope for the reconquest of Normandy and Guienne, Edward was quite prepared to let the threat of force extract concessions as favourable as any he might obtain on the battlefield. Louis also was a realist, and it took only three days to hammer out the main heads of agreement. For a down payment of seventy-five thousand crowns and an annual subsidy of fifty thousand, Edward would take his army home again. English and French merchants were freed from trade restrictions in each other’s countries. The five-year-old Dauphin was betrothed to Edward’s ten-year-old-daughter Elizabeth. Margaret of Anjou, a prisoner since Tewkesbury, would be ransomed for a further fifty thousand crowns. And both Kings promised to aid each other against rebellious subjects. Before the treaty was formally concluded on 29 August 1475 by the two sovereigns in person at Picquigny, Louis organised a gigantic alcoholic party for the entire English army at Amiens: it lasted three days.

There was, however, a minority who felt that Edward’s peace treaty was no cause for celebration – among them the Duke of Gloucester. Richard was conspicuously absent from the signing ceremony: his sympathies were with the Gascon knight who told Commynes that Picquigny was a disgrace outweighing all King Edward’s battle honours. Or, as Louis himself put it, ‘I have chased the English out of France more easily than my father ever did; for my father drove them out by force of arms, whereas I have driven them out with venison pies and good wine.’

Who, in fact, gained most from the Peace of Picquigny? The speed with which terms were arranged suggests that both sides got what they wanted. Edward had made his point about Louis’s meddling in English affairs, and received a handsome tribute for the privilege. Louis was left free to plot the destruction of Burgundy, and he could call the King of England his pensioner.

On 21 August Edward’s army re-embarked for England and early in September Richard was back in Wensleydale. Here he spent the best part of the next two years. When he returned to the Court in February 1477 it was to face a new crisis in foreign policy – and the last act in the pitiful career of George, Duke of Clarence. The crisis arose from the death in the battle of Nancy of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, at the hands of Swiss pikemen, on 1 January 1477. With him were slaughtered the remains of the Burgundian army which had already sustained a crushing defeat at the battle of Morat six months previously. King Louis, wrote Commynes, ‘was so overjoyed he scarcely knew how to react’. This was an overstatement. Since Charles left no male heir, Louis immediately claimed that the duchy of Burgundy, along with the northern counties of Artois, Picardy and Flanders reverted to the French Crown. His opponents were Charles’s twenty-year-old daughter Mary, and her childless step-mother, Margaret of York.

Margaret naturally turned to her brother Edward for help. But Edward could not make up his mind. There was a strong case for propping up the shaky Burgundian régime which had, in the past, provided a useful check to Louis’s more extravagant ambitions. Should the Burgundian possessions in Flanders fall to the French Crown, England’s Continental foothold at Calais would be entirely surrounded by Louis’s domains. But if Edward declared openly in favour of Charles’s heiress, he would have to forego his French pension and disburse the considerable treasure he had amassed since 1475 on an expeditionary force. In the end he made a few ineffectual protests and did nothing. Despairing of Edward’s help, Mary’s advisers scoured the Courts of Europe for a rich and war-like husband to come to her rescue. An atmosphere of gloomy foreboding dominated the English Court. ‘It seemeth that the world is all quavering’, wrote John Paston, ‘It will reboil somewhere, so that I deem young men shall be cherished.’

The young man the Dowager Duchess Margaret cherished was George, Duke of Clarence. Here was a golden chance to bestow on her favourite brother, whose wife had just died in childbirth, the hand of the greatest heiress in Europe. However, it was hardly surprising, as the Croyland Chronicler put it, that:

...so great a contemplated exaltation of his ungrateful brother displeased the King. He consequently threw all possible impediments in the way, in order that the match before-mentioned might not be carried into effect, and exerted all his influence that the heiress might be given in marriage to Maximilian [of Austria], the son of the [Holy Roman] Emperor; which was afterwards effected. The indignation of the Duke was probably still further increased by this; and now each began to look upon the other with no very fraternal eyes. You might then have seen (as such men are generally to be found in the courts of all princes), flatterers running to and fro, from the one side to the other, and carrying backwards and forwards the words which had fallen from the two brothers, even if they had happened to be spoken in the most secret closet.

Clarence’s paranoid feelings were further inflamed by the news that Edward had proposed as his candidate for Mary’s husband a member of the despised Woodville clan, the Queen’s brother Anthony, Earl Rivers. This time Edward was not prepared to turn a deaf ear to his brother’s threats of treason and revenge. After a final warning Clarence was to be struck down. The warning took the form of a death sentence on one of the Duke’s retainers, one Thomas Burdett, who was condemned on charges of treasonable writing and necromancy. Ignoring the danger signal Clarence interrupted a Council meeting at Westminster to protest Burdett’s innocence. Even more recklessly he began to spread the old story that Edward was a bastard, armed his retainers and managed to engineer riots in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. In the meantime, King Louis, ever anxious to keep his English cousins at each other’s throats while he completed the dismemberment of Burgundy, sent word of further treasonable gossip. Edward summoned Clarence to Westminster and had him confined to the Tower.

BOOK: The Life and Times of Richard III
13.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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