The War of the Roses (24 page)

Nor did Henry VII have a large-scale ‘turn-out' to assist him in defending the new dynasty against the Simnel/Lincoln invasion in 1487. The latter army, based on a body of foreign mercenaries (German) like Henry's (French) in 1485, was able to march right across England from its isolated landing in the west (Simnel landed at Barrow-in-Furness, Henry at Milford Haven) to take on the King waiting for them in the East Midlands. If Richard's failure to tackle Henry–or send loyal troops to hold him up en route–before the pretender reached the East Midlands is an indication of weak support among the magnates, the same can be said of Henry in 1487. No pragmatic noblemen would have realized in 1487 that the Tudor regime would last for another 116 years; the precedents available to them would have suggested the possibility of another sudden reversal of fortune as in 1459–61 or 1470–1. As Richard depended on one senior supporter with military experience–Norfolk–as his main general in 1485, so in 1487 Henry depended on the Earl of Oxford (who had fought for Warwick at Barnet in 1471). Lincoln, Richard's nephew and senior commander of the rebels at Newark in 1487, was an untried young man in his mid-twenties like Henry had been in 1485 but had the advantage of having been named as Richard's heir when the King's son died in 1484. It was Simnel and Lincoln's defeat at Newark, not Bosworth, that established a period of comparative peace and security for the English Crown–and Henry still had to face the lesser threat of Warbeck in 1497. He was lucky in that Warbeck did not land in Cornwall until the most serious local threat of that year, the popular revolt against excessive taxes for the faraway Scots war, had already been put down. That large body of rebels, led by a blacksmith from St Keverne and a minor lawyer in the populist tradition of Cade's Kentish revolt of 1450, reached Blackheath in their march on London.
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As we have seen, some ex-Yorkists contemplated joining the rebels. Had Warbeck arrived from Scotland in time to promise redress and persuade them to accept him as their leader he would have had far more supporters than he could muster in reality. Nor should it be forgotten that the absence of revolt after 1497 was not necessarily a sign of ‘inevitable' triumph by a wise and widely-accepted king. Henry may have been paranoid, but his intense fear of foreign-backed plots continued after ‘Warbeck's execution and was centred on the escaped Edmund de la Pole, Lincoln's brother. The latter fled to the Continent in 1499, and Henry did all that he could to deny him the military aid that had been given to ‘Simnel' and ‘Warbeck. Finally, in 1506 Duke Philip of the Netherlands, the son of ‘Warbeck's ex-host Emperor Maximilian, was driven ashore in Weymouth Bay by a storm and Henry ‘invited' him to London for talks. Before Philip and his wife, Juana, left England they had agreed to have Edmund handed over, and the pretender languished in the Tower until the new King Henry VIII executed him a few years later. Fear of another Yorkist plot was not limited to the King either, as it was reliably reported that when his elder son, Arthur, died in 1502 senior nobles were discussing if the throne was secure for his second son Henry. The latter was only eleven, younger than Edward V had been in 1483, and his succession was not seen as secure. The witness was treasurer Sir Hugh Conway–speaking in the relative safety of Calais, but terrified of Henry VII's reaction if he was accused of discussing the succession seditiously.
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One plausible adult alternative was said to be Duke Edward of Buckingham, the son of the 1483 rebel and direct descendant of Edward III's youngest son Thomas–and his boasts of his ‘rights' apparently continued into Henry VIII's reign.
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It is possible that some senior ministers rumoured to be in touch with Edmund de la Pole after his flight (e.g. Sir Richard Guildford, recently ‘marginalized') were doing this as an ‘insurance policy' just in case the regime crumbled–as senior figures at William III's court were to keep in touch with James II in the 1690s. Hindsight should not make us believe that the Tudor throne was seen as secure after 1499, especially once Henry VII's health declined after 1503. Certain of his extortionate ministers, e.g. Empson and Dudley, were as resented by nobles as Richard III had been.

 

Bosworth: could Richard have won?

Richard, an experienced commander at Bosworth though dependent on his magnate allies, had the advantages of reputation, high ground, and possibly of numbers on 22 August 1485. (The actual battle-site is still not beyond doubt; the latest 2009 discoveries suggest a different site from the usual one.
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) His wait in central England for his enemy to advance to meet him has been interpreted as a sign of weakness, and certainly none of his supposed allies moved to intercept Henry Tudor's small army when it emerged from the isolated Welsh hills into the Cheshire plain. But Richard's defensive strategy was only a repeat of that of Warwick's government when facing Edward IV's invasion (from Yorkshire) in 1471, and of Edward IV's when facing Warwick (from Devon) in September 1470. It gave him time to muster a larger army rather than hurry forward to take on the invader. Henry, like Richard II when facing Henry of Bolingbroke in 1399, was initially out of reach in western Wales, and could not be tackled safely until he reached the English lowlands. If Richard had moved forward to block Henry's exit from Wales at Shrewsbury, could he be sure that the Earl of Northumberland (son and grandson of Lancastrians killed by Richard's kin in 1455 and 1460) would not attack his rear?

Henry was a cautious man who had refused to land in Devon when he arrived to join the 1483 revolt, rightly fearing that the assurances of support he had had from on shore were insincere and he would be arrested. His August 1485 landing in his home country of Wales (in Jasper's Earldom of Pembroke) avoided that risk but meant that he had a long march into England. Marching to attack him as soon as he landed was not an option for Richard, given the distance to Milford Haven and the hostility of the landscape (and potentially the locals). Luckily for Henry the local magnate, Rhys ap Thomas, had politely refused to send his young son to Richard's court and could delay his reaction to the invasion, allow Henry to march into mid-Wales without resistance (or many recruits), and belatedly join him a week or so later. (The link between the two men was supposed to have been Rhys' ex-tutor Dr Lewis, now an agent of Henry's mother Margaret Beaufort, Lord Stanley.
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) The failure to block Henry's advance into Shropshire and the Midlands lay with the principal magnate of Lancashire, who had enough armed tenants to do it–luckily for Henry, his stepfather Thomas Stanley. Stanley avoided joining either side ahead of Bosworth, although Richard was driven to make threats to execute his hostage son if he did not obey his sovereign. His brother Sir William apparently gave Henry enough private assurances of due–not immediate–support to persuade Henry to move on to attack Richard, which kept momentum with him and arguably gave him his only real hope of winning a battle.
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Richard may have commanded a wing at the battle of Barnet in 1471, aged eighteen, and he led armies against the Scots in the early 1480s, whereas Henry had never been on a battlefield and had spent the years 1471–84 as a minor diplomatic pawn of Duke Francis of Brittany, lodged under watch in his castles and at risk of being extradited to England. Henry's uncle Jasper Tudor had military experience from the 1460s, as a long-standing Lancastrian commander in Wales who had held out at Harlech Castle for years after defeat by Sir William Herbert in 1461. The senior Lancastrian commander at Bosworth, Oxford, had commanded Warwick's left wing at Barnet in 1471 before years in exile; having failed to stir up revolt in Cornwall from his base on St Michael's Mount in the mid-1470s, he had been arrested by Edward IV and spent years more in prison near Calais before escaping. Richard faced a potential for treachery by Lord Stanley, the commander of the Lancashire and Cheshire area levies, as Henry Tudor's stepfather and a pardoned participant in the nebulous ‘Hastings plot' of June 1483–he had refused to take his troops to join Richard' s forces on the field. His brother Sir William Stanley was also strategically positioned with his levies near the battlefield (at what site is unclear), and joined his brother in attacking Richard when the King got into difficulties–and in 1495 was to be executed by Henry Tudor for apparent links with the Yorkist pretender Warbeck.

There was allegedly a warning to Norfolk beforehand that Richard was to be betrayed, presumably by the Stanleys. It is also uncertain if the Earl of Northumberland, commanding his north-eastern levies as part of the royal infantry, held back from following Richard down Ambien Hill into the melee out of cowardice or treachery. It should, however, be pointed out that the risk of commanders of the sections of a mid-fifteenth century army defecting to the opposition in the middle of a battle was not a special problem unique to Richard. At Barnet the Marquis of Montague, Warwick's brother, was found to be wearing the enemy colours under his armour when he was killed, possibly indicating an intention to defect when opportune; a few weeks later chaos among the Lancastrians at the battle of Tewkesbury allegedly led to one commander having his brains dashed out by another who feared he had been suborned by Edward IV.
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The battle of ‘Bosworth', in fact of Sutton Cheney or Stoke Golding, is still contentious as it is not clear what positions the rival armies held and where. The battle took place adjacent to a ‘marsh', which has since dried out, and scholarly argument has raged over which way the armies were facing. Richard was apparently to the north-east or north of Henry, who had marched out from Atherstone on Watling Street. But enough is agreed by the sources to make it clear that Richard had to attack Henry by moving west or south-west down from a hill–traditionally seen as Ambien Hill, though the latest finds of cannon-shot and royal badges are enough to cast this in doubt. It started poorly for the royal forces when Howard was killed leading the royal vanguard. The Stanleys did not yet join in on Henry's side and merely continued to disobey orders to move to the King's support It is unclear why Northumberland did not move his troops forward to aid Norfolk's men in breaking Henry's line, and it may have been due to geography rather than intended treason. Was the ground too marshy or the hill too steep for an advance on the royal army's right to reinforce the vanguard–or did Northumberland fear a Stanley attack on his flanks?

The two vanguards were left engaged on approximately equal terms in the centre, without Richard's forces being brought fully into action. Richard's were the more experienced and thus likelier to prevail in a long combat. But the King attempted to put the issue beyond doubt by a personally-led cavalry charge downhill against the pretender, presumably to pre-empt a Stanley advance to rescue the rebels. His frontal attack with his Household knights could have won the day–he got close enough to Henry to cut down his standard-bearer, Sir William Brandon, and several others who would have been near the invaders' leader. But, as would have been feared, both Stanleys then attacked Richard in the rear and he was surrounded and hacked down. Allegedly, he refused to escape in the few minutes available. But if the Stanleys had delayed for a few more minutes, Northumberland had moved into the fight with Richard to give him the advantage of numbers and thus dissuaded the Stanleys from intervening, and Richard had had the luck to reach Henry in time, the outcome of a personal combat between them would have been in little doubt. Those magnates who had hung back from the battle to see which way it went would have had no option but to hasten to the King's assistance with assurances of their support. Lacking a broad base of support and with his main general Norfolk dead, Richard would not have been able to risk punishing them for fear of causing more rebellions–Stanley controlled much of Lancashire and the Isle of Man, and Northumberland was head of the powerful Percy clan and crucial to the safety of the Border now Richard himself had moved south to London. Richard, like Henry VII in1485 and 1487, would have had to make the most of what support he had among the peers and seek to establish a secure regime with the passive quiescence of men he knew he could not trust.

Richard had sought to project an image of himself as a man concerned with his subjects' welfare since 1483, acting swiftly to carry out justice, dealing with concerns raised in Parliament, and pointing out his moral standards and piety in contrast with the ‘luxury' and immorality of his brother's reign. His use of moral issues in his propaganda was noted, with foes who had been known for their wild living at Edward IV's luxurious court (e.g. the Marquis of Dorset) being placarded as immoral and Edward IV's ex-mistress Elizabeth/Jane Shore having to do penance as a whore. Richard's sympathetic biographers, Paul Murray Kendall (1955) in particular, have paid extensive tribute to his abilities, public-spiritedness, and hard work as king. His critics have, however, noted his obsessiveness with sin and his extensive founding of chantries, and analysis of his personal ‘Book of Hours' has pointed out the hints at a sense of guilt–and a personal devotion to St Julian who had killed his relatives. His loss was particularly lamented in York, the centre of his power, where the Council records paid him a generous tribute.
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Richard III's policies after Bosworth: would he have been more insecure than Henry VII?

As unchallenged king from 1485 Richard would have continued these policies, sincerely or not, and with Henry Tudor dead or in flight to France he would have faced no major challenges for at least several years. The unusual and disquieting circumstances of his removal of a legitimate sovereign meant that, like the similarly-placed Henry IV, he would not have been secure from a series of potential challenges even after one crushing victory. The continuing acquiescence of Elizabeth Woodville and powerlessness of her 1483 southern English allies could not be taken for granted, and it is indicative of Richard's sense of this dynastic threat that even before his ailing wife died in winter 1484–5 the idea was floated that he should marry the Princes' sister Elizabeth. It is unclear if he was ever serious or just raising the issue to see if this drastic solution to his dynastic illegitimacy was possible, but the fact that it was considered despite the ‘sin' of incest involved indicates his (or his supporters') sense of weakness and need to neutralize Edward IV's children as a threat. The marriage would have been rare for medieval Europe and particularly since the introduction of Church canon law, the main known examples of a similar uncle-niece dynastic alliance having been in Rome (Claudius and Agrippina) and Byzantium (Heraclius and Martina). Unfortunately, neither had ended well –Agrippina had murdered Claudius and some of Martina's children by her uncle had been born disabled. The next outbreak of uncle-niece marriages was to occur among the Habsburgs, as a measure to keep their vast inheritance within the family–Philip II married his niece, Anne, in the 1570s. (The Church did not seek to prevent this ‘incest', but its champion Philip was in a stronger position than Richard III was in 1485.) Marriage among first cousins was more normal, and was common practice among the Spanish and Portuguese royalty. Richard and his brother George of Clarence both married their first cousin's (Warwick) daughters, Anne and Isabel Neville. Reaction at court and among the ‘political nation' to any idea of his marrying Elizabeth of York was so hostile that Richard was forced to deny that it had ever been seriously considered. Some modern writers also think that the apparent enthusiasm of Princess Elizabeth for a marriage–and her appeal to Howard for support–refers to a planned Portuguese marriage, not to her marrying her uncle.
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His return to the idea after a victory at Bosworth was possible, given his ruthlessness and the fact that the possible rebellion that Catesby and Ratcliffe had warned could follow the marriage was now impractical.