Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors Read online

  Emboldened by his victory, Henry looked to strengthen his position even further, promoting key allies such as the Earl of Worcester to Treasurer, and the Earl of Wiltshire to Lieutenant of Ireland, where he replaced York. The king even decided that he would renew the war against France, taking an army across the Channel to defeat Charles VII’s forces. Surprisingly, the tide seemed to turn for the English under the ferocious and skilled military leader, John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.

  It was against this backdrop of recovery and success that Henry decided to make one of his boldest political gestures: on 23 November 1452, he raised his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor to the rank of earls. Henry had already recognised both brothers as his kinsmen by providing for their education and upbringing; now he was prepared to go further, recognising their importance as members of the house of Lancaster. Henry’s intentions can be guessed at from the choice of titles he was to bestow upon Edmund and Jasper. Edmund was to become the Earl of Richmond, Jasper the Earl of Pembroke. Both titles retained especial significance to the king: the earldoms of Richmond and Pembroke had previously been held by Henry’s uncles, John, Duke of Bedford and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Since the two Tudor brothers, despite having French royal blood in their veins, had no claim to the English throne, raising them to the higher ranks of the nobility could hardly endanger Henry’s own standing. Their formal recognition as the king’s half-brothers would help Henry to reinforce his own family interest, creating new standard bearers for the Lancastrian dynasty. It also helped to remove both men from any focus of political discontent, binding them close to the king to whom they owed so much.

  The official investiture took place after the Christmas holidays, when on Friday 5 January 1453, the two brothers, having been provided with a new wardrobe of velvet clothing, furs and cloth of gold, appeared in front of the king attired in their ermine robes to be formally created earls. Two weeks later, they were summoned to Parliament. When Parliament opened in March, the House of Commons presented a petition to the king requesting that Jasper and Edmund be recognised formally as his legitimate brothers, born of the same mother as ‘uterine’ brothers. They also requested that Henry release both brothers from any legal penalties arising from their father’s Welsh origins. The very fact that the request was made is remarkable in itself: Edmund and Jasper were the first Welshmen to enter the ranks of the English peerage.

  As earls, both Jasper and Edmund would need a substantial income to sustain their positions at court. Between November 1452 and July 1453, both brothers were given substantial grants of landed estates that gave them each an annual income of £925. Edmund’s lands were concentrated in the honour of Richmond, containing the fertile and prosperous lands on the eastern side of the country, between Norfolk and Yorkshire. Jasper received the honour of Pembroke, based around Pembroke itself, together with the lordships of Cilgerran and Llanstephan in south-west Wales; many of his estates were grouped around the great estuary of Milford Haven. Since their political activities were largely to be focused at court, both brothers would also need a townhouse or ‘inn’ within the capital. Edmund was granted Baynard’s Castle, a large fortified house on the banks of the Thames, while Jasper was given a house in Brook Street, Stepney.

  Titles and lands were not the only prizes that Henry had decided to bestow upon his half-brothers. On 24 March 1453, Edmund and Jasper were given joint custody, the ‘wardship’, of the nine-year-old Margaret Beaufort, the daughter of the late John Beaufort, the elder brother of Henry’s despised adviser Edmund Beaufort. Henry’s expectation was not merely that the brothers would look after the girl. With the rights of wardship came the right to marry her. It was time, Henry believed, that one of the Tudor brothers at least should take a bride.

  In particular, in granting Margaret Beaufort’s wardship to the Tudors, Henry had Edmund Tudor’s marriage in mind. As one writer later recorded, he intended to ‘make means for Edmund his brother’. Margaret was not only one of England’s richest heiresses in the 1450s: she was descended from the royal blood of Edward III, albeit through the illegitimate line borne from the relationship between Edward’s son, John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford, who had given birth to Margaret’s grandfather, John Beaufort. In many ways, the Beauforts held a similar position to that of the Tudors. Both families were descended from royal blood, though both were tainted by accusations of illegitimacy. It was made clear that neither family, despite their nearness of blood, would ever be considered legitimate heirs to the throne.

  Since John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford later married, their son John was declared legitimate by both the parliaments of Richard II and Henry IV, though any claim to the throne that his heirs might have was specifically ruled out. Beaufort had been created the Earl of Somerset and Marquis of Dorset by Richard II in 1397, with his lands granted to him around the West Country, focused on his residence at Corfe Castle on the Dorset coast. The story of the family then turned to tragedy. Margaret’s father John had succeeded to the earldom in 1418, yet his life had been wasted as a prisoner of war, having been captured at the battle of Bauge in 1421. Imprisoned in France for seventeen years, he was unable to marry until 1442, aged thirty-eight. His release had cost him £24,000, half the value of his inheritance, leaving him ‘impoverished’ and bitter at the hand life had dealt him. Desperate to win back his ransom, Beaufort persuaded the king to allow him to lead a major expedition through France. Elevated to the rank of Duke of Somerset for the campaign, Beaufort’s expedition was a disaster, achieving no military success and leaving the crown with a bill of over £26,000. The fiasco caused Beaufort to be banished from court; retiring to the West Country in disgrace, he died shortly afterwards, possibly taking his own life.

  Aged just forty, John Beaufort left behind a pregnant wife and his sole surviving heir, his daughter Margaret, a few days short of her first birthday. The duchess of Somerset’s second child did not survive, leaving her daughter as sole heiress. Margaret’s wardship was a valuable commodity, one which Henry VI decided to grant to the Earl of Suffolk, in reward for his ‘notable services’ rendered to the country. Six years later, shortly before his exile and death off the coast of Dover, Suffolk decided that his only son, the seven-year-old John de la Pole, should marry Margaret, then aged six. He had originally intended that John should marry Anne Beauchamp, the daughter and sole heir of the Earl of Warwick, but she had died at the age of five in 1449. The hasty decision was taken between 28 January and 7 February 1450, while Suffolk remained in the Tower. It was obvious Suffolk considered it an urgent necessity to provide for his son’s future, though the decision sparked further suspicion that he was attempting to control the succession to the crown, using his son’s marriage to Margaret to obtain a claim to the throne. Suffolk’s death brought an end to the prospect of Margaret and John de la Pole remaining in permanent union. Their betrothal was easily enough annulled: despite the fact that a papal dispensation had been sought and a marriage contract agreed, since Margaret had entered into her marriage contract with Suffolk before she was twelve, under canon law she was not bound to fulfil it. This allowed Henry the freedom to once again grant Margaret’s marriage, this time to Edmund Tudor.

  At so young an age, it is unlikely that Margaret would have known much about her marriage to John de la Pole. But three years later, making her first visit to court in February 1453 accompanied by her mother, the experience would leave a lasting impression upon her. She was treated with kindness by the king, who provided ‘his right dear and wellbeloved cousin Margaret’ with new clothes worth 100 marks. But it would have been the display of ceremony and the lavish clothing such as the blood-red dresses worn by Margaret of Anjou and her ladies in waiting at the St George’s Day celebrations that April that gave the young Margaret her first introduction to the dramatic reality of power and its political stage.

  Many years later, her memory faded and her childhood recollections hazy, Margaret told her chaplain John Fisher how she believed i
n her own mind she had faced a choice between John de la Pole and Edmund Tudor. Unable to decide, she was urged to pray to St Nicholas, ‘the patron and helper of all true maidens, and to beseech him to put in her mind what she were best to do’. She had been given the night to decide and ‘the morrow after make answer of her mind determinately’. In her dream, she remembered how a man dressed in white had visited her, ‘arrayed like a bishop’, who told her to choose Edmund Tudor as her husband.

  Margaret’s marriage to John de la Pole was annulled the same month she arrived at court, with her wardship formally being granted to the Tudor brothers on 24 March 1453. Her marriage to Edmund seems to have taken place formally in 1455, when they travelled to Lamphey in Pembrokeshire. Edmund and Margaret’s marriage had taken place during a period of relative good news for the Lancastrian dynasty, for in March 1453 it was announced that Queen Margaret was pregnant. Within months, however, the country would once again be thrown into turmoil.

  No one could be sure what exactly had caused Henry VI to collapse at his hunting lodge at Clarendon near Salisbury one day in August 1453. Unable to move or speak, he was ‘so lacking in understanding and memory and so incapable that he was neither able to walk upon his feet nor to lift up his head, nor well to move himself from the place where he was seated’. It was believed that the king had suffered ‘disease and disorder of such a sort’. No one understood then the medical realities of psychiatric illness, perhaps a form of hereditary schizophrenia inherited from his Valois ancestors. What everyone did know was that the king’s mental collapse was very serious indeed, threatening the very foundation of the Lancastrian dynasty.

  One possibility is that the queen’s pregnancy may have placed strain upon a man uncomfortable with physical intimacy. More likely to have damaged Henry’s mental state had been the events of the previous few weeks, when on 17 July the Earl of Shrewsbury’s army in France had been overwhelmed at Castillon, and the earl himself killed in the cannon fire. Defeat at Castillon in effect brought with it the end of the Hundred Years War.

  For two months news of Henry’s collapse was kept secret in the hope that the king might recover. Yet not even the joyous news of the birth of his son and heir, Prince Edward, on 13 October 1453 could wake Henry from his catatonic state. When Queen Margaret presented their son to the king, he reacted ‘without any answer or countenance, saving only that he looked on the Prince and cast his eyes down again without any more’. It was a situation which everyone realised could not continue.

  For Richard, Duke of York, it was a second chance: as the most senior nobleman in the realm, while the king remained incapacitated, he had a strong claim to be recognised as Protector. Recognising the threat to his own position at court, Somerset was understandably reluctant to include York in any council negotiations about what should be done, though this did not prevent York from returning to London by November 1453, accompanied by a large retinue of armed men. The stage was set for an inevitable confrontation.

  Throughout the winter, both factions sought to fill the vacuum of power. Margaret of Anjou demanded that she be declared regent of England and have ‘the whole rule of this land’. It was to prove a step too far. Many noblemen who previously had refused to take York’s side, Jasper and Edmund Tudor among them, understood the idea of a French Queen, the niece of their French enemy Charles VII, would be politically impossible. By January 1454 the Tudor brothers had formed an alliance with York, it being reported that ‘the Earls of Warwick, Richmond and Pembroke come with the Duke of York, as it is said, each of them with a goodly fellowship’. Margaret’s intervention ensured that the council’s sympathies shifted towards York, agreeing to nominate him as the King’s Lieutenant in February 1454. As armed retinues of various noblemen swarmed through London, tensions began to mount.

  Matters came to a head when the appointment of a new chancellor became a political necessity following the death of the previous holder of the office Cardinal Kemp in March 1454. A crisis of authority opened up since only the king could signal who should take his place. The council rode to Windsor to discuss the matter with Henry. In vain, they tried three times to speak with the king, ‘to the which matters they could get no answer nor sign, not for any prayer or desire, lamentable cheer or exhortation, nor for anything that any of them could do or say, to their great sorrow and discomfort’. Recognising that Henry would be incapable of taking any decision, it was decided that York should be appointed Protector, the chief councillor with responsibility for the defence of the realm.

  York’s success lay not merely in Henry’s incapacity; the duke had managed to win more noblemen to his cause as a series of local conflicts between magnates had broken out, contesting lordships that had been parcelled out unwisely and often to separate parties by the crown. National politics and local authority had become polarised, as members of the gentry and minor nobility sought protection from great lords such as York. The most significant feud was the longstanding rivalry between the Nevilles and the Percys in Yorkshire, which had degenerated into an armed brawl between both sides in August 1453. When the king did nothing to prevent the violent behaviour of the Percys, who held the royal office of the Warden of the East March, against the Nevilles, it was clear that the Nevilles would have to look elsewhere for help. York was closely associated with the Nevilles, having married the youngest daughter of Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmorland. Matters were made worse for the family in June 1453 when Somerset was granted estates in Glamorgan, previously held by the twenty-five-year-old Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. It was to prove the final straw for the earl, who now sided with York in order to oust Somerset.

  As Protector, York moved quickly to establish his position. Somerset had been sent to the Tower in November 1453, shortly after York’s arrival in the city, having had charges of misconduct in France once again brought against him. York had every intention of keeping him there. In the meantime, York replaced key positions in the council with his allies: his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, was made Chancellor, Thomas Bourgchier was made Archbishop of Canterbury while York himself took over the captaincy of Calais. Margaret of Anjou was ordered to be removed to Windsor, where she was effectively placed under house arrest.

  Then on Christmas Day 1454, Henry suddenly recovered from his illness, waking as if from a coma, not knowing ‘where he had been whilst he hath been sick till now’. Henry’s recovery of his faculties turned a tragedy into a national disaster. York was dismissed as Protector; in his place returned Henry’s old friends and former advisers, including Somerset, who was released from prison in February 1455. York and his associates left London in disgust, without taking formal leave from the king. Somerset now began to plot their destruction, summoning Parliament to meet in May 1455 ‘to provide for the king’s safety’. It was soon clear that York was to be placed on trial. The duke knew that if he were to fight for his survival he would have to act first. Military force seemed to be his only option.

  On 1 May 1455 Henry departed London, riding with a large company of noblemen, including Jasper Tudor, intending to journey to Leicester. Spending the first night at Watford, they continued on to St Albans. There York was waiting with an armed force. Negotiations began in earnest, as heralds passed messages from one camp to another. York’s demands, however, were uncompromising: Somerset was to be handed over, to be imprisoned. This Henry refused. As the talks continued, York’s patience was wearing thin. After the herald had returned from his third mission, the duke had waited long enough. ‘Now,’ he is said to have replied, ‘we must do what we can.’ The Rubicon had just been crossed.

  Street fighting broke out between the king’s men and York’s. It was soon clear that York was winning the ‘battle’; many of Henry’s household, who had been set upon even before they had the chance to arm themselves, fled into the surrounding countryside. Some raced for the abbey doors, in the hope of finding sanctuary. Others simply had to make do with the nearest building for shelter as the Yorkist troops str
eamed through lanes and back gardens into the town. The king sought shelter in a tanner’s cottage as his standard was abandoned in the street, but not before he had been injured, wounded in the neck. When York discovered what had happened to the king, he ordered that he be removed to the abbey for his safety. His real target, Somerset, had barricaded himself into a local inn. There was to be no escape. As York’s men surrounded the building and broke down the doors, Somerset resolved to die fighting and was said to have killed four men by his own hand in his final charge before he was hit first by an axe then set upon and hacked to death.

  What part Jasper Tudor played in the fighting must have been limited. He had little military training or experience to take an active role in the fighting. The scenes of death, of the hail of arrows that had descended upon them, leaving many of Henry’s household with face, neck and arm wounds, would have left a lasting impression upon him. The abbot of St Albans recalled the horrific scenes of violence that Jasper must also have witnessed: ‘here you saw a man with his brains dashed out, here one with a broken arm, another with his throat cut, a fourth with a pierced chest’. It also left Jasper with a resolve that there might still be another solution to violence. With Somerset dead, perhaps reconciliation might be possible. Jasper would now play a critical role in attempting to bridge the two factions together.

  Henry was taken back to London, riding alongside York. He had become effectively a prisoner of the Yorkists, even if they still claimed that they were the loyal servants of the king. When Parliament was summoned several weeks later in May, both Tudor brothers were ordered to attend. One of the most pressing issues was to stabilise the nation’s finances, which had been placed under severe strain by the king’s lavish grants of land and office. Now, in a grand Act of Resumption, all grants which Henry had made since the beginning of his reign were cancelled. There were however to be a small number of exemptions: as members of the royal family, Edmund and Jasper were to keep all their estates and offices. York could hardly have been pleased, but he recognised that he needed to build a broad coalition of support, and that the Tudor brothers had the potential to be his allies.