by Mike Voyce
Chapter 2 – Duke Henry
The next questions were what? And why?
I tackled these in the same way as before. That night, at home in my flat, I sat in my armchair, quietly, and meditated. With my mind clear of everything, I relaxed and simply took thought. It much annoyed Angharad, later, when I told her about it, but it works. In fact all I’ve had to do to learn this story of Edward is to sit in my chair and take thought, ‘channelling’ as Angharad calls it. It is just like daydreaming and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
The lounge in my flat is a long room. I sat in my chair, at one end of it; the door and a settee to my left, a window, another chair and a bookcase to my right: in front, a desk and television. Surrounded by soft greens and browns I’d drift off into another world. Whenever I think of meditation it’s this spot my mind turns to, for it was here I sat down to take thought when first I got to know Edward.
(Past)
“I’m scared Papa, and I’m cold...
I don’t like this place.”
“Hush boy; be at peace. You trust your father don’t you?”
“I love you Papa. I don’t want those men to get you!”
“God willing, boy. God willing we both may live.
Come sit by me Edward.
Some day you may be a duke. You must listen to me now and be very grown up. I don’t know if you can understand but you must try. Will you Edward?”
“Yes, Papa, I’ll be good. I don’t want those men to get you.”
“Good, then listen.
The present king is a bad man; though I have served him well enough to my profit. Be that as it may, I have declared against him and raised our musters for that cause. The king killed his nephews, your cousins, boy, the Princes in the Tower, and now he’s killed our friends whose crime was loyalty to us.
Morton taught me to raise England and I tried. Our men fought, and for me they died. King Richard is not a forgiving enemy; whoever wears the de Stafford colours is being killed.
I thought.... with Morton I thought that, with Richmond behind me, the country would rise. Not even all our own estates, who owe us loyalty. The nobles were cowards, they’ve seen too much blood spilt by Richard, and they kept their soldiers mewed up and quiet. Still, we might have done something but for “Buckingham’s flood”. Even now they’re calling it after us. You saw the swollen streams, boy, we’re cut off from the friends we have… and with Tudor failing to land with his army from France... Maybe, despite Bishop Morton’s blessing, it is the Will of God.
Edward, it took six weeks, just six weeks, to sweep us up. That Tudor didn’t land leaves hope for England and for us too if we can get away to him... If we’re not betrayed.
I had to bring you with me, my son; you’re the de Stafford heir. Richard killed his own nephews; he wouldn’t stop at you.. Listen, Edward, I am afraid for you. If those men take me run boy, hide. Tell no one your name till you know you’re safe among friends.
Whatever happens to me you are to live. Do you understand? You are to live! You are de Stafford’s heir and maybe England’s too.
Do you understand?”
“Yes Papa. I promise. I don’t want you to die Papa, I’m scared here, I’m frightened.”
“Hush.
Hardly anyone knows we’re here, only two or three of our own servants. We’re safer here, hiding in a storehouse, than we would be on the road. We must trust our own.”
...Said very quietly, “How can I run carrying the boy?”
“Come, Edward, we shall play a game.”
“Yes, Papa…”
“Listen Papa! I hear noises.”
“Quiet!”
Terror stalked outside with heavy boots before the door came crashing in.
“Run boy, hide!”
A cool voice spoke out of a large figure, framed by daylight from beyond the door,
“Too late, your Grace, for you and the boy.
By your Grace’s leave my duty’s to the King. In the name of King Richard, Henry de Stafford, sometime duke of Buckingham, I arrest you for treason by these officers, in execution of this warrant.”
“Your pocket to the king; your duty’s to me!”
“Take them. The King’s warrant and reward.”
“Not the boy. The warrant’s not for my boy, nor any of my kin. Take him to safety… For your duty man! The Tudors will pay, Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond… For pity’s sake!”
“Take the Duke.”
“Papa!”
I came back to reality with a sense of anguish still trailing its tattered hem through my mind. In sight of my modern furniture, in my modern room, lingered the parting of father and son.
So now you know the name of that boy I told you about at the first. Edward de Stafford, the son of a duke and a traitor, hunted by the agents of Richard III.
I saw with an adult mind, through a five year-old’s eyes, the betrayal and arrest of Duke Henry. You couldn’t know and I, who felt it, can’t tell the depth of Edward’s grief. I wanted to tell Henry how much his son really loved him; Edward never again got the chance.
There were so many things I didn’t know; how that perfidious servant persuaded the Duke into the wood store, so that he might more easily be taken prisoner, or where it might be. I do remember the smell of the sawdust and the bench facing the door, the bench Henry and Edward sat on. I remember the affection between father and son and the strength of it brings tears to my eyes even five hundred years later.
(Past)
Once the Duke had been dragged away and the soldiers departed, silence fell in that small room. Edward was left utterly alone. Shock turned to grief and that finally gave way to terror. The wood store remained in unrelenting stillness.
When Edward finally regained his voice he shouted,
“Papa!”
He rushed outside as if to see his father still standing there. All around was emptiness. In the woods and the fields nothing stirred except a lone songbird proclaiming its territory.
Edward sat down and at last he wept. Sobs welled up from the very centre of his being, a cry that could neither be controlled nor comforted. So he stayed until the first faint trace of dusk brought the first owl hoot and Edward looked around him. A sense of danger brought him to his feet and made him stumble into the woods, always looking around him for the return of the soldiers who had taken Papa.
As full night fell Edward found what warmth and shelter he could amongst the trees. The autumn cold and damp shook his body till at last exhaustion set in. When the first light of morning came he would search for Papa and for friends to guard his life.
There is a postscript to this. I wanted to know what happened to Edward, but I shall hold back, at least for this chapter, the road to Edward’s feelings has painful potholes of black depression and I shall circumnavigate them as best I can. There is another route, through books. I read about the Buckingham Rebellion. It’s not a well-known part of history.
Historians don’t know why the Duke of Buckingham rebelled; that he blamed Richard for the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower is just one explanation. It is certain the Duke took his eldest son with him, that they went into hiding when the rebellion failed, and that, while the Duke was captured, young Edward miraculously escaped. From meditation and research, I will tell you how the rebellion came about, but not yet; for now my interest was in what happened to the Duke, and what became of little Edward.
As to Duke Henry, he was beheaded at the market place in Salisbury on Sunday 2nd November 1483, without trial and without Edward ever seeing him again. Henry asked to see the King, he admitted privately he would have killed Richard if he got the chance, but his request was turned down. The whole business was brought to an end in an unseemly rush. For any execution, let alone of a duke and a defeated rebel, to be held on a Sunday, with no trial, was extraordinary. You would expect the Duke’s body to be paraded in state, it wasn’t; it was hidden in the yard of a common public house, ‘The Bl
ue Boar’. When Edward became a man it gave him great trouble to recover his father’s body, to give it proper burial.
There’s no doubt Richard was furious at Duke Henry’s treason, the House of Stafford was scattered, there were executions indeed, there was a manhunt for Edward and the Duke’s estates were confiscated.
What happened to Edward for the next two years is also a mystery (albeit one I shall reveal to you) but it is recorded, on the 21st August 1485, Henry Tudor became king of England, so ending the fear for Edward’s life, at least from King Richard.
After Richard’s death, Edward became the ward of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor’s mother. You will learn much more about that lady and how she abused her position. Nevertheless, Edward was cared for almost as a prince, almost, but never quite. He would hardly have understood his position, as Duke Henry’s son, now Henry Tudor was king of England. Let’s say the King at least seemed to honour his debt to a friend, which not all rulers do.
There are so many questions about Richard, questions that brought about the ‘Richard III Society’. You may have believed Shakespeare’s play, why should he lie? Yet, perhaps he would, to serve a Tudor queen or to keep his own head on his shoulders. Maybe Shakespeare believed what he wrote; he relied on Polydore Vergil and Sir Thomas More, immensely respected figures, who told the most remarkable lies, to please Henry VIII. The truth is, the most extreme and ruthless campaign of propaganda ever mounted against anyone was mounted against Richard III, it started as soon as Richard came to throne and continued even after Shakespeare.
It wasn’t until the sixteen hundreds that anyone dared speak for Richard. That first Ricardian was Sir George Buck, one time Master of the Revels in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I – in today’s language, official state censor. Sir George had access to secret papers, from the descendants of the Stafford family, now lost but enough to convince Sir George. Since then, Ricardians have exposed lie after lie, yet the pendulum of doubt still swings through all sorts of opinions. It leaves you to wonder about the truth of any history.
At first it was interesting to compare scholars’ accounts with my vision; scepticism assured me the truth would be different from what I saw. But as I read, and more and more points of my vision were confirmed by history, I felt a rising sense of enormity. It began to dawn on me I actually had heard Duke Henry talking to his son.
As to the Princes, little Edward’s cousins, I’m sure Duke Henry believed King Richard killed them (but you’ll have to wait to find out why). As to the Duke’s arrest, for all I felt his fear of betrayal, I read that it was the taking of food to the storehouse which gave him away. I latched on to this as one particular, at least, in which my vision was wrong.
All I knew of this period in history, before my vision, had been year nine lessons in school, and I’d paid little enough attention to those. How could all this have been lurking in my head? Yet, everything except the question of whether Henry was betrayed or discovered turned out to be true. Every word Duke Henry said to his son, even down to “Buckingham’s Flood”, was exactly as the historical duke must have known it. Imagine me turning from one text to another, searching for anything to deny that vision. Never before had I cross-examined a piece of evidence more ruthlessly. Even the “Bishop Morton” Duke Henry spoke of turned out to be Henry Tudor’s spymaster and later his chancellor, in effect, his prime minister. How could this be? How could I have known these things? What had I to do with this medieval lord and his family?
I was awed by it, I shied away from it. This channelling isn’t like normal daydreaming, you get emotionally involved. It was painful and confusing. Having put so much effort into it, I got cold feet; I wanted to run away from it. I felt a fool.
There are lost days in everybody’s life. It isn’t that nothing happened, there was just nothing memorable. So life went on, with my project taking more time than I wanted, with less result. I couldn’t talk to Sarah about that, any more than about Edward de Stafford. She was away on holiday in the south of France and completely out of reach.
It became clear we’d have to bring in an institute of higher education, to handle the administration it was increasingly obvious Sarah wouldn’t do, and to cross check and support her work. At least here I was successful. I spent a happy time trawling through academia till I found a university which would give it a good home. I remember one delightful afternoon, lost in conversation with a professor at ‘All Souls’ in Oxford. I felt, if only I were to knock a little harder on their door, the academic community would let me back in, as one of their own. That is, they would if I abandoned staff and clients and all else I’d created, to work on my project. It ended, as it was bound to do, with my business partner coming to wag a finger at my hour and a half on the phone, neglectful of fee-paying clients.
The university I eventually settled for was famous for its psychology research, but not yet for its work with criminals. It was handy for Sarah; she had a daughter studying there. But as to everything else, it seemed to be grinding to halt, not only my work with Sarah, the business in my office, everything.
Everything except Edward de Stafford.
It was at this time a strange fragment came into my hands. It happened one day when I was walking through Stafford, I found myself outside ‘the William Salt,’ the privately funded local history library. Why I went in I don’t know, I didn’t know what I was looking for. The history books left more questions than they answered; perhaps I was just looking for something more personal. I looked without much expectation, yet there it was. To me it was truly remarkable; it’s about Duke Henry, see what you think.
“The plaine old Duke his life to save
Of his owne man did souccour crave
In hope that he would him releive
That late much land to him did give
Base Banester this man was nam’d
By this vile deed for ever sham’d
‘It is’ quoth he ‘a common thing
To injure him that wrong’d his king’
Thus Banester his maister sold
Unto his foe for hiere of gold
But mark his end and, rightly see
The just reward of treachery.”
A contemporary ballad.
So the Duke was betrayed after all! It was my vision that was right, not the books. I pictured the figure from my vision, the man framed in the doorway, as “Base Banester”. Though I didn’t know what became of him, “the just reward of treachery,” somehow it cheered me to think of ordinary people taking the Duke’s side. Most of all, it ended my last doubt, I could no longer pretend I had not witnessed Duke Henry’s arrest.
One day I went to see Angharad. She wanted to know how I was getting on with Sarah. It was difficult to hide the doubts I felt about that woman, but it was also difficult to decide whether I was unhappy with Sarah because of her lack of work or because she caused my visions. Having drunk too much of Angharad’s whisky I admitted as much, at least I told her about the courtyard and about the duke’s arrest. I don’t know why I told her this, or what I expected her to say. She paused, looking at me for a moment; she asked me if I believed in the spirits of the past.
She exhorted me to follow my story and ‘channel’ my spirit guides.
“What are you afraid of?
Just because it’s different, you can’t look it up in your Law books, is that any reason to go into hiding?”
I bridled at that, and scoffed at ‘the spirits of the past’. Yet, when I turned to other friends, they gave me a book of ‘psychic’ investigations.
My darling daughter, aged nine, pestered almost constantly about Stafford Castle, which lies a mile or two from where she lives. It was now almost four years since the separation and divorce and the time my wife and our daughter went to live in their present home.
It was more than a month since I’d seen the vision of that courtyard and nearly two weeks since I saw Duke Henry’s arrest. I was still haunted by the memory of each of them. They, eve
rything, drew me back.
It was said, dear reader, by Thomas à Kempis, many years even before Edward was born,
“Man proposes but God disposes and Man’s destiny is not in his own hands.”
Let’s face it, I didn’t have a choice.
***
