by Mike Voyce
Chapter 6 – The Kings of England
It was after the shock of reading van Dusen that I sat down at my desk to start this journal. I’d come back to Stafford early, for a court case, but it hadn’t been booked to last beyond the morning and I went into my office expecting to find an afternoon’s work. I was surprised to find my diary empty, my secretary didn’t make mistakes, and she came in to my room, practically before I’d taken my coat off.
“You’re looking tired; you could do with a rest before the strain gets you.”
I looked at her in surprise. I never thought of myself as under strain, you just get on with the job. Of course, I hadn’t told her about Edward, did the pressure of these visions show?
I’d never experienced rebellion from Yvonne; she always worked well, fitting in with my demands, no matter how unreasonable. She enjoyed her job; she was good at it, and, for some reason, approved of me. I could have been angry, but as it was I just sat there, looking at her back as she retreated through the doorway.
I did spend most of the afternoon idling, trying to make sense of what I’ve told you. The trouble was it didn’t make sense, and all I did was resolve to write down my experiences. With my diary and such notes as I’d made, and what I filled in from memory, and the careful record of what came after this, these are the sources of this book.
Do you know much about Tudor history? I didn’t, even after reading about Duke Henry and Richard III. It became an issue that same Friday evening.
I told you about my fear of insanity; I thought about it as I drove out to see Angharad. If I told her all I’ve told you would she think me mad? Perhaps Yvonne was right. It takes discipline not to let these visions overwhelm you, would I know it if I descended into delusion? But Angharad showed no sign of thinking me mad. I told her everything but it wasn’t enough. She quizzed me about Henry Tudor, how he came to be king? Why couldn’t I answer? She seemed to think I ought to know everything.
You can picture Angharad, hands on hips, telling me with gusto,
“Well, it’s time you found out! You don’t have to do it all by channelling, you can look it up in the library.”
“Yes. And so I will.”
But it wasn’t just this that sent me scurrying to the library. It was as if the fate of England hesitated in the balance in these years. There was something about Lady Katherine’s concern when she parted with Edward that morning.
I wanted solid facts; as a counter-weight to van Dusen’s book. Edward seemed all too close to me. I needed him to have his own reality.
“Go and check it in the books. You’ve a critical brain; use it. If you’re too close to it, treat it all as if Edward were one of your clients.”
The very next morning I went to the library. It was open on Saturdays, and I started methodically, with the Dictionary of National Biography, giving the essential facts of everybody who ever mattered in English history. Working from there I searched the library. Here we go on a little journey through the most extraordinary piece of English history and the shortest account you’ll ever read of the Wars of the Roses.
The tangle leading to Edward de Stafford started with Edward III, glorious king of England, victor over the French at Crecy and descendant of Henry II, first Plantagenet king of England. Edward III died in 1377 having fathered seven sons. Though two of them died in infancy, Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince; Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence; John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster; Edmund of Langley, duke of York and Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester survived to manhood; but as the Black Prince was killed in 1376, succession went to the Prince’s ten-year-old son, Richard II.
When he inherited the crown, history says, Richard wasn’t a good king, impetuous and bloody, listening to his friends rather than the wise and powerful. It wasn’t long before Richard’s uncles combined to take power from him.
The parliament of 1388 was known as the “Merciless Parliament”; it left Richard king in name only, executing or driving into exile his friends and supporters. It put power into the hands of the great lords, Richard’s uncles. For a time England was ruled by these ‘Lords Appellant’, Richard being as powerless as any modern monarch.
Yet Richard was given a second chance. He was very young in 1388. Perhaps the great lords had gone too far. Dispute and meddling revived, several great men were condemned. Far from silencing complaint, disaffection grew. Next, Uncle Thomas was arrested and murdered. This grabbed my attention, for it was Thomas of Woodstock who was Edward de Stafford’s ancestor.
It is claimed Richard struck back at a domination his uncles thrust on him over many years, that he hadn’t forgiven them for what they did in 1388. There chanced to be a rebellion against some of these great lords. Not only did he forgive the rebels, he recruited from them, Richard’s famous Cheshire Regiment. Towards the end of his reign he was surrounded by them, and still recruiting.
But it wasn’t the murder, according to History; it was Richard’s banishment of his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, which turned the nobility against him.
After Lionel, John of Gaunt, Edmund and Thomas came a new generation. First among these was John’s son, Henry, called Bolingbroke after the Lincolnshire castle where he was born.
Richard shouldn’t have killed Uncle Thomas, it wasn’t Thomas who was the threat; Thomas had always supported John of Gaunt, now John was dead it left Thomas exposed. John had been enormously powerful, he won Lancaster by advantageous marriage; he held vast possessions in France and nearly became king of Portugal. From him, Henry Bolingbroke inherited wealth and influence beyond King Richard’s dreams.
Henry wasn’t at all exposed, he was bound to win when he defied Richard and came back to England. The outcome was a foregone conclusion.
Whether Richard starved himself to death or was murdered after Henry deposed him is uncertain. I picture him sat in a grey chamber at Pontefract castle, facing the emptiness of despair,
“Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Henry Bolingbroke became King Henry IV; he was strong and vigorous, as described in Shakespeare’s plays. But he was dogged by rebellion and nervous ill health, a skin complaint that showed on his face. Remembering the propaganda against Richard III, I wondered, was it guilt that made Henry ill and turned him inwards?
Henry’s son, Prince Hal, disowned his father’s rule. When he became king he apologised for the usurpation. The irony is that without Henry IV’s crimes he would have become king anyway, as Richard’s heir.
Henry V was able. After his overwhelming victory at Agincourt, he became heir to the king of France and married the French king’s daughter, Catherine. Then disaster struck. Henry died, suddenly, of a mysterious illness. He left his heir, Henry VI, still a baby.
Henry’s widow sought consolation in the arms of a servant, the clerk to her wardrobe, Owen Tudor, the son of a Welsh farmer. They kept their unlicensed, unlawful, marriage a secret and there was a great scandal when it all came out. Catherine was sent to a nunnery where she died shortly after. But they kept their secret well and for a long time, there were five children; Edmund, Jasper, another son who became a monk, and two daughters.
When he came to power young Henry VI was kind to Owen and to his half-brothers; they were declared legitimate by Parliament, Edmund was made earl of Richmond while Jasper became earl of Pembroke. Henry himself was crowned king of France while still only ten years old, but he was too weak to hold it. He lost the crown and all the other gains his father made. He lost all or almost all the vast holdings in France, some of them more English than England itself. They slid away from English rule in a catalogue of incompetence and acrimony. The last straw was the treachery of the duke of Somerset, he was given almost independent charge of what was left of France but he turned Henry’s subjects against him, by extortionate taxes, used to line his own pockets. He died suddenly, possibly by suicide, before he could be arrested.
Henry was a good man; some said a saint. He carried religion to ext
reme, but this didn’t compensate a nobility smarting from French losses. On top of this Henry suffered dreadful depressions from the strain of kingship, a responsibility always too great for him, it left him unfit to rule.
This time it was the descendants of Edward III’s fourth son, Edmund of Langley, who came to the fore. Edmund was succeeded by a son, a grandson and then a great grandson in the Yorkist title. This last, Richard, duke of York, was heir to both York and Clarence. As the mightiest subject in the realm it was he who was Protector during Henry VI’s illness, as John of Gaunt had ruled in King Richard’s reign.
The Duke and Henry’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, rowed dreadfully. They argued so much that on Henry’s recovery it came to battle. Poor King Henry, he might well have been nervous at resuming power and calling his first parliament; as it was, everyone else’s mind was on the Duke, whether he’d be arrested and what he should do. Fighting broke out, even before he could come before Parliament. Duke Richard won and forced Henry to forgive him of all the complaints Queen Margaret made. Unfortunately it didn’t end there. Further incapacity re-opened the quarrel, bringing greater and greater violence. In the end it was a straight choice between the Queen and York. The Queen provoked a battle, it was more like an ambush, but the Duke felt he had no choice. At the battle of Wakefield, in 1460, the Duke was killed and the scene set for a war dividing the whole nation.
There’s Shakespeare’s story of the great lords meeting in a garden, split over their loyalties, some picking the red rose of Lancaster, others the white rose of York. They were split not about justice and policy but about legal right.
Edward III’s second son, Lionel duke of Clarence, died even before the Black Prince and without affecting the kingship of England. He left an only child, Philippa, who married the earl of March; their granddaughter and heiress married the grandson and heir of Edmund of Langley. I wonder if the explosive implications of this were seen at the time. It meant that Lionel’s claim to the throne passed to their son, Richard duke of York, the man who died by Queen Margaret’s scheming.
When Henry Bolingbroke took the crown from Richard II, Richard had no heir. The next person in line, who was actually able to rule, was Henry himself. But the succession should rightfully have gone to the heir of Richard’s eldest uncle, Lionel, not only that, had Henry’s treason against Richard disqualified him from the crown? At the time Lionel had no competent heir, now, in the time of Henry VI, he did - the Duke of York.
It had been Queen Margaret who forced Duke Richard into it. By accusing him of treason she gave him little choice. Richard’s answer was that he couldn’t commit treason against himself; Henry IV had been a usurper, since Richard II had no heir, he, Richard of York, was the rightful king. He placed his hand on the throne and let it be known, in due time, he would take the crown. Perhaps that’s what drove Margaret to the desperate step of having him killed.
If Henry VI had been a strong king he might have brushed the claim and the past aside. He wasn’t and England knew it. Illness and foreign disasters were further compounded by financial incompetence and the King retreated more and more from reality. But the Queen and her supporters were determined to hold on to power, blaming York for their own cupidity. Pretence that the Queen spoke for her husband completely broke down.
The dead duke’s eldest son, Edward, had no choice, he could abandon family and honour, or he could fight. Queen Margaret had laid her plans with great care; the Lancastrian armies were raised and ready. Despite the support of the earl of Warwick, Edward was perilously weak. For all that, he fell on the Lancastrians as an avenging angel; the shock of his righteous judgement and execution of the Lancastrians at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross must have been shattering. Not only did Edward win against all odds and expectation but his victory was accompanied by strange astronomical events in the sky. The young duke adopted his badge, “the Sun in Glory”, as evidence that his victory was the judgement of God.
Queen Margaret would not admit defeat. The Lancastrians mustered again for a last great battle, the biggest ever fought on English soil. The two sides met at Towton in Yorkshire, on a grim, wet and dark winter’s day; and the supporters of Lancaster were put to the sword, the slaughter was greater than ever before or since in England.
Of course, after that, Parliament confirmed Edward as King Edward IV. Poor Henry, sometimes a prisoner of his wife’s policy, sometimes a prisoner of the Duke of York, still unwell, was imprisoned in the Tower of London, his coronation denied and his life put in peril. His son, Edward Prince of Wales, and Queen Margaret fled.
Henry VI didn’t conveniently die as Richard had done and there were those still loyal to the house of Lancaster. Resentment smouldered on wherever the new king was weak. For more than ten years rebellion continued.
It was at this point Angharad came into the library. Loaded with shopping, she brought the bustle of Saturday morning, intruding with the rain she shook from her hair. Yet her sunny smile was such a pleasant relief from the chore of searching references and making notes.
“My, you have been busy.”
She parked her bags and plonked herself down next to me.
“Well, tell me all about it.”
Other readers scowled.
“It was an astonishing time. You have to look back over so many generations to see how people thought.”
“Tell me about Edward’s family.”
“Mostly it’s not about the Staffords. Everything in this story goes back to King Edward III, the daughter of his youngest son married an earl of Stafford and from then on the eldest Stafford sons were princes. It starts when earl Edmund married Anne, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock. But when Thomas was murdered it left Edmund week, he died fighting for Henry IV at the battle of Shrewsbury, in one of the many rebellions. Edmund was never strong enough to rival King Henry or Richard II. The greatest power runs down a different side of the family.
Thomas’ descendants rebuilt their power, Edmund’s son was made a duke, but they were never quite strong enough to control the rest of the family. They were always somehow indebted by loyalty to one side or another. Most of them were killed by that loyalty.”
Edward’s great grandfather, Duke Humphrey, did his best to hold the French possessions together, even paying the Calais garrison out of his own pocket, he stayed loyal to Henry VI. First his eldest son, then he himself, died fighting to keep the peace. Yet once the Yorkists won and Edward IV became king, the Staffords transferred their loyalty, holding steadfast to the Crown. Duke Humphrey’s second son, Sir Henry Stafford, died from wounds he received at the battle of Barnet, fighting for Edward IV; while Sir Henry’s nephew, Duke Henry, was married to the sister of Edward’s queen.
Angharad patted me on the shoulder. Would I keep her bags for her while she went back to the shops? I wasn’t sure whether I was a left luggage office or if Angharad had been checking up on me. I went back to the kings of England.
Following Henry VI’s overthrow, it wasn’t the expected Lancastrians who endangered King Edward; the next turn of events is a strange one.
The Earl of Warwick had sided with Edward; in fact he made Edward’s victories possible. After Towton he worked tirelessly to suppress rebellions, throughout the north. He used his wealth and power and skill in war with great ability, constantly preventing any real threat to Edward and building up his own importance as he did so. It won him the nickname, ‘Warwick the King Maker’. Yet he’s best remembered for changing sides and it’s difficult to see why he did it.
There had to be very good reason to betray the king he helped so loyally. On the face of it, the main reason for that betrayal is a silly one.
In those days the great married for wealth and power, not for love. Edward IV married an English lady, Elizabeth Woodville. He married for love, perhaps illegally, certainly in secret, and it was rumoured, under the spell of witchcraft. The fact of the wedding came out at the very time Warwick was negotiating with the king of France to give Edward a cont
inental marriage. The King Maker may have been made to look a fool but that’s hardly reason for rebellion.
I thought about that secret marriage, carried out by a country parson, away from court. I thought about the rumours that Elizabeth had been betrothed to a country gentleman, making marriage to the King illegal. I imagined Warwick’s reaction to the news, in the middle of state negotiations with the king of France. Surely Elizabeth Woodville could have been proclaimed queen of England without driving Warwick and Edward to war.
The real reason was hard to find, and largely ignored even today. Edward IV was not legitimate; he wasn’t Duke Richard’s son at all. He had been conceived while the Duke was away fighting and the campaigning dates make it abundantly clear. Edward’s father was a common archer, Duchess Cecily admitted it; she could hardly do otherwise.
The dates were open and easy to read, how strange historians refuse to acknowledge the fact; but when Duke Richard acknowledged Edward as his own son it made Edward legitimate, for most purposes other than claiming the crown.
I’m sure what Warwick was doing was negotiating to restore the succession, to give Edward a wife who could deliver legitimately royal sons. That’s why he rebelled when Edward married a “popinjay”.
Warwick’s power toppled Edward but by now the Lancastrians were too weak to prop up King Henry. It was a brief restoration and it didn’t survive Edward’s return match. Warwick was killed at that battle of Barnet while the Prince of Wales died at the battle of Tewksbury or was, as some say, captured and summarily killed by King Edward’s brothers. King Henry himself was murdered in the Tower, only Queen Margaret; the cause of so much trouble, survived.
What of the Tudors through these years? Throughout the turbulence in Henry’s reign they remained loyal. In 1461 Owen fought for Queen Margaret at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross; he was captured, tried and executed. Jasper managed to escape. Edmund’s fate was inglorious; he had already died, in prison, in 1456, from plague.
Edmund left a young widow, very young, she was only thirteen but already she was pregnant. The widow was Lady Margaret Beaufort, and her child, Henry Tudor, was the future king of England.
At first I thought I must have misread Lady Margaret’s age. Although the nobility often went through marriage ceremonies when they were still quite young, there was a rule that such marriages shouldn’t be consummated, at least till the couple were fourteen. It seems Edmund hadn’t waited. I imagined the trauma of that child, in the middle of civil war, bearing that dead earl’s son.
So now to back track a little, to tell you about Lady Margaret and her ancestry; for everything in this story returns to the children of Edward III.
After his second wife’s death, John of Gaunt finally married his mistress, Catherine Swynford. Despite the eldest child having been conceived in double adultery, their several children were legitimated by the next Parliament after the wedding; they took the name of Beaufort from a castle John once owned in France. Like the Tudors, they received royal favour. John Beaufort, the eldest child and Margaret’s grandfather, was made a marquis while her father became a duke, that same disgraced duke of Somerset, who lost the last of France to England’s enemies.
There was a price for all these favours; it was imposed by Henry IV when he first legitimated his half-brothers. The price, enshrined in Act of Parliament, was that neither they nor their descendants should ever claim the throne of England.
Margaret’s father died when she was very young. For all her father’s infamy and the bastardy of her line, Lady Margaret was the child of a duke and a direct descendant of John of Gaunt. She found herself, in the regency in Henry VI’s illness, in the care of the powerful John de la Pole, who treated her like his own daughter and determined she should have a good match. Despite John’s care, she was married, in a confusion of match making, to Edmund Tudor. It is said Margaret was given a choice of suitors and chose Edmund because of a dream. Yet, given her early pregnancy and Edmund’s death, I cannot think she chose well.
After Edmund Tudor, Margaret married Sir Henry Stafford, one of the kindest and wisest of the last Lancastrian magnates. Sir Henry was the only surviving son of Humphrey, duke of Buckingham. Not only did Margaret receive his protection but the support of the dowager duchess, Anne, the richest woman in England and patron of both Oxford and Cambridge universities.
When Edward IV came to power Sir Henry changed sides, doing all he could to protect Margaret and her son. He negotiated with the leaders of both Lancaster and York for the sake of Henry Tudor, eventually pledging to fight for King Edward, should the need arise. His death, in 1471, came from wounds he took honouring that pledge.
After Sir Henry, Margaret quickly married Lord Stanley, a Yorkist who could best protect her during the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III. It was Stanley’s protection that saved her from Richard’s wrath after the Buckingham rebellion, and Stanley’s inaction at Bosworth that helped her son to the throne, and it was her brother-law, Sir William Stanley’s men who killed Richard III.
So there we have it, the history and scant, illegitimate line of Tudor pedigree. Bastards and dishonour on both sides; with no claim to the throne of England, indeed an express exclusion from it.
Between the death of Sir Henry and her marriage to Lord Stanley, Lady Margaret’s son was without a protector; so it came about that Jasper removed him from England and the reach of Edward IV. They meant to take refuge in France but storms set them down in Brittany. Brittany was then independent, long an enemy of France but a friend of England. King Edward could expect to influence such an ally. Nevertheless its ruler, Duke Francis II, gave sanctuary to Henry Tudor and resisted all English attempts at extradition. I can only guess at the intrigue and danger at this time. However it was, Edward never succeeded in extracting him from the hands of the wily Duke Francis. Henry even settled down to domestic bliss, married, and fathered a Breton child.
A perverse thought struck me, since Henry Tudor was already married, with a child, when he came back to England, his subsequent marriage and the whole ensuing House of Tudor, as known to History, was illegal and illegitimate. That might have made a difference, if the House of Tudor had any claim to the crown of England in the first place, which it had not.
Conventional history has it that when Edward IV died England fell into the hands of his surviving brother, Richard duke of Gloucester, like a sparrow into the claws of a hawk. Shakespeare has both Edward’s queen and Richard’s own wife in fear for their lives. It is a fact that Richard had the intellectual Earl Rivers, protector of Edward’s children, executed for no very good reason, and that he killed William Lord Hastings, in a fit of rage. But the victors write history and I was coming to question conventional views.
There were two things I didn’t understand. First the arrest of Earl Rivers, it was the plan of Duke Henry, to gain control of the Princes, but why was it necessary to kill him? Second was the killing of Hastings.
Richard asked Hastings to investigate Mistress Shaw, she had been Edward IV’s mistress and was rumoured to be implicated in his death; there were even rumours that she had bewitched Edward, in much the same way that Elizabeth Woodville had done many years before. Richard also believed witchcraft was being practised against himself and his family, no-one was suspected except Mistress Shaw. Hastings not only found no fault in her, he proposed to marry her. It was this that sent Richard into a fury.
My inclination was to scoff at witchcraft, until I remembered how seriously Warwick had taken it, and how he turned England upside down over Edward’s marriage in 1471. Should the allegations against Elizabeth Woodville be taken seriously? And were the allegations against Mistress Shaw not so similar? Then I remembered that Earl Rivers was Elizabeth Woodville’s brother. Was the fact of the matter that he was killed for being implicated in his sister’s witchcraft? He certainly profited from it, and it’s unlikely Richard III would damage his brother’s reputation by making such claims public.
Historians do no
t take allegations of witchcraft seriously; still less do they think witchcraft could corrupt a king. It seems at least possible that Richard took them no less seriously than Warwick the ‘King Maker’ had done.
What historians do remember is the disappearance of King Edward’s sons, the Princes in the Tower, Edward V and another Richard, duke of York. Their vanishing, while in King Richard’s care, shook England. As Dominic Mancini, reported at the time,
“I have seen many men burst forth into tears and lamentation… When they were removed from men’s sight.”
Did Richard murder them? Were they spirited away by witchcraft? Were they removed for their own protection? Certainly Lady Margaret backed an armed attempt to remove them.
All these events happened in such a rush, it even confused those who were there. After Richard seized the Princes, while they were still alive and well, everything proceeded for the coronation of Prince Edward as Edward V. The ceremony was actually started, in Westminster Abbey, with most of the nobility of England present, when the bishop of Bath and Wells refused to anoint Edward as king. The Bishop announced that King Edward IV’s marriage had been void, as royal bastards neither Edward nor his brother could inherit. I can only try to imagine the consternation this must have caused.
The bishop almost certainly knew Edward IV was illegitimate, a sermon had been preached about it the previous day; though historians dismiss this as Richard’s propaganda, I think it more likely to have come from the bishop, an explanation in advance for what he intended to do .
It is certain, it was Duke Henry who addressed the lords and commons of London, following that failed coronation, as if it were planned; calling for Richard to be crowned in place of Edward V. His speech was so moving, and brilliant, delivered with such authority, that the crowd, with one voice, shouted their approval. So it was that Richard, duke of Gloucester became king of England.
The propaganda of Polydore Vergil and Sir Thomas More paints Richard as the wickedest king of English history. The evidence is, that for the short time he held the throne, he passed good laws, ruling conscientiously and justly. There is an enormous question, what sort of man was Richard III? Still more, it left me wondering about Duke Henry, the man who put him on the throne.
Why should Duke Henry be so ruthlessly murderous to his wife’s family? What could he possibly gain? What threat did he see in them? What of the talk of witchcraft that got Hastings killed? and what about Warwick’s astonishing rebellion? Then again, what about the amazing pronouncement of the bishop of Bath and Wells? History is silent about the truth of these things.
Then there is the further question, why did Henry rebel? You know I’d already read about this and even found the fragment from that ballad. I shall tell you more later; but as to the history books, they are baffled. It was Duke Henry’s consummate political skill that put Richard in power and, for all it failed, the Buckingham rebellion was Richard III’s death warrant. It caused many of the discontented and fearful to beat a path to Brittany and many soldiers and remarkable men went with warrants against them because of the rebellion. Their numbers must have stretched the seams of Duke Francis’ court to the limit. Most of all, it gave credit to the accusation that Richard murdered his nephews.
Henry Tudor had promised to join in the Buckingham rebellion. Even though his army never landed, Richard III wasn’t likely to leave him safe on England’s doorstep. Pressure was put on Brittany. Duke Francis was growing old and ill and could not long resist. While the Duke lay sick, a chamberlain issued a warrant for Henry’s arrest, even as Tudor was preparing the invasion that would kill Richard. Even with a warning from one of his own spies, he escaped to France with no more than an hour to spare. It was from France Henry launched the invasion the very next year.
Tudor’s invasion gained little strength as it moved through Wales into England and on to Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. Even so, the Welsh preferred the grandson of a Welsh page to a noble Plantagenet, the English preferred peace to blood. Richard III had been king for only two years and two months when he was slain by Henry’s army.
The house of York didn’t quite end with Richard III. Although his only child died before him, Richard named his nephew, John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, as his heir. After Bosworth, Lincoln made his preparations and finally his claim. He fought bravely against the usurper, but Fate did not accord with justice. The truth was too many Yorkists had pledged themselves to Henry Tudor for salvation from Richard III. They wouldn’t betray that pledge for Richard’s heir. It was Henry who defeated the Earl of Lincoln at the battle of Stoke. In the ironic way of history it was Henry who had the Earl executed for treason, not the other way round.
After Lincoln there was another nephew, Edward earl of Warwick. This Edward was the son of George duke of Clarence, middle brother between Edward IV and Richard III. George had been notoriously disloyal and unreliable and was finally executed for treason against Edward IV. Having discovered Edward IV’s paternity I could understand George’s resentment, it was he, George, who should have been king; not his brother, the son of an archer. But George’s treason disinherited his son, a pitiful child, without power or supporters, possibly even simple minded.
After Henry Tudor came to power, Edward was kept for a time by Lady Margaret at Coldharbour, later he was sent to the Tower and finally he, too, was executed.
Like Lincoln, all other claimants were too weak to defeat Henry Tudor: all except one, the heir to the fifth son of Edward III. When Henry Tudor restored the titles and estates, which had been stripped from Duke Henry, he must have been sore tempted. They were truly vast. Over all the generations of Stafford power, the net of noble allegiances, feudal duties, and tradition in arms, lands and wealth must have made Henry Tudor look weak and poor. I can imagine Henry and his mother pondering over it.
Of course Henry kept a slice for himself, £1,000 a year, an enormous sum in 1485. Beyond that, by making his mother Edward’s guardian, Henry gave her the vast income from Edward’s estates and the right to sell his marriage prospects (alone worth £4,000). Henry himself would take further large fines when Edward came of age. But most of all, in the meantime, Edward would be under Tudor control for the next fourteen years.
There were the same considerations in marrying Lady Katherine to Jasper. Henry was bound to return the share of Stafford wealth which was Katherine’s by right, as dowager duchess, but by the marriage he effectively gave it to his own uncle. At the same time Jasper would keep the only adult Stafford under close control.
These devices leached incredible fortunes from the Stafford estates, the richest estates in England. It was this wealth which allowed Henry Tudor to run England out of his own pocket, without using the nation’s exchequer or, for many years, calling a parliament. In every sense the success of the Tudor reign was based on the usurpation of the de Staffords.
I wondered what was in the minds of Lady Margaret and Henry Tudor. I’m sure they worked very hard to stop Edward Stafford realising how they used him. No doubt it was easy enough when Edward was first taken to Coldharbour, when he was only seven years old, but with each year that passed the risk would grow and grow. I wondered if they ever suffered a guilty conscience. Lady Margaret’s confessor, the eminent John Fisher, often said she feared divine retribution, though she never confessed to him why.
I wondered if Edward might be in danger of being murdered, to stop him realising how he was being used. Then I remembered that it would only be if Edward were judicially killed, for treason; that the Stafford estates would come to Henry Tudor. Of course, the young earl of Warwick was killed in exactly this way.
Edward never did rebel or claim the crown; by holding their most powerful danger close to them the Tudors held themselves safe. I knew this from history, but what I didn’t know was how Lady Margaret managed it, and what effect all this had on Edward.
As I helped Angharad put her shopping in the boot of her car my thoughts were still all taken up with this story. What had
I learned in the library? Many of the kings and great lords I’d read about were unsympathetic. Yet there were two for whom I felt sympathy, Thomas of Woodstock, and that most honest and conscientious gentleman, Sir Henry Stafford, doing all he could for his wife and her child. When I explained these feelings to Angharad her answer was simple.
“You need a determination they didn’t have.
If Edward had it he would have been king.”
***
