To a man the council vigorously rejected the idea of a female regent, especially a Frenchwoman, and made moves to recall parliament in order to establish a formal protectorate. A consensus gathered around Richard as the adult male with the best claim to the succession and therefore the best qualified to deputise for the crown. His appointment as Protector and Defender of the Realm was ratified on the third of April, but only after the baby prince had been invested with the cap, ring and stick of the Principality of Wales, confirming his official status as heir to the throne. This order of events had been to reassure the queen of her son’s position and to pacify her fury at being denied the regency.
So I awaited the return of my husband the Lord Protector of England. Through the leaded glass of the window of the solar I saw his galley glide downriver from the Palace of Westminster and turn into the water gate at Baynard’s. True to his love of display, Richard sat amidships in an elevated gilt chair under a gold-tasselled canopy and was rowed by twenty oarsmen in York livery, their blades hatched in murrey and blue. Three standards were ducked as they passed under the gate arch – the white rose of York, the falcon and fetterlock and, to the fore, an escutcheon of the arms of the Dukedom of York, three gold lions on red in a silver border. I wondered how long it would be before Richard had the College of Heralds produce a coat of arms for the new Protector of England. Behind Richard’s galley there followed another, smaller craft, boasting only ten oarsmen and one standard displaying my brother Hal’s green spread-eagle.
Having no intention of being outshone by Richard’s flowing ermine-trimmed houppelande and gem-studded chaperon, I was dressed ready to perform my role as the Protector’s lady in a gown of brocaded blue silk with trailing sable-trimmed sleeves and a headdress of jewel-encrusted gold net set on a ducal coronet. Sadly Richard’s spectacular White Rose collar, which had been his proudest possession and a spectacular symbol of his investment in the future of the House of York, had had to be sold to meet our expenses. He had proved his administrative skills in Normandy and Dublin without being paid but it remained to be seen whether he would now have the chance to steer the kingdom onto what he called its ‘true course’ and recoup some of the debt owed to him by the crown at the same time.
For me it was a short walk from the privy apartments to the Great Receiving Chamber where friends and allies of York were gathered to hear the latest news. Richard, Hal and I arrived together, greeting each other on the steps of a dais covered in blue velvet and fitted with two gilded thrones. We did not take our seats however, until another chair had been placed for Hal beside ours. Then Richard raised his hand for silence.
‘For the peace and good rule of the realm it gives me great satisfaction to announce that I have today appointed my respected and renowned brother-in-law, Richard, Earl of Salisbury, as Chancellor of England. I hope you will all join me in pledging support for the good work I am certain he will do in restoring the Exchequer to a position of strength and good management.’
There was a stamping of feet and calls of congratulation and encouragement and Hal stood up and made a short speech of thanks and commitment. Richard then announced that other new appointments would be made to the council as soon as possible and that he would open the new session of parliament the following day. The three of us then made our way to Richard’s private chamber so that we could speak freely together. A chamberlain poured wine and was dismissed and we all relaxed into cushioned seats.
‘You look tired, my lord,’ I said, observing the dark shadows into which Richard’s usually bright green eyes had sunk. Since our reunion at Ludlow, he and I had returned to a working partnership, although I knew it would never be the warm and loving relationship we had enjoyed before. I could not deny him his conjugal rights and nor did I wish to but when I announced that my eleventh child would be born sometime in late June or early July, I worried that it might arrive a little early. I would never repent my secret interlude with John but I was acutely aware of the danger of giving birth to a child which Richard could not possibly have sired.
‘I would be exhausted,’ he acknowledged, ‘if I did not now have your brothers and nephews on my side.’ He raised his jewelled cup in salute to Hal. ‘I thank you heartily for agreeing to take the Great Seal, Salisbury. I have discovered that finding men to fill the highest offices in the land is not easy. Few are willing to expend their energies for the benefit of the realm when at any time the mat could be pulled unceremoniously from under their feet.’
Hal’s appointment was a controversial one because it was a post usually filled by a member of the Church hierarchy, so I was surprised that he had been offered, let alone accepted, the post of Chancellor.
‘It is rather disquieting,’ Hal agreed, taking a judicious sip from his cup. ‘Our brother Will was in the deputation that went to Windsor last week and he told me that King Henry’s stupor is still profound. Yet the doctors claim he could regain his intellectual processes at any moment.’
‘Or not at all,’ added Richard with no obvious sign of regret.
I had also heard Will’s account of that visit to Windsor. The carefully selected group of lords had been invited to attend the king at dinner time and had watched him consume a meal with agonizing slowness and a frighteningly vacant expression. He had appeared completely unaware of their presence and failed to respond to anything they said to him. It was after this unsettling audience that the council finally united behind the appointment of Richard as Protector.
‘England is lucky to have two men such as you at the helm of state,’ I remarked encouragingly. ‘God willing, her people will soon notice a return to order and the rule of law.’
The mention of Will had reminded me of his daughter Alys, who had kindly nursed little Anne through her traumatic abduction by Harry of Exeter. Sadly I had received no correspondence from Anne herself but Alys had visited me on her way back north to be married and reported that Anne was pregnant. Her baby was due two months after mine and I knew that there would be no chance of my being admitted to Ampthill even if I had been fit to travel there, so I could only rely on Alys’s assurance that there were pleasant women around her and a good midwife had been appointed. Her lying-in would be around the time of her sixteenth birthday and I prayed every day to St Margaret to grant her a trouble-free birth. At least she would be free of Harry’s company because he had been summoned before the council and committed to the Tower for failing to pay substantial fines imposed for occupying Ampthill and damaging countless other properties, a sentence which I heartily applauded. I could not quite bring myself to wish him dead but I certainly felt that the country would breathe easier, the longer the Fox was denied his freedom.
The first months of Richard’s protectorate brought a considerable slackening of political tension due to his rigorous application of the law to those lords who had been consistently flouting it, including the arraignment of Lord Egremont to answer for his violent raids on Hal’s Yorkshire holdings. However by Christmas the king showed signs of recovering his faculties; by the following February he and the queen were back at Westminster and Somerset had been released from the Tower. The protectorate was over; Richard services on the council were no longer required and he retreated once more to Ludlow. The Wheel of Fortune had turned again.
Meanwhile I had given birth to a baby girl, born late enough to leave me in no doubt that she was legitimately Richard’s. Sadly she was also sickly and fretful, requiring constant nursing from the moment of her arrival. As soon as she and I were strong enough, I took her off to the tender care of Anicia at Fotheringhay where she joined her toddler brother Dickon in the nursery. We called her Ursula, the Little Bear.
I cannot say that I was personally sorry to see the end of the protectorate, which had meant spending much time in London at draughty Baynard’s and away from the children but, of course, Richard and his affinity were furious and gathered at Ludlow for another strategy meeting in the middle of April. Sensing dangerous times ahead, I decided to j
oin Richard and took all the younger children and their nurses and servants to Ludlow for safety.
Before dinner on the day after our arrival, family members and guests gathered in the grand first floor chamber off the great hall. Talk centered on the summons Richard, Hal and Dick had each received to a meeting of the Great Council at Leicester in May.
‘I am not going,’ declared Dick, waving his letter of summons high. ‘To Leicester? In the Lancaster heartland? With no retinue? They jest! This is a one-way invitation to the Tower.’
‘Somerset is certainly pulling no punches,’ agreed his father in a slightly more moderate tone. ‘No doubt he wants pay-back for the months he spent there last year.’
‘It smacks of Duke Humphrey’s summons to the St Edmund’s Bury parliament,’ said Richard grimly. ‘He was ordered to attend the king and bring no retainers and look what happened to him.’
‘What did happen to him, my lord?’
It was Edward who spoke; he was on the cusp of his thirteenth birthday and about to become a squire, albeit only in the service of his governor Sir Richard Croft. Of course, being Edward, he was desperate to serve someone of more exalted rank, such as his cousin Dick, but Richard had told him he must wait.
‘Poor Gloucester was arrested and died soon afterwards,’ Richard explained. ‘He was fifty-seven and it was said that he had an apoplexy but few believe it was not murder. He took on a corrupt court party and came off worst. Edmund Beaufort was one of them – before he became Duke of Somerset and the equally corrupt Suffolk was the royal favourite at that time. Your cousin Dick is right. This summons is definitely a trap.’
Richard had still received none of the money owed to him by the crown and to add insult to injury Somerset, in the king’s name, had released Harry of Exeter from the Tower declaring him to be there due to the malice of ill-wishers. Richard saw this as a personal insult and bitterly resented seeing the red rose and the wheatear flying together again.
Meanwhile Dick of Warwick was on the warpath because Somerset had reinstated his claim to Glamorgan and besieged Cardiff castle. ‘I will need to send relief to South Wales before I can bring a force to your aid,’ he said. ‘What action do you have in mind, my lord of York?’
Richard flung one arm around Hal’s shoulder, which my brother bore patiently but awkwardly. They were not bosom friends however much Richard liked to pretend they were. ‘Your father suggests we should prevent this meeting of the Great Council happening at all and I am inclined to agree with him. If it does not happen we do not need to go and therefore we cannot be accused of treason for refusing.’
Warwick raised an eyebrow. ‘Hmm. That is a crafty plan, my lord father. How do you propose we bring it about?’
‘Will there be fighting, Uncle?’ Edward asked, making thrusts with an imaginary sword.
Hal smiled at his bloodthirsty young nephew and eased himself from under Richard’s arm. ‘Well, young March, I think we might aim at the barber treatment – trim Somerset’s beard a little but not draw any blood. We are not aiming for a fight.’
‘And I think your father will consider you too young take part, Lord Edward,’ remarked Sir Richard Croft, crushingly.
‘And his mother most certainly will,’ I declared firmly from my seat near the hearth where I sat with Elizabeth and Meg beside me. As they were eleven and almost ten respectively now, I thought it time they experienced the world of adults, however boring they claimed to find it.
I watched Edward’s temper flare but was glad to see him swallow his ire, make a graceful bow of compliance to his governor and retreat to stand behind his father. Edward was learning tact as well as tactics. Edmund on the other hand was always quiet on these occasions, watching and listening. One of the small triumphs Richard had achieved as Protector had been successfully to argue that his second son should be made Earl of Rutland, in recompense for the lands and titles he had lost when France had overrun Normandy. I hoped this would do much to reduce Edmund’s sense of inferiority.
Richard expanded on the proposed strategy. ‘If we are to stop the council from sitting we have to prevent the king from going to Leicester. When he takes the road north he always spends the first night at St Albans Abbey. We will block his progress there but we will not make an attack and King Henry will not order one because it is not in his nature. Therefore it will be a stand-off, giving an opportunity for negotiation. That is what we need – a chance to take our case directly to the king without having to deal with his weasely side-kick. But hear this, if I could make Somerset disappear in a puff of smoke I would, believe me.’
Later that evening, after the meal was concluded, the trestles were cleared and when wine had loosened tongues I passed close to where Dick of Warwick was discussing these tactics with one of his companion knights. I did not like what I heard.
‘York has tried that strategy before – bringing a large force to confront the king and relying on him to negotiate. It did not work last time and it will not do so now. Personally I vow that if Somerset is in the royal party when we confront them at St Albans I will not waste time in talking. There will be a fight and Somerset will not survive.’
32
St Albans Town, 22nd May 1455
Cuthbert
At dawn a thick mist formed over the fields where our troops were stationed behind the outer row of houses and gardens on the east side of St Albans. The town had no walls and the makeshift barricades erected against us did not look as if they would offer much resistance. Our three-thousand-strong force had been deployed in three divisions and because of my tactical skill with the longbow I had been seconded to the Earl of Warwick’s retinue to captain his crack cohort of archers. We were drawn up behind the foot-soldiers who were detailed to storm the barricades while we shot over their heads to break down the defenders on the other side with showers of arrows. I could not fault Dick of Warwick’s strategy or his instructions to his knights to inflict as little injury as possible on the common soldiers and concentrate on taking out the men of rank. He did not declare it publicly but all the captains knew that while York claimed only to want certain people to be stopped from abusing their positions of power beside the king, Warwick had only one aim in this confrontation – to come face to face, sword in hand, with the Duke of Somerset, the man who had robbed him of his wife’s legitimate inheritance, as he saw it.
Although it meant that the archers would be shooting blind, the shrouding mist would undoubtedly assist the infantry’s attack, hiding them from the defenders until the last minute and Warwick, fretfully pacing the ground between Richard’s forces and his own, was anxious to get started in order to take advantage of this. First, however, we had to wait for the inevitable last-minute diplomatic efforts to prevent bloodshed. Richard had insisted on sending his herald to assure the king of his loyalty and obedience to the crown but also of his intention one way or another to remove from the king’s presence the traitors by whom he was surrounded. When the herald returned with the royal reply that the only traitor the king could see around him was the Duke of York, Dick punched the air with delight, clapped his father and uncle on their armoured shoulders and declared, ‘Then we fight! God give us the day!’ and marched off to mount his horse.
As predicted, the barricades barely delayed our assault on the town. Once my archers had let loose their fusillades of arrows our infantry charged at the haphazard heaps of upturned carts and domestic furniture, hauling them aside and then, screaming defiance, battering and hacking their way through the defenders in the gardens beyond. Some of our more enterprising men had the idea of stopping to release pigs and chickens from their pens and coops which then ran amok and caused further havoc, before breaking through the houses to the street beyond, leaving a trail of destruction but few injured citizens, most of whom seemed to have retreated to their upper floors behind locked doors. I led the archers after the infantry. Bows slung and daggers in hand, we avoided entering the street and prowled along the row of back gardens seeking
a suitable vantage point from which to bring our fire-power to bear on the real foe – the high-ranking barons and knights of the king’s party. The royal forces we had encountered so far were evidently recruited from the surrounding countryside and seemed timid and badly equipped, armed mostly with scythes and billhooks and protected with ancient padded gambesons, relics from the previous century. When they turned and ran we let them go. They were not our prey on that day.
Where the houses were intersected by a crossroads, we came to a building that was one story higher than the others. The extensive stables and outhouses behind it were deserted and the rest of us took cover while two of my sturdier sergeants put their shoulders to a rear door. After several heaves they succeeded in bursting through, allowing us all to pour into the chamber beyond, a large room supported by wooden pillars, which occupied most of the ground floor. It was deserted and almost devoid of furniture but the strong smell of ale and the presence of several large barrels at one end revealed its normal function as the taproom of an inn; the furniture must have found its way onto the barricades. There was a gallery of rooms above reached by a staircase at one corner and I led the way up, hoping to find the attic floor and a way out onto the roof. If there were people cowering in the first floor bedchambers we did not disturb them as we climbed further. From a landing window, I caught sight of the painted sign that swung from the front of the building. It told us that we were occupying a hostelry called The Castle Inn.
Within ten minutes I had thirty archers deployed on the roof which overlooked a key street leading up through the marketplace and into the main square of the town, an area milling with men-at-arms wearing red rose badges and fully armoured knights with shields bearing easily-recognized crests of the Lancastrian affinity. Over their heads I could just make out the top of the market cross and flying above it the unmistakable lions and lilies on the royal standard. Somewhere under that standard must be the king himself. I made a furtive sign of the cross. Never before had I taken up arms against England’s anointed king and I felt as if I was breaking one of God’s commandments. I glanced quickly at the men around me and wondered if the same thought had occurred to them but if they were aware that they were about to commit treason I could discern no sign of it.
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