Battle Royal

by Hugh Bicheno

  *1 When Calais was finally lost on 1 January 1558 it fell to a night attack that began with the capture of the sluice gates – by that time strongly fortified – while the garrison was drunkenly celebrating the New Year.

  XVI

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  Here be Dragons

  Wales might well have been marked ‘here be dragons’ on the Anglo-Norman mental map. Barring rims of settlement along the north and south coasts, it was a mountainous, wooded territory, thinly inhabited by miserably poor and deeply resentful peasants. It preserved its own legal system, with feudalism still the dominant form of land tenure, and of course its own language, thanks to which a separate Welsh identity survives to this day. It is only through translations of the oral history contained in bardic poems that English speakers can even glimpse what was going on in the hearts and minds of the conquered people.

  The border marked on Map 12 was not legally defined until the mid-1500s, by the same series of acts that made Wales part of England, granting it representation in Parliament for the first time, but abolishing its legal system and banning the Welsh language from any official role or status. ‘The March’ occupied most of what we now call Wales. During the prolonged Norman conquest from 1067 to 1283 it was dotted with a profusion of motte and bailey timber castles. These were gradually replaced by a smaller but still large number of masonry castles and walled towns, with the heaviest concentration in the south.

  Monmouth and Glamorgan corresponded approximately to the old kingdoms of Gwent and Morgannwg. The royal counties of Cardigan, Pembroke and Carmarthen had once been the kingdom of Deheubarth, while the borders of the Principality (Anglesey, Caernarvon and Merioneth), along with Denbigh and royal Flint, were those of Gwynedd, the last independent Welsh kingdom. Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire were English, but Welsh gentry predominated along the borders. Many adopted English surnames only during our period, under the pressure of penal laws enacted by Henry IV.

  The most famous Anglicization was by Owen, son of Maredudd ap Tudur, hence properly Owain ap Mareddud (Meredith), Catherine of Valois’ consort. His was not a Marcher family – the Tudors were from north-west Wales. When given Englishman’s rights for service in Normandy, Owen chose to use his grandfather’s name as his English surname. This was probably in tribute to the role of the three ap Tudur brothers in the last great Welsh revolt, led by their first cousin, Owain Glyn Dŵr, after whom he was named.

  The peculiar circumstances of the Wars of the Roses gave Wales a role in English history it had never played before – or has since – thanks to which a Welsh dragon was one of the shield supporters of the royal coat of arms from 1485 to 1604. The Tudor dynasty descended from Edmund, the first-born son of Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, but he did not even live to see the future Henry VII born. It was his brother Jasper who piloted the boy to the throne, through vicissitudes that would have broken the spirit of a lesser man.

  As Pembroke was so poor and much of it was owned by the Bishop of St David’s, the English nobles appointed to senior posts within Wales never performed in person the duties for which they were paid, delegating them to local officials instead. The most outstanding of these was Gruffudd ap Nicholas of Crug, in the Tywy valley, who made himself so useful to successive absentee lords and bishops that by the late 1440s he and his sons Thomas and Owain dominated Carmarthen, Pembroke and much of Cardigan.

  Although some of Gruffudd’s lands were granted in theory to Jasper Tudor in 1452, he did not set foot in the county until 1456. Gruffudd resided at Carmarthen Castle and acted in all respects as the lord of south-west Wales until Somerset was killed at St Albans, after which Gruffudd and his sons were replaced by new Yorkist stewards, constables and justiciars throughout the area. York himself became constable of Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Carreg Cennen. Kidwelly and Dinefwr, held by Gruffudd since the 1430s, went to Edward Bourchier and to the Yorkist retainer William Herbert of Raglan in Monmouth.

  Herbert was the son of William ap Thomas, who fought at Agincourt and was made a knight banneret, but never anglicized his name. The older William had been Chief Steward of Usk and Caerleon, York’s largest Welsh estates, and High Sheriff of Glamorgan. When he died in 1445 his namesake son, who adopted the surname Herbert and was also knighted for service in Normandy, inherited his offices along with the manor of Raglan, which his father had begun to fortify. Herbert, who made a fortune from the Gascony wine trade, was to make it the last of the great Welsh castles, as a proud display of wealth and power.

  Although Gruffudd and his sons were summoned on pain of treason to appear before the Council in London, he had seen it all before and ignored York’s authority and appointments, confident that, as always, his isolated corner of the kingdom would be very low on the squabbling English lords’ lists of priorities. Thus it came as a nasty surprise when Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, was sent in late 1455 to restore royal authority in south-west Wales.

  Jasper was the more obvious choice, but unlike Richmond he had formed part of the king’s retinue at St Albans and York did not trust him. In the confrontation with Somerset, who despised them as upstart bastards (what a difference a generation makes!), the Tudors had been, if anything, Yorkist in their sympathies. In early 1453, to Somerset’s fury, the king gave them the lucrative joint wardship of the estates of Margaret, sole heir of John Beaufort, Edmund’s older brother and predecessor as duke of Somerset. The wardship had previously been awarded to Suffolk, and after his death was exercised by Marguerite, so this concurs with the hypothesis that she built up the Tudors to counterbalance Somerset.

  The death of Somerset at St Albans removed any impediment to Richmond marrying his 12-year-old ward, and to the Tudors becoming wholeheartedly associated with the queen’s faction. Either York did not fully appreciate this, or else he thought to win Richmond to his own side by entrusting him with gaining control of the castles defiantly held by Gruffudd. Richmond did not do so, however, moving first to the bishop’s palace at Lamphey, near his brother’s castle at Pembroke. There, so great was his anxiety to guarantee his life interest in his wife’s estate that he got her pregnant despite her age and slight build.

  Edmund must have been anxious indeed: convention dictated that men of refinement waited until their child brides were in their late teens before consummating their marriages. Such forbearance was practical as well as ethical. Although twelve was the legal age of consent, simply because a girl had reached puberty did not mean her body was fully developed. An early pregnancy risked the girl’s life or, as proved to be the case with Margaret Beaufort, could wreck her ability to bear more children.

  When Richmond finally took possession of Carmarthen Castle in August 1456, it was by agreement with Gruffudd ap Nicholas. By then York had lost patience with him and sent 2,000 men under William Herbert to do the job properly. With him went Walter Devereux of Weobley, Herbert’s father-in-law and constable of York’s castle at Wigmore, and the Vaughan brothers of Bredwardine, Hergest and Tretower, who had been brought up with the Herbert brothers after their widowed mother married William ap Thomas. Carmarthen and the other castles were not prepared for defence and quickly surrendered. Richmond was briefly imprisoned, but he was at liberty when he died of the plague in Carmarthen on 1 November.

  Jasper Tudor moved to Pembroke Castle in late 1456 and there, on 28 January 1457, his brother’s posthumous son was born. It was a difficult birth yet within two months, escorted by Jasper, Margaret travelled to meet the Duke of Buckingham at his manor of Greenfield in Newport in Monmouth. She negotiated her betrothal to his younger son, Henry Stafford, and they were married on 3 January 1458. Confusingly, Buckingham’s heir Humphrey had earlier married Margaret’s namesake first cousin, the daughter of Eleanor Beauchamp who had been the cause of her ‘shot-gun marriage’ to Edmund Beaufort.

  In the face of the Yorkist onslaught Gruffudd made submission to the queen, and after her counter-coup of October 1456 the king issued a pardon to him and his sons.
Jasper Tudor took back the lands pertaining to his earldom, but when he replaced York as the constable of Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Carreg Cennen in April 1457, things continued as before with Gruffudd’s family operating as his agents. The last record of Gruffudd is in late February 1460, when he made a will bequeathing the castle and lordship of Narberth to his son Owain. Along with Jasper Tudor, Gruffudd’s family were to be the most tenacious of Lancastrians throughout the Wars of the Roses.

  All politics is local and, as was the case throughout the kingdom, it was clan rivalries rather than any overarching commitment to York or Lancaster that tended to define what side noble and gentry families took. The most inveterate opponents of Gruffudd were the Dwnns of Kidwelly, Carmarthen, and they perforce became beleaguered but fanatical Yorkists. The Kynastons and Eytons of Shropshire were rivals of the Talbots of Shrewsbury, and so became York’s main supporters in the North March. The Skydmores of Herefordshire had chronic disputes with York and Herbert, and the Pulestons of Denbigh with York’s unpleasant ally Lord Grey of Ruthyn, and so became firm Lancastrians.

  An exception to the general rule was the Principality of Wales. More than was the case with the royal counties of Wales, there was genuine popular commitment to the Prince of Wales as the successor to Llewellyn the Great in Anglesey, Caernarvon and Merioneth. Unfortunately for his cause they had been wretchedly governed during his father’s reign: ‘Lawlessness was everywhere rampant, and Merioneth subsisted on cattle stealing, private feuds, burning of houses and murders. Market day at Dolgelly and Conway was a festival of looting and plunder.’*1

  Thanks to Jasper Tudor, south-west Wales proved a greater asset. He quickly appreciated the strategic importance of the Pembroke peninsula and the great harbour of Milford Haven. Even before it became apparent that war was inevitable, he entered into an agreement with the citizens of Tenby, on the southern side of the peninsula, to build up the fortifications of the port. He also governed fairly. Winning the loyalty of the people of Pembroke proved to be the wisest long-term investment made by any of the participants in the wars.

  The Middle and South Marches were the heartland of York’s power and, as we have seen, after the failure of his demonstration at Dartford, Henry and Somerset had held assizes in Ludlow to humiliate his tenants. They never turned out in force for York again. From 1457, Marguerite resumed the attack, singling out York’s supporters in the South March. In April, at Hereford, William Herbert and Walter Devereux were arraigned before the king, with Marguerite at his side, not for their actions on behalf of York in south-west Wales, but for an arbitrary act committed on their own initiative a year earlier.

  Following the murder of Walter Vaughan, Herbert and Devereux had intimidated the coroner’s court at Bredwardine and seized Hereford, imprisoning the mayor and pressuring the king’s justices to convict the men they said were responsible, whom they promptly hanged. The members of the commission that tried Herbert and Devereux at Hereford were the leading lights of the royalist faction: Buckingham, Shrewsbury, Wiltshire, Beaumont and James Tuchet, Baron Audley, joined by William FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, trimming his sails to the prevailing wind in the manner that was to serve him well in the future.

  Herbert and Devereux were found guilty of treason, but their subsequent treatment was markedly different. Devereux, who had already been condemned and pardoned for his part in York’s armed protest in 1452, was imprisoned and his goods declared forfeit. Herbert, the principal instigator, was granted his life and restored to his property in return for swearing allegiance to the king. The purpose was plainly to divide the two men and to weaken Herbert’s allegiance to York.

  Herbert was the steward of York’s castle at Usk and manor of Caerleon, which together with Herbert’s own large estate of Raglan occupied the strategic centre among Buckingham’s large holdings in Brecknock and southern Monmouth, and the lands held by Somerset, Wiltshire and the junior Talbots in Gloucestershire. If the Vaughans followed Herbert’s lead, a wedge would also have been driven between York’s strongholds in the Middle March and Warwick’s lordships of Abergavenny and Glamorgan. Herbert was also Warwick’s High Sheriff for Glamorgan, and if he could have been won to active support of the king, it would have been a spectacular coup.

  There is little doubt that Marguerite’s policy of chipping away at York’s support without confronting him directly, and carefully refraining from taking any similar action against Salisbury and Warwick, offered the best chance of achieving her objective. Time was not on her side, however. Keeping the court away from the Westminster bureaucracy was unsustainable, as although Shrewsbury and Wiltshire were able to collect taxes directly from the Midlands, the mobile court lacked the staff to conduct national administration. The struggle against York might be won, but only at the cost of accelerating the fragmentation of a kingdom that could only function as a unitary state.

  With the court living hand-to-mouth, Marguerite could not use royal patronage to win followers or to buy conformity to her designs. She became a coalition manager, hostage to the interests of its component parts. While those of her son’s Council broadly corresponded to her own, any hope of breaking up the alliance between York and the Nevilles was dashed by the actions of the heirs of the nobles killed at St Albans and their allies, who at this stage must be seen as constituting a third party, and a damagingly loose cannon on Marguerite’s deck. She would need them if push came to shove, but they made sure it came to shove.

  The heirs were Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, 21 years old in 1457, Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland (36), and John, 9th Baron Clifford (22). Driving them on were the trio who had caused so much trouble in the earlier 1450s: Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter (27), Henry Percy’s brother Thomas, 1st Baron Egremont (35) and Thomas, 9th Baron Roos (30). The Percys and Cliffords had intermarried several times, and Roos was the son of the first marriage of Eleanor Beauchamp. Hence he was the maternal half-brother of Henry Beaufort, and shared his hatred of Warwick for the disinheritance of their mother.*2

  Politics was not only local, but also highly personal. Although Clifford’s and Roos’s main grievances were with the Nevilles, they had their own reasons to hate York. Both had been born in York’s own birthplace, Conisbrough Castle, when it was part of the dower of his stepmother Maud, Countess of Cambridge. She was the daughter of the 6th Baron Clifford and Elizabeth, daughter of the 5th Baron Roos, and along with her extended family lived there sumptuously while running up debts using the castle as collateral. When she died in 1446, York reclaimed his heavily encumbered property with icy contempt for Maud’s heirs.

  The product of all these and other resentments and provocations too numerous to list was a critical mass of unappeasable hatred that demanded bloodshed. Exeter and Egremont had tried to assassinate York during his first protectorate, and they were probably the authors of a sinister threat in September 1456, after Egremont escaped from Newgate. Five dogs’ heads were impaled on the railings of the London home of Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, where York was staying. The verses in the dogs’ jaws said that although York, the son of a traitor, deserved to die, others had paid the price for his treason:

  What planet compelled me, or what sign

  To serve that man that all men hate?

  I would his head were here for mine

  For he hath caused all the debate.

  This was a killer jibe, because it was true. So far, York had paid no material price for seeking to impose himself on the king – but the persecution of his followers after Dartford had seriously eroded their collective loyalty. At the same time, nobody seeking a legal judgement in his favour or public office would now seek York’s ‘good lordship’, and consequently he had to spend more of his own money to maintain influence. The quest for power was a further large drain on his resources, and he was compelled to mortgage more and more of his estates to sustain the regal style his ambition demanded. Added to which, after St Albans he had pressing reasons to retain a considerable numb
er of bodyguards on a permanent basis.

  In October 1456, at the Coventry Council where Marguerite staged her counter-coup, Somerset had to be restrained from assaulting York in person, and on 1 December, still at Coventry, his retainers attacked York’s party, and were themselves attacked by citizens outraged by their behaviour. Before then, an attempt was made on 5 November to ambush Warwick, returning to London from Calais, by retainers of Somerset, Exeter and Shrewsbury. It was this episode that persuaded Warwick to appoint deputies to administer his interests in England, and to move to Calais.

  There were several other such attacks over the next two years, forcing York and Salisbury to travel with large armed retinues and to reside only in their own castles or fortified manors. If the purpose had been assassination, there were many better ways of accomplishing it than through the very public clash of retainers. There were few if any casualties and one does wonder whether the supposed ambushes were not just threatening displays, akin to the behaviour of male animals in the wild.

  To pursue the analogy, the aim of intimidation is to achieve dominance without fighting. If, however, neither party backs down, then the issue has to be settled by force. There may have been an element of bravado in the young lions’ challenges to the Alpha males, but at some point the urge to find out who was the stronger would become irresistible. To avoid this, Henry VI made a last effort to dissuade his nobles from tearing his kingdom apart.

  *1 Quote from Howell Evans’ indispensable Wales and the Wars of the Roses.

  *2 For the Beaufort-Roos connection see Appendix D: The Beauchamp Inheritance.

  XVII