Elizabeth
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…anon she found a default in mine English which she commanded me to amend and moreover commanded me straightly to continue and make an end of the residue then not translated. Whose dreadful commandment I durst in no wise disobey because I am a servant unto her said grace and receive of her yearly fee and other many good and great benefits and also hope many more to receive of her highness…10
Anthony, Earl Rivers met Caxton while visiting Margaret in early 1471, a relationship that would flourish in just a few years to the great benefit of England. During this sojourn in Burgundy, Edward IV, too, became interested in books and resolved to build his own library. That would have to wait, however, until he regained his throne.
In early March, Edward IV boarded the Anthony, a ship belonging to a brother-in-law of Gruuthuyse who was an Admiral in the Burgundian navy. A small fleet of thirty-six ships set sail for England. Prevented from landing at Cromer by the Earl of Oxford’s men, the ships sailed on to Ravenspur on the north bank of the Humber, where the King landed on 14 March 1471. Storms had separated the fleet, and Gloucester with his 300 men landed four miles away, while Rivers with his 200 men landed at Powle near Hull, about fourteen miles from the King.11
Claiming that he was returning only to regain his lands as Duke of York, Edward was admitted to the city of York only after he swore allegiance to the Lancastrian ‘King Harry and Prince Edward’ and declared before the High Altar in York Minster that ‘he never would again take upon himself to be king of England’. Immediately thereafter, he began to assemble followers, including his brother Clarence, to attack the Lancastrian army.
Family pressure and political reality caused Clarence, once more, to change sides. The Duchess of York, the Duchesses of Exeter and Suffolk (his two sisters in England), and the Duchess of Burgundy (his sister Margaret) had besieged Clarence with letters and messengers urging reconciliation with his brother. Clarence began to have second thoughts about his alliance with Warwick. The marriage of Anne Neville to Prince Edward of Lancaster had moved Clarence farther than ever from any claim to the throne. Even the weak and wayward Clarence could see that he was no more than a pawn used to strengthen Warwick’s position.
Even worse, with Henry VI restored to his crown, Clarence would lose much of his personal wealth, which had been funded from Lancastrian spoils won by the Yorkists in 1461 after the battle of Towton. A victory for Henry VI would reverse attainders and bring home a flood of Lancastrian followers to their restored lands, causing Clarence to lose the estates given him by Edward IV. His greed for money and power had positioned Clarence to lose more than he could possibly gain by his attachment to Warwick.
Thus, by the time Edward IV left York to march south to engage Warwick’s troops, Clarence had once more turned his coat and marched north to meet his brother. A contemporary chronicler records the encounter:
When they were together within less than half a mile, the King set his people in array, the banners [displayed], and left them standing still, taking with him his brother of Gloucester, the Lord Rivers, Lord Hastings, and [a] few others, and went towards his brother of Clarence. And, in like wise the Duke for his part, taking with him a few noble men, and leaving his host in good order, departed from them towards the King. And so they met betwixt both hosts, where was right kind and loving language betwixt them two, with perfect accord knit together for ever hereafter, with as heartily loving cheer and countenance as might be betwixt two brethren of so great nobility and estate.12
Edward IV should have known better. But forgiveness of his younger brother’s waywardness seemed to be inbred in the King. In spite of Clarence’s disloyalty and folly, Edward embraced his brother’s return to the Yorkist camp, restored all his possessions, and appointed him Great Chamberlain of England. Such reluctance to look beneath appearances to discern reality would later contribute to the chaos that followed Edward’s death.
Edward IV marched straight towards London without encountering any resistance. On Tuesday 9 April, he sent ‘comfortable messages to the Queen’ at Westminster and to his supporters in London.13 Edward IV entered the city on 11 April 1471 to the cheers of merchants and citizens, who were already anticipating restored trade with Burgundy. Phillippe de Commynes snidely commented from his French perspective that Edward IV was welcomed so warmly because of ‘the great debts he owed in the city, which made his merchant creditors support him’ and because ‘several noblewomen and wives of the rich citizens with whom he had been closely and secretly acquainted won over their husbands and relatives to his cause’.14
Londoners were pleased to welcome home their handsome and affable Edward IV, whose tall, energetic figure contrasted sharply with the frail and languid Henry VI, whose very appearance, always in the same old blue gown, ‘rather withdrew men’s hearts than otherwise’.15 The pitiful Henry VI, perhaps anticipating relief from the six months he had dealt with Warwick and the council, greeted his cousin: ‘My cousin of York, you are very welcome. I know that in your hands my life will not be in danger’.16 For the moment he was correct. Edward IV sent Henry VI back to his quarters in the Tower.
Edward IV stopped by St Paul’s Cathedral to give thanks, then headed up river to Westminster. In the abbey he prayed, ‘gave thanks to God, Saint Peter and Saint Edward’, and had the crown placed on his head by the Abbot.17 Appropriately sanctified, Edward IV went directly to Westminster Sanctuary to greet his wife, his three daughters, and his six-month-old son. Fleetwood’s chronicle summarises Elizabeth’s experience:
The Queen… had a long time abode, and sojourned at Westminster (assuring her person only by the great franchise of that holy place) in right great trouble, sorrow, and heaviness, which she sustained, with all manner (of) patience that belonged to any creature, and as constantly as hath been seen, at any time, any of so high estate to endure; in the which season, nevertheless, she had brought into this world, to the King’s greatest joy, a fair son, a prince wherewith she presented him at his coming, to his heart’s singular comfort and gladness, and to all them that him truely loved, and would serve.
From thence that night the King returned to London, and the Queen with him, and lodged at the lodging of my lady, his mother, [Baynard’s Castle, home of the Duchess of York] where they heard divine service that night and upon the morrow, Good Friday.18
But the Cousins’ Wars were only slightly delayed. Warwick was marching towards London. On Good Friday, Edward IV convened his council and prepared to depart the next day to fight the enemy. Queen Elizabeth, her children, the Duchess of Bedford, and the two archbishops once more moved home to the Tower.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
York Restored
On Easter Sunday 1471, the troops of Edward IV engaged those of his cousin Earl Warwick at Barnet, in one of the more bizarre encounters in these wars of the cousins. On Saturday night, the King’s troops camped so close to Warwick’s army that Warwick’s artillery firing throughout the night overshot Edward’s men. On Sunday morning, a dense fog shrouded the field, causing commanders, despite their military experience and expertise, to position troops so poorly that Warwick’s line outflanked Edward’s at one end, and Edward’s outflanked Warwick’s at the other.
As the battle began, Edward’s left wing was destroyed. Survivors retreated to London, spreading the word that Warwick had won. But the centre of the line under command of Edward and Clarence held, and the right flank, led by Gloucester, moved ahead. Then Fortune spun her wheel, with consequences unintended by mere mortals. The Earl of Oxford, whose Lancastrian troops had destroyed Edward’s left wing, returned from pursuing the fleeing Yorkists. As they rejoined the battle in the fog, they mistook the badge of their own men, a flaming star, for the badge of York’s flaming sun. They attacked their own men. Warwick, sensing defeat, tried to escape on horseback. But as he rode through the nearby woods, he was recognised, captured and killed on the spot.
The death of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’, whose sword had placed Edward IV on the throne and then replaced h
im with Henry VI, now assured the ascendancy of Edward IV. By ten o’clock in the morning, the battle of Barnet was over. Edward was back in London in time to celebrate Easter Sunday Mass at St Paul’s. On Easter Monday, the body of Warwick was brought to St Paul’s, where it was displayed on public view for three days, ‘open and naked’ except for a loin cloth. No doubt would remain in anyone’s mind that the Kingmaker was dead.
Still, the mopping-up of Margaret’s army remained. Funded by Louis XI, Margaret had departed from France and landed at Weymouth on that same fateful Easter Sunday. Her troops marched north through Exeter, Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Bath, gathering support from the traditional Lancastrian counties of Devon and Cornwall. Moving on into Gloucestershire, Margaret’s army arrived at Tewkesbury. In this last battle, on 4 May 1471, Margaret lost everything. Most crushingly, she lost her hope and claim for the future: her son, Edward, the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, was ‘taken fleeing to the town and slain in the field’, according to the Yorkist account.1 Lancastrian versions of his death claim that the prince was murdered after the battle. In any case, the son of Henry VI and Margaret was dead. With nothing left to live for, Margaret, who had sailed with such splendour and promise to England at the age of fifteen to marry the twenty-three-year-old King Henry VI, surrendered to Edward IV on 14 May 1471.
The Neville family attempted one last hurrah. Thomas Neville, son of the Earl of Kent and popularly known as the Bastard of Falconbridge, attacked London while Edward IV was consolidating his victory after Tewkesbury. Arriving from Calais with 300 men, Falconbridge gathered followers as he marched through Kent to invade the city. The Mayor and alderman wrote to Edward to come
…in all possible haste… to the defense of the Queen, then being in the Tower of London [with] my Lord Prince, and my Ladies, his daughters [and] likely to stand in the greatest jeopardy that ever they [had] stood [in].2
Edward IV dispatched 1, 500 men to defend the city, but Falconbridge attacked before they arrived, setting fires at Aldgate, Bishopgate and London Bridge, where his men burned over sixty houses in an effort to clear a path into the city.
Anthony Wydeville, the Queen’s brother, saved London. Bivouacked in the Tower, he mobilised his troops to counter-attack Falconbridge’s rebels:
…After continuing of much shot of guns and arrows, a great while upon both parties, the Earl Rivers, that was with the Queen in the Tower of London, gathered unto him a fellowship right well chosen and habiled [able] of four or five hundred men, and issued out at a postern upon them, and, even upon a point came upon the Kentish men, being about the assaulting of Aldgate, and mightily laid upon them with arrows, and upon them with hands, and so killed and took many of them, driving them from the same gate to the waterside.3
The Croyland Chronicle particularly commends the heroism of Anthony:
[The Londoners] were especially aided… by a sudden and unexpected sally, which was made by Anthony, Earl Rivers, from the Tower of London. Falling, at the head of his horsemen, upon the rear of the enemy while they were making furious assaults upon [Bishopgate], he afforded the Londoners an opportunity of opening the city gates and engaging hand to hand with the foe; upon which they manfully slew or put to flight each and every of them.4
A poem ‘On the Recovery of the Throne by Edward IV’ devotes three stanzas to celebrating and thanking Anthony, including:
The erle Revers, that gentill knight,
Blessed be the time that he borne was!
By the power of God and his great might,
Through his enemies that day did he pass.
The mariners were killed, they cried ‘Alas!’
Their false treason brought him in woo,
Thus in every thing, Lord, thy will be doo.5
With the defeat of Falconbridge, the way was clear for Edward IV’s return to London. He entered the city on 21 May 1471 in a procession of state, preceded by Richard, Duke of Gloucester and followed by George, Duke of Clarence. The former Queen Margaret of Anjou brought up the rear, displayed in defeat. She was sent to the Tower but not permitted to visit Henry VI who was also imprisoned there. She never saw her husband again.
That night, King Henry VI died. Whether he died because of the ‘pure displeasure and melancholy’ caused by his son’s death and wife’s capture, as recorded in the Arrival, or whether he was killed by the hand of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as reported by the Chronicle of London, Fabyan, Commines, and common gossip, will never be known. Henry VI’s body was displayed in St Paul’s to inform the world that his departure from this earth was beyond doubt. With only his face exposed, any wounds were hidden. Witnesses declared that in his lying he bled upon the pavement.
By July, Edward IV began to secure the future of the Yorkist monarchy. On 3 July, the seven-month-old Prince Edward of York was created Prince of Wales with two archbishops, eight bishops, and the nobility of England swearing allegiance to him as the next heir to the throne. If anyone doubted Edward IV’s trust and respect for his Queen, the appointment of Elizabeth as head of the Prince’s Council put all such doubts to rest. The other council members – the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Gloucester and Earl Rivers – were appointed ‘to be of council unto the said Prince, giving unto them, and every four of them, with the advice and express consent of the Queen, large power to advise and council the said Prince’ until he was fourteen years old.6
So, too, Edward IV rewarded those individuals who had helped Elizabeth survive his exile. Abbot Thomas Millyng of Westminster Abbey was appointed chancellor to Prince Edward. William Gould, the butcher who had supplied the weekly ‘half of beef and two muttons’ while the Queen was in sanctuary, and sent a hundred oxen to the meadow near the Tower following the battle of Tewkesbury, was given a ship called the Trinity of London to fill with ox-hides, lead, tallow and all other merchandises except stapleware (wool), for trading in whatever parts of the sea he desired. Marjory Cobb, midwife, received a grant for life of £10 and Doctor Serigo was awarded £150 from the Venetian wine trade.7
In September, King Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth went on pilgrimage to Canterbury to give thanks for their survival. In less than two years, Elizabeth had lived through the murder of her father and brother, the witchcraft trial of her mother, the exile of her husband, the birth of her son in sanctuary, and a siege within the Tower. The poem ‘On the Recovery of the Throne by Edward IV’ acknowledges the Queen’s trials, and concludes with a three-stanza tribute to her:
O queen Elizabeth, of blessed creature,
O glorious God, what pain had she?
What languor and anguish did she endure?
When her lord and sovereign was in adversity.
To hear of her weeping it was great pity,
When she remembered the King, she was woo,
Thus in every thing the will of God is doo.
Here after, good lady, in your felicity,
Remember old troubles and things past,
And think that Christ himself is he
That is King of kings, and ever shall last,
Knit it in your heart surely and fast,
And think he hath delivered you out of woo,
Heartly thank him, it pleaseth him so to doo.
And ever, good lady, for the love of Jhesu,
And his blessed mother in any wise,
Remember such persons as have been true,
Help every man to have justice.
And those that will other manner matters devise,
They love not the King, I dare say soo,
Beseeching ever God that his will be doo.8
With such praise and good wishes from the people of her country, the future must have looked bright for the Queen. Finally, she could relax, as the royal court began governing the nation. The prosperous reign over which they presided would last just twelve years.
The court spent Christmas 1471 at Westminster, in public displays of their roya
l presence. On Christmas Day, the King and Queen, wearing their crowns, celebrated Mass sung by the Bishop of Rochester in Westminster Abbey. Following the Mass, the King sat in state at Whitehall, with the Bishop of Rochester sitting on his right and the Duke of Buckingham on his left. On New Year’s Day, the King and Queen went in procession without their crowns. On Twelfth Day, yet another procession showed ‘the King crowned, and the Queen not crowned because she was great with child’.9
Queen Margaret’s fate was less happy. Elizabeth took pity on the Queen she had served as lady-in-waiting: ‘The imprisonment of Queen Margaret was at first very rigorous, but it was, after a time, ameliorated through the compassionate influence of Edward’s Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, who probably retained a grateful remembrance of the benefits she had formerly received from her royal mistress’.10 Margaret’s first imprisonment was in the Tower, but she was soon moved to Windsor. On 8 January 1472, John Paston wrote that she was ‘removed from Windsor to Wallingford, nigh to Ewelm, my Lady of Suffolk’s place in Oxfordshire’.11 Alice Chaucer, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, had been a favourite friend of Margaret in happier days. Now her custodian, Lady Suffolk received eight marks each week for the former Queen’s maintenance.12 Margaret lived with Lady Suffolk until Louis XI ransomed her in 1475, when she returned to France to live in poverty and pain until her death on 25 August 1482, aged fifty.13
In February 1472, the court moved to Sheen, the Queen’s dower palace that she particularly loved for its pleasant and peaceful setting. The proximity of this palace to the Carthusian charterhouse and to the Bridgettine Abbey of Syon, both of which Elizabeth patronised, provided easy access to the spiritual sustenance she frequently sought. But any simple pleasures that the Queen hoped to enjoy with husband and children were soon shattered by conflicts between her brothers-in-law. Instead of a peaceful and long-overdue holiday, the Queen had to contend with the anger and antagonisms of Clarence and Gloucester, brotherly battles in which Edward was forced to arbitrate. The ingratitude of Clarence, in particular, grated against Elizabeth’s desire for family harmony.