Iron, Fire and Ice

by Ed West

  William FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, was married to Salisbury’s eldest daughter but he was cautious; so too was John Vere, Earl of Oxford, who was allied with Norfolk against Suffolk and disliked Somerset but remained neutral for now. There was Thomas, Lord de Ros, who had the oldest continuous title of nobility in the whole country, based in Helmsley in Yorkshire; his mother had married Somerset and they were locked into an almost interminable conflict over inheritance, but he remained loyal to the crown.

  The council was now full of Yorkists: Warwick, Salisbury, and Lincolnshire baron Ralph Cromwell, while Exeter, Somerset, Northumberland, and Clifford had been excluded. As protector, York made himself Captain of Calais, on top of Lieutenant of Ireland, and he also appointed Richard Neville as chancellor, but despite such partisanship his rule was just, and he had also brought some semblance of peace to the vendetta in the North. He had also imprisoned his own son-in-law Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, in Pontefract Castle, for his involvement in a local feud, against his oath as a lord. Queen Margaret, Buckingham, and the Tudor brothers all received lands or offices, while York’s ally Warwick got nothing. His great enemy Somerset remained in the Tower, however.

  York, in many ways an honest and honorable man, lacked the necessarily guile to rule the land; he failed to understand that many leading men were not like him and expected bribery and rewards. He seemed to possess an acute sense of what was right and just rather than expedient. In contrast, Somerset, who had wormed his way into the king’s inner circle, was better at manipulation; he was also a spymaster, and in January 1454, even while imprisoned in the Tower, he still employed friars and seamen to act as his spies and “enter the house of each lord in the land.”5

  In May 1454, Salisbury and York ordered Northumberland as well as his brothers Thomas and Ralph to come to London to explain their actions. No Nevilles were asked, despite some of their depredations, and the Percys refused. Instead Egremont went to York where they held the mayor hostage; so, Richard of York went north and forced his submission.

  York also succeeded in ending the violence between the Courtenays and Bonvilles, which had begun in October 1445. The feud had deteriorated to such an extent that one of the Courtenays, Sir Thomas, had arrived at the house of a Bonville affiliate, an MP called Nicholas Radford, and knocked him to the ground, after which one of his cronies cut the man’s throat. But with York’s firm hand the Realm saw some peace.

  Then on Christmas Day, 1454, Henry left his catatonic state. Five days later he met his son, held his hand, and thanked God for this blessing; yet, he said, he could not remember the child ever being born, who must have been brought by the Holy Ghost. After eight years of a childless marriage this only further added fuel to rumor and speculation about the child’s real father. York, who stood next in line, was certain the boy was really Somerset’s bastard, or at least he had instructed his liegemen to say so.

  The mad king released Somerset, and, on February 9, York was formally stripped of his role as protector and of his Calais position, which was given to Somerset. Salisbury was forced to abdicate the chancellorship and his son Warwick made to release Henry Holland—and so the Yorks and the Nevilles went north to raise an army.

  Somerset arranged for a great council to meet in Leicester in the midlands, in which York and his allies were invited. But Salisbury had already recruited an army of five thousand from his family seat in Middleham in Yorkshire. In mid-May the king’s men chose to meet instead at St Albans and ordered York, Salisbury, and Warwick to come with no more than five hundred men in total. They did not.

  In Westeros, Jaime can raise thirty thousand men against Robb, and Tywin brings an equal number; Robb Stark can gather around twenty thousand. Standing armies are expensive, and only a few lords could raise anything like that many troops; outside Ware, a few miles from St Albans and just north of London, the king’s force heard news that York was nearby with three thousand men, half raised as he marched south from Yorkshire, while the king had only two thousand.

  Despite attempts to compromise by replacing Somerset as Constable of England with the more neutral Buckingham, the two groups were camped outside St Albans where York issued more demands on May 21. Then at ten o’clock the following morning Warwick launched an assault on the town where the king and his entourage were based.

  Fighting in built up areas gives advantage to defenders, something the English learned in France, but such was the speed and surprise of the attack that many Lancastrians had not had time to put their armor on, and the battle lasted barely half an hour. During that time several thousand men fought with longbows, swords, maces, axes, and pole-axes through side streets and even houses, bludgeoning each other or swinging axes. Many would have brandished giant broadswords with two hands, and the muscles of regular soldiers were incredibly well-developed before the advent of modern warfare. A pole-axe, up to six feet in length, would also be used and could go through armor and rip bones and flesh. After a short space of time the men would have been exhausted.

  The Earl of Northumberland, Hotspur’s son, was struck down by Salisbury; Lord Clifford, Percy’s cousin, was also slain. Somerset had killed four men in close combat outside an inn before, looking up, he noticed the sign outside—the Castle—and recalled the prophecy he was once told. Momentarilly distracted, he was stabbed and then dragged away and hacked to death. His son Henry, just nineteen, was seriously wounded and not expected to make it.

  While this fighting played out the Mad King Henry sat by the royal banner in the market place, and at one point an arrow landed in his neck, and he cried out in pain—but the rebels could not kill the king, too much of a taboo even when all the other rules were being broken, for as it is said in the Old Testament: “The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord’s anointed.”6

  With most of the leading Lancastrians cut down, the king’s men fled, leaving Henry sitting on the ground, dazed and wounded. The battle won, Warwick and York approached and called for a surgeon and afterwards the king was taken to the nearby abbey, where a Mass was said for the sixty men who had died that day. Among the fallen were the most powerful barons in the country, and their sons would do everything to get their revenge.

  *Uchtred is also the name of the Northumbrian protagonist in Bernard Cornwell’s Last Kingdom series, who is supposed to come from the same family.

  37

  THE SONS OF THE FIRST MEN

  I’ve had an exciting life. I want my death to be boring.

  —BRONN

  The crushing of Glyndŵr’s rebellion had ruined many once-proud native families, and it would be the last such uprising by the British, as the Welsh were still called at times by their neighbors. Many of their sons would therefore grow up in hardship and forced to make their own way in the world, among them Owain ap Maredudd. He had been born in one of the most remote regions of Wales, on the island of Anglesey which juts out into the Irish Sea; even today it has a large Welsh-speaking population and was then well inside Pura Wallia, “deep Wales” where English law did not run. Owain’s grandfather had been Tudur ap Goronwy and the family was Welsh nobility, serving the princes of Gwynedd and later the English kings. They could trace their line back to Ednyfed Fychan ap Cynwrig, who fought against the armies of King John in the early thirteenth century and had brought the heads of three English lords to Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd; Ednyfed had risen to become seneschal, that is chief minister, of the principality. Before that, they descended from Marchudd ap Cynan, lord of one of the fifteen tribes of Wales and still further traced their ancestry to Cadrawd Calchfynydd, a Brythonic king from the sixth century. These were indeed the first men of Britain, and DNA evidence shows that a quarter of fully-Welsh people are today descended in the male line from just twenty early medieval warlords.1

  Owain’s father Mardudd ap Tudur, along with his brothers, had fought with Owain Glyndŵr, and been disinherited for their troubles; Owain was born around 1400, at a dangerous period when Glynd
ŵr’s revolt began, and by the time he reached fighting age the family had nothing, its men killed or stripped of their land. Instead Owen Tudor, as his name was sometimes Anglicized, had risen solely by his soldiering ability and noted charisma, a humble soldier-for-hire with roguish charm and an eye for the ladies. He had served in France for Henry V, his father’s enemy, and fought bravely enough at Agincourt to get noticed; by 1421 he was fighting for Sir Walter Hungerford, a veteran of the 1415 campaign who had become Admiral of the Fleet.

  After Henry V’s death, his widow Catherine of Valois had found herself isolated and alone. She had grown close to Edmund Beaufort, the future Duke of Somerset, who was five years her junior, but because Edmund was the nephew of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, Humphrey of Gloucester became alarmed that Catherine might marry one of his rivals and so increase the Beaufort’s stranglehold on power. Instead in 1427, under Humphrey’s influence, Parliament expressly forbade queens from remarrying without “special license” of an adult king; her son at the time was just six. Catherine now lived away from court life, lonely and forgotten.

  There was always scope for a handsome and charming swordsman to better himself, and some time around 1430 the queen became close to Tudor, one of a number of her husband’s retainers she had taken on. He was but a common soldier, her “sewer and servant” and his “kindred and country were objected . . . as most vile and barbarous.”2 Yet Tudor was “handsome and sympathetic and he would know how to sing sad Welsh songs to the sad Catherine. Soon he had sung himself into her bed.”3

  It is possible that being from across the sea she didn’t realize how lowly his status was and was unaware that his people were seen as inferior. Penal laws against the Welsh from 1402 stated that they could not own property, hold royal office nor hold public meetings, or even testify against an Englishman in Wales, and all castles in the country had to be garrisoned by full-blooded Englishmen. Englishmen who married Welsh women were also subject to the laws.

  Various stories attach themselves to their romance, so that she spotted Tudor bathing naked in a river and was consumed by passion; another recalled that he fell down drunk on her lap. They were married soon after, in secret and away from the dangers of court, but despite their best efforts it became a subject of gossip. Their firstborn was named Edmund; whispers in high places suggested that Beaufort was the real father.

  Catherine eventually petitioned Parliament to have her husband’s status recognized, with proof of his noble ancestry; Tudor was granted lands and citizenship, but his status and security depended on his wife and in 1436 she fell ill, perhaps from the same illness as her father and son. Over the winter of 1436-7 the ailing queen stayed at Bermondsey Abbey and in her will she wrote of “grievous malady, in which I have been long, and yet am, troubled and vexed.”4 This was the coldest decade of the millennium, a harsh winter when a “great, hard, biting frost . . . grieved the people wonder sore,” and Catherine’s condition deteriorated; she died on January 3, 1437, aged thirty-five. For her son the king, just fifteen, it was yet another blow.

  Tudor, now in the midlands, knew he was in serious danger and was making his way west toward safer territory when he was caught and taken back to Westminster. Later he was brought to the king and declared his innocence of breaking the law by marrying his mother, and the merciful ruler allowed him to return to Wales, only for Tudor to be arrested again, and sent along with his servant to Newgate.

  This grim jail on the western fringes of London was surrounded by a moat and the dank and polluted Fleet river, notoriously filled with excrement. Many here were placed in irons, and the dungeons, called the “less convenient chambers,”5 were cramped, dangerous, dark, and filled with contagious diseases. But the prison was also corrupt and badly run, and in January 1438 Tudor broke out in a daring escape, injuring his jailor along the way. Although rearrested, Edmund Beaufort arranged for his transfer to Windsor Castle under the guard of his old captain Walter Hungerford. In July 1439, he was finally pardoned.

  Tudor’s sons Edmund and Jasper, now aged seven and six, went to live with Suffolk’s sister Katherine de la Pole, abbess of Barking, and a godmother to the children of many wealthy families. The Tudor boys spent five years here during which they became closer to their half-brother the king; when they reached the age of manhood their blood connection to the monarch was formally recognized, and later they were raised to the peerage, with lands taken from the Yorkist Sir William Oldhall—which York could only take as a slight. To further add insult. Jasper Tudor was given appointments in Wales that York had traditionally held, and Edmund Tudor received the great prize of the young Margaret Beaufort, the richest heiress in the realm.

  “POWER IS POWER”

  After St Albans had come the victor’s justice. The Percys were fined £6,050 for transgressions against the crown, conveniently close to the £6,000 they were already owed. York was reappointed protector on November 1455 and made Warwick captain of Calais while also giving him some of Somerset’s land in Wales. However, York was forced out again the following February, having failed to pass an act that would have raised revenue for the crown by taking back land previously sold off. Many viewed him as an overmighty subject, and by the end of the year York’s allies were replaced by those in Queen Margaret’s affinity.

  The queen was building up her powerbase in the midlands and north. She went to Coventry in Warwickshire, the very heart of England—and later Shakespeare’s county—where the Lancastrians support was strongest and was greeted in verse by men dressed as Alexander the Great, St John the Baptist, and Edward the Confessor. Actors read lines praising Henry and Margaret and looking forward to Edward continuing the dynasty; in fact, many suggested that Margaret now wanted her husband to abdicate in favour of her son. Margaret appointed numerous allies to secure roles and gave others advantageous matches; she also began to arm, taking twenty-six long guns, or serpentines, from the Tower to her fortress of Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire.

  A growing role was now played by Salisbury’s son, Warwick “Kingmaker,”6 almost as absurdly rich as his father and far more arrogant. Warwick had been knighted at the age of sixteen and saw military service for the crown soon after. He had remained loyal to King Henry, but from 1453 had become rivals with Somerset over the Beauchamp inheritance, and the lordship of Glamorgan, which Warwick also claimed through his wife.

  It was now that he became increasingly drawn to his uncle, York, and would prove a useful ally to make up for York’s lack of political ability. Warwick was a brilliant politician with a talent for winning popular opinion, he was charismatic, and “a man of exceptional intelligence, personal charm and steely determination.”7 He was also a ruthless killer. Too important and rich to exclude, in October 1457 Warwick had been given the task of doing the king’s enemies “all hurt and annoyance” at sea, which also meant keeping a third of the profits himself, so the role of pirate suited him fine.

  In 1458, the king organized a “love day” for March 25, Lady Day, based on old judicial practices in which parties were ordered to try to reconcile their differences. It was hoped to bring Lancastrians and Yorkists together after St Albans, with Northumberland, Warwick, Salisbury, Somerset, Clifford, and York walking hand-in-hand to St Paul’s cathedral. And yet each of the factions brought so many armed men—as many as four thousand in the small confines of the city—that archers had to be placed along the Thames with orders to fire if the two sides clashed. The two sides were separated by London’s old walls, while the Mayor of London brought a force of five hundred—just as well, for the sons of those killed at St Albans had only revenge on their minds.

  In November 1458, there was a scuffle in Westminster which began when one of Warwick’s retainers struck a menial royal servant; someone, Warwick then claimed, tried to kill him and he escaped to Calais. When he returned to London to tell the council that only Parliament could relieve him of his job, he was attacked a second time, by Somerset and Wiltshire’s men—but this time the queen was almost
certainly behind it.

  There was now a further build-up of arms on both sides. The Lancastrians ordered three thousand bows to be made at the royal arsenal, and for sheriffs of each shire to select men to fight. Queen Margaret tried to punish York through an Act of Attainder, which blamed him for all the kingdom’s troubles. This took away his lands but also denied it to his heirs, an act against precedent, since the sons of traitors were given their father’s lands after his death. The queen, in trying to hold the kingdom together, was becoming excessive; later that year she removed more Neville men from positions on the border.

  Margaret was now entirely in charge. The following May, the queen and her supporters headed into their heartlands in the midlands and northwest, recruiting men into their service. There was quite clearly a war coming. A great council was called in June 1459, but York and the Nevilles refused to attend and the queen openly denounced them. The court in Coventry sent the elderly war veteran James Tuchet, Lord Audley, to arrest Salisbury, and with this action the kingdom exploded into violence.

  Audley was a lord in the west midlands, and recruited men from Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, perhaps twelve thousand in total, many of them cavalry armed with helmets, breastplates, and armor. Salisbury had raised an army of five thousand from his family seat of Middleham in Yorkshire, heading toward the Welsh borders. Across the West families were forced to choose their sides. In south Wales, the Gruffudd clan were pro-Lancastrian so their rivals the Dwnns of Kidwelly became Yorkists. Across the border in Shropshire the Kynaston and Eyton families were rivals of the pro-Lancastrian Talbots, and so supported York. The Skydmores of Herefordshire were opposed to York and Herbert, and the Pulestons of Denbeigh were rivals to Lord Grey of Ruthyn, so became attached to Margaret.