Iron, Fire and Ice

by Ed West

  Audley and his troops got to Blore Heath, near Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, where Salisbury’s men were waiting for them across the small river. The queen had a second army, some ten miles away, led by Lord Stanley, the most powerful magnate in Lancashire, and his brother William. On the morning of September 23, 1459, battle began when Salisbury tricked the enemy into coming out, unleashing their arrow volleys before being pinned down by return fire. The battle might have gone either way and yet Stanley—now forever known as “the late Lord Stanley”—held back to see which side would win.*

  The Lancastrian Lord Audley, who had been born in the reign of King Richard, led the fighting and was struck down by Sir Roger Kynaston, one of York’s bannermen from the Welsh marshes whose ancestors had originally been princes of Powys. After four hours, two thousand men lay dead and the Yorkists had won, but it would not last, as a fresh royal army was nearby. Salisbury proceeded south-west, meeting Warwick and York and swearing mutual oaths, and then on toward the border town of Ludlow in Shropshire, built on the wool and cloth trades, and home to numerous prosperous merchants. It was also York’s base, and his wife and two youngest sons, George and Richard, were in the town. It was here that events now moved.

  The most influential history of the War of the Roses was Edward Hall’s The Union of the Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and York, published in 1548. This came to heavily influence Shakespeare’s telling of events which in turn became the standard narrative. Hall’s grandfather had been one of York’s councilors and heard accounts directly from Salisbury’s men arriving at Ludlow, which is how the history came to be passed down.

  By early October, the Yorkists were camped by the River Teme, below Ludford Bridge; the Lancastrian army appeared on the 12th, among them Somerset, Buckingham, and Northumberland, and also in attendance was Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter. Despite being married to York’s daughter Lady Anne, he had become a bitter enemy of the Yorkists as the conflict escalated. Various other earls and lords were camped with the royalist forces, the bulk of the aristocracy sticking with the mad king, while Henry and Margaret were in the rear. Even York’s Welsh allies, the Herbert and Vaughan families, were pinned down in Pembrokeshire by Owain Tudor.

  In the night Andrew Trollope, one of Warwick’s captains, led his troops across the river to submit, and so the rebel leaders, realizing they could now expect no pardon, snuck out of the camp, among them Warwick, Salisbury, York, and his two eldest sons Edward and Edmund, now of fighting age. They divided their forces, some to Ireland and others to the southwest and eventually Calais.

  Ludlow was now sacked, all of this watched by Cecily Neville from the castle, her young sons, eleven and eight, by her side. Across the town the king’s men helped themselves to wine and “went wete-schode in wyne” before they “defoulyd many wymmen.”8 Cecily walked through the streets with George and Richard but, it was said, when the troops found her, “The noble duches of York unmanly and cruelly was entreted and spoyled.”9 Mercifully, by this it was meant only that she was robbed rather than raped, but the ordeal would have been terrifying, and a lesson to the House of York about what happened when they crossed the queen. It seemed like Margaret had won.

  *Likewise, Walder Frey is the Late Lord Frey for a similar action.

  38

  THE BLACK DINNER

  Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.

  —TYWIN LANNISTER

  The queen was merciless to her enemies, ruining many Yorkist families in late 1459 during “the Parliament of Devils.” York was denounced and all estates, honors, and dignities were removed from his affinity. Lancastrians such as Owen Tudor and his son Jasper were rewarded, while York was replaced as Lieutenant of Ireland by the loyal James, Earl of Wiltshire, veteran of the first St Albans—although he had actually run away. In reality, York, now residing in that western island, had the loyalty of the Anglo-Irish lords. Likewise, Henry Beaufort, who had inherited the Somerset title after his father’s death at St Albans, was made captain of Calais but the port was now controlled by Warwick.

  Calais remained for another century England’s last outpost on the continent and after London it was the realm’s second most important city; the entry point for the country’s continental exports and home to its only permanent garrison.

  While the queen was in the midlands on July 2, Salisbury marched on London with two thousand men, where they were met with widespread support. The Tower was controlled by Lord Scales, Edward of March’s sixty-three-year-old godfather and former Yorkist. A tough old veteran of the French war, he ruthlessly turned on the city people, and a chronicler reports: “They that were within the Tower cast wildfire into the City, and shot in small guns, and burned and hurt men and women and children in the city.”1 However after a successful siege Scales surrendered with a promise of safe conduct—ignored by the city’s rough watermen who ferried people across the river, and who beat him to death. Warwick stayed forty-eight hours in the city before his men split into two large armies, one led by Edward of March and Warwick, and the other by Fauconberg.

  By now the country was irreversibly divided. The Lancastrians still had the vast majority of the higher nobility, including Northumberland, Buckingham, Shrewsbury, Beaumont, Egremont, Humphrey Stafford, John Talbot, Sir Thomas Percy, and Sir Edmund Grey, Lord of Ruthin. Among York’s allies were Norfolk, Warwick, March, Bourchier, Abergavenny, Audley, Fauconberg, Say, and Scrope; on both sides choices were made either through family connections or in opposition to a local rival.

  On July 10, Warwick’s force met an army led by his uncle Buckingham just outside of Northampton, with John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and Thomas Percy also among the Lancastrian forces, who had the king with them. The queen’s men took up position in the grounds of Delapre Abbey, along the River Nene, defended by a ditch layered with stakes. The Lancastrians had cannons and rejected peace overtures by Warwick.

  Most of the soldiers would not have been heavily armed, locally raised men wearing only a jacket and a helmet, probably a kettle hat, and with odd bits of mail and other equipment stolen from the dead. As Talisa says of one of Robb’s soldiers: “he’s a fisherman’s son—probably never held a spear until three months back.”2 When the fighting started at 2 p.m., the Yorkists were faced with both pouring rain and arrows, although the bad weather also neutralized the Lancastrian cannons. However, the battle was won with treachery, when Edmund Grey—another of Gaunt’s descendents—took his men over to the Yorkist troops, in exchange for the Yorks supporting him in his dispute with the House of Holland. Those common soldiers wearing Grey’s badge were spared.

  The thuggish Thomas Percy met with a heroic end, falling alongside Buckingham and Shrewsbury while making a last stand in heavy armor outside the king’s tent as they were surrounded by Warwick’s Kentish soldiers. The king was taken prisoner, while Queen Margaret had fled to Wales with her son Edward.

  Cecily Neville was staying with her sister Anne, the Duke of Buckingham’s wife, when they heard the news of Buckingham’s death at the hands of their nephew Warwick. Cecily had endured a turbulent year on the move; after the horror of Ludlow, a widow from London called Alice Martyn had taken in her sons George and Richard, keeping them safe from vengeful Lancastrians.

  Like that of Catelyn Stark and her sister, the relationship between Cecily and Anne seems to have been difficult, as well as being complicated by the family politics of the time (although she didn’t have a strange boy sucking at her breast). Cecily had been mercifully treated by the king, but her future was now uncertain; that of her sister even more so.

  York now arrived in Westminster on October 10, 1460 with several hundred men, and the Parliament of Devils was overturned. The two factions had concentrated their forces at either side of the country, with the House of York controlling the south and the House of Lancaster the north and west.

  Meanwhile, over the autumn of 1460, young Henry Percy, the third Ea
rl of Northumberland since his father was killed five years earlier, was running the North as an independent kingdom. Henry VI had given him even greater powers there, and Percy ordered that all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty arm themselves to free the king and to attack Richard of York with a northern legion. The family were damned by the Yorkist Parliament “as ravagers and misdoers,” but the House of York would have known that a Percy call to arms in the North would not be ignored.

  And now Richard claimed the crown outright, for there was now nowhere else to go in this game of thrones—victory or death. In front of a stunned assembly at Parliament he sat down on the seat reserved only for the monarch, expecting to be proclaimed king. Instead there was stunned silence; even Warwick and Salisbury, and York’s eldest son Edward, could not follow him in breaking the ultimate taboo.

  As well as the corruption and intrigue at the heart of the queen’s faction, York must also have now felt that the crown was his by right; he was, after all, through his mother’s Mortimer line, the true heir to Edward III, by the king’s second son Lionel of Antwerp; the House of Lancaster derived from his third son, John of Gaunt. And yet many noblemen were disturbed by the implication of York’s action, for if he could disinherit the king’s son could he or someone else not also do the same to their sons too?

  Instead it was agreed that York be made heir, and Prince Edward disinherited; the queen, naturally, refused, but nevertheless on October 24, the Yorkist Parliament passed an act of Accord, making it so. All royal officers would now have to give their obedience to York, who was also given power to raise troops for any reason. Warwick remained in London, with the king in the Tower, while Edward of March went west to recruit more men, and York and his second son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, rode to Yorkshire to secure the north.

  In November, Somerset and Devon arrived at the city of York where they met Percy and went south. That month Margaret took her son with her to Scotland, by ship, and it was bitterly cold when they arrived on December 3 at the church of Lincluden, a gothic twelfth century priory built by Uchtred mac Fergusa, Lord of Galloway, whose name reflects the mix of Scots and Anglian culture of the region. There they stayed with the dowager Queen Mary, regent for her young son James III. Mary of Guelders had been fifteen when she made the journey from her native Holland to marry James II of Scotland, arriving with a huge dowry of sixty thousand crowns, a fortune for the Scots and provided by her cousin Duke Philippe of Burgundy. With the money they had built Holyrood House to receive such a grand queen, which is today the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. Alas James II had been killed that August while testing a new type of canon during the siege of Roxburgh Castle in a rather ill-conceived attempt to show off to his wife. Now Margaret and Mary negotiated a treaty by which Prince Edward would be married to James III’s sister, securing the border for Margaret and allowing her to raise an army in the North, and even—to the horror of the kingdom—recruit Scots to come south.3

  RED WEDDINGS

  England had made peace with the Scots a century before, but with the overthrow of Richard II the men of the far north had found themselves increasingly drawn into the English and French political dramas. There was also continual conflict at home: Robert III had sent his twelve-year-old son James to France after his other son had died suspiciously in the custody of the king’s brother, the Duke of Albany—also, confusingly, called Robert. Along the way the boy’s ship was intercepted by English pirates, who handed him over to King Henry, and so poor James endured eighteen years in an English prison.

  When James was finally released, eighteen years later and now married to John of Gaunt’s granddaughter Joan Beaufort, he nursed many grievances.

  By 1437 things had come to a head with a plot led by another member of the king’s family, the Stuarts. The House ultimately traced its origins to a Breton knight, Alan fitz Flaad, who had come over to Britain with Henry I; his great-grandson Walter had become the “steward,” or governor, of the Scottish throne, a position that became hereditary, until one of their line married the daughter of Robert the Bruce. Their son Robert II became the first of the House of Stewart (the spelling was later changed to Stuart to make it easier for French speakers to pronounce).

  And yet there were many different Stewart sub-houses in conflict with each other. The plot to kill the king was led by his former ally, Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl, who had lost two sons fighting for the monarch against his rivals, the Albany Stewarts, the two branches of the family nursing a deadly hatred against each other. However, King James had not rewarded Walter Stewart, nor certified the family’s hold on titles and land, and Atholl was worried that when he died the king would take away his estates. So, when James was in Perth, Atholl’s retainer Robert Graham conspired with their former enemies the Albany Stewarts to remove the monarch.

  On the night of February 20, 1437, when King James went to bed, a band of thirty men stormed into his quarters, killed his page, and burst into the bedroom. But James had prised open some floorboards and escaped into the sewer, leaving his queen and ladies-in-waiting. The assassins were about to cut Joan’s throat when one of their number, Thomas Graham, shouted “For shame . . . she is bot a woman.” This was a mistake.

  Unfortunately for the king, the sewer had recently been blocked up, and he found himself cornered; James killed two assassins but was felled by a third, Robert Graham. The king was bleeding now and cried for a priest, but Graham replied “Thou shalt never haue other confessore bot this same sword” and “smote hum thorogh the body.” Three other assassins stabbed him sixteen times.

  The king’s six-year old son, James II, was installed on the throne, and his allies—having the testimony of the queen—had the conspirators hunted down and killed. Walter Stewart would be tortured for three days, and among his torments was being blinded by red-hot iron pincers and having his entrails removed and burned in front of him, before his heart was torn out.4 Six successive monarchs of Scotland—James’s I to V and Mary, Queen of Scots—all died violent deaths or as the result of war.

  The new king was just seven and the realm was ruled by a regency led by Archibald Douglas, of the fabled Clan Douglas. Archibald Douglas died in 1439 and there followed a power struggle—and the inspiration for one of the most notorious scenes in the Game of Thrones saga. The new head of the clan, William Douglas, was only sixteen, and had inherited an array of titles including Lord of Galway, Selkirk, and Annandale, as well as Duke of Touraine in France. However rival magnates Sir William Crichton, James Douglas, and Sir Alexander Livingston all wanted the Douglases excluded from power.

  And so, in 1440, the young Earl of Douglas and his younger brother David were invited to Edinburgh Castle on behalf of the ten-year-old James II. In fact, the whole thing had been organized by Crichton, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, with the support of the Livingston family. Over supper at Edinburgh castle the young men had been joking and talking merrily when the head of a black bull was thrown onto the table, and a single drum beat was sounded. The two brothers were immediately dragged outside onto Castle Hill, told they were guilty of treason, and beheaded.

  This notorious incident became known as the Black Dinner, and was the obvious inspiration for the Red Wedding, as Martin has himself said, where Robb Stark and his relations are murdered while under the hospitality of the Freys.5 Such political violence was not unusual north of the border; indeed just twelve years later the eighth Earl Douglas, a cousin, was murdered by James II and his body thrown from a high window at Stirling Castle. King James had asked Earl Douglas to break with his allies; Douglas refused and so the king shouted, “False traitor, sen yow will nocht, I shall” and stabbed him twenty-six times, his brains splattered all over the wall and floor. Douglas’s son fled south across the border.

  Violence was shocking, but violence toward a guest was unforgivable. As in Westeros, the laws of hospitality were hugely important in all ancient and medieval societies. In classical Athens, Clesithenes was a popular p
olitician but his family the Alcmacondids were believed to be polluted because generations before they had killed enemies who were supplicants; the shame and stigma stuck to the family for decades. Today the hospitality rule survives in societies which remain clannish; one of the difficulties the United States had with searching for Osama bin Laden was that his Pashtun hosts would not give him up, however high the reward or horrific the crimes he had committed, because he was their guest.

  Such is the taboo about killing guests that recorded incidents were rare and shocking; back in the eleventh century, Mercian nobleman Eadric Streona was notorious for having murdered a rival while entertaining him, and then blinding both his sons. Having double-crossed Edmund Ironside to side with Canute, the Viking then had him executed because he had betrayed his master. The Scots even had a special law making such a crime worse than regular homicide, called “murder under trust.” And yet Scotland also provides the other inspiration for the Red Wedding—the Glencoe massacre of 1692, in which up to 38 members of the MacDonald clan were murdered by their guests, the Campbells. All that would lie long in the future – but for now the Scots were being drawn into the finale of the conflict between Richard of York and Margaret, de facto head of the House of Lancaster.

  39

  THE YOUNG WOLF

  He’s a boy and he’s never lost a battle.

  —TYWIN LANNISTER ON ROBB STARK

  Percy was now raising an army alongside Clifford and Ross, the other northern barons loyal to the Queen, for what was to be the grand finale to Richard of York’s rebellion against the mad king, and the bloodiest battle in Britain’s history. It would mark the end of the first war between the Houses of Lancaster and York, although not the last. Queen Margaret sent messages to Somerset, Devon, and other supporters in the south, and issued a letter to the City of London condemning the rebels.