The Women of the Cousins’ War

by Philippa Gregory, David Baldwin

  The death of Jacquetta’s father shows why the disease was so feared: neither rank nor the privileges of wealth could protect someone from a disease that was a mystery to doctors. The disease probably started from the bite of an infected flea that, in turn, infected the lymph glands, which swelled to form hard boils called buboes. A high fever and aches and pains were often followed by death within the week. At a time when no one understood how disease was transmitted, the deaths seemed to occur at random. The name ‘the Black Death’ came not only from the darkened swellings on the patient, but also the intense dark despair throughout Europe in plague years, as the dead could not be buried, the crops could not be got in from the fields, and ordinary life broke down. A city such as Luxembourg, at a centre of trade routes, on pilgrimage paths, and with a number of public hospitals, was particularly vulnerable to the disease.

  In July 1434 John Duke of Bedford decided that, despite his weariness and deteriorating health, he had to return to France. The commune of Paris begged for his help as law and order collapsed inside the city, and convoys of food could not get past the marauding soldiers of the French king. Accompanied by Jacquetta, he made the journey back to France, and returned to Paris for the feast of Christmas. Jacquetta’s uncle, Louis of Luxembourg, was relieved to restore the power of acting governor to his master. Paris was practically besieged by lawless gangs of soldiers from both sides, and it was dangerous to go outside the city walls.

  The fortunes of war were beginning to turn against the English and their allies, with advancing French troops and constant uprisings from the French peasantry. In spring 1435 Bedford and Jacquetta left for the safer city of English-held Rouen, and the duke struggled to keep the supply routes to Paris open from Normandy, though his health was failing as news arrived of new peace negotiations to be held at Arras.

  The young French king, crowned by Joan of Arc, and now widely recognised as Charles VII of France, had consolidated the early gains and was now the rising power in the country. The quarrel between John Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Burgundy over Jacquetta was now proving very costly. The Duke of Burgundy abandoned his traditional alliance with England, probably calculating that he could be more influential with the French king than the English one. The Treaty of Arras would mark his joining with France and the isolation of England. Without their powerful ally, the English were fatally weakened. John Duke of Bedford struggled to maintain English territories from his sickbed in his castle at Rouen.

  He tried to fortify the Calais garrison by putting in a new lieutenant. He appointed Sir Richard Woodville, a thirty-year-old soldier who had made his reputation in the English army in Normandy, following his father into royal military service. As the Duke of Bedford’s health failed, and he made his will, the young duchess and the young captain of the Calais garrison, Sir Richard Woodville, grew close. John Duke of Bedford, still working for his country, died on 14 September 1435. He was buried, at his request, in the English-held city of Rouen that he loved so well. There can have been no quarrel between him and his young wife for he made her his sole heir in his generous will which left her all his lands for life (excepting one estate) and also gave her his famous and treasured library including the romances of Camelot.

  Jacquetta, now aged about nineteen, suddenly a wealthy widow, was still not free to do as she pleased. As a duchess of England her marriage was in the gift of the King of England, and Henry VI sent for her to return. She was granted her dower – a widow’s pension – in February 1436 on condition that she did not marry without royal permission, so she can have been in no doubt that a marriage would be arranged by the king’s council for her in the future. But Jacquetta was in love, and young, and determined.

  Her lover Sir Richard Woodville held the garrison of Calais against an attack by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, who was now England’s declared enemy. Woodville led the garrison through the siege and threw back the forces of Burgundy, but must have been deeply shocked, as was Jacquetta, when the English-held capital of Paris fell to the French.

  SECOND MARRIAGE: LADY OF THE MANOR

  There is no record of their wedding, but Sir Richard and the wealthy young widow travelled to England and confessed to their marriage in 1436 or early 1437. Indeed, they may even have been lovers earlier and only married when Jacquetta found she was pregnant. Jacquetta was ordered to pay a huge fine of £1,000; but she was forgiven by the king, and the young couple were officially pardoned in October 1437 in time for the birth of their first child, a girl. They called her Elizabeth and she was born sometime in the winter of 1437 or in 1438.

  Jacquetta and her new husband Sir Richard probably divided their time between court and their country house, at Grafton, Northamptonshire. Richard Woodville’s father already owned houses and land in Grafton and neighbouring parishes, and it is likely that the young couple set up home near him. The Woodville (or Wydeville) family had been living in the area since the early thirteenth century, probably as farming tenants of the wealthy de la Pole family, who owned the manor of Grafton. The Woodvilles would have regarded themselves as tenants and retainers of the de la Pole family: owing their lord their support in any disputes, bound to him by an almost feudal loyalty. Although they were not vassals in any legal sense, there still survived a system of patronage and protection in return for loyalty and support. Sir Richard also owed a sense of chivalric loyalty to Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, who had earlier been his commander in Normandy, and appointed him as his deputy to the Calais garrison. William de la Pole Earl of Suffolk would owe the Woodville’s ‘good lordship’: a share in his good fortune, and his protection. In 1440 William de la Pole sold the manor of Grafton to the young Sir Richard – a favour to the young couple – and made it possible for them to set themselves up as lords of their own manor.

  With ownership of the manor and land came responsibility. Jacquetta would now find herself as a lady of the manor, partly responsible for farming the lands, supervising the tenants, maintaining law and order, paying taxes and collecting tolls, dispensing charity and supporting the Church. Jacquetta and Sir Richard would also have been responsible for the maintenance of local roads, and the honesty of local markets. When called upon by their lord they would be expected to recruit soldiers and go to war. When Sir Richard was absent, Jacquetta, like other medieval wives, would take on his duties, running the estate, managing the money, and commanding the workers.

  As courtiers they played their role in the life of the court, taking part in its leisure, cultural and religious life, and serving as advisers and assistants to the king. In or around 1438 their first son was born. They named him Lewis, perhaps as a tribute to Jacquetta’s illustrious Luxembourg uncle; but the little boy, like many medieval babies, did not survive. The infant mortality rate was more than 30 per cent. The loss of a child, though it may well have been deeply painful, could not have been unexpected. Jacquetta was a fertile woman and raised thirteen children to adulthood, but births were not always noted in this period, and the records are not clear as to the exact date of their births, nor of the siblings who did not survive.

  Jacquetta’s husband continued to serve as deputy commander of Calais, recruiting men and leading them in forays against France, which continued despite the treaty and other attempts at peace. He was away from home on military service in 1439 when Jacquetta went into confinement and gave birth to her second daughter, Anne, and then the young couple were reunited on his return.

  News came from Europe. Jacquetta’s brother, Louis, the new Count of Luxembourg, had married his uncle’s stepdaughter, Jeanne de Bar, who had tried to defend Joan of Arc. Now Jacquetta’s brother was turning his back on his family’s traditional loyalty to England. Around 1440, perhaps to ensure that he received his inheritance of Luxembourg and Ligny from the French king, he joined Charles VII of France and later fought alongside him, against the English. This might have caused Jacquetta some embarrassment, but the long wars in France were teaching the gentry of England a hard les
son that they would soon learn: loyalty could not be taken for granted.

  WITCHCRAFT

  In 1441 the country was convulsed by a scandal that had particular resonance for Jacquetta. She still held the title of Dowager Duchess of Bedford, and would have known the only other royal duchess: Eleanor Cobham. Eleanor had met Humphrey Duke of Gloucester when he was a new husband, married recklessly for love to a foreign countess, Jacqueline of Hainault, who was in dispute with her family and her former husband, and locked in a war for her lands. Duke Humphrey was said to be equally in love with the Countess Jacqueline and with her lands in Hainault; but when Jacqueline came under siege from a coalition of her uncle and former husband, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester abandoned his wife, her lands and her cause, and went home to England with her lady-in-waiting, Eleanor.

  In a dramatic act of faithlessness he had his marriage to Jacqueline declared invalid, and married Eleanor, leaving English foreign alliances in ruins, and his former wife Jacqueline without help. It was the scandal of Europe. As she had risen from such modest beginnings Eleanor, the new Duchess of Gloucester, attracted much criticism for her pride. When the king’s mother died, and Jacquetta lost status by marrying Sir Richard, a simple knight, Eleanor became the first lady of England, her husband the king’s only surviving uncle, and so first in line for the throne of England.

  Duke Humphrey opposed the policy of his uncle Cardinal Henry Beaufort, who advised the king against military advances in France. Duke Humphrey claimed to rule England as regent during the minority of his nephew; but the cardinal was determined to reduce the duke’s influence on his nephew the king, and set about undermining his reputation. The duke was a known scholar and practitioner of alchemy. But it was the easier target – an unpopular woman, his duchess – who came under attack.

  Eleanor was accused of commissioning a horoscope that predicted ill health for the king. This alone was an act of treason, punishable by death; and worse was to follow. Her associate Roger Bolingbroke, a well-known astronomer and scholar, was probably tortured and pleaded guilty to the crime of sorcery, which he said he had undertaken at her command. He did penance before the court at matins ‘placed upon a scaffold before the cross of St Paul, in a chair curiously painted, which was supposed to be one of his implements of necromancy and dressed in mystical attire’.

  The scholar was exhibited, surrounded by the tools of his trade: equipment for divining, and an effigy. The effigy was said to be a wax model made in the shape of the king that would cause the king to waste away as it was slowly melted.

  Another man, Thomas Southwell, Eleanor Cobham’s personal physician, was found guilty of saying mass unlawfully – presumably as a spell rather than a religious service – with the aim of destroying the king. A woman known as ‘The Witch of Eye’, Margery Jourdemayne – a herbalist and wise woman consulted by many of the court – was accused of working with Eleanor and making a wax image of the king which was designed to cause his ill health and perhaps death.

  The twenty-year-old king was deeply distressed by this attack on him by his own aunt, and the council was alarmed at evidence of active witchcraft in such high places. Their extreme concern has to be understood in the context of the times. Most people believed that such rituals were effective. What if there were many practising witches at court? What if Eleanor’s spells were making the king ill? Alternative horoscopes were drawn up to show the king was well and strong, and all the conspirators were questioned; the men were probably tortured to confess.

  Bolingbroke pleaded guilty and was hanged, drawn and quartered. Thomas Southwell was said to have died of sorrow in the Tower the night before his execution – he probably found some way to commit suicide. Margery Jourdemayne, lacking the friends or the influence to bring poison for a less agonising death, was burned as a witch at Smithfield, the meat market in London.

  Eleanor confessed only to commissioning her own horoscope, and claimed that she had met with Margery Jourdemayne for her own fertility treatment. But the king’s council had no need to examine conflicting evidence to find a verdict. Eleanor did not receive a fair trial by her peers – indeed she was not tried at all. She was found guilty of treason by royal decree: a decree issued by the king, her young nephew. It was a verdict without a trial; as a woman accused of witchcraft, Eleanor could not hope for justice.

  The problem of how to punish her was a difficult one for the royal council. In the end, they set her a penance of parading around the bounds of the City, wearing only her linen shift and carrying a lighted taper, a punishment more often used against women found guilty of sexual promiscuity. Sending her out before the citizens of London barefoot in her underwear, the council intended to publicly shame her. The council then ordered that she be imprisoned in the charge of Sir Thomas Stanley. Her husband, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, declared that his marriage to her had been brought about by her seduction and sorcery; and the marriage was rendered null and void.

  Stand forth, Dame Eleanor Cobham, Gloucester’s wife:

  In sight of God and us, your guilt is great:

  Receive the sentence of the law for sins

  Such as by God’s book are adjudged to death.

  You four, from hence to prison back again;

  From thence unto the place of execution:

  The witch in Smithfield shall be burn’d to ashes,

  And you three shall be strangled on the gallows.

  You, madam, for you are more nobly born,

  Despoiled of your honour in your life,

  Shall, after three days’ open penance done,

  Live in your country here in banishment,

  With Sir John Stanley, in the Isle of Man.

  Eleanor lost her liberty, her husband, and her position at court on the basis of an allegation without evidence, without a trial, and died in prison aged about fifty-two in 1452 after ten long years of imprisonment, constantly watched to prevent her killing herself. Most of her final years were in Peel Castle on the Isle of Man, where even today there is a legend that the unhappy duchess haunts the stairs in the shape of a black dog.

  The fate of the Duchess of Gloucester would have served as a stern warning to any woman; but especially to the only other royal duchess, Jacquetta. England, and indeed all of Europe, was a deeply superstitious and religious society, at this time on the brink of one of the panics about witchcraft and sorcery that periodically swept through Europe before the age of enlightenment in the eighteenth century. For people who suffered from natural disasters without understanding the causes, who faced terrible diseases without effective medicine, the only explanation for catastrophic events was the supernatural. People hoping for good and bad outcomes invoked both religion and magic, sometimes interchangeably. A miracle might save a sick child, a saint’s help could be summoned by the right prayers, a young man might fall in love with the right spell, the plague might be called down on an enemy. The supernatural was daily observed in everyday life: when a blaspheming man fell from his horse, or milk refused to churn into butter, or a priest blessed a sickly child who then grew strong. People who had no understanding of science or medicine had to depend on magical explanations, or prayer or casting spells to try to control events. There were no clear distinctions between science, magic and religion. Witchcraft trials would dramatically increase throughout Europe in the next fifty years as the Pope’s instructions in the form of papal bulls were issued against ‘magicians, and diviners practising witchcraft’.

  In another ominous change, suspicion was focused on women. In the two decades before Eleanor Cobham’s trial twice as many women had been executed in Europe for witchcraft as men – 110 of them. It is easy now to see why women would come under suspicion. Any woman who was skilled in healing, or who was believed to be able to foretell the future, or ill-wish a victim – thus any woman who served as a midwife, a herbalist, a layer-out of the dead, a fortune teller or an adviser, or any woman who lived on the fringe of society, on the edge of the village, or who seemed to be ou
tside convention or control – would be in danger of an accusation of witchcraft when the levels of public anxiety rose. Women, whose fertility was still a mystery to physicians, whose temperament was said to be changeable under the influence of the moon, easily tempted and easily led astray like Eve, were particularly vulnerable to accusations of meddling with magic, especially in pursuit of power denied to them by the laws of the land and Church. Deep fears about female sexuality and female ambition contributed to the climate of suspicion about women.

  Superstition was part of everyday life in the castles as well as in the cottages. Noble women came under suspicion just like the women of the poor. Jacquetta knew that her behaviour would be scrutinised just like the other royal duchess’s, and there were some disturbing similarities in their stories. Jacquetta, just like Eleanor, had been the surprising choice of a royal duke who appeared to have been ‘enchanted’ by her and married her against his best interests. Jacquetta’s ancestor was known to be a water goddess: Melusina, who had also tempted a man into marriage against his mortal interests, and who had continued to commune with water throughout her marriage. Jacquetta’s family’s association with the spirit world was known to everyone: the goddess was named as the founder of her house, appearing on her family tree and in her family crest. In the small world of the royal court, Jacquetta would have known Eleanor Cobham’s associates and might have been seen talking with them: Bolingbroke was a scholar in Eleanor’s household; he may well have known Jacquetta’s first husband, who had been a student of alchemy just like Eleanor’s husband. Southwell was a priest at St Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster, where Jacquetta may have attended the services. Margery Jourdemayne was a wise woman and herbalist who had many patrons at the Westminster court; she might even have advised Jacquetta among her other clients. If a witch-hunt were to start at court, Jacquetta would be one of the first suspects.