The Women of the Cousins’ War

by Philippa Gregory, David Baldwin

  BLORE HEATH AND LUDLOW: DEFEAT AND VICTORY

  Margaret summoned the gentry of England, in the name of the king, to arm and meet in Coventry in June 1459. The queen brought the five-year-old Prince Edward to the meeting as an emblem of the future, and accused the absent Yorkist lords of treason. The Yorkist allies, hearing this, agreed that they must arm to defend themselves. Richard Neville Earl of Warwick crossed the narrow seas from Calais, his father the Earl of Salisbury marched south with his army from the family castle at Middleham, planning to meet Richard Plantagenet Duke of York at his home at Ludlow Castle in the west of England. The queen, probably with Jacquetta in attendance, was staying at Eccleshall Castle, with her own army. She ordered James Touchet Lord Audley to command the royal army in the name of Prince Edward and to intercept the Earl of Salisbury as he marched south-west towards York’s castle at Ludlow. Lord Thomas Stanley volunteered to lead the Lancastrian army but was ordered to join Lord Audley’s force. Instead he sent promises – this was not the last time that Stanley would prefer being on standby to being in action – but his brother William Stanley actually joined the other side, the Yorkists, serving with the Earl of Salisbury.

  Jacquetta and the queen watched the Lancastrian Lord Audley’s force – of about 10,000 men, including powerful cavalry – march out to catch the Earl of Salisbury’s men as they emerged from thick woodland near the village of Blore Heath on 23 September 1459 just after midday. It is likely that Jacquetta’s husband Richard Woodville was among them, drawn up on the heath, waiting for the far smaller force to emerge from the woods. The Yorkist soldiers must have been appalled when they saw the force waiting before them: they were outnumbered by two or three to one. The legend says that they kissed the ground as their deathbed and formed a line on a hill behind a little brook. It was an inadequate defence but they were able to use their archery against the Lancastrian cavalry, who had to cross the water and ride uphill into the withering fire of experienced archers. The fighting lasted for about four hours, until dusk; amazingly it went the way of the Yorkist force. About 3,000 men were killed, perhaps as many as 2,000 Lancastrian soldiers, including their commander Lord Audley. The battle ended as the Lancastrians fled from the field. The queen, perhaps with Jacquetta in attendance, is said to have climbed the spire at Mucklestone church to watch the defeat, and – again according to local legend – was so frightened that she paid the village blacksmith to reverse the shoes on her horse so that the Earl of Salisbury could not order scouts to track and capture her as she fled from the scene.

  Lucky once more, Lord Rivers probably with his son-in-law John Grey and his son Anthony survived the battle; but they must have been shaken by the defeat. The victorious Earl of Salisbury marched on to meet with his son Richard Neville Earl of Warwick, and his brother-in-law Richard Duke of York, at Worcester. They were now convinced of the enmity of the queen and the court party, and agreed that they must free the king from his aggressive advisers. In public statements they blamed the Earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire, and Viscount Beaumont, avoiding any direct attack on the king or queen. The Yorkist lords met at Worcester and swore loyalty to each other and to their king in a solemn mass in the cathedral; a copy of their written oath of brotherhood to each other and loyalty to the king was taken to Henry VI by the prior of the cathedral. When no reply came from the king, they believed that they had no choice but to defend themselves with arms and they withdrew to the fortified headquarters of the Duke of York, his principal home, Ludlow Castle.

  The royal army pursued them, headed by the king and queen, to Ludlow, where battle lines were drawn up on either side of the River Teme, which curls like a protective moat around the town. The king flew his royal standard outside the Duke of York’s town, and offered a pardon to any man deserting the Yorkist lords. It was too tempting an offer for the 600 soldiers from Calais who had served under Richard Woodville and the late Duke of Somerset of the House of Lancaster; they had followed their new garrison commander so far, but had not expected to make war on the king himself. With their commander Sir Andrew Trollope, they deserted to the Lancastrian side and took the Yorkist battle plans with them. Trollope’s former captain Richard Woodville would have welcomed him to the king’s army.

  Once again, the Yorkist lords faced a battlefield where they would be heavily outnumbered – historians think the royal army was more than 40,000-strong; the Yorkists had probably no more than 20,000 – but this time they avoided battle. The three lords slipped away overnight: the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury went to their safe haven of Calais, taking the Duke of York’s young son Edward Earl of March with them. They were ferried across the narrow seas by Sir John Dynham, a Devon man who would serve the Yorkist cause again. Richard Duke of York slipped away to his post in Ireland, abandoning his men, his town and even his wife and younger children, who were left to face the royal army as it poured into the town, ready to loot, drink and run riot.

  According to the tradition, Cecily Neville Duchess of York had to wait for the enemy at the centre of the town, under the market cross, with her children: thirteen-year-old Margaret, eleven-year-old George, and seven-year-old Richard. It must have been a terrifying experience for the children, as the ill-disciplined royal army burst into the town and set about looting goods and raping women. This was the first sight of war for the seven-year-old Richard, who would go on to command two pitched battles in this war but never again experience defeat until he went down into the mud of Bosworth.

  The battle had been won by the king and queen; but in allowing Richard Duke of York to escape to Ireland, and the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury and the young Edward Earl of March to get to Calais, they had left England in danger of attack both from the south across the English Channel and from the west across the Irish Sea. Their next urgent task must be to dislodge Warwick from Calais and defend the south coast.

  JACQUETTA KIDNAPPED

  The young Duke of Somerset was sent to Calais to expel Warwick, which he failed to do; the garrison was now loyal to its new commander and supporting the cause of the Yorkists. Instead Somerset occupied the nearby castle of Guisnes. Lord Rivers with his wife Jacquetta and their seventeen-year-old son Anthony Woodville were sent to reinforce the port of Sandwich and raise an expedition to support Somerset in the recapture of their old garrison. Rivers set about the task of repairing the defences of Sandwich and raising men. But in a cold January dawn, Warwick’s captain Sir John Dynham, who could handle a ship in winter seas, came out of the darkness with a raiding force of 800 men, landed at Sandwich and marched into the town. The alarm was sounded and Richard and Jacquetta abruptly woken. Richard came dashing out of his house, his breastplate under his arm, and was captured by the Yorkist soldiers. Jacquetta was taken too, and their son Anthony Woodville – riding to his parents’ help from the nearby castle of Richborough – was seized, and the three of them were bundled on board ship and taken back to Calais in triumph. The Yorkists regarded the capture as a good joke: ‘Rivers was commanded to have landed at Calais by the king, but he was brought there sooner than he liked . . .’

  They were held outside the town until evening, so that the citizens and soldiers of Calais should not protest against the capture of their former commander, and when night fell they were taken, under cover of darkness, into the great hall of Calais Castle to stand before the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury and the young Edward Earl of March. It seems as if Jacquetta’s husband protested fiercely at their capture, accusing the Yorkist lords of treason, and the Yorkist lords were angry in reply:

  My Lord Rivers was brought to Calais, and before the lords with eight score torches, and there my lord of Salisbury rated him, calling him knave’s son that he should be so rude to call him and these other lords traitors, for they shall be found the King’s true liege men when he should be found a traitor, etc. And my lord of Warwick rated him and said that his father was but a squire and brought up with King Henry the Vth and sees himself made by marriage and also made lord, and that
it was not his part to have such language of lords being of the King’s blood. And my lord of March rated him in like wise.

  What Jacquetta, a dowager duchess of England, must have felt, as she and her seventeen-year-old son listened to her husband being abused for social climbing by marriage to her, can perhaps be imagined. To be insulted by Edward Earl of March, a young man only the same age as their son, must have been particularly galling. However, the Rivers were lucky to escape with nothing worse than insults. A later raid on Sandwich in June saw the Captain of Sandwich kidnapped to the Rysbank Tower in Calais, and beheaded.

  Unlike him, the Rivers were spared. Jacquetta was sent home to England within a few weeks, but Lord Rivers and his son Anthony were held as prisoners in the castle he used to command for six long months, until the invasion of England by the Yorkist lords in June 1460, when they were released.

  Meanwhile in England, the royal court, fortifying Kenilworth with cannon recklessly stripped from the Tower of London, and calling up reserves, could not inspire a disaffected country to resist the Yorkist invasion. The Kentish towns opened their gates to the Earl of Warwick’s small force of about 2,000 men, and some of the royal party changed their allegiance as the earl started a triumphant recruiting march on London. The city gates were thrown open to him; only the Tower held out under a Lancastrian commander, and there were Londoners who remarked that they would have preferred not to experience this troublesome token of support from the Lancastrians. The Earl of Salisbury stayed in London to lay siege to the Tower while the Earl of Warwick and Edward Earl of March went directly north to meet the king, recruiting as they went, publicly declaring that they only wanted to set their grievances before the king, invoking the help of the Church and Commons, and naming the king’s bad advisers. Probably, they had agreed to capture the king and separate him from his wife and court, thinking that they could rule England through him. Perhaps they even considered putting Richard Duke of York on the throne in his place.

  The royal army, of about 10–15,000 men, dug in before the River Nene, outside the Abbey of Delapré, Northampton, just eight miles from the Rivers’ home at Grafton. It was a well-fortified position with a water-filled ditch protected with sharpened staves before them, and field artillery drawn up to protect the men-at-arms. They were commanded by the Duke of Buckingham, the king was nearby, and the queen and the prince were in Eccleshall Castle once more, awaiting results. Jacquetta was probably with them. It would have been an anxious time for her; she probably did not know if her husband and son were alive or dead, or still imprisoned at Calais.

  As soon as the Yorkist force, now an impressive 20,000-plus, came up, the Earl of Warwick sent two messages to the king, asking for parley. The Duke of Buckingham blocked these, so that no concessions could be made by the merciful king. Forced into fighting, without a chance to negotiate, the earl ordered his forces into three contingents or ‘battles’, put himself in the centre, and – with eighteen-year-old Edward Earl of March and Lord Fauconberg on either side – prepared to advance and sent the dramatic message: ‘At 2 o’clock I will speak with the King or I will die.’

  Steady rain had turned the water-meadows into sodden ground, and soaked the powder of the Lancaster cannon, rendering them useless. The Lancastrian opening volleys of arrows caused no damage, and the Yorkists trudged through the mud to engage in hand-to-hand fighting, which made almost no progress until Lord Grey of Ruthin, the kinsman of Elizabeth Woodville’s husband Sir John Grey, suddenly turned traitor against his king. He heaved the young Earl of March over the barrier, commanded his men that they were now fighting for York, and the two troops, working together, fought their way inside the Lancastrian defences. The battle was over in an hour, with no prisoners taken and no ransoms offered – a new standard of ruthlessness for these battles, which now departed from any pretence to the ideals of chivalry. About 400 men were killed, including four Lancastrian lords who may have died trying to help the king escape. They died in vain: the king was found by a Yorkist archer, praying in his tent, and the three Yorkist lords once again knelt to him in their victory and did him homage; and then took him with them to London.

  As soon as the queen had news of the catastrophic defeat she took her son and rode to the protection of Jasper Tudor in Wales. Quite unprotected on her journey, she was robbed by her own attendants on the way; but after days of travel she got behind the grey stone walls of Denbigh Castle, and planned her escape to Scotland, seeking the help of the widow of James II of Scotland, Margaret of Gueldres. Jacquetta almost certainly made her own way to her nearby home and prayed for the safe return of her husband and son. When Sir Richard and Anthony finally arrived, they probably thought it best to stay quietly at their home at Grafton. Their queen and prince were plotting in Scotland, their king was held by the Yorkist lords, and the Duke of York was on the march, coming from Ireland. Even the city of London was a dangerous place: the Lancastrian lords still held out in the Tower, bombarding their fellow citizens, and irritating them so much that most Londoners wished a speedy victory to the Yorkists laying siege to the Tower. Finally, the Lancastrian defence collapsed and they fled, their commander Lord Scales among them, to be killed by Londoners.

  A purge of Lancastrian officials followed the victory of the Yorkist commanders. Lancastrian supporters were dismissed from the king’s service and replaced by men loyal to York. The Duke of Somerset surrendered the castle of Guisnes outside Calais. The king himself went on pilgrimage to Canterbury in August, and when in London seems to have lived quietly under the control of the Earl of Warwick; a contemporary observer described him as ‘more timorous than a woman, utterly devoid of wit or spirit’.

  There is no record of the Rivers family in October 1460 when Richard Duke of York, arriving from Ireland, astounded everyone by entering London to the sound of his own trumpets, his sword carried before him, claimed the throne of England as his own, by descent from Edward III through his third son Lionel Duke of Clarence, and went to the royal palace of Westminster and occupied the royal apartments. Perhaps we can speculate that the Rivers were at home in Grafton, appalled by events, keeping their heads down and wondering how to serve a king who was in the keeping of his treasonous kinsman, and a queen who was far away.

  King Henry nervously stayed in the rooms traditionally allotted to the queen and avoided his self-aggrandising cousin whenever they might have met in the labyrinthine corridors of Westminster. If Jacquetta and her husband were at Grafton they would have heard of the astounding settlement that York reached with the lords and with King Henry in October. After weeks of investigation into his claim to be the true heir to the throne, an agreement was made: York was to serve as protector of the realm as he had done during the king’s illness, and he was to be heir to the throne, succeeding on the death of the king. In the meantime he could collect fees on the assets of the heir to the throne, as if he were Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester; and all royal officials were to obey him as if he were king. Fundamentally, it was a total coup. Richard Duke of York would be served as the king and would be regarded as prince and heir.

  For the Woodville family, as for the rest of the kingdom, this must have been unthinkable. The kingship of England was not elective, it was hereditary – though sometimes won by force of arms. Richard Duke of York’s claim to the throne might be as strong as that of his cousin Henry of Lancaster, but he had never promoted it before, and indeed he had sworn fealty more than once to Henry as King of England. In these new circumstances what was to happen to the queen? Was she to be deposed on the death of her husband? And who could doubt for a moment that she would fight to defend the inheritance of her son?

  Jacquetta, who knew Margaret so intimately after fifteen years of friendship and service, would have foreseen that the queen would do anything to defend her own power and her only son’s inheritance. His very title was threatened by the settlement: was young Edward not to be called Prince of Wales any more? Jacquetta, waiting in Grafton, mu
st have predicted with some confidence what would happen next.

  Margaret made reckless agreements with the Scots, which included the surrender of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and the betrothal of her son the prince to one of the Scots princesses, in return for military support; then she marched in December at the head of this new army, south to meet the Lancastrian lords of Somerset and Devon and the commander from Calais, Sir Andrew Trollope, at Hull. Sir Richard Woodville Lord Rivers and his son Anthony almost certainly joined their peers at Hull in the queen’s army. Jacquetta probably went too, to serve the queen as she returned to England. At the city of York, Margaret declared her defiance to Richard Duke of York, and challenged him to settle the succession by force of arms. Replying to the challenge, Richard Duke of York and the Earl of Salisbury left Salisbury’s son the Earl of Warwick to guard London, and marched north, as representatives of the new royal power, to confront the queen’s army, as soon as Christmas was over.

  The Duke of York had planned to spend the time of Christmas truce in his castle at Sandal, but came out to confront the strong Lancastrian force and joined battle. Some accounts suggest he was lured from his stronghold by a mock attack and retreat, others that his men were ill-disciplined and away from the castle when it was attacked, or a truce may have been in force which the Lancastrians dishonoured. In any case, it was a grave error for the duke and it brought a punishing defeat. York was killed in the battle, as was his second son Edmund of Rutland – his favourite son, whom he had kept at his side through the difficult months. Salisbury’s own fourth son, Sir Thomas Neville, died on the field, and Salisbury himself was killed the next day at Pontefract: ‘The common people of the country, which loved him not, took him out of the castle by violence and smote off his head.’