Shakespeare's Kings

by John Julius Norwich

  The light was already beginning to fail when the Duke of Norfolk arrived with fresh troops to smash into the exposed Lancastrian flank, which finally broke and started the headlong flight of Queen Margaret's men. Hundreds of heavily armoured knights were drowned trying to cross the little river Cock; hundreds more of their followers were trapped at Tadcaster where, to block the Yorkist advance, they had themselves destroyed the only bridge two days before. Few prisoners were taken: for the vast majority, capture meant instant slaughter. Northumberland, Clifford and Nevill were among the royalist nobles who fell on the field; killed too was Sir Andrew Trollope, one of the bravest and most experienced of the Lancastrian leaders. Among the Yorkists Lord FitzWalter was the only noble casualty, but their losses too were horrendous. The snow is said to have been more crimson than white, while the river Wharfe and its tributaries ran red with blood. We need not necessarily believe the contemporary report that the heralds counted 28,000 dead on the field, but after ten hours of desperate hand-to-hand fighting even that figure is not impossible. Over an area six miles long by half a mile broad, the dead lay unburied for several days.

  Edward entered York in triumph, removing from the walls the heads of his father and the other Yorkist nobles slain at Wakefield and replacing them with those of the Earl of Devon - captured alive but subsequently executed - and other Lancastrian leaders. He remained in the city for the next three weeks, consolidating his position. The great Lancastrian families of the north - the Percys, the Cliffords, the Dacres - were largely destroyed, their power shattered, their old loyalties severely shaken; now for the first time it seemed that there might be a chance of persuading the whole region to accept his authority. He also showed himself in Durham and Newcastle - where he witnessed the execution of one of his oldest enemies, the Earl of Wiltshire - finally returning in May to London, where on 28 June he was crowned at last in Westminster Abbey. His two brothers George and Richard, whom the Duchess of York had sent over to Utrecht for safety after her husband's death, returned in time for the ceremony and were awarded the dukedoms of Clarence and Gloucester respectively.

  Queen Margaret, however, was not yet beaten. Having retreated once again to Scotland, she further ingratiated herself with the Scots by ceding to them the town of Berwick-on-Tweed; and early in 1462 she crossed to France, where she persuaded her cousin Louis XI - who, after two unsuccessful attempts to depose his father, Charles VII, had succeeded him naturally the previous July - to lend her money and send an expeditionary force to help her, promising him Calais in return. (Fortunately Philip of Burgundy refused point-blank to allow French troops to cross his territory, so this plan came to nothing.) In 1463 she tried again to establish a solid Lancastrian base in the far north, but with no greater success; then in the following year the young Duke of Somerset, whose father had been Richard of York's chief opponent but whom Edward had pardoned and befriended, reverted to his original cause and, with Sir Ralph Percy and Sir Humphrey Nevill, raised a revolt in Northumberland. On 25 April, at Hedgeley Moor near Alnwick, they attacked a Yorkist army under Warwick's brother, the Marquis of Montagu, but were soundly defeated. Percy was killed; Somerset escaped and tried to regroup his forces, but at Hexham on 15 May his army -which by now included all the Lancastrian notables in the north and had even been joined by King Henry in person - suffered a surprise attack by Montagu and was virtually annihilated. He himself, together with several of the other leaders, was captured and beheaded; the King escaped, only to spend nearly a year in disguise, wandering through the wild hill country of the north, taking refuge where he could at monasteries or in the homes of his supporters. At last he was recognized as he sat at dinner at Waddington Hall in Ribblesdale. Arrested and taken to London, he was imprisoned in the Tower — where he was to remain for the next five and a half years.

  The pendulum had swung in favour of King Edward; but at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham he had played no part. His mind was on other matters. Early in the morning of 1 May 1464 he had paid a secret visit to Grafton, near Stony Stratford; it was the residence of the old Duchess of Bedford, widow of the Regent who had governed France some forty years before. After his death she had married Richard Woodville, Lord Pavers, and had borne him a daughter, Elizabeth, whose husband, the stalwart Lancastrian Sir John Grey of Groby, had been killed at the second Battle of St Albans. The young widow was now twenty-seven, five years older than Edward and devastatingly attractive; he had been pursuing her for months, but it was widely believed that she had insisted on marriage before granting him her favours, even when he had held a dagger to her throat.1 Finally he had given in, and by the time he left Grafton a few hours later the two were man and wife.

  No public announcement was made. Other brides, a good deal more distinguished than Elizabeth,2 had been suggested and had already been the subject of tentative diplomatic inquiries; they included the Princess Isabella of Castile — who was later to marry Ferdinand of Aragon and to send Christopher Columbus to the New World - and the sister-in-law of Louis XI, Bona of Savoy. Bona's cause was being industriously promoted by the Earl of Warwick as part of his policy to form an alliance with France and Burgundy, and Edward was well aware that the very idea of the Woodville marriage would drive him to fury. He kept his secret for four months, even from his closest friends, revealing it only in September 1464 when it could be kept no longer.

  Warwick's reaction when he heard was even worse than the King had feared. The marriage meant not only the collapse of his political plans; it also affected him personally since, as soon became clear, Edward was marrying not just a beautiful woman but a highly ambitious clan. Over and above her own two sons by her first husband, Elizabeth possessed no less than five brothers and seven unmarried sisters, all of whom expected to be generously endowed. Three years earlier, they could have been satisfied without too much difficulty: Edward had had at his disposal all the vast Lancastrian estates confiscated from their former owners. Unfortunately, however, these had by now all been bestowed on the many Yorkist friends who had brought him to the throne. The only thing he could do for the Woodvilles was to arrange profitable marriages for them, and these followed thick and fast: over the next six years there was not a single heir to an English earldom who, on his marriage, did not choose a Woodville wife. Warwick

  Such at least is the report of Dominic Mancini, a well-informed Roman visitor to London, who in December 1483 was to write a fascinating account of Richard Ill's coup d'etat of the same year.

  Elizabeth was in fact of extremely noble birth on her mother's side, the Duchess of Bedford being herself the daughter of Peter of Luxemburg, Count of St Pol, who claimed direct descent from Charlemagne. But the Duchess had married beneath her; her second husband, Richard Woodville, though generally believed to be the handsomest man in England, was by origin a simple country squire, and she had been obliged to pay a fine of £1,000 for marrying without the royal licence.

  SHAKESPEARE S KINGS

  himself, who had no male heir but two daughters of his own to dispose of, saw them passed over again and again in favour of the Queen's innumerable relations; worse still, he was forced to stand by powerless while his own aunt Katherine Nevill, Duchess of Norfolk, was married off to one of the Queen's brothers, John Woodville - the groom being just twenty while his bride, as the Nevill chronicler records with heavy irony, was 'a slip of a girl almost four score years old'. He was, he felt, drowning in a sea of Woodvilles - and rapidly losing the prime position at court which he believed to be rightfully his.

  For a man like Warwick such a situation was intolerable; before long he began looking around for other friends. He had never made any secret of his connections with the French court, and by 1467 there were rumours on both sides of the Channel that he was in communication with Queen Margaret, to whom Louis XI had given refuge. In fact, however, his principal ally was rather nearer home: the King's brother George, now Duke of Clarence and, for the moment, heir-presumptive to the throne. Warwick had long been determined on a marri
age between Clarence and his own elder daughter Isabel; Clarence too had favoured the idea — the lady was, after all, the greatest heiress in England - and both of them had taken serious offence when Edward had rejected it out of hand on the grounds that Clarence's mother, Cecily of York, had been both Isabel's great-aunt and her godmother, and that the marriage consequently fell within the prohibited degrees.

  Warwick, characteristically, refused to accept the King's decision. Having secretly obtained a special dispensation from Pope Paul II, early in July 1469 he suddenly summoned Clarence to Calais, where Isabel was waiting. The two were married on the spot by his brother George Nevill - now Archbishop of York - in the church of Notre Dame. They and Warwick together then issued a manifesto, announcing that they were coming to present to the King certain 'reasonable and profitable articles of petition' and calling upon all 'true subjects' to join them in an armed demonstration at Canterbury on Sunday 16 July to emphasize the need for reforms. The articles, which purported to be representations made to the confederates by men 'of diverse parties', were for the most part little more than the usual complaints of 'lack of governance' and 'great impositions and inordinate charges' that Warwick had so often levelled at the Lancastrians in the past; but there was no attempt to conceal his real grievance - that the King had antagonized and estranged the 'great lords of his blood' by his blatant favouring of the Woodvilles and other 'seducious persones'.

  The people of Kent gave the Earl a warm welcome; and all the way to London he continued to protest his loyalty, much as Richard of York had done on his various marches to the capital some fifteen years before. Subsequent events, however, soon showed that his true intentions were far from peaceable. Already in Yorkshire an insurrection had broken out under a shadowy figure known as Robin of Redesdale - but who was very probably a landowner from Marske in Swaledale (and an old friend of Warwick) by the name of Sir William Conyers. Edward had marched north to deal with him, ordering the Earls of Pembroke1 and Devon to gather troops in Wales and join him at Northampton. The first of these tasks they satisfactorily performed; but on 26 July, at Edgecote some six miles north-east of Banbury, they were intercepted and soundly defeated by Robin's men. That evening several hundred Welshmen lay dead on the field. Pembroke and his brother, Sir Richard Herbert, were taken to Northampton and beheaded, on Warwick's orders, the following morning.

  King Edward was at the little town of Olney, on his way from Nottingham to his Northampton rendezvous, when he heard the news. What then occurred is not entirely clear; it seems, however, that many of his men deserted, and that he himself, perhaps bewildered by the events of the past month and the sudden reversal of his fortunes, relaxed his guard. At all events he somehow allowed himself to fall into the hands of the Archbishop of York, who had recently returned with his brother from Calais and who now dispatched the King - with every outward show of respect — first to Warwick Castle and then to the old Nevill fortress of Middleham in Yorkshire.

  What, one wonders, were Warwick and his family trying to achieve? It was rumoured in many quarters that he was aiming to have Edward declared a bastard, so that the crown should devolve upon his new son-in-law Clarence; on the other hand he does not seem to have made any deliberate move in this direction, and any attempt would almost certainly have failed. It seems on the whole more probable that he was hoping to tame the King, to reduce him to the status of a willing tool,

  1. Sir William Herbert had received the Earldom of Pembroke in 1468, after the attainder of Jasper Tudor.

  happy to carry out such policies as he, Warwick, might dictate to him. If so, he had seriously misjudged his man: Edward, captive or free, took orders from no one.

  It soon became clear that the King's arrest had been a serious mistake. When Warwick tried to raise forces in the north to put down a new Lancastrian rebellion by his distant kinsman Sir Humphrey Nevill of Brancepeth, he found himself unable to do so: while Edward remained a prisoner, the land was effectively ungovernable. He therefore proposed to the King that he should return to London, rejoin his wife and show himself to the people; and the Londoners for their part were told to prepare a suitable welcome. Edward - whose captivity had in fact been extremely comfortable, to the point where he regularly went out hunting - was only too happy to forgive and forget, and soon afterwards granted both Warwick and Clarence a general pardon for their offences.

  All too soon, however, he was to have reason to regret it. His master of horse, Sir Thomas Burgh of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, had for some time been at daggers drawn with his neighbour, Lord Welles and Willoughby; and early in 1470 Welles and his son attacked and destroyed Burgh's manor house, carrying off its contents. Feuds of this kind were frequent enough in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and were usually allowed to settle themselves; Burgh, however, was a member of the King's household, and Edward decided to go immediately to his assistance. For Clarence and Warwick, here was precisely the opportunity they had been seeking. Secretly allying themselves with the Welles faction, they put it about that the real reason for the King's visit to Lincolnshire was to take his revenge on the county for its part in Robin of Redesdale's insurrection; and on Sunday 4 March Welles's son, Sir Robert, issued a proclamation claiming that Edward intended 'to destroy the commons of Lincolnshire'. The King, knowing nothing of all this, had advanced only as far as Royston when he received a letter from Clarence to say that he and Warwick were riding up to meet him. He replied in all innocence with a handwritten letter of thanks, authorizing the two to raise troops in Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

  On Monday 12 March he reached Stamford, where further letters from Warwick and Clarence informed him that they hoped to arrive the same evening. He also learned that a hostile army under Sir Robert Welles was only five miles away at the little village of Empingham, and instantly marched out to meet it. Edward's force may have been slightly outnumbered, but he was far superior in cavalry and artillery, and the fighting was soon over. Welles and his men were soon in headlong flight, tearing off their defensive clothing in such quantities that the place came to be known as 'Lose-coat Field'. But the battle had a consequence which far outweighed its military outcome. Among the dead was a man in Clarence's livery carrying a casket. It contained letters from the Duke to Welles, and left no doubt in Edward's mind that the insurrection, such as it was, had the full backing both of Clarence and of Warwick — a fact which was confirmed by Welles himself when he was captured a day or two later.

  On 19 March, at Doncaster, Welles and his captain of infantry, Richard Warren, were publicly beheaded in view of the entire army. But what was to be done with Clarence and Warwick? Great as their treachery had been, Edward still had no taste for fratricide; and it was to Warwick, as he well knew, that he owed his throne. Several times he summoned the two of them to join him; on each occasion they assured him that they were on their way, then headed off in another direction. Finally he wrote to them that, even if they had indeed betrayed him, he was prepared to receive them 'with favour and pity, remembering their ties of blood and the old love and affection which had been between them'; but such vague assurances were not enough. They insisted on nothing less than free pardons and safe conducts for themselves and their followers, a demand to which he in his turn could not possibly agree. Finally, at York on 24 March, he issued a proclamation. If they appeared before him within four days, they would be received with grace and favour; if not, a price would be put on their heads and they could expect no mercy. Then he himself set off in their pursuit.

  It was by now clear that the rebel lords had no intention of giving themselves up and, having failed to find any more English adherents, that they would try to seek refuge in France; and Edward reached Exeter on 14 April only to discover that they had sailed a few days before, taking with them Warwick's wife and daughter, the heavily pregnant Duchess of Clarence. By the time they reached Calais she was in labour; even so, they were refused entry to the town. Somehow the Duchess survived her ordeal, but the baby
lived only a few hours and was buried a little further down the coast. At this point a large Flemish fleet entered the Channel from the north-east, and Warwick - who, even when his life was in danger, could never resist a little piracy - attacked and plundered it. He and the Clarences then sailed on to Honfleur, where they made a formal request to King Louis for protection.

  Louis was only too pleased to agree. Now that King Edward had seemingly antagonized almost all the most important of his erstwhile supporters, there seemed at last to be a chance of restoring Henry VI and cementing an Anglo-French alliance against his arch-enemy Charles, Duke of Burgundy.1 The principal stumbling-block was Queen Margaret. Could she ever be persuaded to overcome her hatred for Warwick and ally herself with him? Louis prepared his ground carefully; and at last, on 22 July 1470, the Earl of Warwick presented himself before Margaret and flung himself at her feet. She left him lying prone, we are told, for some considerable time before agreeing to forgive him, and even then insisted on a further public act of contrition at Westminster after her husband's restoration. But Warwick was finally permitted to rise to his feet and, to celebrate their reconciliation, Margaret's son the Prince of Wales was formally betrothed in the church of St Mary at Angers to Warwick's younger daughter, Anne Nevill, while all those present swore on a relic of the True Cross to remain faithful to Henry VI.

  With this problem safely out of the way, Louis could now devote his energies to the next stage of his plan: the invasion of England. For some time already he had been preparing a war fleet, which Edward - who was well aware of his intentions—was doing his best to immobilize by setting up a blockade around the Channel ports ofBarfleur and La Hogue where it lay. For most of the summer he was successful; but on 8 September a violent storm scattered the English ships - driving them, we are told, as far away as the Dutch and Scottish coasts — and Warwick saw his chance. His fleet put to sea the next day, making landfall at Dartmouth and Plymouth. Immediately he issued proclamations in the name of Henry VI, calling on all right-thinking Englishmen to rally to the cause of their true King; then, with Clarence and the Earl of Oxford at his side, he set off north-eastwards towards Coventry, gathering forces as he went.