The War of the Roses

by Timothy Venning

  Compared to his vigour in the 1460s, Edward had not shown much of an interest in campaigning or in visiting the north since the mid-1470s. Even in the earlier period, he had allowed himself to be taken by surprise by the 1469 rising and had no agents spying on the Earl of Warwick whose discontent could have been anticipated by a shrewder king. As noted earlier, he had unexpectedly refrained from using his Parliamentary grant and fleet or raised an army for a Scottish campaign in 1463. Nor did he hasten to link up with Herbert and Devon to confront the rebels in 1469.The grip of his government on the country in 1482–3, as analysed by Charles Ross, showed no sign of weakness or a loss of control despite his reduced itinerary and his careful and determined build-up of royal wealth to outmatch his magnates was noted by the Croyland Chronicler.20 His delegation of authority over a large part of his realm to his brother Richard then was not new–he had given similar power to the equally trusted Duke of Somerset in the north in 1462–4, Warwick in the north in 1462–8, Montague in the north-east in 1464–70, and Herbert (created Earl of Pembroke) in Wales in 1461–8. Three of the four had played him false, but he did not learn his lesson and use more men with less power given to each. Henry VII, by contrast, was a master of ‘divide and rule’ and did not trust the northern frontier to its traditional magnates (after 1489) or lavish grants on his nobles.

  Edward showed no interest in personal involvement with the Scots crisis of 1480–2 compared to the northern revolts of 1464 and 1468, not responding to the major raids on Northumberland in person, staying in southern England, and leaving the planned invasion of Scotland to Richard. The serious magnate discontent in Scotland as a result of James III’s reliance on ‘low-born’ favourites, coupled with the apparent mixture of fear and greed for power shown by James’ surviving brother Duke Alexander of Albany, was a major opportunity for the English King to intervene. It would have provided Edward with a bonus for his military reputation after the anticlimax of the French campaign of 1475, even if he marched all the way to Edinburgh and back without much to show for it or–as happened to Richard–Albany and his faction linked up with the English to coerce James but turned against them once they had gone home. He did not avoid war on account of the cost or the futility as he arguably did in 1463, when Scotland was no major threat once Henry VI’s northern English allies had been driven out, or Richard would not have been sent to invade Scotland. Edward had been more careful of his reputation as an active hero in the 1460s, sponsoring the propagandist claims that he was the ‘Son of Prophecy’ of Welsh legend (as a descendant of the Princes of Gwynedd via the Mortimers) and having been linked to a revival of the ‘Arthurian’ chivalric cult. (The extent of his active involvement via his brother-in-law Anthony Woodville with Sir Thomas Malory’s commission to write the Morte d’Arthur is more uncertain.) Even in the 1470s his miraculous return to power had been quickly ‘written up’ and cast in a heroic light in the Historie of the Arrivall of Edward the Fourth, apparently composed by one of his followers and distributed abroad.21 The ‘spin’ placed on his achievement conveniently avoided asking why he had been overthrown in the first place if he was such a great leader. So why was he not quick to head north in 1482, even if he left the fighting to Richard?

  The King’s lack of personal intervention in this crisis–he did not even go as far as York–may reflect no more than a desire to give Richard a chance to ‘earn his spurs’ as his principal northern commander, and cannot be linked definitively to Commignes’ criticism of his laziness. As seen in 1463, he had little personal concern with his northern frontier. (The one time he did march to Newcastle, in 1464, he fell ill with measles.) But his lack of action may indicate a decline in health or undue lethargy. Nor did he show signs of reacting with a new Continental war to the French abandonment of their treaty-obligation from 1475 to marry the Dauphin to his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, by allying with his other principal neighbour, Archduke Maximilian in 1482–a serious insult. It is possible that this foreign reverse, uniting his two principal neighbours who until now he had striven to keep apart, caused the onset of depression in winter 1482–3, but if so it did not lead to plans for retaliation. The obvious target of such an action would be Louis, now aged 59/60 and usefully in declining health and living like a hermit at the Loire chateau of Plessis. Louis’ fear of Edward was such that there was one story that he had poisoned him to head off an English invasion in 1483,22 and if Edward had been contemplating retaliation to the insult shown to him there should have been some sign of it at the early spring 1483 Parliament or in an embassy to Maximilian.

  His death apparently followed a chill caught on a fishing-expedition on the Thames at Windsor at the beginning of April, with the King unaware of its seriousness until he was dying. Given its suddenness, poison was inevitable rumoured, with Louis XI of France the prime suspect. One modern theory has even suggested his wife, Elizabeth Woodville–though it would have been a ‘high-risk’ strategy to remove her husband in favour of a regency headed by herself without being sure of dealing with Richard or Lord Hastings first. Arsenic has been suggested as a means of poison, and Edward’s failure to recover from his ‘chill’ may be suspicious but may only mean that he had some underlying problem (perhaps due to alcohol). Even when his condition started to deteriorate, he did not take it seriously enough to make efforts to resolve the factional disputes among his intimates, principally the quarrel between his stepson Dorset and his chamberlain Lord Hastings until a late stage or to make it publicly known who was to be in charge of the effective regency for his 12-year-old elder son. The latter was not summoned from Ludlow Castle, his residence as titular head of the ‘Council of the Marches’, whereas if the Prince had been en route to London well before the news of Edward’s death reached Yorkshire Richard of Gloucester would not have had the time to arrange to intercept the party. (If the Queen was poisoning her husband, logically she would have had an idea how long he would last and thus would have summoned her son in time.) Even though Edward’s illness may have been relatively short (perhaps around ten days at most), he had time before he died on 9 April to give orders to have the Prince brought quickly to London, which should have stimulated Anthony Woodville into speedier action had they existed. Instead, Woodville lingered at Ludlow for several more weeks.

  Results of Edward IV’s survival. Even less excuse for a Protectorship if Edward V had been older?

  What if Edward, even if overweight and in poorer health than as a young man, had lived for another few years–or a decade or two? A physically inactive king restricted to touring the parts of the south nearer London was not a major problem if there was a vigorous and loyal deputy to act for him in outlying regions, as Prince Edward (later Edward I) had done for his ageing father in 1265–9 and as John ‘of Gaunt’ had done for the young Richard II. A trusted close male relative could act (militarily and administratively) for an incapable king in France, as Bedford had done for Henry V; Edward IV had not trusted Clarence with a Burgundian ‘power-base’ in 1477 but he gave Richard such military powers in the north in 1480–3. As the most vocal opponent of the 1475 French treaty Richard was the logical leader of an expedition to France, and was very unlikely to be bribable by Louis XI. His hostility to the 1475 treaty was notorious.

  Had Edward IV been in poor health throughout his last years (his forties?),there was the precedent of Henry IV who had been struck down by a mysterious illness at the age of, at most, 39 in June 1405. On that occasion it had seen the King’s eldest son and Archbishop of Canterbury at odds over the control of the Council and the Prince’s temporary triumph in 1410 had been reversed when the King reasserted himself. When Edward III was in his dotage, restricted to his Thames valley estates, and the ‘Black Prince’ was chronically sick at Berkhamsted in 1372–6 John ‘of Gaunt’ had been their effective deputy in government, with accusations of a greedy court clique (headed by the King’s mistress, not his wife as with the Woodvilles) benefiting from the over-indulgent King. The fact that Edward V would have accede
d at an older age would have meant no need of or excuse for a Protectorship even for the few weeks until the coronation, thus giving Richard of Gloucester no excuse for arresting his alleged would-be deprivers of that role. As explored below, that did not rule out a military challenge from Richard at a later date, with the fate of the previous royal uncle Duke of Gloucester (Humphrey) in 1447 hanging over him.

  Legally, the last official ‘regency’ had been that of William Marshal for the 9-year-old Henry III in 1216 so Edward V had not needed a regency even in 1483–as his mother’s faction apparently endeavoured to effect. This is assuming that Edward’ IV’s grant of a ‘Protectorship’ to Richard amounted to real legal power, as opposed to a personal ‘governorship’ of the under-age King. We do not have any unbiased record of what role Edward IV intended for his brother as of April 1483, only Richard’s ‘post facto’ claims–and it is improbable that Edward IV would have feared his wife’s relatives’ acquisitiveness enough to give supreme power to Richard.

  We can only use precedents of what was usual in working out what Edward IV intended, not Richard’s subsequent justifications of his coup–though Lord Chamberlain Hastings was apparently alarmed enough at the Queen’s activities to summon Richard to London in late April 1483. The 10-year-old Richard II had succeeded without any ‘Protector’ or ‘Governor’ in June 1377, though as a legal minor he had not exercised royal authority and the Council had collectively done so under the leadership of his eldest surviving uncle, John ‘of Gaunt’. The 14-year-old Edward III had succeeded without one in January 1327, merely with his eldest male relative Henry of Lancaster as titular head of the Council and the King’s guardian. In reality, Edward’s mother, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, had controlled the government until they were overthrown in October 1330 and had been able to brush Lancaster aside. The Council had ruled in the name of the infant Henry VI from September 1422, rejecting the claims of his uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to become Protector under Henry V’s will; Henry VI had been declared adult and the governance of the kingdom by his Council ended in November 1437, just before his sixteenth birthday.

  Even in 1483, the assumption was that the Protectorship that Edward IV’s will gave to Duke Richard was only to last until the coronation. The ‘Woodville faction’ led by the Queen-Mother were thus presumed to be hastening Edward V to the capital in early May for a quick coronation to obviate the need for Richard to hold power even for a few weeks, and Richard’s propagandists declared this thwarting of the late King’s will to be their aim.23 Incidentally, the coronations of Edward III and Henry VI had not ended their supervisors’ governorships, so a crowned king was not automatically ‘adult’. Nor was declaring Edward V free of legal tutelage at his coronation following the legal ‘norms’; though its end to a legal ‘Protectorate’ could have been feared by Richard as meaning that the Queen would persuade her son to have him arrested. Timing was crucial in any case, with the excuse for any legal tutelage for the new King lessening as he grew older. If Edward V had succeeded at the age of 14 or 15 in 1485–6 there would have been less likelihood of a royal will by his father creating any ‘Protectorship’ (personal or political), and if he had succeeded at the age of 16 in 1487–8 virtually none. Thus even if Edward IV had still died early, in his mid-forties, the new King would have been in the charge of a Council, which could still have exercised the use of the royal signet and determined policy (Queen-Mother Isabella had held the signet for Edward III in 1327–30) but would not have needed any legally-appointed head. As Humphrey’s claims had been seen off in 1422 with a much younger king, so a majority of the Council under men such as Hastings and Dorset could have constrained Duke Richard’s authority to that of one among many equals. He could have been personal guardian of the young King, as Earl Henry of Lancaster, the nearest male relative, had been for Edward II and Earl Richard Beauchamp of Warwick had been for Henry VI–both of them without political control of the government. Indeed, it remains possible that Edward IV intended him as only a personal guardian, and that Richard deliberately inflated the extent of his Protectoral powers in his claims of what Edward IV’s will had meant. This may not have been a sign of his designs on the throne as of May 1483, merely a legal manoeuvre to protect himself from any indictment by his foes on the Council and/or a Woodville-prompted Edward V. It must be remembered that he had arrested Earl Rivers and Sir Richard Grey, uncle and half-brother of the new King, at Stony Stratford and had a tense interview with the latter who clearly did not trust him.24 The last ‘regent’ to arrest a young king’s relatives and ignore his protests was Roger Mortimer in 1330, who had ended up arrested by the affronted young Edward III and dragged off to Tyburn as a traitor. Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, executed his nephew Richard II’s tutor Burley despite his protests in 1388, and was killed (probably on his orders) a decade later.

  The issue of political alliances at Edward V’s accession: which mattered more, Edward V’s young age or Hastings abandoning the Woodvilles?

  But Edward V’s age in 1483 might not have been decisive in leading to his maternal relatives’ neutralization by Richard and his later deposition. Other under-age kings had not been at their paternal uncles’ mercy, so why was 1483 an exception? Notably, the new government for a king aged under one year had been able to hold off an ambitious royal uncle’s demands in 1422–3. Then the royal Council had been united, and Duke Humphrey had been unable to secure his alleged right as Protector of the new King in England although the Council had conceded such a right to Bedford as governor of France. They had also been able to use Bedford, their ally and possessing more troops than Humphrey, as an agent to block Humphrey’s demands. Bedford had been granted legal precedence over Humphrey when in England, and he and his Council allies had been able to block Humphrey’s ambitions; indeed, the frustrated Duke had become violently antagonistic to Bedford’s main ecclesiastical supporter on the Council, their uncle Bishop Henry Beaufort, for frustrating him.

  This unity of 1422–3 was lacking in 1483, which may well have been more crucial than the thorny question of whether Edward IV’s will–never published–had appointed Richard as ‘Protector’ (and if so with what powers). It is also important to note that in 1422–3 the leading clerics on the Council, Chancellor (Bishop) Thomas Langley and Bishop Henry Beaufort, were both willing to stand up to Duke Humphrey’s demands to be Protector. Humphrey could not remove Beaufort, despite threats of violence to him; in 1426 Bedford seems to have persuaded Beaufort to go to Bohemia on ‘crusade’ to get him out of Humphrey’s way. In 1483 the Archbishop of Canterbury, the aged royal relative Thomas Bourchier, was not active in politics and the equally aged Chancellor, Archbishop Thomas Rotherham of York, lost his nerve over what to do when he heard of Rivers’ arrest and illegally handed the Great Seal to the Queen.25 Richard duly sacked him. Could younger and more determined clerical councillors in 1483 have stood up to Richard, as Langley and Beaufort had stood up to Humphrey? Or if the crisis had come a few years later, would Edward IV have appointed a younger and more capable Chancellor by then? The Yorkist dynasty favoured trustable clerical protégés for this office, and the logical next appointees were either Bishop John Russell of Lincoln (the real-life Chancellor under Richard in 1483–5) or Bishop John Alcock of Worcester, one of the Prince of Wales’ Council at Ludlow. Alcock is likelier, having held the office briefly in 1475 while Rotherham was abroad, and was likely to be loyal to Edward V; in 1486 Henry VII made him Chancellor after Rotherham’s final retirement. Stronger clerical leadership on the Council could have shifted the balance of its members against Richard, with or without Hastings joining them.

  Even in the circumstances of 1483, it would have been possible for Hastings to choose to back the Woodvilles not Richard and to seek to contain the latter via a ‘normal’ Council of State not by backing their overthrow. It was apparently his warning that brought Richard to the Midlands in time to intercept the new King, and he who rallied the Council to limit Edward V’s armed escort.
As seen in 1422, precedent favoured government by a collective Council not one ‘regent’. The possibility thus arises that it was his personal dislike of the Queen’s eldest son, the Marquis of Dorset, his recent rival for Edward IV’s patronage, that led Hastings to seek alliance with Richard and invite him to come quickly to London. Or was it fear that Dorset and the Queen would use their planned ‘army’ to arrest him? This was to be fatal to him and probably fatal to Edward V–though Richard could still have arrived uninvited to confront the Council after Edward V’s arrival and to demand his rights as Protector. As he showed in June 1483, he had substantial numbers of armed tenants from his northern lands who he could use to overawe the Londoners–a politico-military weapon entrusted to him by Edward IV who had granted him a large autonomous ‘palatinate’. It would make little difference if he arrived before or after the coronation; as seen by the poor attendance of peers at Edward IV’s coronation in 1461, a coronation was no less legal for being enacted in the absence of major figures. But a royal uncle parading his troops near London making noises about his exclusion from power might not win such a confrontation; the mutinous Earl Henry of Lancaster had been faced down by the Queen-Mother’s regency in 1329.