The War of the Roses

by Timothy Venning

  A united Council holding Richard at bay in May 1483, or a later accession of an older Edward V, would not have prevented potential discord. There could still have been quarrels over the exercise of authority, the destination of patronage, and the implementation of policy–e.g. towards France and Scotland–with the grant of significant military forces to Richard for a campaign feared by his enemies. The physical possession of the King would have been important, as was more nakedly the case in regencies in Scotland where James III, in particular, had ended up kidnapped by rival magnate factions. In England in 1329 Henry of Lancaster had tried to march on the court to seize possession of Edward III from Isabella and Mortimer. But Richard would have been at a disadvantage compared to his London-based rivals, with his estates concentrated in the north so the court would have adequate warning if he was marching south to attack them. He would have been better-placed if the alleged greed or monopoly of patronage by the Queen’s clique had given him an opportunity to exact political capital out of it and propose redress by armed force as the saviour of the nation (see below).

  Results of Edward IV remaining an active king

  If Edward IV’s regime had continued into the later 1480s, or even the 1490s, the pattern of power and patronage of the period 1471–83 are likely to have continued. The exercise of power would have seen continuing Woodville influence at court and an enhanced role for Anthony, Lord Rivers, and the Queen’s other brothers. Bishop Lionel was too young to be made Archbishop of Canterbury when Archbishop Bourchier died in 1486, even by the brazenly nepotistic Edward IV, so the reliable Bishops Alcock or Russell were the likeliest candidates. The real-life choice to be Archbishop, Bishop John Morton of Ely, was chosen as a leading plotter for Henry Tudor in 1483 by his grateful protégé. Indeed, it was the ‘Richard vs Hastings’ showdown on 13 June 1483 that caused Morton to throw in his lot with the Tudor cause–Richard had him arrested and put in the custody of the ‘loyal’ Duke of Buckingham, whose rebellion later in 1483 was supposed to be partly due to Morton.26 When the revolt failed, Morton fled to France to join Tudor. In the case of Edward remaining king, Morton would not have been disgraced by the Yorkist regime in 1483 but would have been less close to King Edward IV than others. His main court ally as of 1483 appears to have been Henry Tudor’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess Stanley, a potential threat to the Yorkists as the Lancastrian Beaufort heiress but entrusted to her ‘loyal’ husband by Richard after her arrest in June.27 Had Bourchier died under a Yorkist king around 1486, Morton was far less likely to have secured the Archbishopric than John Alcock, Edward V’s former tutor.

  Archbishop Rotherham of York, trusted as Chancellor by Edward but only appointed to his see in 1480, was unlikely to be moved from that post to Canterbury by Edward V c. 1486. There was, however, a precedent of moving a politically useful Archbishop of York on to Canterbury when a vacancy arose–Bourchier’s predecessor John Kemp in the early 1450s. Kemp, like Rotherham, was a long-serving civil servant (twice Chancellor). Edward’s other senior advisers of 1483, especially Lord Hastings, would have dominated affairs through the 1480s and into the 1490s under both Edward IV and Edward V. Hastings (born c. 1420) was probably the former’s closest intimate, and had been a companion on his return to retake the throne in 1471; he was supposed to ‘share’ Mistress Shore’s charms with the King.28 He would have remained the Crown’s chief magnate in the East Midlands, while the lack of an opportunity to gamble for high political stakes would have saved Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham (executed for rebellion against Richard in October 1483) from ruin and his Gloucestershire/South Wales estates from confiscation. Elizabeth Woodville’s elder son by her first marriage, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset–who had already secured an important heiress by 1483 and was Hastings’ rival as the King’s boon companion–would have been an important figure, especially in his half-brother Edward V’s reign. His younger brother Richard, executed in real life in June 1483, had been in the Prince’s entourage in 1483 and was likely to have received a title and heiress. The same could be expected for the Queen’s youngest brothers, Sir Edward and Richard Woodville.

  Husbands for Edward IV’s daughters: different from the men Henry VII chose in real life?

  Allied noble families would have been angling to marry their sons off to Edward IV’s daughters, who would have made better matches than they did under the suspicious Henry VII whose principal female adviser was his mother, Margaret Beaufort, rather than his Yorkist Queen. Henry (and probably Margaret) were to marry off two of Edward’s daughters, Cecily (born 1469) and Catherine (born 1479), to Lancastrian loyalists, William Courtenay and Lord Welles, and a third–Anne, born 1475–to the son of a senior pardoned Yorkist, Thomas Howard. By this date, Elizabeth Woodville, mother of Henry’s Queen, was in (forced?) retirement at Bermondsey Abbey after alleged support for Lambert Simnel’s revolt. Her removal was probably a personal effort by her rival as senior female adviser at Court, Henry’s formidable mother, Margaret Beaufort.29 By contrast, Edward IV and Elizabeth could have been expected to select more prestigious marital partners–possibly from the extensive Neville connection, though Anne could still have been married to Howard whose grandfather John Howard was a senior Yorkist. (Edward IV had cheated him out of his share of the Duchy of Norfolk estates and titles in 1481.) They would have been more likely than Henry VII to consider foreign bridegrooms too, as Henry notably avoided using his sisters-in-law to build up foreign alliances in c. 1486–1500 despite having no daughters old enough. (He may have feared being overthrown by an ambitious and ‘unsafe’ brother-in-law.)

  Luckily for Edward, he had six surviving daughters in 1483, aged from 3 to 18, so he could have used them as political bait for Continental allies for well over a decade. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, had been deprived of her French fiancé the Dauphin Charles (Charles VIII) by Louis’ double-dealing in 1482 but Edward would have been looking for another crowned bridegroom for her. Given her age, she was too old for Maximilian’s son Philip (born 1478), thirteen years her junior, and the Habsburg would have regarded Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain as more valuable allies than England–as in real life–although England would have seemed more stable than it did in the real-life late 1480s. Ferdinand and Isabella’s son Juan, heir to Spain, was also born in 1478. There was a current shortage of eligible heirs to thrones of the right age, with the Kings of Denmark (Hans/John) and Portugal (John II) married, Hans’ elder son Christian married, the Burgundian family virtually extinct, and Maximilian and Charles VIII without brothers. A domestic magnate was possible as husband for Princess Elizabeth if Edward could not find a suitable European partner, and it is possible that the girl had inherited her mother’s ambition as in real life she was plausibly believed to be angling for political rehabilitation by marrying her own uncle early in 1485.

  The contemporary ‘Song of the Lady Bessy’ and a letter she sent to John Howard suggested that she was as ambitious then as her mother had been in 1464. Incidentally, her apparent willingness to throw herself at her uncle Richard III implies that she did not believe that he had killed her full brothers Edward V and Richard of York–her half-brother Sir Richard Grey and her uncle Rivers were evidently more expendable. An alternative theory has it that the account of Elizabeth’s marital plans in early 1485 refers to a foreign marriage, probably to the Portuguese prince Manuel, not to the King. If this is correct, a successful negotiation (talks were underway in summer 1485) would have removed her from English politics and she would have become Queen of Portugal in 1495.30 Edward IV had married (secretly) for personal rather than political reasons and evaded his advisers’ attempts to arrange a foreign match; Elizabeth may have been capable of seeking–or being used by–an aristocratic ‘catch’ at court if she was still unwed in the late 1480s. Edward IV, like Richard, might have found a Portuguese match useful to prevent her from having a husband who could challenge his male heirs. Given that Princess Cecily had already been earmarked for Prince James of Scotland, closer to her
age than was Elizabeth, and there were no sovereign duchies in the Low Countries available, the eldest Princess might have had to make do with Hans of Denmark’s second son, Frederick, or an English noble. One obvious family to tie to the House of York was the powerful northern dynasty of Percy, originally staunchly Lancastrian, to whom Edward had had to return the Earldom of Northumberland in 1471. If a noble of semi-royal blood was essential the Bourchier, Fitzwarin, and Stafford descendants of Edward III’s youngest son, Thomas, were closer to the throne than the Percies. The ambitious Duke of Buckingham, in real life Richard III’s lieutenant then betrayer, might have used his talents at intrigue to link Elizabeth to his son, Edward Stafford (born 1478), provided that the latter’s being Elizabeth’s cousin did not stop this (perhaps dependant on a papal licence). But the lack of use Edward made of Buckingham may indicate mutual mistrust between them.

  In a continuing Yorkist regime, some of the clerical ministers would have been the same as for Henry VII in the 1480s and 1490s. Edward’s own most trusted clerical advisers, given the Chancellorship since 1471, were Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells and allegedly privy to the secret of his ‘pre-contract’ first marriage; and the ageing Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York. Stillington, briefly arrested in 1478, may have been suspected of passing on the secret of the ‘pre-contract’ to Clarence and thus been unlikely to be re-employed; Rotherham was to be briefly reappointed by Henry VII in 1485–6 but soon superseded by John Alcock. Most bishops continued to serve whoever was King, even in the swift changes of fortune from 1483 to 1485, though personal contacts at court were vital for promotion so Edward V’s tutor John Alcock would have been a likely candidate for promotion under the Yorkist government. Promotions could have been expected for senior royal clerks such as Edward’s secretary Oliver King and Richard’s choice of Chancellor, John Russell.

  Political alliances

  It is unlikely that the acquisitive Edward would have taken the illegally-seized Dukedom of Norfolk from his younger son Richard–its late heiress’ widower, not a relative–for John Howard, which Richard III was to do later in 1483 (though Edward V might have done so to secure support as an adolescent King if he could compensate his brother Richard of York elsewhere.) Shuffling peerages around for political reasons was normal policy for Edward, who had handed the untrustworthy Percies’ Northumberland title and lands over to John Neville in 1461 but returned it to win their allegiance in 1470. Edward also had the lands and titles forfeited by Clarence to use as sweeteners to potential allies. It is uncertain if Edward would have rehabilitated Edward, Earl of Warwick (born 1475), the disinherited young son of the executed Clarence, who was in the wardship of the Queen’s sister Catherine and her husband, the Duke of Buckingham, in 1483. Warwick was taken into the household of Richard III in real life and was treated as a possible heir once the latter’s son died. Warwick was Edward IV’s nephew and technically closer to the line of succession than Richard of Gloucester and the royal family was short of adult males so he could have been a useful new peer once he was old enough–assuming that his alleged ‘simpleness’ in real-life 1499 was due to prolonged incarceration in the Tower not mental feebleness. Reversing his father’s attainder and giving him land could have roused Richard’s jealousy. From the mid-1480s Edward IV’s nephew John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, son of his sister Elizabeth, could have been a rising military commander in campaigns in Scotland or Brittany as James III faced revolt and conflict resumed with Charles VIII’s regency. Lincoln, born around 1464, was the real-life military leader of the Yorkist revolt in 1486-7.

  If Edward IV had lived the special jurisdiction created in the north of England–a ‘palatinate’ like the Bishopric of Durham–for Richard would have continued as a northern equivalent to the Marcher lordships, but with Richard’s son dying in 1484 he would have had nobody to pass it to unless he had married again after 1485 and had a son.31 It could have been given to Edward’s and Richard’s nephew John de la Pole, an adequate military leader in real life so capable of handling Scottish border raids, if he had outlived Richard. The younger sons of Edward IV’s sister Elizabeth de la Pole, John’s brothers, were also potential grantees of peerages and a role at court and in administration, and Clarence’s daughter Margaret (born 1473) was likely to have received a more advantageous marriage from her uncle than she did in real life from Henry VII.

  Foreign policy

  Would the newly ineffective Edward have bothered to intervene in France to save Brittany from being swallowed up by the kingdom when Duke Francis II died in 1488–sending a large expedition under a Woodville general like Rivers for a civil war like that of the 1350s? Keeping Brittany out of the hands of the French central government had been a major aim of the English regime at times of Anglo-French hostility, and Brittany was also a matter of concern in 1471–83 for its harbouring Henry Tudor. Edward IV had endeavoured to lure Henry home with a promise of a royal bride before 1483; and after the pretender invaded England in autumn 1483 Richard III was to bribe Duke Francis’ minister Landois to have Henry seized and extradited. (He was forewarned of the plan and escaped to Paris.32) Had the crises of 1483 not unfolded as they did, Henry would presumably still have been in Brittany when Francis died in 1488 and Brittany faced annexation by France; and his role as a Lancastrian pretender would have made him an embarrassment to an Anglo-Breton alliance. Would he have prudently fled to Paris to seek aid from the regency for Charles VIII, and the latter used him against England as Louis XI had used Margaret of Anjou?

  In real life Henry VII, a French ally in 1485, now lent troops for Breton resistance, with traditional English efforts to keep Brittany independent continuing. He sent Sir Edward Woodville to aid the Duchy against Charles VIII’s regency;33 however, the French secured Francis’ heiress Anne and the Duchy. Edward IV, betrayed by Louis XI who had abandoned their political/ marital alliance in 1482, would have been equally if not more hostile to France in 1488. It is possible that the belligerent Richard of Gloucester would have successfully urged intervention to save Brittany from the French regency regime, leading an armed force there if not himself preoccupied with the succession-crisis in Scotland.

  The overthrow of James III in June 1488 by a coalition of his principal nobles, led by the Border magnates under Archibald (‘Bell-the-Cat’) Douglas, would have occurred irrespective of events in England and been of concern to their neighbour Richard. He had attempted to manipulate a Scots revolt to coerce or remove James in 1481–2. The heiress of Duke Francis II of Brittany, Anne, born in 1476, was of a reasonable age to be married off to Edward IV’s eldest son Edward (born November 1470) in a potential union of crowns, as revenge on France for its ‘desertion’ of the English alliance in 1482. Alternatively, if the hand of the future Edward V had been bestowed elsewhere (perhaps one of Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughters) she could have been married to his next brother Richard, Duke of York. Either would have been fiercely resisted by the French regency, and entailed a long war in which taking sides in a Breton succession-dispute served as a means of drawing England and France back into open war as in the early 1350s. Edward IV being unfit for major foreign campaigning, the obvious person to lead an expedition to Artois to link up with the Yorkists’ Habsburg allies was Richard of Gloucester. Maximilian of Habsburg would have been no more reliable for the English than his father-in-law Charles of Burgundy had been for Edward IV in 1470–1 or 1475, and ultimately an Anglo- French treaty would have been possible securing Brittany for England (or at least its junior line as represented by the Duke of York). If Edward IV wished to keep his sons for a more senior princess, Anne of Brittany could have been bestowed on his eldest Pole nephew–the older and militarily active John, Earl of Lincoln.

  Would Richard of Gloucester have intervened in Scotland again as rebels rose against James III in 1488–or done so earlier to impose James’ brother Alexander as king? The treacherous Alexander had deserted him in 1482 but was still ambitious enough to link up with England again. Ri
chard had the men to invade, and the Scots leadership was seriously divided with James III’s low-born ‘favourites’ a source of aristocratic anger. Presumably the English would have been unable to forcibly keep a nominee like Alexander on the throne indefinitely against the resistance of most of the Scots nobility, as Edward III had found with Edward Balliol in the 1330s. A small English army had installed Edward Balliol in Perth in 1332 and after his eviction Edward III had intervened in greater force in 1333–4, ultimately to no effect; the English could at best dominate the Eastern lowlands and hold onto key castles with local help. (Edward had also had local aristocratic backing from the ‘disinherited’, partisans of the deposed John Balliol expelled by Robert Bruce in 1307–14; Richard did not have such a ‘bloc’ of support.) Richard would have had no better luck than Edward III if the nobility turned against Alexander, and the French were liable to assist any anti-English contender as they had backed David Bruce in the 1330s. Like Edward Balliol facing the young David Bruce after his seizure of the Scots Crown in 1333, the English-appointed usurper would have been at the risk of a long civil war and then deposition (in favour of James’ son) as soon as his sponsor became preoccupied elsewhere.

  If Richard had had the troops to force Alexander onto the throne as an English vassal in 1488 and the unpopular James III been unable to stage a comeback (as he was captured and murdered?) James’ son James IV would have been the beneficiary of a ‘backlash’ in Scotland against an English-imposed king. Richard, possibly adding parts of Galloway or Lothian to his northern principality with the ruthless brutality he showed in dealing with opponents in real-life 1483, would have had to campaign hard year after year to keep his lands and his candidate as King of Scots. He could have ended up being forced to abandon his efforts due to the cost causing complaints in London (Parliament) and Edward IV refusing him more aid, and then blamed the withdrawal of his brother’s support on the Woodvilles. If Edward IV was physically failing, the Queen and her brothers would have been wary of allowing Richard a large army lest he turned it on them in a succession-dispute. As an over-powerful ‘Lord of the North’, Richard would have seemed as threatening to his rivals in London in the mid-late 1480s as Warwick was in the 1460s or the Percies were to Henry IV in 1403. Conceivably, the brave but rash Richard, campaigning in person in Scotland, would have ended up killed in battle and the Scots venture abandoned as Edward IV had to come to terms with the new regime of James IV–presumably by the marriage of one of the King’s daughters to James as an ally. Princess Cecily had been considered already by 1483.