Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors

by Skidmore, Chris

  We do not know what conversation took place between the thirteen-year-old Henry Tudor, growing in confidence and approaching his majority, and the child-like Henry VI, almost fifty, who, as one chronicler reported, had been ‘bandied about as in a game of blind man’s bluff’, but it seems unlikely that the latter understood much of the circumstance or even the identity of the adolescent boy presented before him. Later, the meeting would be vested with almost supernatural significance, as the Tudors sought legitimacy through their connection with a Lancastrian past. Every straw, no matter how thin, needed to be grasped at. Henry Tudor’s earliest biographer Bernard André wrote how, when Henry VI was enjoying a ‘lavish banquet’, while washing his hands he summoned Henry Tudor, ‘and forecast that someday he would assume the helm of state, and was destined to hold everything in his grasp’. The king also apparently warned Henry to flee the realm, ‘to evade the cruel hands of his enemies’. Several years later, no doubt having been influenced by André’s own account, the Tudor historian Polydore Vergil wrote in his Anglia Historia how Jasper ‘took the boy Henry from the wife of the Lord Herbert and brought him with himself a little after when he came to London unto King Henry. When the king saw the child, beholding within himself without speech a pretty space the haughty disposition therefore, he is reported to have said to the noble men there present, “This truly, this is he unto whom we and our adversaries must yield and give over the dominion”.’

  Related by later writers, the story was simply too good not to be told. The truth, however, will remain forever hidden. What the records do reveal is that shortly after his audience with the king, Henry Tudor enjoyed what little time remained of his visit with Margaret Beaufort, bonding as mother and son. On 5 November, Margaret, Stafford and Henry visited Guildford, at a cost of 10s 11d, with Margaret riding three palfreys on the journey. Further visits were made to Maidenhead on 8 November, where they stayed the night, buying firewood ‘for my lord Richmond’s chamber’ at a cost of 7d. It was in the town that on 9 November, a new ‘horsecloth’ made of 1½ yards of white cloth was acquired for Henry at a cost of 16d, while eight new horseshoes purchased at Windsor for 14d were required to finish the journey. Arriving at Henley on Thames on Saturday 10 November, more fuel was bought for Henry’s chamber, and more horses needed including three palfreys for Henry and four for Margaret. The total cost of the journey was £5 8s 4d. At the end of the journey on 11 November, Henry bade farewell to his mother and was returned to Jasper’s custody, with whom he was to return to South Wales by the end of the month.

  After Henry’s departure, Margaret remained in London, though her son’s welfare continued to be the focus of her attentions. On 27 November a meeting was arranged with the Duke of Clarence at Baynard’s Castle to discuss the future of lands belonging to the honour of Richmond that traditionally accompanied the Earldom of Richmond, but which had been granted to Clarence by Edward IV. If Margaret had hoped for the restoration of her son’s inheritance, she was to be sorely disappointed. Clarence refused to give them up, but a compromise was agreed that Henry would succeed to them after Clarence’s death.

  For Clarence, Henry Tudor’s arrival at court and audience with the king had seemed ominous, perhaps a sign of things to come. The duke had been appointed as Lieutenant of Ireland in reward for his support for Henry VI’s restoration, but this was hardly what he had bargained for when he had given his initial support to overthrowing his elder brother. Now, faced with Margaret of Anjou’s return from France with her son Prince Edward, who was officially married to Warwick’s daughter Anne at Amboise on 13 December, Clarence had found his own claim to the throne pushed aside.

  Warwick’s discarding of Clarence’s royal ambitions was not the only harsh reality that the proud duke had to face when he returned to court. According to one contemporary account, Clarence found himself ‘held in great suspicion, despite, disdain, and hatred, with all the lords, noblemen, and other, that were adherents and full partakers’ of the Lancastrian side; the duke could not but feel that they ‘daily laboured’ to undermine him, ‘and more fervently intend, conspire, and procure the destruction of him and all his blood’. It seems that from his exile, Edward understood that securing his brother’s support would be critical to any mission that he was planning to win back his crown. He had previously sent a lady on a secret mission to the duke to ‘persuade him not to be the agent of the ruin of his family’ and to ‘ask him to consider very carefully what room there was for him now that Warwick had married his daughter to the Lancastrian Prince of Wales’. Once again he made contact with his brother, urging him to consider defecting to his side.

  Edward IV faced a bleak future. Having landed on the coast of Holland, the men who witnessed them disembark considered that ‘never was such a beggarly company’. Hearing of Edward’s arrival, Duke Charles of Burgundy was less than pleased; refusing to admit him to his court, Charles ordered that no subjects should provide aid or assistance to Edward and his entourage, whom he considered as embarrassing refugees and ‘would rather the King had been dead’. An exiled king was the last thing he needed in his attempts to win over English support, which he hoped would be achieved by winning over the Lancastrians, sending them repeated messages of friendship. Hoping to avoid conflict with England, in January 1471 Charles was visited by the Lancastrian Dukes of Somerset and Exeter who attempted to persuade the duke to support Henry VI. Frozen out from international diplomacy, Edward and his men were forced to settle in Bruges, where he found lodging with his friend and former Burgundian ambassador to England, Louis de Gruthuyse.

  As days passed in nervous frustration, Edward waited, watching whether the consequences of Warwick’s deal with Louis XI would indeed mean war with Burgundy, something which would surely push Duke Charles into his arms. Stunned by how fast he had been brought to heel by Warwick’s return, in darker moments doubts in his mind were bound to surface. He had attained the crown mainly as a result of his perceived strength against the background of Henry VI’s unsuitability and weakness as king. In contrast, Henry’s son, Edward, Prince of Wales, now aged seventeen, showed none of his father’s character traits: in 1467, the Milanese envoy described how Edward, then a precocious thirteen-year-old who had grown up knowing little else but violence, ‘already talks of nothing but of cutting off heads or making war, as if he had everything in his hands or was the god of battle or the peaceful occupant of that throne’. Perhaps Henry VI might even be persuaded to step aside and offer the throne to his son: if this happened, it would be more than likely that the country, of whom reports suggested that ‘the more part of the people’ were ‘full glad’ for the Lancastrian restoration, would prefer to support the peaceful accession of the prince rather than suffer violent conflict. If Edward did not act swiftly, the return of Prince Edward could easily mean that his window of opportunity would be closed for good.

  Fortunately for Edward, Margaret delayed her departure from France, spending Christmas and the first few weeks of 1471 waiting for Warwick to return to France to collect her son and his daughter. It was a nonsensical idea, one which Warwick attempted to reject claiming lack of funds. In the intervening months he strengthened his own position, appointing himself Great Chamberlain of England and captain of Calais, as well as the king’s Protector, yet his power base rested only on a few noblemen including his brother Montagu, Clarence, the Earl of Oxford and Jasper Tudor; to leave the country might end in disaster.

  Warwick’s mind was also elsewhere, wondering how to solve the diplomatic nightmare he now faced. Louis now expected his favour to be returned, making clear that he required Warwick to prepare, and raise taxation for, a force to fight in France against the Burgundians. In order to put additional pressure on the earl, Louis declared war on Burgundy in December 1470. Warwick continued to procrastinate, promising 10,000 archers and ordering the Calais garrison to go on the offensive against Burgundy. But with Louis keeping hold of Prince Edward and his daughter Anne, the earl was forced to declare war on D
uke Charles and Burgundy in February 1471, to the amazement of London’s merchants who understood the devastation this would inflict upon England’s trade with the Low Countries.

  The situation was now too serious for Burgundy not to act. Duke Charles was forced to retaliate and was drawn into lending his support to Edward, who was summoned to the Burgundian court and given £8,000 ‘to assist his return’. Thirty-six ships were also hired for the expedition, which eventually set sail from Flushing across the stormy North Sea on 11 March. Few believed Edward stood any chance of recovering the throne. ‘It is a difficult matter to go out by the door and then to try and come in by the windows’, the Milanese ambassador wrote. ‘Men think he will leave his skin there.’

  Edward landed in Norfolk the following morning, but after his scouting party had been attacked, set sail again to land at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, three days later. His army, numbering just 2,000 men in total, had been scattered by storms and struggled to regroup deep in hostile Lancastrian territory. Edward was undaunted; he remembered how, when Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, had landed at Ravenspur seventy years before to claim the throne from Richard II, he had announced that he had come not as pretender, but merely to recover his rightful Lancastrian inheritance. Now Edward chose to emulate him, proclaiming that he had landed only to reclaim his Dukedom of York. To win over the city of York, that nervously refused to admit him, he came wearing the ostrich plumes of the Lancastrian Prince of Wales and made his supporters wear Lancastrian badges as a sign of their loyalty to Henry VI. He then made his progress southwards, managing to avoid Warwick’s forces in a series of brilliantly paced marches and counter-marches. The turning point came on 4 April when, having decided to desert Warwick, Clarence, accompanied by 4,000 troops, was reunited with his brothers at an emotional encounter at Banbury, with ‘right kind and loving language betwixt them’. Growing stronger by the day as the surrounding countryside he marched through flocked to his standard, Edward entered London in triumph on Maundy Thursday, 11 April, aided in part, one chronicler noted, by ‘ladies of quality, and rich citizens’ wives with whom he had formerly intrigued’ who now ‘forced their husbands and relations to declare themselves on his side’.

  As Henry VI was once again shut up in the Tower, Edward was reunited with his wife and to the king’s delight, his newborn son and heir Edward, who had been born on 7 November, while Elizabeth had taken shelter in the sanctuary of Westminster abbey. Edward’s tactic of luring Warwick from the capital had been a remarkable success: with Henry VI in his possession and the force of the Tower and its artillery at his disposal, Edward felt confident enough to leave the capital, intent upon crushing the earl in one final battle.

  3

  EXILE

  Two kings, two dynasties, yet the outcome was likely to be the same: the beaten path to victory would be bloody and wreak destruction. It is hardly surprising that many did their best to avoid conflict altogether; Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, who had much to gain from Edward’s success, had failed to rise in support as Edward marched southwards following his landing at Ravenspur. But he had also failed to rise against him, and his inaction was praised as doing the king ‘a right good and notable service’, preventing his tenants, many of whom were Lancastrians with strong memories of Towton, from rising against Edward’s invasion. Warwick had charged noblemen ‘to come forth on pain of death’ to support his cause, but Thomas, Lord Stanley chose to ignore the earl’s summons, preferring instead to continue waging his private feud with the Harrington family over the possession of Hornby Castle in Lancashire. Warwick had written to Henry Vernon of Derbyshire on 23 March summoning him to march to meet him at Coventry, adding a postscript written in his own hand, ‘Henry, I pray you fail not now as ever I may do for you. R. Warwick’. Vernon refused to move, calculating that the most sensible course of action was to err on the side of caution and stay put.

  Family loyalties and ties would be tested to the limit. No more was this apparent than in the Stafford household. After Towton, Henry Stafford had submitted himself to Edward IV, earning a pardon despite his previous Lancastrian sympathies. Stafford had joined with Edward in crushing the Lincolnshire rising in 1470, despite the fact that the rebels included his wife’s stepfather’s son. Edward’s flight and Henry VI’s restoration to the throne had caused Stafford to consider his position. His wife Margaret Beaufort’s desire to ensure that her son Henry Tudor would accede to his inheritance of the honour of Richmond had drawn the couple close to Henry VI and his household during the king’s restoration. Margaret felt that she was close enough to brokering a deal with the existing regime with whom her sympathies naturally lay. Her son’s future, after all, depended upon it.

  Under the security of the new regime, Margaret felt able to return to her Lancastrian roots. When Margaret’s cousin, the exiled Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, returned to England from Burgundy in February, he met with Margaret, dining on a meal of fresh salmon, eel and tench. Somerset naturally assumed that Margaret would support the restored Lancastrian regime, yet Stafford remained uncertain which side to support. Events would leave him with little time to decide. Edward’s sudden return placed Stafford in an impossible dilemma. Should he back the king to whom he had previously pledged loyalty, or fall in with his wife’s family? With Edward’s landing and march to Coventry, the Duke of Somerset, uncertain himself whether to remain in the capital or to march west in the hope of meeting Margaret of Anjou’s forces upon arrival, once again visited the couple at Woking on 24 March, spending four days there with his retinue of forty men. He laid out his plans to head for Salisbury in order to recruit a larger army, but still Stafford refused to join the duke. The discussions continued after Somerset’s departure, with Stafford sending some of his men to Newbury for further talks, yet Stafford himself rode to London on 2 April, perhaps hoping to avoid any impending conflict.

  Edward’s decision to leave Coventry and march into the capital, seizing Henry VI, would force Stafford’s hand. He had no option but to support Edward’s cause. Ten days later he joined the Yorkist army as it marched out of London towards Barnet where Warwick and his forces were approaching with speed. The pace of events had taken Stafford by surprise. Riding out of London, he was not even armed for battle; his servant had to follow later with gussets of mail that might hopefully protect his master in the impending conflict. As Stafford prepared for battle, he wrote a hastily drafted will, naming Margaret, ‘my most entire beloved wife’, as his executrix, and if he should fall in battle, asked for ‘my body to be buried where it shall best please God that I die’.

  Warwick knew that the ultimate test of battle had arrived: unless he could defeat Edward, his future within the Lancastrian dynasty would be over, regardless of whether Margaret of Anjou and Prince Edward arrived from France. He had waited too long in the Midlands, mistakenly believing that Clarence could be relied upon to provide vital support. Nevertheless, the earl still held the advantage in terms of the size of his army, supposedly numbering 30,000 to Edward’s 10,000 men.

  After some initial skirmishes involving the advance patrols of both sides, the armies drew up half a mile north of Barnet on the evening of Saturday, 13 April. As darkness set in, and as both armies manoeuvred into position, blinded by nightfall, Warwick ordered his guns to bombard Edward’s camp. As the deafening sound of cannon fired across the skies, it was soon clear that Warwick had mistaken how close the Yorkist force was to his own side, with the guns overshooting their intended target, much to Edward’s relief. Quickly realising that his opponent had no idea of his position, he ordered his men not to return fire, while the entire army was placed under strict orders to remain in silence. The constant bombardment through the night from Warwick’s guns began to produce a large cloud of smoke that blended into the thickening mist, creating an impenetrable screen between both forces. Determined that the earl’s superior firepower should play no part in the battle, Edward decided to strike first.

  Between
four and five o’clock in the morning, in the half-light of dawn, a blast of trumpets signalled Edward’s advance into the mist. The two forces were so close that both sides fell almost immediately to ‘hand strokes’, even before the gunners and archers had time to fire their weapons. On Edward’s left, it quickly became clear that his troops were outnumbered by the Lancastrian right flank, commanded by the Earl of Oxford. After ‘sharp’ fighting, the Yorkist flank broke, with many taking to flight as Oxford’s forces pursued them, while other Lancastrians, ‘weighing that all had been won’, rode ‘in all haste’ to London to announce that Edward had ‘lost the field’. They were wrong.

  Edward, unaware in the blinding fog that one flank of his army had collapsed, had continued fighting regardless, pushing Warwick’s other flank back, in what became a close-set slogging match between menat-arms on foot, led by Edward’s own physical prowess and fighting skill. ‘With great violence’, one chronicler recorded, ‘he beat and bore down before him all that stood in his way, and turning first one way and then another he so beat and bore down that nothing might stand in the sight of him’. In the mist and confusion, in which men ‘might not profitably judge one thing from another’, the steel of their armour pressed so tightly that even movement became impossible, the battle became like a scrum, with each side locked against one another. Slowly, however, the alignment of both sides began to turn ninety degrees as the Yorkists gained the advantage.