Tudors Versus Stewarts

by Linda Porter

  The balance of power in England was shifting and Margaret Beaufort, though anxious about her son’s safety, saw an opportunity to recover his wardship. Hard bargaining ensued between the lawyers of the Staffords and the Herberts, but Margaret had set her sights on a more ambitious agenda and this required her to take a political gamble that would have a far-reaching impact on both her son and herself. She was determined to secure a title and lands for Henry, to ensure that he was no longer a pawn in the hands of others. Believing that the Richmond title was rightfully Henry’s, she appealed directly to Edward IV’s traitorous brother, the duke of Clarence, then owner of the ‘honour of Richmond’, as the power to grant its title and lands was known. She was not entirely successful, as Clarence, never a man to give up wealth easily, only agreed to return the title and estates on his death. It looked like Henry Tudor would have a long wait.

  But who could be sure where the twists and turns of the struggle for domination of England might lead? Confusing as the events of 1469–71 seem to us now, for contemporaries it was impossible to predict the outcome of so much upheaval. Margaret and her husband had worked hard to be seen as loyal supporters of Edward IV, distancing themselves from her unpredictable Beaufort relatives and developing their contacts with the family of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward’s wife, when Stafford’s nephew, the young duke of Buckingham, married the queen’s sister. But Margaret’s appeal to Clarence on her son’s behalf compromised all this. It looked like plotting with the king’s enemies, even if Clarence and his brother were eventually reconciled. Despite Henry Stafford’s attempts to demonstrate his loyalty, Margaret’s actions could not be undone. In the early autumn of 1470, however, she had every reason to believe that her re-emergence on the political scene was thoroughly justified.

  Faced with rebellion and treachery within his own family and deserted by the powerful earl of Warwick, who had styled himself the ‘Kingmaker’, Edward IV could not hold on to his kingdom. In September 1470 he fled to Holland. Within a month, Henry VI was brought out of confinement at the Tower of London and restored to the throne. Jasper Tudor returned to Wales and was reunited at Hereford with the nephew he had not seen for almost ten years. Henry Tudor was now able to spend time with both his uncle and mother, whose unwavering support for him seemed fully justified. One of his abiding memories of this period, however, was a brief meeting with the gentle and pious king. On 27 October he was rowed down the Thames in his stepfather’s barge for a royal audience.

  Henry VI had always been well disposed towards Margaret Beaufort and he seems to have greeted her son warmly. What passed between them is unknown but the story was later given out that he had prophesied that Henry Tudor would one day become king. There is every reason to assume that he had been gentle and welcoming to the boy, but the gloss put upon young Tudor’s reception is probably Tudor propaganda that was picked up by Shakespeare: ‘This pretty lad will prove our country’s bliss’ is likely to be sheer dramatic invention.

  For young Henry Tudor, the promise of such bliss was soon to be a distant vision. Henry VI had been a weak and unpredictable king before; he was now simply unfit to rule at all. In reinstating him, the Lancastrians lost an opportunity for a painless abdication and the assumption of power by his seventeen-year-old son, Edward of Westminster, who remained in France while attempts were made to cobble together an administration that would help the mentally unstable monarch function. Henry VI never seems to have been enthusiastic about his restoration, preferring the quiet certainties of honourable captivity to the cut and thrust of power in a country where the struggle for dominance seemed never-ending. Taking advantage of the fluid situation and hoping to build on his solid support in London, Edward IV landed without opposition in Yorkshire in March 1471. He defeated and killed Warwick at the battle of Barnet in April and then moved west to meet the forces of Margaret of Anjou, who had landed with her son in Dorset. On 4 May, still waiting for the soldiers that Jasper Tudor and his nephew were bringing from Wales, the queen’s commander, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, cousin of Margaret Beaufort, met Edward IV’s army at Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. The vicious fighting and subsequent bloodletting effectively destroyed the Lancastrian cause. Edward of Westminster was killed fleeing the field, while Somerset was inveigled out of Tewkesbury Abbey, where he had taken sanctuary, on a false promise of safety by Edward IV and executed two days later. To ensure an unequivocal Yorkist success, Henry VI was murdered in the Tower of London, almost certainly on Edward’s orders, on the night of 21 May.

  Jasper and Henry Tudor retreated to Pembroke Castle but it was doubtful that they could hold out there for long. Fearful for her son’s safety and understandably mistrusting any offer of pardon from the king, Margaret Beaufort counselled her son to flee the country. He was now firmly connected in Edward IV’s mind with the Lancastrian cause and his mother valued his life more than his company. She would entrust him to the brother-in-law who had been an unshakeable ally and pray to God that she would, one day, see him again. Jasper, that inveterate evader of the Yorkists, was able to spirit his nephew out of Pembroke Castle to the small port of Tenby, where his local contacts allowed them to make good their escape by sea. Even then, nothing was easy. They intended to make for the French coast, but storms blew them off course and they finally landed in Brittany at the end of September 1471. So began, at fourteen years old, Henry Tudor’s long period of exile. He would be twice that age before he saw his mother or England again.

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  BRITTANY GAVE Henry Tudor sanctuary but also something more – a hard schooling in the reality of power politics in Europe. This would add a dimension to his understanding that Edward IV lacked. It also taught him that trust must be awarded with extreme care, that security was a luxury scarcely to be expected, but that being an outsider provided a perspective that could be enlightening. We know little about most of his time in Brittany, since few records survive. Though honourably treated at the expense of Duke Francis II of Brittany, Henry and his uncle were essentially under house arrest. In addition, they would very soon have realized that they were caught up in a wider political struggle. Duke Francis was determined to maintain his independence from France and the Yorkists needed his support as their own relations with the French king Louis XI ebbed and flowed. The Tudors were separated in 1474 when a plot to assassinate them was feared. It came to nothing but two years later Henry’s position was thrown into doubt when Duke Francis, apparently believing Edward IV’s promises of finding an appropriate Yorkist bride and grants of land for his ‘guest’, agreed to the young man’s return. But no matter how much his mother, now remarried after Stafford’s death to the Yorkist Lord Thomas Stanley, might have wanted such an outcome, Henry himself was not convinced of the English monarch’s good faith. As he was about to embark at St Malo, Henry pretended to be ill. His departure was delayed and, even as Duke Francis reconsidered his agreement with Edward, Henry took sanctuary in the cathedral. He was permitted to stay, and later brought together again with his uncle for a time.

  But the danger and uncertainty over his future remained. Despite it all, the glimpses of his lifestyle from remaining records show that he did not sit fretting inside the succession of Breton castles that became his temporary homes. He grew into an active young man, sometimes in the company of Duke Francis’s own soldiers. His education was not overlooked and he was well prepared in the skills of warfare. Gradually, as his prowess developed, his expenses, particularly for horses, began to outstrip those of his uncle.4 Duke Francis, despite frequent bouts of illness, was a generous host. Yet Henry was not free and his prospects, seen even in the most positive light, were indeterminate. He had been twelve years in exile when, in 1483, his situation changed dramatically. He was about to be transformed from being no more than a member of the diffused Lancastrian opposition to a claimant to the throne.

  The catalyst was the unexpected death of Edward IV on 9 April. The handsome hedonist had turned into an overweight, self-indulgent ma
n (a path closely paralleled by his grandson, Henry VIII) but no one was prepared for the stroke that ended his life after more than twenty years on the throne. He had a large family but the girls, renowned for their beauty, had come before the boys. His heir, now Edward V, was only twelve years old, too young to rule for himself. It soon became apparent that faction, rather than harmony, would characterize the transition towards a new government. Few, however, could have predicted the dramatic outcome of what at first seemed no more than a family squabble for control of the new monarch. Ranged against each other were the queen’s family, the Woodvilles, and the supporters of the late king’s youngest brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester.

  The Woodvilles were certainly numerous. Edward IV had married into a fertile family and the extensive granting of favours to his wife’s relatives, though only to be expected, did not sit well with some of the English aristocracy. Nor did the fact that the Woodvilles had, until Elizabeth’s good fortune, been Lancastrian supporters. When Edward met her she was the widow of Sir John Grey, who had been killed at the second battle of St Albans in 1461, and the mother of two young sons. This dubious past was now well behind her and she appeared to be on reasonable terms with the duke of Gloucester at the time that her husband died. As he was based in the north of England, distance may have made their relationship easier. When circumstances brought them closer together, things did not go well at all.

  It speedily became obvious that the duke would not stay meekly on the sidelines while the reins of government were taken by others. The role of queens during the minority of their sons had never been formalized in England but there were precedents for the appointment of uncles as Protectors. Allied with the duke of Buckingham and Sir William Hastings, one of Edward IV’s most loyal ministers, the duke ensured, within three weeks of his brother’s death, that he would not be passed over. He knew that control of the person of the king was the key to the exercise of real power. In truth, the Woodvilles lost the initiative when they took too long to bring Edward V from his residence in Ludlow to London. On the last day of April 1483 the queen’s brother and younger son by her first marriage, totally unsuspecting after an apparently pleasant dinner the night before with Gloucester, were arrested at Stony Stratford in Northamptonshire. The king himself, though dismayed by this sudden turn of events, was compelled to continue his journey towards his coronation under the control of his other uncle. On hearing the news, Elizabeth Woodville, with her younger son and daughters, fled into sanctuary in Westminster Abbey.

  This was, however, only the first phase of Richard’s coup d’état. It has been suggested that his subsequent actions were at least in part driven by a fear that he would lose his lands and power base in the north of England rather than the burning desire to become king. Perhaps he did not know himself when he took on the Woodvilles in April. Yet by 24 June he had destroyed Lord Hastings (summarily executed after a council meeting in which the Protector claimed there were plots against him), imprisoned Margaret Beaufort’s husband Lord Stanley, the bishop of Ely and the archbishop of York, persuaded the queen to give up her younger son, and published a detailed statement that demonstrated the illegitimacy of the king and his brother because of an alleged pre-contract of marriage that Edward IV had undertaken before he wed Elizabeth Woodville. This left Richard as the sole legitimate heir of his brother but in case people were not persuaded of the legalities, he also brought his army down from Yorkshire in an unsubtle move intended to cow any opposition. On 6 July he was crowned King Richard III in Westminster Abbey. In less than three months he had moved from magnate in the north to monarch of all England. It may well be that, with hindsight, his actions look more carefully planned than they actually were. What cannot be denied, however, is that he ruthlessly removed his brother’s heirs from their inheritance (a document of the time refers to ‘Edward bastard late said king of England’) and that they never emerged from their confinement in the Tower of London.

  Richard III, who had come by the throne with the speed and organization of a professional soldier, remains the most controversial of English monarchs. Tudor propaganda and Shakespeare’s colourful, if wildly inaccurate, portrait of one of the most consummate villains ever to walk the stage served to blacken his image for centuries. No contemporary portrait of him survives, but the nearest, and therefore probably the most accurate, dates from about 1510. If this is a reasonable likeness, it reveals a man who appears wary and tired. He does not look at ease with himself. Even today, when a more balanced view of his actions has been suggested by historians, the popular perception is still that of the hunchbacked monster who left a trail of murder on his way to the throne. Attempts to clear him of all the charges that could be brought against him have merely polarized opinion still further. Yet there is no doubt that the manner of his rise to power shocked contemporaries in an age that was inured to violence and double-dealing. It is not surprising that Richard seems to have known from the outset of his reign that he might have difficulties keeping his crown. But when he looked around, he would not have seen many serious contenders able to try their own hand at usurpation. He was also bolstered by a strong religious faith in the justifications of his actions. It seems unlikely that he was overly troubled, in the summer of 1483, at the thought of Henry Tudor as a serious opponent. By the autumn, he knew differently.

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  IT WAS NOT long before the new king discovered the challenges awaiting him. There were conspiracies everywhere, especially in the south of England, and it was soon brought home to Richard that commanding loyalty in the north was an insufficient guarantee of stability. He had also made implacable enemies in his struggle with the Woodvilles. The significance of this was not lost on one observer. Margaret Beaufort had hoped, before Edward IV’s death, that her patient adherence to the Yorkist cause, coupled with Lord Stanley’s rising power and political influence, might finally bring about her son’s return and the restoration of his lands. Richard III’s seizure of the throne, and the likelihood that the Princes in the Tower were dead, prompted her to rethink her strategy. A greater possibility than mere restitution now beckoned. So Margaret, who had carried the train of Richard’s queen at the coronation on 6 July, was within two months entering into dangerous secret negotiations with Elizabeth Woodville. Her sights were now set much higher: on the arrangement of a marriage between Princess Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor. Her son would claim the throne and make Elizabeth his queen. Using her personal physician, Margaret established contact with the queen dowager and proceeded to raise loans in the City of London to give financial underpinning to her quest. She sent a trusted servant to Brittany to apprise her son of what was afoot, urging that he prepare an invasion. By late September, she had a further important ally from amongst the English nobility. The duke of Buckingham, the man who had helped Richard III to the crown, regretted his actions sufficiently to rebel himself.

  The conjunction of these two strands of revolt appeared to present a major crisis for Richard III so soon after he had been crowned. It was not the most obvious combination of interests and Buckingham’s motives remain unclear. Although he wrote to Henry in late September 1483, giving Tudor the date he proposed for his own rising and other particulars that would allow them to coordinate their actions, he made no mention of Henry’s claim to the throne. Perhaps this is hardly surprising, since, as a direct descendant of Edward III in a line of unimpeachable legitimacy, he knew very well that he had a realistic claim of his own. It may have occurred to Buckingham that his proximity to the throne might make him a target and that a preemptive strike would safeguard his own life. In any case, the original idea of a rebellion was probably not his but the product of the growing influence of John Morton, bishop of Ely, who seems to have used his time as a prisoner in Brecon, one of Buckingham’s castles in Wales, to bend the ear of the duke about his prospects. Certainly, Buckingham was related to both the Woodvilles and the Beauforts. His wife Katherine was the dowager queen’s sister and Margaret Beaufort
was his mother’s cousin. The duke was only three years older than Henry Tudor and appears to have been rather a changeable young man. Edward IV had excluded him from a role in government and though he had been instrumental in bringing Richard III to power, there seems to have been an underlying resentment that Morton sensed.

  Though it was never clear how matters would move forward if the conspiracy succeeded in overthrowing Richard, the alliance of the duke and the exile was never put to the test. Despite risings across the south of England, Buckingham, who was an unpopular lord in Wales, was not able to raise his own tenants. The autumn weather turned wet and made roads impassable. As his support failed to materialize, Buckingham took refuge in the house of a servant who promptly betrayed him to the king. Richard had acted with his customary vigour in putting down the opposition and he was not disposed to show any mercy to a high-born traitor. Buckingham, ‘the most untrue creature living’, as the king furiously described him, was executed at Salisbury on 2 November. Henry Tudor, who tried hard to raise men and put together a fleet in a short space of time, did not even leave the port of Paimpol in Brittany until about the same date. His force of fifteen ships and five thousand men also fell victim to the weather and was scattered by the time Henry and just one other ship reached the Devon coast. He did not know of Buckingham’s fate, but the decision to abandon the mission and return to Brittany was the only one he could have made. Blown off course, as he had been in 1471, he made landfall in Normandy and was soon back in Brittany. His cause, however, was far from lost.

  A substantial group of exiles from England, men of influence and determination, now joined him. Among them were Elizabeth Woodville’s brother and her surviving son from her first marriage. Their hopes rested on Henry Tudor, no longer a lonely exile with no prospects but suddenly, thanks to circumstances and his mother’s initiative, a pretender to the Crown of England. This new relationship was sanctified before God in Rennes Cathedral, on Christmas Day 1483. Edward Hall wrote in his Chronicle: