by Livi Michael
The second King Henry had invaded this country at the age of fourteen after his mother had been exiled. The young prince, Edward of Lancaster, would soon be fourteen. But King Edward did not think that King Louis would grant the old queen enough money for an invasion. Not while Warwick was so assiduously courting him.
And not while the old king was still alive, for his son could not be king until he died. If King Edward had King Henry killed, there would be waves of support throughout Europe for the young prince. And if he died of natural causes his body would have to be on display for as long as it took to dispel rumours of suicide or foul play.
Rumours of that kind could never completely be dispelled.
For this reason he ensured that the old king was treated moderately well, and he courted his friends and supporters with generous gifts of money and land, while still giving liberally to his own supporters. He was constantly in need of money.
He had inherited a nation wracked by debt, bled dry by war, ruled by a king so poor he could not afford meat for his own table. All the problems of the first part of his reign could be attributed to money or the lack of it; that special poverty of kingship that makes the king dependent on other men. He’d had to tax the people very heavily at first, which had caused so much protest that he’d had to look for other ways of filling the royal coffers. So he had reclaimed crown lands which had been lost under Henry VI, exacted payments in return for handing out offices or promotions and had persuaded parliament to grant him the revenues from customs duties at English ports. And he’d changed the coinage.
People were suspicious of the new coins, of course, but they had generated great revenues both at home and abroad. At the same time he had concentrated on boosting the wool trade; English cloth was now in great demand abroad. The merchants, who were a rising class, loved him.
With the money he collected he strove to pay off the debts that were a legacy of the wars. The old king had never paid his debts, and so could never gain further credit. But he, Edward, could claim credit, from the merchants who loved him, or from foreign banks. And the wars were over now, the main rebellions suppressed. He would in that year, 1467, promise parliament that he would live off his own without levying any more taxes. Which, if he managed it, might well be considered the greatest achievement of his reign.
Still the people complained about the magnates, his ‘overmighty subjects’; accusing them of violence and extortion, of appointing corrupt officials who exacted more from them than was their due, and who, for a bribe, could prevent any case coming to court. This was difficult for the king because those same lords had helped to bring him to power, and he relied on their support. John de la Pole had married his sister; William Herbert’s son was married to his wife’s sister.
Such magnates thought, perhaps, that their proximity to the king placed them above the law. They were not above the law, and he had attempted to prove this. He had tried to prohibit the keeping of private armies, but it was not easy to pass this through a parliament that consisted of lords who kept these armies. He had attempted to replace corrupt officials and prevent intimidation, presiding over many courts himself. As far as possible, when his subjects made an appeal directly to him, they were rewarded by his presence.
They were frequently overawed by him, of course; sometimes they could not even speak. And then he raised them easily from their knees, touching without recoil the malformed and malodorous, those covered in weeping sores.
Some claimed they walked better afterwards, or were actually cured of some lasting ailment. They had felt a kind of heat, they said, passing from his flesh to theirs; a kind of prickling on the surface of their skin. He rewarded them handsomely with gifts of money. They would never again question the divine nature of kingship, or doubt that this particular king ruled by the will of God.
Also he’d had work done on several royal palaces: Greenwich, Westminster, Windsor and Eltham. But he chose as his primary abode the Tower of London, where the former king was also lodged.
No other monument exercised such power over the imagination of the people. No other fortress stood as symbol of the realm. And no other king had chosen to make it his base and the foundation of his rule.
It had been built by the Conqueror, of course, who had come over from Normandy and created a new England. Just as he, Edward, had conquered England and was now building a new nation. At the same time it was a reminder to all foreign nations and would-be invaders that England had not been conquered by foreign forces for four hundred years.
It was close to London Bridge, which was itself one of the wonders of the world. Foreign visitors could not fail to be impressed by this citadel within a fortress within a wall as they approached London along the Thames. It was the size of a small town, containing the treasury and armouries, streets and chapels, gardens and a menagerie. The former king was lodged in one of the prisons of the outer court, near Traitor’s Gate, but in the inner court was the White Tower. King Edward had his House of Magnificence here, his ‘chambers of pleasaunce’ where he entertained foreign visitors. Scholars and ambassadors and princes from all over Europe were royally welcomed and dined so that word would spread about the opulence of his court and table, where the king of England was served by four hundred courtiers and two thousand people ate every day at his expense. Such riches, such extravagance and excess, had not been seen in England since the time of Richard II. Banquets of fifty courses and more were served every night. Broiling and sweating, their abdomens close to bursting, the ambassadors marvelled at the king who finished one plate after another with a negligent air.
These foreign lords could only imagine that his massive frame contained extra yards of gut. It was fortunate indeed, they said (among themselves), that the English king was unlikely ever to be hung, drawn and quartered, for the executioner would never finish pulling out the long ropes of his intestines, all swollen with food.
No one could defeat him at the banqueting table; all acknowledged themselves vanquished or fell unconscious on to their plates. Yet the king himself apparently suffered no ill effects. Only his groom of the stool who cleaned his chamber pot, the physicians who medicated his gut and all the squires of the body who shared his bedchamber could attest to the intestinal gripings and rectal explosions that followed these mighty feasts; the way he woke frequently in the night in a foetor of sweat that even to his own nostrils had a rank and carnivorous odour.
Still the word spread, as he intended it should, about the splendour of his hospitality, and soon several nations were competing for trade and alliance with England, and for the hand of his sister, Margaret of York. And while this presented certain diplomatic challenges (the Earl of Warwick favouring France while Edward himself preferred Burgundy), still it was a triumph. A few years ago no one would have had anything to do with this impoverished, battle-torn island that had lost all its territories in France.
And so the king continued to do his utmost to impress, and to shift the balance of power away from the lords towards the merchants and banks. For while there might be glory in warfare, there was no money in it. And he wanted peace and profit.
And most of all he wanted to indulge himself.
The king’s greedy appetite was insatiable and everywhere all over the country intolerable, for no woman was there anywhere, young or old, rich or poor … but … he would importunately pursue his appetite and have her …
Thomas More
They pursued him too, of course, elbowing their way through the pressing crowds to kiss the hem of his cloak, or attempting in other bold and diverse ways to make him glance their way. And if they could not distract his majesty’s attention, they would try at least to capture the attention of one of his close companions, such as Lord Hastings, who would select from the boldest of them for the king, bearing in mind both the catholic nature of his majesty’s tastes and also the fact that he was likely to be given a free trial afterwards.
It was easier to look outside the court, for commoners w
ere less likely to take exception to that kind of thing, and less likely to make any claim on the king. If married, they would swear any child that ensued was their husband’s. And their husbands in turn were less likely to make a fuss, whereas it would not do to provoke any dissension among the lords.
But he did not neglect the ladies of the court; indeed it would have been hard to ignore them entirely. When he entered a room they circled him like so many gaudy moons and formed a gaggle around him, pressing close; giving off their disturbed animal scents. They loved him because he was young and there was still a kind of naivety about his lust. They loved him for the omnivorous nature of his appetite that showed such a generous appreciation of different ages, shapes, sizes, colourations and classes of women. They loved him because it gave them permission to vent their own appetites, for who could refuse the king? And they loved him because the combination of power and potency was the most irresistible of all. No one had ever resisted it except for his own wife, the queen, and she was known to be a very cold woman, playing a very particular game.
She looked beautiful, dressed as richly as he dressed. They were without question the handsomest royal couple in Europe. No scandal was attached to her. She fulfilled her part of the marital contract, including the unwritten part that said she must not question the king her husband, nor contradict him in public, nor refuse him access to her at his will. And he, according to the terms of this same contract, treated her with respect in public, did not flaunt his affairs before her or speak of her in private to any of his women. When he came to her still reeking of other women he said nothing and she said nothing either; there was nothing to be said.
For the queen had struck her own kind of bargain. She said nothing about his other women; he said nothing about her fierce drive to enrich herself and all her relatives. And when in that year of 1467 she gave birth to a second daughter, he did not rebuke her but behaved as though he was glad, though the child was dispatched quickly to Greenwich Palace to be brought up with her sister by their governess.
There were times when the king wondered what he had done to the queen by transplanting her from her original estate. Sometimes he saw the young woman he had loved in the curve of her cheek or a sudden alteration of expression, and then he wanted to reach out to her. And if he did reach out to her she would be acquiescent, of course, but it was as if she unconsciously or deliberately chose to misinterpret him, and what he wanted. And afterwards he would reflect that he was no closer to her than when he had visited her at her father’s house. Further away, in fact; it was as if he had married someone he thought he knew and now they were strangers. It was the usual way for royal couples to begin as strangers and become familiar; yet for them the process was reversed.
He had these thoughts usually just before he fell asleep. But sometimes he would lie awake on the bed tested for him by two squires, two grooms, one yeoman and one gentleman, and reflect that the quality and nature of love available to him had changed irrevocably with kingship. For the king belongs to everyone and no one, and the love granted to him is impersonal rather than intimate; a kind of universal lust. On certain occasions, kept awake through the hostile hours by intestinal pain, he would ponder this transformation and feel all that had come to him was sorrow, or the loss of some earlier unblemished state, when he had loved certain people open-heartedly and without reserve. His father, for instance, or his brother Edmund, both killed in the same battle. And, of course, the great traitor, Henry Beaufort.
The extent of his feeling for this kinsman who had betrayed him surprised him, for he’d had him beheaded, which should have been vengeance enough. Yet it was not unknown for him to wake in the night with tears on his face, feeling the full force of the betrayal all over again. In such moments he knew that there was no compensation for everything he’d lost; that life takes the most when it appears to be giving. And as he toured the grooves of pain in his mind it would come to him that he was like the place in which he lay: for the Tower was visible and accessible to all, but also a hidden and impregnable world.
Yet he continued to live there, as the former king continued to live there, both of them attracting attention in singular ways. Once he’d had a dream that a great light shone from King Henry’s cell in the outer ward of the Tower, and people streamed towards it, bearing gifts and offerings, while he, King Edward, was abandoned in his rich apartments, and everything he owned had turned to dust.
Obviously such dreams were the product of indigestion. He had rescued his nation from utter ruin. He had done everything he could to win the love of his people, and they did love him. He had made the day of his most famous battle, Towton, a day of national holiday and celebration.
And he continued to court the former supporters of King Henry to ensure any divisions that remained in the land did not undermine the structure of everything he had built.
So when Margaret Beaufort wrote to him to thank him for the gift of Woking Old Hall and to express her hope that he would visit them in it, and that she might also, one day, have her son to visit her there, he responded by writing to her that nothing was more likely; and that there was nothing at all to prevent her from visiting her son, in Lord Herbert’s household, in Raglan Castle, South Wales.
24
Margaret Beaufort Receives an Invitation
Late that summer the letter for which she seemed to have been waiting all her life finally arrived. She read it quickly and let it drop to the table.
‘What is it?’ her husband asked, in some alarm, because she had turned very pale. She picked the letter up again and wordlessly held it out to him.
He read it slowly, comprehension dawning.
‘We are invited to visit my son,’ she said.
He came and stood behind her then, placing one hand tentatively on her shoulder. ‘That’s a good thing, is it not?’
She pressed the tips of her fingers to her face.
‘We must write back to them,’ her husband said.
He was ten years old now; he would be eleven in January. She hadn’t seen him since he was a tiny child, at Pembroke Castle. She’d held his hand as he’d walked along a stone wall.
‘There will be many things to arrange,’ her husband said.
What would he look like now? What would he wear? What would she wear? What present could she give him?
‘We could take a boat from Bristol,’ her husband said doubtfully.
She stood suddenly and went to the window. Raglan Castle. South Wales. It would take several days to get there.
There had been four nights of storms, which had done considerable damage. A tree had fallen on one of the stable roofs, and more had fallen in the orchard. Fences were down and a barn door hung from its hinges. Then it had rained so comprehensively that it was hard to imagine when it had not been raining, or that it would ever stop. All the crops stood ruined in the fields.
Her husband stood behind her. ‘I will speak to our steward,’ he said. ‘He is a capable man. I’m sure he can manage things in our absence.’
The wind was still strong, blowing shoals of clouds across the sky. Even as she watched she could see small birds blown about by it; attempting to fly one way, being blown another.
‘What are you thinking?’ her husband said. She didn’t want to say that they might not get there in this weather. Instead she said, ‘I was thinking about Lord Herbert.’
Black William, they called him; a cruel man, prepared for any crime. He had been responsible for the deaths of her son’s father and grandfather. And she would have to sit and eat with him.
‘Perhaps he will not be there,’ her husband said gently. ‘He is often with the king.’
Margaret did not respond. She was still gazing through the window at the birds. That winter, she knew, many of them would fall frozen to the earth.
Sometimes she felt that it was a great fallacy, the greatest in all of human imagining, to think that life was of any concern to whatever deity there was.
Her h
usband put his hand on her shoulder again. ‘It’s not winter yet,’ he said.
The visit was arranged for the third week in September, and Margaret spent the time in a flurry of agitation in case the weather worsened again. Or that her husband would suffer an outbreak of the virulent illness that afflicted him, and their journey would have to be delayed. She had a new gown made of crimson and tawny, and spent many hours deciding on a present for her son. Eventually she chose a small jewelled dagger that had belonged to Edmund.
‘Will he like it, do you think?’
Her husband said he could not help but like it.
‘He is not too young?’
Her husband said it was quite usual for boys of his age to have their own dagger and, besides, he should have something of his father’s.
She wrapped the dagger in an embroidered cloth and tucked it among her clothes.
That night she dreamed of Edmund. He was lying on a straw pallet in his cell. She hurried towards him in delighted surprise. He had not died after all; he had been there all the time. Now at last she could tell him about their son.
But as she reached him she saw there was a beetle crawling from his mouth, and she knew, of course, that he had died.
She woke from this dream feeling stricken, weighted down. And the rest of that day she was so distracted that her husband suggested they should set off early, before the weather broke. If necessary they could spend some time in Bristol.
And so they left the business of their estate in the capable hands of her husband’s steward, and set off for Wales.
Bands of shade alternated with a sunshine that was almost white, streaming down between leaden clouds. It shone brilliantly on the sloping roofs of Bristol, where they spent two days before a boatman would consent to ferry them across the Severn, for the exorbitant price of ten shillings. Then they travelled the rest of the way in the Herberts’ carriage.
