Under the Hog
An Historical Novel
Patrick Carleton
© Patrick Carleton 1937
Patrick Carleton has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain 1937.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
For Cyril Edward Spencer Noakes with love.
Table of Contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
For certainly we be determined rather to adventure and commit us to the peril of our lives, and jeopardy of death, than to live in such thraldom and bondage as we have done long time heretofore, oppressed and injured by Extortions and new Impositions against the Law of God, and Man, and the liberties, and old policy, and Laws of this Land, wherein every Englishman is inherited. Our Lord God King of all Kings, by whose infinite goodness, and eternal providence, all things been principally governed in this world, lighten your Soul, and grant you grace to do as well in this matter as in all others, that which may be according to his will and pleasure, and to the common and public weal of this land. So that after great clouds, troubles, storms, and tempests, the Sun of Justice and of Grace may shine upon us, to the joy and comfort of all true-hearted Englishmen.
PETITION OF THE THREE ESTATES TO DUKE RICHARD OF GLOUCESTER
And al the wikkednesse in this world
that man mighte worche or thinke
Ne is no more to the mercy of God
than in the see a glede.
Wm. Langland: Visio de Petro Plowman
PREFACE
HARDLY any of the characters in this novel are fictitious. All the important political and diplomatic events described in it really took place.
Where, under given circumstances, I have not been able to discover how this or that historical personage actually behaved, I have been at pains to light upon some way in which he was at least capable of behaving.
To my friends Dr. Patrick Du Val and Mr. Philip Bramwell, and to my Father, I am much in debt: to the former for his expert advice on certain points of Heraldry and Genealogy, to the latter for their really valuable and understanding criticisms.
CHAPTER ONE
KING-MAKING
(France: 1470–1471)
Berry est mort,
Bretaigne dort,
Bourgongne hongne —
Le Roy besogne.
French popular song, fifteenth century.
AMBOISE, June evening with red sunshine: Duke, Kingmaker and the Christian King were at it in the Castle, in a private room, watched by Christ above the prie-dieu on the northern wall and by Sir William Monypeny, the Sieur de Concressault, who sat apart from them on a hard bench, not saying anything.
The Duke sat by the table, on which were flagons and bright cups, with his legs out in front of him. He was tall, twenty-one; wore peach-coloured clothes and a short gown of crimson cloth-of-gold lined with white. His yellow hair was in big curls round his forehead. He might have been beautiful, but his features seemed too small for his face, and his eyes were narrow. Kingmaker was his cousin, and now his father-in-law; sat upright at the table’s other end with his right elbow on it. Five rings on his closed hand spat at the sunlight, and the gold chain round his neck shone. He was dressed in purple and dull red, so that, as he sat stiff and attentive in his low-backed chair, he matched the thick, rusty colours of the evening. Sir William Monypeny, who had known him a long time, still found his face interesting. It was long from eyes to chin, and its nose long and arrogant. The small, tight mouth turned upward at the corners. The brown hair had gone a little from the top of the head: helmet-baldness. It was a quiet evening, and sheep could be heard bleating a long way off. There were thick shadows in the cone of the roof and below the windows.
The Duke was talking, in a young, high voice.
“… so my late father, it follows, Richard Duke of York, was true heir to the throne of England.”
No one said anything, and he went on:
“How much love, anyway, can your Grace feel for the house of Lancaster? Family of brigands: good God, they were never at ease unless they were spilling war, pillage, and all the devils in hell over your unhappy kingdom! Harry of Monmouth, who called himself King Henry V, was the plague of France. It’s on record. Sore subject: I’ve no wish to dwell on it, but your Grace will scarcely have forgotten Azincourt.”
A deep settle by the arched empty fireplace had its back to the windows. A mastiff, tan-coloured, with crimson leather collar, lay beside it on the rushes. All to be seen of the King was his hand limply dropped over its arm to play with the dog’s ears.
“Well, however badly the King my brother’s behaved — we’re not here to take his part, God knows — your Grace must see it is to your advantage to maintain our house in England. The name of my father-in-law is a guarantee of my own goodwill to you, Sire. The Lancastrian usurpers gained one kingdom by murder and bled it white trying to snatch another by arms. But we are the heirs of that anointed King filthily murdered by Henry Bolingbroke: Richard II, Richard of Bordeaux, the constant friend of France …”
“Son of the Black Prince.”
The King’s voice came huskily out of the dark of the settle like a talking magpie’s. The Duke flicked his long, white-lined sleeve across his knees and looked sideways. He was a good deal of a bore, Sir William Monypeny thought. English politics were hopelessly complicated, as he, who had been King Louis’ ambassador to Edward IV, knew well enough. It was seventy years since Henry Bolingbroke had alleged thirty-three separate articles of misgovernment against Richard II; elbowed him out of the throne and out of life. That was forgotten. It was with Bolingbroke’s mad grandson, the most pious prince since Edward the Confessor, that the trouble began: marching and fighting of nobles and their armies all up and down the kingdom, red roses and white roses, betrayals, coalitions dissolving and re-forming, attainders, executions. His style until the final fall had been Henry VI, by the grace of God King of England and France, Lord of Ireland; but most Englishmen called him Holy Harry of Windsor and tapped their foreheads. It was his wife they hated: Marguerite of Anjou, who was neither mad nor pious. The old Duke of York was backed by Kingmaker, the Earl of Warwick, when he demanded the crown, and by Parliament; might at this moment have been King if Marguerite had not raised men in the North, struck quickly at him whilst he was keeping Christmas in Yorkshire and sent him to prosecute his claim before a higher court. She defeated the Earl next and took her husband from him, before her luck changed. Her army was of thieves, flayers, banished men, Scots, and she could not hold them. They plundered south of Trent; made her hated. To save the sack of London, Holy Harry went back to the North with them, and the thanks he got was:
He that London did forsake
We will no more to us take:
Rhyme yelped from mouth to mouth. They wanted, in London, a King that they could see. The Duke of York’s eldest son was six feet four inches high, as lovely as a girl; was called the Rose. He was nineteen. The Earl got him crowned somehow, after battles, as King Edward IV. That was nine years ago. Marguerite and her son lived on the charity of King Louis, a thin diet, now, and Holy Harry was in the Tower of London, fumbling his beads and mumbling his prayers and wondering how he had stopped being the King of England. Sir William knew all about it. What he wanted now to know was how exactly Kingmaker had come to quarrel with the King he made, so that he and the King’s brother ha
d run over to France with the name ‘traitor’ shouted after them. He guessed a little, but wondered more. King Edward’s disgraceful marriage would be at the back of it for certain. If Duke George would stop chattering and let his father-in-law have a word, they might hear something. He looked at the Earl. He was still sitting upright and staring at the wall a little to the left of the King’s settle, with an expression as though he were engaged in some important business not being transacted in this place. It seemed unlikely that he was listening to his son-in-law.
“No one feels more than we do how serious an affront my brother’s ill-contrived marriage was to your Grace: and the whole nobility of England feels it. One thing has been clear to me from the beginning. There was sorcery in it. My brother was bewitched.”
There was a stir in the shadows. Sir William guessed the King was crossing himself. Edward of England had done two startling things in his life. He had won the battle of Towton in a howling snowstorm against a Lancastrian army that outnumbered him by two to one and had the advantage of the ground; and he had secretly married an obscure gentlewoman of no family, at the very time when Kingmaker was working to betroth him to King Louis’ sister-in-law.
“What other possible explanation is there? A widow seven years older than he is, with two sons and a whole hamperful of poor relations: widow of a Lancastrian at that. Something addled his wits. She’s not even a Duke’s or an Earl’s daughter. He’s had ladies of better blood than hers for concubines. Her mother, the Duchess of Bedford, married a simple knight. Her own first husband, Sir John Grey, was nothing better, and he was killed fighting for Marguerite at St. Albans. She may be the child of a Duchess and the Count of St. Pol’s niece, but she’s no wife for a King. Why the devil couldn’t he have bedded her and no more words about it? The Duchess of Bedford knows a thing. She could tell you how to brew a love-philtre as well as any witch that ever straddled a broomstick; and God’s truth, she has her reward. The Queen’s kin are everywhere. Greys and Wydvylles, Wydvylles and Greys; you couldn’t toss a tennis-ball in England without hitting one: and they marry. Queen Elizabeth’s sisters have pouched three Earls’ sons and a Duke between them already; and what does your Grace say to her brother John, nineteen years old, married to a Duchess of eighty?”
“Doubtless she also used magic,” said the King, “to beglamour the poor young man. They seem very given to sorcery, your English ladies.”
The Duke laughed, making a noise in the quiet place.
“A Wydvylle would marry the devil’s grandmother for a hundred marks a year and a patent of nobility. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk is the richest woman in England. She’s a widow again now. We could not do much, but we settled accounts with Sir John Wydvylle before our misfortunes came.”
Sir William looked at Kingmaker again. In the sinking light it was not easy to see whether he was smiling; but it must have been a good moment for him when Sir John’s head left his shoulders. Sir William knew what Kingmaker must think of the Wydvylles and their clever marriages. His own family, the Nevilles, had had a genius for the game. He himself quartered the arms of Beauchamp, Glare, Montacute, Newburgh and Monthermer, and his eldest daughter was a King’s sister-in-law now. He would not be happy, watching a new house scrambling to splendour up the same ladder.
“That was an extreme proceeding, my Lord Duke.”
The King’s voice suggested nothing at all, and he was still playing with his hound’s ears. The Duke drew in his legs and leaned forward.
“And a more extreme one would have been a greater charity to the commonwealth. The Queen’s family have been the cause of every misfortune that’s overtaken England these five years past. ‘Apes in scarlet’ is an old saying, your Grace. Their insolence is beyond words. They care for nothing but the enriching of themselves and their blood. My brother has as good livelihood and possessions as ever a King of England had; but his wife’s kin are drinking him dry. He’s debased the coinage already. That’s by their guiding. He crushes the commons flat with taxes with one hand and then twists forced loans out of them with the other, until they curse him out of the side of their mouths as he rides past; and he was loved once. A prince of your piety would hardly credit it, Sire, but those horse-leeches he’s married himself into have even seduced him into spending the goods of the Holy Father, which were given to him for defence of the Christian faith, and bringing the whole land in jeopardy of interdiction: and the money goes up the sleeve of my Lord Scales, the Queen’s brother, may the devil haul him through hell, and the Duchess of Bedford, who would be burned in a tar-barrel if all had their own, and their good friend Sir John Fogg. Those are our masters. They rule the King and they rule England. It’s not to be endured, Sire, and it will not be endured much longer.”
The Duke was talking very loudly now. Sir William was not surprised to hear that he was angry. Queen Elizabeth, as he remembered from his own last visit to the English Court, liked herself very well. Coloured cloth-of-gold and double velvet were her wear. She had a throne overlaid with gold like the King’s, and even her own mother had to kneel to her. He remembered the small, proud face under a heap of yellow curls from which, in private, she was probably plucking an occasional grey hair already, and the fixed, curiously shallow-looking eyes, more green than blue. Her voice was shrill and rather irritating, but she carried herself well. As for her relatives, both her father’s and her first husband’s, they were certainly everywhere, and hated everywhere. Whilst he had been in England a mob had torn up the palings of one of her father’s deer-parks and massacred the deer. The widow of a little country knight: it was odd she should have caused so much trouble.
The bells had started to ring vespers: cold sprinkles of sound over Amboise. Sir William looked to see whether the King would say a prayer; but he did not. As though the bells had awakened him from some kind of drowse, the Earl of Warwick stood up suddenly. He was long-legged, and his shape, at forty-three, was young still. He stood with his feet apart and his thumbs in his girdle, looking into the shadow that the King sat in. Hard lines of his profile showed against the fading windows, the nose jutting and the underjaw pushed out. He said in a low voice, speaking better French than the Duke:
“My son-in-law is quite right, Sire. It will not be endured.”
The King’s voice was lower still; sounded like a priest’s mutter.
“Have you no remedy in your own hands, then?”
The Earl made a stiff gesture like movement of a man in armour. The whole carriage of his body in its rich clothes still suggested harness.
“We have tried and failed. Your Grace knows. There was trouble in Yorkshire last year. The King went North to deal with it. We took charge of him. Old Rivers and Sir John Wydvylle and the two Herberts we headed, to put an end to their mischief. Edward promised seas and mountains to us. He would be advised by us in all things. There should be no more bleeding of the commons. The Queen’s kin should be punished for their ill-guidance. Oh yes, he promised everything!”
The Earl sat down again; passed his hand slowly two or three times over his chin, let it fall with a tiny slap onto the table.
“We had the wolf by the ears. We dared not loose him and could not hold him. He’s a strange creature, Edward: clay and iron in him. Mould the clay as you please. You will scrape the iron bare in the end and cut your fingers. He is besotted by these Wydvylles, and we had killed two of them. He slipped away from us in October and was back in London, mustering men as fast as God would let him, the Queen at his elbow yelling vengeance for her father and brother. He said everywhere that we were his best friends; but his household-men had other language. I can see flies in milk, Sire. We had gone too far or not far enough.”
“So,” said Duke George, “seeing that my brother had shown himself unworthy to rule, and that I, after him, am the next heir to the house of York …”
Kingmaker went on as though he had not been interrupted.
“Our only retreat was to advance. We raised Lincolnshire against him, a
nd told our people that when the matter came near the point of battle, they should call upon my Lord of Clarence, here, to be King.”
It was out now. Sir William realised that he had never quite believed it. He could not picture Duke George as King of England. The Earl’s low voice began again:
“Edward had a great power of artillery. Robert Welles, who was the leader of our people, retreated from him. Edward had Welles’ father and Thomas Dymmoke for hostages. He headed them both.”
“Contrary to faith and promise given,” put in the Duke, “and to the worst example that might be.”
The Earl nodded.
“Yes, he was angry. Welles stood before him then, without waiting for us. The artillery was too much for him. He was taken and headed.”
“Requiescat in pace anima eius, et animae omnium fidelium,” the King muttered disconcertingly.
The Earl crossed himself, saying Amen, and then went on:
“We were in a bad case. I asked help of Thomas Stanley, but he flatly refused to bear arms against Edward. Then Edward’s summons came. Robert Welles confessed before he died, it seems. We were to surrender ourselves to the King’s grace or be proclaimed traitors: and the King’s grace would have meant the Queen’s grace. We thought best, Sire, to leave England for a time.”
It was a quiet way, thought Sir William, in which to describe what looked like ultimate disaster. Kingmaker and his son-in-law had taken ship from Exmouth, he had heard, and had meant to put in again at Dartmouth: but the Queen’s brother, Anthony Lord Scales — Lord Rivers, too, since his father’s execution — had driven them off. They headed for Calais. Kingmaker had been Governor there for fifteen years. His own lieutenant, Lord Wenlock, fired on them and would not let them land, even though Kingmaker’s daughter, the Duchess of Clarence, was being brought to bed of a son on board the ship. They had got ashore between Harfleur and Honfleur at the upshot. Now Kingmaker was asking favours of King Louis, who, in past times, had treated him almost as a reigning prince. The silence in the room was prolonging itself. Even the Duke seemed to have nothing left to say. The tan-coloured mastiff yawned, King Louis’ fingers still busy with its scruff and ears. The Earl looked thoughtfully at the rings on his hand. Then he repeated:
Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III Page 1
