How much difference in practice all this made to Henry’s position is unclear. The guess must be that it altered rather little. Henry continued to live with his sisters at Eltham, to share his upbringing with them and to be attended by their joint staff. What changed instead were words. The joint staff became the ‘attendant [s] in our nursery upon our right dear and right entirely well-beloved son the duke of York and the lady Margaret and Mary his sisters’. And Henry’s own title and mode of address changed too, of course.
But equally, words and titles matter – especially if you are royal.
Finally, there is something more indefinable. Henry’s creation and endowment as duke of York marked his entry into his inheritance as a prince of the blood. It also made the rivalry with Warbeck evident and inescapable. The ‘dukedom [of York],’ one of Henry’s future servants, Sir William Thomas, asserted flatly, ‘belongs to the king of England’s second son.’5 Only force could determine which of the rival dukes would possess it.
Warbeck and his handlers understood this too. But how to raise the funds necessary to mount a serious invasion of England? Warbeck had no resources, and the goodwill of Margaret of York and Maximilian would only stretch so far. Instead, at the turn of the year 1494–95, it was decided, in effect, to mortgage England to pay for its future conquest.
Two sets of deeds were executed. In the first, between the pretender and his ‘aunt’ Margaret of York, Warbeck pledged himself not only to compensate her for her outlay on the expeditions against Henry VII in 1486 and ’87, but also to settle all her claims on England going back to the third of her dowry which was still unpaid at the time of Charles the Bold’s death in 1477. The second agreement, between Warbeck and Maximilian, was even more extravagant. In this the pretender promised, in return for Burgundian hospitality and assistance, to nominate Maximilian and his son Philip as his heirs to the dominions of the English crown should he die before he had issue of his own.
With England as security, fundraising now proceeded apace. Maximilian made over, covertly as well as openly, some of his Netherlandish revenues. Commercial money-lenders were also encouraged to take a punt on Warbeck’s success. The result was that by June 1495 a substantial amphibious force had been raised, consisting of fifteen ships and a mixed force made up of English exiles, mercenaries and international soldiers of fortune. Not, in short, very different from the expedition which Henry, earl of Richmond, had captained in 1485 when he set out to recover his right in England.
Back in England, however, early 1495 was not all trials and executions. By late January, Henry VII had discovered all he needed to know about Warbeck’s English adherents, and the court moved from the Tower to Henry’s birthplace of Greenwich.
There, on 4 February 1495, the wedding of the year took place in the presence of the king and queen. The bride was the queen’s sister, Anne Plantagenet, and the groom Lord Thomas Howard, son and heir of the earl of Surrey. Elizabeth of York had brokered the marriage, with the ‘assent’ of the king, while its financial terms were ratified by an act and an amending act of parliament, which were passed ‘at the special desire’ of the queen, in view of her ‘very will and mind’ that the money be paid in full.6
Perhaps, bearing in mind his mother’s enthusiasm, Henry, nearby at Eltham, was brought over to join in the family celebration. The marriage is forgotten now. But at the time it seemed the most significant in England since the wedding of Henry’s own parents nine years earlier. For, like that wedding, it involved a union of political opposites.
The groom’s father, Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, was the most important survivor of Richard III’s regime. He had fought at Bosworth alongside his father, John Howard, duke of Norfolk. Norfolk had been killed by Henry Tudor’s forces and Thomas captured. Subsequently, both were attainted, that is, declared legally dead, by Henry VII, and their estates and titles confiscated. But Thomas was not executed; instead, he was given the opportunity to redeem himself. And he took it. It was a carefully calculated policy of quid pro quo: Thomas showed loyalty and usefulness, Henry VII gave him honour and favour. Step by step his estates were regranted and in 1489 his earldom itself was restored.7
The year 1495 marked another major stage in Thomas’s rehabilitation: he recovered a further large tranche of his lands, while his reconciliation with the king was confirmed by his son’s marriage to the king’s sister-in-law.
Thomas Howard, unlike Sir William Stanley, who went on trial for his life two days after the wedding, had decided that Henry Tudor was a better bet than Perkin Warbeck.
But the marriage was, still more, a reconciliation with the queen. For the inheritance of the Mowbrays, dukes of Norfolk and earls of Surrey, had been disputed between the Howards and the Plantagenets. And, once again, the brief life of Richard of Shrewsbury, Elizabeth of York’s younger brother and our Henry’s alter ego, was at the heart of the story.
Richard of Shrewsbury had been married to Anne Mowbray, daughter of the last Mowbray duke of Norfolk, in 1478, and given the dukedom of Norfolk (alongside his own duchy of York) in right of his wife. Anne died three years later, aged only eight and of course childless. But Richard of Shrewsbury kept the dukedom of Norfolk and the lands.
This was to challenge head-on the claims of John Howard. He descended in the female line from the Mowbrays; he had also been an ardent Yorkist. But Edward IV was more interested in protecting the rights of his son, Richard of Shrewsbury, than in recognizing faithful service. Howard’s opportunity came with Richard III’s usurpation. Howard supported him at every step, and was rewarded with the dukedom of Norfolk and its vast estates. This meant that the princes in the Tower posed as much a threat to the Howards as to Richard III. Some even suspect that Norfolk was their murderer. This seems unlikely. But certainly there was bad blood between the two families.
The marriage of Anne Plantagenet (Richard of Shrewsbury’s sister) to Lord Thomas Howard (John Howard’s grandson) was a vital step towards neutralizing this poisonous legacy. Even more important, however, had been his parents’ decision about Henry himself. The previous autumn he had been given all of Richard of Shrewsbury’s titles and offices – with one exception: the dukedom of Norfolk. That was left unfilled, as a final carrot to be dangled in front of the Howards.
And, as it happened, it was Henry himself who would restore it to them, along with the ancient office of earl marshal, which the Mowbray dukes had held in hereditary succession, and which Henry had been granted in 1494.
Henry, whether or not he was present at the wedding, was deeply interested in its outcome. Anne Plantagenet was his aunt and one of his mother’s leading attendants; Lord Thomas was now his uncle; while their children would be his cousins and, apart from his own siblings, his closest relations near to his own age. Four were born, three of whom died at birth. The fourth lived and was baptized Thomas after his father. But this baby too died on 3 August 1508, and was buried at Lambeth with the monumental inscription ‘Lord Howard, son of Thomas Lord Howard, and of his wife the daughter of Edward IV’.8
One wonders what his pride would have been had he lived – or what kind of problems he would have presented to his cousin Henry.
Anne herself died in 1511, and her husband promptly set himself to find another wife who would keep him within the charmed – and dangerous – circle of royalty.
Henry may have had a second family wedding to attend in 1495 as Catherine Plantagenet, aged only sixteen and next to the youngest of the queen’s sisters, followed Anne to the altar. Her husband was Lord William Courtenay, son and heir of the earl of Devon. Their marriage settlement was also ratified in the same parliament as the more complex one between Anne and Lord Thomas Howard. By the act, the earl transferred his principal estates to a group of trustees to the ultimate benefit of his son and daughter-in-law.
First of a distinguished list of names was Henry himself as duke of York.9
On the other hand, the queen’s involvement does not appear so explicitly as in the arrangement
of the Howard marriage. But her role must have been similar, since she financed this marriage as well by supporting the whole young family: she paid for clothes for Lord William, gave Lady Catherine an annuity of £50 as one of her principal ladies and defrayed the entire cost of bringing up their children. 10
* * *
Once again, it was politics that spoke. The sixth and seventh Courtenay earls of Devon had been committed Lancastrians, and had paid the price: the former was beheaded after the battle of Towton in 1461; the latter was killed at Tewkesbury, that graveyard of Lancastrian hopes, ten years later. With the death of the seventh earl the direct line of the house was extinguished. The male heir was Edward Courtenay of Bocconock in Cornwall, who des-cended from a collateral branch. In 1483, like his kinsman Peter Courtenay, bishop of Exeter, Edward threw his lot in with the Tudor cause: he joined in Buckingham’s revolt, escaped its failure by fleeing to join Henry Tudor in Brittany, returned with him in August 1485, fought at Bosworth and was restored to the earldom the following October.11
Here then was a record of Lancastrian loyalism – both personal and familial – that was second only to the earl of Oxford’s. The marriage between Earl Edward’s son and Edward IV’s daughter was thus both a reward, and a renewal of the union of the Roses in the face of Warbeck’s rival appeal to Yorkist sentiment.
Unlike many political unions, the marriage seems to have been happy; certainly it was fruitful. There were three children: Henry, Edward and Margaret. They were brought up in the country near Havering-atte-Bower in Essex. The old royal residence had long been part of the queen’s dower, and under Elizabeth horses were bred on the estate. This may be why Dame Margaret, the wife of Sir Roger Cotton, the queen’s master of the horse, headed the little nursery that was a miniature version of the establishment for Henry and his sisters across the river at Eltham.12
Plenty of clothes were bought for the children, and soap to wash them with. But, despite hygiene and healthy country air, Lord Edward died in infancy in July 1502. News of his death was brought to the queen, who paid for his funeral.13 In December 1502 the two surviving children were brought up from Havering to the court in London and settled in their own chamber, which was furnished with additional necessaries like candlesticks and cupboard cloths.14 Lord Henry promptly fell sick. With the life of the queen’s only surviving nephew at risk, a surgeon was summoned and paid the substantial sum of 10 shillings ‘for medicines by him ministered upon the Lord Henry Courtenay’.15
Usually, sixteenth-century cures were worse than the disease. Nevertheless, the boy survived to play a momentous part in the reign of his cousin and namesake, Henry VIII, as his closest male relation.
Henry had been at most an onlooker at his aunts’ weddings. But a few months later, in May 1495, he was once again the centre of attention at his installation as knight of the Garter. The Garter ceremonies were fixed for Sunday, 17 May. On 4 May the exchequer was instructed to pay 100 marks (£66.13s.4d) for the feast. But payment was delayed, as was usual at this period. On the twelfth Henry VII sent an urgent reminder. ‘The day of the said feast is at hand’, he pointed out to under-treasurer Lytton, when ‘we have appointed our dearest second son the Duke of York to be installed Knight of the Garter’. Further delay in payment was unacceptable, as ‘this matter toucheth so near our honour’.16
Once again, as when he had personally marshalled the procession for Henry’s creation as duke, Henry VII was intervening to make sure that his second son entered public life in proper style. The records of the Garter, as the great register of the order known as the ‘Black Book’ notes, are ‘a perfect silence’ for this period. But Henry would have been vested with the robes of the Garter: the kirtle or gown, the mantle and the hood, all of blue velvet lined with white damask; sworn his oath; had the Garter itself buckled round his left leg, and been conducted to his stall in the chapel by the two most senior knights present.
Whether his father the king was there in person or entrusted the installation of his son to deputies is unclear. But the payment on 18 May, the day after the feast, of £13.6s.8d to Sir Charles Somerset, the vice-chamberlain and captain of the guard, ‘for offerings and expenses of my Lord Henry, duke of York, at his installation’, probably argues against the king’s own involvement. Two years later white damask was ordered for lining or relining a ‘gown of garter’ for Henry.
Could he have been boy enough to have spilt something on his new robes?17
* * *
Less than a month after Henry’s installation, the time for feasting was over as news arrived that Warbeck’s invasion fleet was ready to set sail. Henry VII moved to Woodstock before beginning a progress through the Welsh Marches to Sir William Stanley’s former stronghold of Holt Castle in Denbighshire. There he inspected its treasures, which had been carefully inventoried after Stanley’s fall, and showed himself ready to face down any residual Yorkist sentiment.
None manifested itself. Warbeck’s original aim seems to have been to try to land in East Anglia, in Richard of York’s former duchy of Norfolk, to try to benefit from memories of the young prince. But adverse winds kept him south, and he put troops ashore instead at Deal in Kent. This formed part of Henry’s jurisdiction as lord warden of the Cinque Ports. And it was perhaps their familiarity with Henry that led the men of Kent to take a robustly sceptical attitude to ‘Duke Richard’. First they tricked Warbeck’s landing party into thinking that they supported his cause. Then, having lulled the invaders into dropping their guard, they rained arrows on them, killing many and capturing more.
Warbeck watched from his ships, powerless to help and not – it seemed – very eager to try. He sailed off to the west, eventually landing near Waterford in Ireland.
Here too Henry was nominally in command. The lord lieutenancy, or viceroyalty, of Ireland had formed part of Richard of Shrewsbury’s galaxy of offices and titles. Henry had duly followed in Richard’s footsteps and been appointed lord lieutenant in September 1494, with, once again, Sir Edward Poynings as his deputy. Poynings had left for Ireland immediately, with a mission to bring it under direct English rule. The cowed Irish parliament passed the necessary legislation, known as ‘Poynings’ Laws’, readily enough. Enforcing them was another matter, and the deputy soon faced a major revolt.
Warbeck, naturally, was trying to fish in these troubled waters. But even here he failed. After his repulse from Waterford he vanishes from view for two months, lurking we know not where. Then, in November 1495, he reappeared at the court of James IV of Scotland.
There a new phase of the pretender’s career began. James IV wanted to recover Berwick from England. He wanted to make a noise in Europe and be recognized as a major power.
Warbeck, he decided, offered the means.
‘Richard IV’ was received at Stirling Castle on 20 November with royal honours. He was married to Lady Catherine Gordon, the king’s remote cousin by marriage. And he was given Falkland Palace as his residence and base for his following of 1,400 armed retainers.
In September 1496 the king and would-be king launched a joint invasion of England. But the north, where the earl of Surrey commanded the border, held firm, and first Warbeck then James IV withdrew to Scotland.
* * *
Meanwhile, Henry VII was trying to win James IV from his attachment by fair means and foul. First he offered him the hand of Henry’s elder sister, Margaret. But the incursion into England by Warbeck and James was a provocation too far, and in 1497 Henry VII decided to launch a counter-invasion. Taxation was voted, preparations got under way and a massive army was assembled to crush the Scots.
But at this moment events suddenly turned in Warbeck’s favour. The Cornish saw no reason why they should pay taxation to fight distant Scotland, and rose in revolt. They were joined by the men of Somerset and beyond. Still worse, with the king’s army mustering in the midlands to fight the Scots, there was nothing to stop the Cornish rebels when they decided to march on London.
In the face of the sudde
n crisis, Henry’s father and mother went in opposite directions. On 5 June the king left Sheen and rode to Aylesbury and beyond to shadow the advance of the rebels on London from the west. On the sixth the queen entered London with ‘my lord duke of York her second son’ and stayed at The Coldharbour, Lady Margaret Beaufort’s town-house in Thames Street. She remained there almost a week, till Monday the twelfth, when news came that the rebels had entered Arthur’s former nursery-town of Farnham.
Henry and his mother promptly decamped to the Tower, where they remained as the rebels and the royal troops, never more than a few miles apart, advanced round the south of the City.18
For five days Henry’s dukedom and his father’s crown hung in the balance. He probably enjoyed his short stay in the Tower: there were battlements to explore and big guns to touch gingerly. It was a paradise for a small boy, and the experience may have laid the foundations for his lifelong interest in fortifications and ordnance. But for his mother these were uneasy days in a place of uneasy memories. Perhaps she told her son about them. If so, he would have found them more fascinating than the Tower and its armaments – and much more frightening.
This was the third time that Elizabeth of York, still only thirty-one years old, had taken refuge in London as the battle for the crown raged round about. The first occasion was in 1470, when her father, Edward IV, had been temporarily driven from his kingdom and Elizabeth, aged four, and her mother, Queen Elizabeth Woodville, had first sought the protection of the Tower, and then, as Edward IV’s situation became hopeless, the spiritual safety of the sanctuary at Westminster. Then, after Edward’s premature death in 1483, mother and daughter fled first to the Tower and then to the sanctuary once more as Richard of Gloucester cut a dreadful swathe through their family.
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