In recent years, Richard had begun to take action to neutralise any threat posed by the Neville reversionary interest in his lordships of Middleham, Sheriff Hutton and Penrith. He secured a quit-claim from Ralph, Lord Neville, to ensure that no additional, even older, claim to the lands could be considered.43 Richard was hampered in his efforts to remove the claims of the next in line to the Neville inheritance, Richard Neville, Lord Latimer, on his lands, since the young boy remained in the custody of Thomas Bourchier, the archbishop of Canterbury. Yet still Richard pursued other members of the family ruthlessly, obtaining quit-claims from Latimer’s aunt, Katherine Dudley, in 1477 and his grandmother, Elizabeth, Lady Latimer, in 1480.44 In an agreement drawn up on 20 March 1480 with the elderly widow, Richard revealed his intent: should the duke, ‘at any time hereafter’, obtain the custody of Lord Latimer, then he undertook to continue to pay Elizabeth an annuity of 300 marks, which she received from the archbishop, with Richard promising to continue to pay even if the archbishop cancelled his payment on account of her signing the agreement, which had come about through ‘the desire and pleasure of the said duke’.45 It seems that Richard had convinced Lady Elizabeth to support plans for Richard to secure the custody of her grandson, yet in the event Elizabeth died in 1481, with her estates reverting to the crown.
Richard had also successfully managed to secure the custody of the key figure of George Neville. Yet Richard had still to arrange a marriage for the young George, let alone ensure that he would produce an heir. All that Richard had worked for hung on the thread of George Neville’s life.
For now, however, basking in the glory of his Scottish conquests, Richard could expect, regardless of the insecurity of his Neville inheritance, that he would remain a mainstay of the Yorkist dynasty for years to come. Having started out in life as a younger son, without any expectations of inheritance, Richard had already transformed his life beyond what he must have reasonably thought possible. He had done so by both accident and design, through marriage and through loyal service to the crown, but his determination to succeed at all costs remained the hallmark of Richard’s early career. Yet Richard knew that his success was at best temporary. He had succeeded not as an over-mighty subject independent of the crown, but because he was a loyal subject of the king. His authority in the north was entirely dependent upon his position as the king’s representative. All that Richard owned, he did so because of his brother: even his Neville inheritance, granted through his wife, Anne, had been partitioned only with the king’s agreement. Now, with the creation of the palatinate on the Scottish marches, Edward had chosen to establish his brother as one of the greatest northern overlords the country had ever seen.
Upon his return to the throne, Edward IV had at first seemed to have learnt the lessons of the past: of the spoils of victory that he distributed after 1471, none went to the Woodvilles. Instead the family sought new avenues of influence and authority. The creation of Edward’s son as Prince of Wales, duke of Cornwall and earl of Chester saw the establishment of a household and council for the prince. When the young prince was moved to Ludlow in 1473, his council was effectively given the task of running the Welsh government, led by the queen and the prince’s governor, his maternal uncle Anthony, Earl Rivers. The Woodvilles therefore came to dominate the council, with their affinity formed tightly around the heir to the throne. The traditional interests of nearby magnates such as the duke of Buckingham, or the Stanleys in Cheshire, were to be subsumed into the council itself: Buckingham himself had to enter into an indenture and place Woodville protégés in key administrative positions, while Sir William Stanley had become steward of the prince’s household by 1483. Through the instrument of the prince’s council, the Woodvilles were able to exert power and authority that extended across nearly the entirety of Wales.
What mattered most, however, was possession of the person of the young prince himself. Edward was determined that his son grow up a paragon of virtue. Every moment of the prince’s waking education was to reflect this; at dinner, he was to be read ‘such noble stories as behoveth to a prince to understand and know’, while ‘at all times’ the only topic of conversation ‘in his presence be of virtue, honour, cunning, wisdom and deeds of worship’. In particular, there was to be no mention of any matter ‘that should move or stir him to vices’. After breakfast, the young Edward was to be ‘occupied about his learning’, followed by ‘all such convenient disports and exercises as behoveth his estate to have experience in’. Dominic Mancini had heard that while in Wales the Prince had ‘devoted himself to horses and dogs and other youthful exercises to invigorate his body’, while the Italian had learnt of ‘the talent of the youth’: ‘In word and deed he gave so many proofs of his liberal education, of polite, nay rather scholarly, attainments far beyond his age’, including ‘his special knowledge of literature, which enabled him to discourse elegantly, to understand fully, and to declaim most excellently from any work whether in verse or prose that came into his hands, unless it were from among the more abstruse authors’.46 John Rous also wrote how Edward had been ‘brought up virtuously by virtuous men’ and was ‘remarkably gifted, and very well advanced in learning for his years’.47 By exerting influence over the young heir to the throne, the Woodvilles hoped to secure their own political longevity.
As the prince’s governor, the queen’s own brother Anthony, Earl Rivers, had complete control over access to the young prince. Each morning, no man was to enter the prince’s chamber ‘except our right trusty and well-beloved the Earl Rivers, his chamberlain and his chaplains, or such other as shall be thought by the said Earl Rivers convenient’. While the prince ate at dinner, no one was to sit ‘at his board’ except ‘such as shall be thought by the discretion of the said Earl Rivers’.48 Perhaps most importantly, Edward granted that ‘for the weal, surety and profit of our said son’, full authority was to be granted to Rivers ‘to remove at all times’ the prince ‘as the case shall require unto such places as shall be thought by their discretions necessary for the season’.49 Rivers was given the opportunity to extend his authority over the young prince. On 25 February 1483, new ordinances for the household of Prince Edward were issued. For the first time the ordinances set down the names of the prince’s chief household officers. The increase in the influence of the Woodvilles is striking. The names included Sir Richard Grey, Queen Elizabeth’s second son by her first marriage, Anthony, Earl Rivers, and Richard Haute, the queen’s cousin.50 The new ordinances also declared that Edward was not to ‘give, write, send or command any thing without the advise’ of John Alcock, Richard Grey or Rivers. Significantly, an additional clause had been added insisting that if Rivers or Grey ‘understand our said son of any unprincely demeaning or to deal contrary to these ordinances’ then they were to ‘forthwith show it in good manner unto himself to be reformed’; if the prince refused to ‘amend’ his behaviour, then they were to report to the king or queen.51
Rivers fully understood the power and influence he had been granted by the king. He was determined to use his position as the prince’s governor to his own advantage. Among his surviving correspondence are letters dating from January 1483 that demonstrate how Rivers was planning to fill vacant parliamentary seats located in land belonging to the Prince of Wales and the young duke of York with his own men.52 He also used his position to further the interests of the Woodville family. Another letter in his surviving correspondence concerned Rivers’ attempt to give to Thomas, marquess of Dorset – the queen’s eldest son from her first marriage – the office of deputy constable of the Tower, which Rivers had been appointed to in 1480.53 In early March 1483, he wrote to his attorney Andrew Dymmock, explaining how ‘my lord Marques and I be in a communication that he should have of me such interest as I have in the office of the Tower’; Dymmock was to sue the constable, Lord Dudley, on behalf of Dorset ‘in that matter in all haste and send me word of their disposition’. His postscript read: ‘Send me by some sure man the patent of mine authority about th
e lord prince, and also a patent that the king gave me touching power to raise people if need be in the march of Wales.’54 It was clear that Rivers, residing at Ludlow with the Prince of Wales and charged with the possession of the young boy as his unofficial regent, was placed in an ideal position to exert his influence and authority.
Even with Prince Edward in their complete control, Queen Elizabeth could not help but embellish her family with royal favour. In 1474, she concluded a marriage between her eldest son from her first marriage, Thomas Grey, and Cecily Bonville, whose guardian was the king’s chamberlain and close friend, William, Lord Hastings. Even Hastings would be caught out by the Woodvilles’ tenacity. According to the marriage agreement, Cecily’s inheritance was to be kept by the queen until she was sixteen, ostensibly to cover the 2,500 marks (£1,667) paid for the marriage, but in fact the cost was credited against Hastings’s debts to the king, which would be written off to the exact amount, so the revenues were of immediate profit to Elizabeth. Hastings would not receive a penny. Created the marquess of Dorset, Thomas Grey steadily built up his power base in the West Country; he was also granted the lucrative wardship of Clarence’s son, the earl of Warwick, while his own infant heir was betrothed to the daughter of the late duchess of Exeter, the king’s sister, by her second husband. The Exeter estates themselves were not part of the inheritance, but nevertheless were settled on Dorset by an Act of Parliament in 1483. As a result the rightful heir to the estates, Ralph Neville, later earl of Westmorland, was cut out of his inheritance entirely.
The bending of the laws of inheritance had been a common feature of Edward’s reign, particularly when it came to accommodating his own royal family, but the king was now twisting them to breaking point. In Wales, where previously William Herbert, the earl of Pembroke, had held sway as the king’s lieutenant, his son and heir, sixteen years old in 1471, was stripped of part of his lands two years later, and in 1479 was forced to exchange his earldom of Pembroke for that of Huntingdon. His title and remaining Welsh lands were instead conferred upon the Prince of Wales, effectively granting them to Rivers, who continued to build up his power base in the country.
No member of the nobility nor their inheritance, it seemed, was immune from Edward’s, and the Woodvilles’, meddling. When, in January 1476, John Mowbray, the fourth duke of Norfolk, earl of Nottingham and Warenne, died, he left an infant daughter, Anne, as sole heir to the duchy. She was immediately marked out as a bride for the king’s second son, Richard, who had been born in August 1473 and created duke of York in May 1474. Even before the marriage had taken place, the young prince was given the title of earl of Nottingham in June 1476, followed by the dukedom of Norfolk in February 1477. To clear the path for his son’s inheritance, Edward had been prepared to ride roughshod over the rights of the accepted heirs of the Mowbray inheritance, the descendants of the original first duke of Norfolk, William, Lord Berkeley, and John, Lord Howard. When Anne died in November 1481, a few days short of her tenth birthday, the laws of inheritance meant that her estates should have passed to Berkeley and Howard. Conveniently, Edward raised the issue of the crippling debts and bonds totalling £37,000 that Berkeley owed to the crown. These were written off in return for Berkeley surrendering his rights to the Mowbray inheritance; to make the transaction more palatable, Berkeley was also created Viscount Berkeley in April 1481. An Act in the January 1483 Parliament confirmed the arrangement, vesting the Mowbray inheritance in Duke Richard for his life, with reversion to his heirs and then finally to the heirs of the king himself. In effect, the entire rights of the dukedom and its lands had been sequestered into the royal family.55 Berkeley may have felt that he had struck a reasonable bargain, but for the hardworking royal servant John, Lord Howard, the only recompense was to be a single manor; his royal master had silently disinherited him.
Edward’s own wealth, particularly following the receipt of his French pension, combined with his increasing avarice, ensured that ‘in the collection of gold and silver vessels, tapestries and highly precious ornaments, both regal and religious, in the building of castles, colleges and other notable places and in the acquisition of new lands and possessions not one of his ancestors could match his remarkable achievements’.56 The king’s building works at Windsor alone cost £6,572 in the years between 1478 and 1483, while at Nottingham Castle £3,000 was spent on refurbishing the building, adding a new tower and rooms with the latest glazed windows.
‘You might have seen, in those days’, the Crowland chronicler wrote, ‘the royal court presenting no other appearance than such as fully befits a most mighty kingdom.’ The sense of entitlement and exceptionalism, of the royal family detached from its nobility, the court and ordinary life, seems to have been an early trait of Queen Elizabeth, who made her own mother and sister kneel before her at dinner, not allowing them to sit until the first fish course had been served.57 Yet the entire royal family was to be marked out as a separate caste in a new law passed in 1483, making it illegal for anyone but the king, queen and their relatives to wear the colour purple. The change was recognised by the Crowland chronicler, who noted how Edward’s clothes, ‘the costliest clothes very different in style from what used to be seen in our time’, were lined with ‘such sumptuous fur’ and displaying the king, the chronicler observed, ‘like a new and incomparable spectacle set before the onlookers’ – a deliberately crafted image, one which reflected the increasingly, and perhaps to some dangerously, absolute monarchy that was forming at the Yorkist court.58
This sense of the court as a spectacle is underlined by the vivid account of the Italian Dominic Mancini’s arrival in London in late 1482. Already in his fifties, Mancini was feeling his age. The ‘damp cold’ of the capital could hardly have agreed with a man born into a wealthy Roman family near the Via Lata. After Mancini had entered into the order of Augustinian friars, it was his friendship with a fellow Italian, Angelo Cato – a noted astrologer and later physician and councillor at the court of the French king, Louis XI, who had appointed Cato as archbishop of Vienne – that had led Mancini to take up residence in Paris. With Cato acting as his literary patron, it was here that Mancini enjoyed the company of a literary circle of friends; the city’s printers had published one of the Italian’s Latin verses in an anthology collected by a French professor the previous August, in which Mancini boasted of his talents as a ‘most eloquent orator, a poet laureate and a palatine count’.59
Then, in the autumn of 1482 or early in 1483, Cato had contacted Mancini, requesting that he journey across the Channel. Exactly why Cato needed Mancini to travel to London is unclear, although the archbishop’s influence in foreign affairs, providing Louis XI with the latest information concerning the gossip and movements within the royal courts of Europe, was extensive. Mancini’s sudden arrival in London perhaps places the Italian in the role of an agent, acting at his patron’s behest, and ultimately on behalf of the French authorities.
Now Mancini found himself in the city ‘so famous throughout the world’, its street stalls filled with goods heaped high: ‘there are to be found all manner of minerals, wines, honey, pitch, wax, flax, ropes, thread, grain, fish, and other distasteful goods’, the Italian observed, ‘there is nowhere a lack of anything’.60 In recent years, freed from the shackles of bitter civil war that had engulfed the country since the 1450s, England had grown increasingly prosperous. Nowhere could the accumulation of wealth and prosperity be better witnessed than at the court of Edward IV.
Edward seemed to have finally secured the future of the Yorkist dynasty. A nation divided had come to heal. Mancini observed how the king ‘ruled England with great renown’ and was ‘very powerful’. Whether the Italian was able to gain access to the royal court, or had simply managed to glean some information from his contacts, he described how Edward was ‘more favourable than other princes to foreigners’. The king appeared to have ‘a gentle nature and cheerful aspect’, he recalled, though ‘should he assume an angry countenance’ he could appear ‘very t
errible to beholders’. ‘He was of easy access to his friends and to others, even the least notable’, Mancini recalled. ‘Frequently he called to his side complete strangers, when he thought that they had come with the intention of addressing or beholding him more closely. He was wont to show himself to those who wished to watch him, and seized any opportunity that the occasion offered of revealing his fine stature more protractedly and more evidently to onlookers.’ In particular, Mancini remembered how Edward ‘was so genial in his greeting that if he saw a newcomer bewildered at his appearance and royal magnificence’, the king would ‘give him courage to speak by laying a kindly hand upon his shoulder’.
The king was now aged forty-one, and with seven surviving children from his marriage to his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, including two boys, his heir Edward, Prince of Wales, and Richard, duke of York, his confidence in his own authority was at its height. As the New Year arrived and the Christmas festivities at Westminster continued, the Crowland chronicler described how the king appeared ‘dressed in a variety of the costliest clothes very different in style from what used to be seen hitherto in our time. The sleeves of the robes hung full in the fashion of the monastic frock and the insides were lined with such sumptuous fur that, when turned back over the shoulders, they displayed the prince (who always stood out because of his elegant figure) like a new and incomparable spectacle set before the onlookers. ‘In those days’, the chronicler continued, ‘you might have seen a royal Court such as befitted a mighty kingdom, filled with riches and men from almost every nation and, surpassing all else, with the handsome and most delightful children born of the marriage.’61
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