The Demon's Brood

by Desmond Seward

  1413

  Death of Henry IV

  HENRY V

  1414

  Lollard plot

  1415

  Southampton plot

  Battle of Agincourt

  1417

  Henry invades Normandy

  1419

  Rouen falls to Henry

  John, Duke of Burgundy, assassinated – Burgundians ally with England

  1420

  Treaty of Troyes – Charles VI recognizes Henry as ‘Heir and Regent of France’

  English occupy Paris

  1422

  Death of Henry V

  HENRY VI

  1424

  Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, routs the Dauphinists at Verneuil

  1429

  Joan of Arc relieves Orléans

  1431

  Joan of Arc burned at Rouen

  Coronation at Paris of Henry VI as King of France

  1435

  Treaty of Arras – Burgundians abandon alliance with England

  1436

  French recapture Paris

  1444

  Truce of Tours between French and English

  1445

  Henry marries Margaret of Anjou

  1447

  Death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester

  1448

  English surrender Maine

  1449

  French invade Normandy – Rouen falls

  1450

  English defeat at Formigny – loss of Normandy Jack Cade occupies London

  1451

  English lose Gascony

  1452

  Duke of York’s rising

  Lord Talbot reoccupies Gascony

  1453

  Talbot defeated at Castillon – Gascony finally lost Henry VI goes insane

  Birth of Henry’s son, Henry of Lancaster

  1454

  Duke of York becomes Lord Protector

  King Henry regains his sanity

  1455

  First Battle of St Albans, won by York York’s second protectorate

  1456

  End of York’s second protectorate

  1459

  ‘Rout of Ludford’ – York and his allies flee from England

  1460

  Yorkist victory at Northampton

  Parliament recognizes York as heir to the throne York defeated and killed at Wakefield

  1461

  Yorkist victory at Mortimer’s Cross

  Lancastrian victory at second Battle of St Albans

  Edward, Earl of March, proclaimed king in London

  EDWARD IV

  1461

  Edward IV wins a decisive victory at Towton

  1462

  Surrender of last Lancastrian garrisons in Northumberland

  1464

  Edward IV marries Elizabeth Wydeville

  Duke of Somerset’s rebellion defeated at Hexham

  1465

  Capture of Henry V in Lancashire

  1469

  Edward survives plot by the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence

  1470

  Warwick’s reconciliation with Margaret of Anjou

  1470

  Flight of Edward IV and restoration of Henry VI

  1471

  Edward defeats and kills Warwick at Barnet

  Edward defeats last Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury

  Murder of Henry VI

  1475

  Edward invades France but makes peace with Louis XI

  1478

  Murder of the Duke of Clarence

  1483

  Death of Edward IV – Duke of Gloucester becomes Protector

  EDWARD V

  1483

  Deposition of Edward V

  RICHARD III

  1483

  Gloucester becomes Richard III

  Failure of Buckingham’s rebellion

  1485

  Richard III killed at Bosworth

  1499

  Execution of the Earl of Warwick, last male Plantagenet

  PART 1

  The First Plantagenets

  1

  The First Plantagenets

  Fulk Nerra, Fulk the Black, is the greatest of the Angevins, the first in whom we can trace that marked type of character which their house was to preserve with a fatal constancy through two hundred years

  John Richard Green1

  A little knowledge of their ancestors helps us to understand the first Plantagenets. The earliest to make his mark was a Breton outlaw called Tertulle the Forester, half woodman and half bandit, who, in the ninth century, fought Viking invaders from a stronghold in the dense woods overlooking the Loire known as the ‘Blackbird’s Nest’. Although he and his son Ingelger are semi-mythical figures, Ingelger’s son Fulk the Red (c.870–942) certainly existed, acquiring the old Roman hill town of Angers and becoming Count of Anjou.

  The savagery of the wife-burner Fulk III (987–1040) shocked contemporaries. In 992 the Black Count defeated the Bretons, killing their duke with his own hands, while in 1025 he reduced Saumur to ashes, massacring its inhabitants after capturing its lord, the Count of Maine, by false promises. These were only the best-known victims during a saga in which he and his son, Geoffrey the Hammer, transformed an obscure county into one of the most powerful feudal lordships in France. Eastward, they conquered Blois and Tours, southward Saumur and Chinon, won by battles or sieges, held down by tiny garrisons in small stone towers – Fulk’s favourite lair in old age was the tower of Durtal near Baugé.2

  Geoffrey the Hammer was succeeded by his son-in-law, Geoffrey of Gâtinais, whose heirs inherited Black Fulk’s wolfish qualities. If they paid homage to the French king as overlord, the Counts of Anjou were independent of a monarch whose real authority was restricted to a small area around Paris.

  Geoffrey V (called ‘Plantagenet’ from his broom-flower badge) became Count of Anjou in 1129 after his father, Fulk V, left France to become King (by marriage) of Jerusalem. Geoffrey’s barons thought a pleasant-mannered boy of fifteen must be easy game and so they rebelled; but he soon disillusioned them by marrying the widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, Matilda, who was also the daughter of Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy. Ten years older, a beautiful virago, she made the same mistake as the barons and tried to bully her young husband. As a result she was sent back to England. After much wrangling, her father King Henry made Count Geoffrey take her back – she was now sufficiently tamed to produce children, although after she had done her duty the couple lived apart. Henry hoped the marriage would defuse the quarrel with Anjou over the county of Maine, but when the king died in 1135 Geoffrey was contemplating invasion.

  Geoffrey had matured into a tall, yellow-haired, handsome man, a fine soldier, with a taste for books rare in somebody who was not a cleric. His worst fault was self-indulgence where girls or hunting were concerned. There was a streak of the Black Count in him – any magnate who disputed his authority received short shrift – and he was determined to preserve his son’s inheritance in both England and Normandy.

  It was generally expected that Matilda would succeed her father Henry I on the English throne and at Rouen. A huge personality who roared out his commands, this last Norman king had made his barons and prelates swear loyalty to Matilda after the drowning of his only legitimate son, William, in the White Ship. Even though they had no say in the matter, his Anglo-Saxon subjects may well have approved the succession. They knew that her mother, another Matilda (originally Edith), had been the daughter of King Malcolm of Scots and his English Queen Margaret – sister of Edgar Atheling and granddaughter of the heroic King Edmund Ironside.

  Henry never forgot the example of his father William I, who had claimed to be Edward the Confessor’s heir. Despite replacing the old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy by Normans, the Conqueror declared, ‘It is my will and command that all shall have and hold the law of King Edward in respect of all their lands and all their possessions.’3 Like William, Henry took the old
coronation oaths, promising to keep the Confessor’s laws, and ruled through Anglo-Saxon hundred and shire courts. He gave the son who predeceased him the title ‘Atheling’ borne by pre-Conquest heirs to the throne, while his choice of an English wife irked courtiers so much that they nicknamed the royal couple ‘Godwy and Godgifu’. Although the Conqueror had introduced feudalism (which, basically, meant military service in return for land tenure), by preserving pre-Conquest legal tradition, Henry hastened the transformation of Norman settlers into Englishmen.

  But when Henry died in 1135, it was not a direct heir that took up claim to the throne but Stephen of Blois, Count of Boulogne, whose mother had been a daughter of William the Conqueror, hurried over to London and persuaded the council to let him take the throne. The great Anglo-Norman lords, the tenants-in-chief, rejected Matilda, partly because they did not care to be ruled by a woman and partly because they had suffered from her husband’s raids on Normandy. Stephen was even accepted as king by Matilda’s bastard half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the richest magnate in England.

  At first, the new king ingratiated himself by his friendliness, sitting down to eat with all comers, regardless of rank.4 Yet he turned out to be a disaster – ‘a mild, good humoured, easygoing man, who never punished anybody’, says The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,5 and let his Flemish, Breton and Basque mercenaries plunder to their hearts’ content. Squandering the treasure left by the Norman kings (including gold vases filled with rubies, emeralds and sapphires), he ran out of money and debased the coinage. The Archdeacon of Huntingdon writes, ‘there was no peace in the realm [of England] but all was destroyed by murder, burning and rapine, with the sounds of war, wailing and terror everywhere’.6 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells the same story: ‘In the days of this king there was nothing but strife, evil and robbery.’7 He confiscated castles from barons he disliked and upset bishops by questioning their privileges.

  Then Stephen made the mistake of quarrelling with Robert of Gloucester, who invited Matilda to take the king’s place; her supporters, meanwhile, were rebelling all over England. The ‘Lady of the English’ (an old Anglo-Saxon title) as she styled herself, landed at Arundel in 1139. Two years later, the king was defeated and captured at Lincoln, and imprisoned at Bristol while Matilda occupied London. Walter Map says she was partly good, but mostly evil. Her haughtiness upset the Londoners and, instead of granting their petition for lower taxes, she ordered them to pay more. Just as the Lady of the English was sitting down to dinner at Westminster soon after her arrival, an armed mob marched on the palace and chased her out of London.

  Behind King Stephen stood another fearsome virago, his queen (also called Matilda), who was determined he should keep the crown and hand it on to their son Eustace – who had recently married Louis VII’s sister. After Stephen was taken prisoner at Lincoln, angered by the Lady’s refusal to let Eustace inherit even his father’s original patrimony on the other side of the Channel, the queen gathered a new royal army to fight for the king’s restoration.

  The Lady of the English had re-established her court at Winchester, the old royal capital, but, in the wake of these events, was driven out in September 1141, riding astride like a man. Terrified, she continued her flight in a litter hung between two horses, looking like a corpse – some said she hid inside a coffin. Robert of Gloucester was captured and exchanged for King Stephen, who returned to his capital. But Matilda regained her nerve. In December 1142, while besieged at Oxford, she muffled herself in white during a blizzard and was let down by ropes at night on to the frozen moat. With three white-clad knights as escort, she slipped through the enemy lines, walking through the snow to Abingdon, where they found horses and made good their escape.

  Stalemate ensued. A time-server with ‘the mouth of a lion and the heart of a rabbit’ (in King Stephen’s view),8 Robert stayed on the defensive in his city of Bristol, while the Lady sulked in her castle at Devizes which, although Henry of Huntingdon thought it the most splendid in Europe,9 was scarcely a capital. The king kept only the south-east and some isolated outposts. His opponents ruled the West, the Welsh border and East Anglia, while the Scots occupied Northumberland, Cumbria and northern Lancashire.

  Central government had collapsed, replaced by warlords whose mercenaries operated from ‘castles’ – stockades with wooden watchtowers on top of mounds or Iron Age hill forts. The chronicles are full of atrocities committed by ‘castle-men’, who left people eating dogs and horses. ‘Never did a country endure more misery,’ wrote a Peterborough monk in the final pages of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. ‘If the ground was tilled the earth bore no corn, for the land was ruined by such doings; and men said openly that Christ and his saints slept.’10

  2

  The Eagle – Henry II

  The painting shows an eagle with four of its young perching on it, one on each wing with a third on its back, tearing the parent with beaks and talons, while a fourth just as big as the others stands on its neck, waiting for a chance to peck out its eyes

  Gerald of Wales1

  The first campaign of Henry fitz-Empress

  In spring 1147, just after his fourteenth birthday, a red-headed, freckle-faced boy landed at Wareham in Dorset, to wage war on the king who had stolen his heritage. His troops were young cronies and a few mercenaries – he must have been very eloquent for them to risk their lives on a perilous adventure when he could offer only promises in lieu of pay.

  Marching inland, he attacked two Wiltshire castles, Cricklade and Purton, whose garrisons were threatening his mother at Devizes. However, Cricklade easily repulsed his scratch force, as did Purton. Unpaid, his men began to desert. Henry rushed to Devizes, begging his mother for money, but she was penniless. His uncle, Robert of Gloucester, refused to help. Finally, he wrote and asked the king for funds. Hoping to get rid of the boy, Stephen paid him to go home to France, instead of trying to catch a rival who, despite his youth, was already dangerous. By the end of May 1147 Henry was back in Normandy.

  If his expedition was a mere teenage adventure, to his adherents he became a king over the water. Yet no other English monarch had to fight harder for his inheritance than Henry fitz-Empress. And, after he succeeded, his achievement was nearly destroyed by his rebellious sons, the young eagles who were depicted in a mural at Winchester.

  The pretender

  Henry was born at Le Mans on 5 March 1133. His first visit to England began in November 1142 when he was brought over from France by his Uncle Robert. Landing at Wareham, they fought their way ashore, recapturing the port from Stephen’s supporters before marching to Bristol. There the boy saw plenty of military activity, the Earl Robert’s troops regularly raiding areas controlled by the king. Henry stayed at the castle, tutored by a Master Matthew and the canons of the local abbey, before returning to Anjou towards the end of 1143. He then received an education of a sort given to few laymen, learning to read, write and speak Latin. Throughout his life he remained fond of books, fluent Latin helping him to understand the law and communicate on equal terms with bureaucrats.

  Meanwhile, having overthrown Stephen’s regime in Normandy and been formally accepted as duke by right of his wife, Geoffrey Plantagenet ruled Normandy ruthlessly. (When the canons of Séez elected as bishop a certain Arnulf, of whom Geoffrey disapproved, he had him castrated, making the chapter process through the city carrying Arnulf’s severed member in a basin – to show he was a eunuch and could not function as a bishop – then blandly denied any involvement.2) But in England, despite hopes raised by Henry’s foray, Matilda’s cause seemed lost when Earl Robert died. Early in 1148 the ‘Lady of the English’ went to Normandy where she remained in pious retirement until her death in 1167.

  King Stephen was never secure, as a result of his own sheer ineptitude. One example of this was his clumsy persecution of prelates whom he suspected of supporting the empress – when he banished Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, the archbishop simply moved to Norfolk, an area outside royal control.3 Moreover, Geof
frey’s conquest of Normandy put the English barons in a quandary. If they remained loyal to Stephen their Norman estates would be forfeit, but if they supported Geoffrey they would lose their lands in England.

  During spring 1149 Henry fitz-Empress returned to England, to Carlisle where he was knighted by his great-uncle, David I, King of Scots. Several English magnates joined them, planning to attack York, but scattered when Stephen appeared with an army. The king set up roadblocks along the main roads to catch Henry, fleeing south from Lancashire; however, he avoided capture by using byways under cover of darkness. Learning Henry was on his way to Bristol, Stephen’s son Eustace marched through the night in pursuit, mounting three ambushes, but, somehow, Henry reached Bristol. When he moved to Dorset, where he harried royal supporters, the king marched westward, hoping that the boy would give battle. Wisely, Henry’s advisers persuaded him to go back to Normandy.

  Soon after, Count Geoffrey gave Henry the duchy of Normandy, and Henry was duly invested as duke at Rouen Cathedral, with the ducal lance, sword and coronet. Louis VII initially refused to recognize the investiture, summoning Eustace to help him evict the new duke, but their campaign failed dismally. Louis finally accepted the situation and in the summer Henry went to Paris, where he did homage to the king for the duchy. Geoffrey then announced that he would invade England. However, he died in September, aged only thirty-nine, leaving Anjou, Maine and Touraine to Henry, save for a handful of castles he bequeathed to his second son. Henry erected a tomb to his father in the cathedral at Le Mans, surmounted by his effigy on a superb enamel plaque. But Geoffrey’s best monument is his name – ‘Plantagenet’.