by David Loades
that the king was fi tter for a cloister than a throne, and had in a manner deposed himself by leaving the affairs of his kingdom in the hands of a woman, who merely used his name to conceal her usurpation, since, in accordance with the laws of England, a queen consort hath no power,
but title only …9 28
T U D O R Q U E E N S O F E N G L A N D
This was an opinion which was to be voiced with increasing insistence over the coming years and it was not good for the credibility of the regime. By this time also the divisions within the Council and among the English nobility were assuming dangerous proportions. At the end of December 1446 the Duke of York was replaced as governor in France by Edmund Beaufort, Marquis of Dorset, the Cardinal’s nephew, and the Duke of Gloucester was arrested and charged with treason at the parliament that was held at Bury St Edmunds in January 1447. The parliament had been carefully convened in a place far from Gloucester’s main bases of support and he would almost certainly have been convicted but he spared them the embarrassment of a trial by dying (apparently of natural causes) on the 23 February.
10 All these developments were factional moves against the leading opponents of that conciliatory policy in France, which was fronted by the Marquis of Suffolk, but which was, it seems, really the policy of Henry VI and his queen. It may be signifi cant that the English establishment in Normandy were strongly opposed to York’s removal. At the same time the English offi cials in Maine were dragging their feet and at least two deadlines for the handover passed with nothing accomplished. Commissioners were appointed to accomplish the handover but even they prevaricated and Dorset, who had issued the formal instructions, seems to have been convinced that the surrender was a mistake. By March 1448 Charles was becoming exasperated, and deployed a show of force against Le Mans. This did the trick, and on 15 March Maine was fi nally ceded, amongst bitter recriminations on the English side.11 This surrender did little to promote the still-fl agging peace negotiations but it did enhance the careers of two of those who were now Henry’s most trusted advisers. In March Edmund Beaufort was created Duke of Somerset, and in June William de la Pole was raised from the Marquisate of Suffolk to a Dukedom. With Richard of York having been shunted off to Ireland and Humphrey of Gloucester dead, the King’s failure to maintain a balance within his council was becoming increasingly clear. The ineptitude of English policy in France at this point beggars belief because the ‘peace party’, having secured its domination of the King’s Council and surrendered any initiative in negotiation, attempted to recover its position by breaking the long standing truce. In March 1449 a mercenary captain in English service seized the town and fortress of Fougères on the Breton border. The story of this escapade is immensely complicated but de Surienne seems to have acted with the full complicity of the English governor, although the motivation for the attack remains obscure. It may have been intended to intimidate the Duke of Brittany or to inject some much-needed credibility into the English negotiating position. It seems to have been intended as little more than a gesture because, having carried out his attack, de Surienne was left to his own devices and the
T H E Q U E E N A S D O M I N AT R I X
29
town was soon recaptur
ed.12 However, Charles understandably regarded it as unprovoked aggression and, picking up what he saw as a challenge, launched his armies against Normandy. On 10 November 1449 Rouen fell, and the English position in northern France collapsed completely. Attempts were made to send reinforcements, but these were frustrated by a shortage of munitions and a lack of money. With the fall of Caen in January 1450, the only English foothold left outside of Gascony was Calais. The repercussions of this disaster were immediate. Unable to blame the King directly, the Duke of Suffolk became the scapegoat. The House of Commons seized upon the confession made
in extremis by Adam Moleyns, the Keeper of the Privy Seal, who had been murdered at Portsmouth early in January, to frame a variety of charges against him, and he was impeached on the 7 February. A total of eight articles were framed, including responsibility for the surrender of Maine and Anjou, but his real crime was his failure to secure Normandy – in spite of the fact that he had never held the governorship, which had gone from the Duke of York to the Duke of Somerset some time before. The King tried to have the charges respited but the Commons were insistent and were strongly supported outside Parliament. Had Suffolk been tried, he would almost certainly have been found guilty; in order to prevent this, Henry stepped in and banished his friend for fi ve years. He did this unilaterally, without any consultation or process of law. On his way into exile in May the Duke was seized at sea and summarily executed. 13 Before his elevation to the marquisate, William de la Pole had been Steward of the Household and he, together with Adam Moleyns, had come to symbolize that household dominance of the Council that was so bitterly and widely resented. Now both of them had died at the hands of assassins and when Jack Cade’s men rose in rebellion in Kent later in 1450, household government was among their leading grievances, ‘the law’ they declared bitterly, ‘serveth for nought else but to do wrong’.14 All this lightning was striking close to the Queen. She had been a friend of Suffolk’s because he had so patiently negotiated for her marriage and Alice, his wife, was one of her ladies. The Duke of Somerset was also a friend who had performed many good offi ces for her. Her position made it inevitable that her closest associates would be those household offi cers who, in 1450, were being so much vilifi ed. Cade’s supporters had the Duchess of Suffolk and William Booth, Margaret’s Chancellor, on their ‘hit list’, as well as the Duke of Somerset. Despite this and her reputation, her political role at this stage was in fact negligible. Her endowment of 10,000 marks (£6,600) a year made her a very rich woman and she was a generous patron, running a large household of her own. In 1447 she petitioned her husband for permission to found a new college in Cambridge 30
T U D O R Q U E E N S O F E N G L A N D
on the grounds that the university had seen ‘no college founded by any Queen of England hithertoward’. The foundation stone of Queens’ college was laid on 15 April 1448. A sizeable collection of her letters show her working hard on behalf of clients – sometimes her own servants, sometimes others who had sought her intercession. She secured benefi ces for her chaplains and confessors, offi ces for lay petitioners and lucrative marriages for her ladies – or at least for those who were not already wed. The King in turn was generous to her. Realizing that the fi nancial diffi culties of the Crown had somewhat reduced her dower, in 1446 he settled on her for life an additional £2,000 worth of lands, drawn mainly from the Duchy of Lancaster and comprising the Honours of Tutbury, Leicester and Kenilworth.
15 This was also given precedence over all other Duchy grants, an additional security if times should become still harder. Margaret also received a number of rich wardships and other lucrative privileges and concessions. This did not make her popular with other disappointed petitioners, although it was hardly her fault. Cade did not directly attack her but many of his shots came close and almost her only known political intervention came in connection with that rebellion. Realizing (perhaps better than Henry) the seriousness of the threat that he represented and the importance of some kind of conciliation, she urged the general pardon that the King issued on 6 July 1450 – although whether she did it as a kneeling supplicant, with her hair unbound in the classical pose of the mediatrix, we do not know. Although Henry and Margaret spent a great deal of time together and celebrated most of the major feasts in each other’s company, the years passed without any sign of the longed-for pregnancy. Inevitably there were mutterings that ‘she was none able to be queen of England … for because she beareth no child …’
16 but eventually, in the spring of 1453 and after nearly eight years of marriage, the feat was accomplished and Margaret conceived. There was great rejoicing, in which the King joined, but then, when she was about six-months’ pregnant, disaster struck. Earlier in the year the King h
ad appeared to be in good health and good spirits. At the end of April he had been intending to make an extended progress to pacify some of the discontents which were plainly visible but by the end of July news had been received of the crushing defeat at Castillon in Gascony and of the deaths of the English commanders, the Earl of Shrewsbury and his son. Nobody knows whether this news (which presaged the end of English Gascony) drove Henry over some hitherto unsuspected edge but within a few days he was in the grip of a mysterious condition, which it has been suggested may have been catatonic schizophrenia. Bereft of speech and of all understanding, he became a kind of vegetable. Nobody knew what to do, either medically or politically and for several weeks it was hoped that he
T H E Q U E E N A S D O M I N AT R I X
31
would recover as quickly as he had succumbed. It was in these circumstances, on 13 October 1453 that Margaret was delivered of a son, who was promptly named Edward, after the Confessor whose translation feast it was. Archbishop Kemp, the Duke of Somerset and the Duchess of Buckingham stood as his godparents. We do not know whether the Queen might have taken a political stance in other circumstances. As it was the circumstances of her confi nement and convalescence effectively took her out of the equation – for the time being. Margaret’s household accounts for this period survive among the records of the Duchy of Lancaster, and we know (for example) that her chancellor Lawrence Booth was paid £53 a year and that she was spending no more than £7 a day on feeding her servants and herself. One intriguing entry records that she gave the generous sum of £200 to one of her ladies on the occasion of her marriage. It has been speculated that this young lady was Elizabeth Woodville, who was one of her attendants and who married at about this time. Certainly ‘Isabella, Lady Grey’ (her married name) features among the Queen’s attendants not long after. Because the birth of Edward so adversely affected the prospects of the Duke of York, it was to be expected that Yorkist rumours would surround her delivery. The child was not Henry’s; alternatively the real child had been born dead and the King’s supposed heir was a changeling. Margaret knew of these slanders and did not forget them but they made no difference to her political position. Although nothing was said about the King’s condition when Parliament reassembled in November, it was clear by then that some interim arrangement for the government of the realm was unavoidable. A Great Council was called on 12 November and, as soon as it assembled, it became clear that the Duke of Somerset, bereft of the King’s support, was in deep trouble. The Duke of Norfolk accused him of treason with reference to the fi ascos in France and he was arrested and conveyed to the Tower
.17 While Somerset was still in charge an attempt had been made to exclude the Duke of York from the Council but York was a prince of the blood, who had been Henry’s putative heir and Norfolk favoured him. The suggestion was raised that he should be made protector of the realm for the duration of the King’s illness, but this was immediately challenged by Margaret who in January 1454, with the full backing of Henry’s household offi cers, put forward her own claim to the regency. As one observer wrote: the Queen hath made a bill of fi ve articles, desiring those articles to be granted: whereof the fi rst is that she desireth to have the whole rule of this land; the second is that she may make the Chancellor, Treasurer, the Privy Seal and all other offi cers of this land …18 Although she had her supporters outside the household, this was a demand of revolutionary implications and where the idea came from remains a mystery. 32
T U D O R Q U E E N S O F E N G L A N D
During the recent precedent of Henry’s own minority, no one (least of all Catherine herself) had suggested the Queen Mother as Regent – nor had Isabella made any such claim during the frequent illnesses of Charles VII. It seems that motherhood had transformed a fairly conventional, not to say ornamental, consort, into a determined and ambitious player in the dangerous game of power politics. The unprecedented and unexpected nature of this bid played into the hands of the Duke of York, who was clearly determined to use the King’s illness as a pretext to establish and secure his own position and those of his ‘well willers’. He was nominated to open Parliament on the King’s behalf on 14 February 1454
and that was a step in the desired direction, but the death of John Kempe, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on 22 March, forced the issue. A new appointment was urgent and only the King or his designated replacement could nominate. On 28 March a fi nal attempt was made to get some sense out of Henry when Margaret brought in his infant son to receive his blessing. When that failed, on 3 April, York was appointed Protector on the same terms that Humphrey of Gloucester had enjoyed 32 years earlier. The Queen’s bid appears to have been simply ignored. That, as it was to turn out, was a serious mistake. The Duke of York went through the motions of reluctance to accept the appointment but in fact he was highly gratifi ed and immediately secured the appointment of his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, to the vacant chancellorship. His position was not strong enough to enable him to remodel the Council and all the remaining offi cers continued in post, but Salisbury was a valuable ally. His other appointments were not numerous, or obviously partisan, and the translation of Thomas Bourgchier from Ely to Canterbury, which occurred at some time after 23 April, introduced a noticeably conciliatory voice. The most obvious focus of opposition was the royal household, now controlled by Margaret, but beyond a little trimming for fi nancial reasons he was not strong enough to attack it. After all, the King might recover at any moment. Beside which, he had other priorities. Apart from Calais, English France was lost and the whole coastline in enemy hands because, despite the defeats, there was still no peace. Unpaid, the garrison of Calais mutinied and there were unresolved aristocratic faction fi ghts going on all over England. In Ireland, too, York had diffi culty in restoring the authority that he had formerly exercised there. This turbulent situation exposed the protector’s limitations, and it has been fairly claimed that he acted less like a surrogate king, determined to impose impartial justice, and more like the leader of a magnate faction concerned to consolidate his position. Only in the north of England did he have any success in bringing peace and that was by supporting the Nevilles in their bid to destroy the Percies. In other words, it was a factional victory.
T H E Q U E E N A S D O M I N AT R I X
33
Then, at Christmas 1454, Henry recovered as suddenly as he had collapsed; or at least, he recovered suffi ciently to resume his formal duties. He is reported to have been as a man awakening from a deep sleep, delighted to see his son (now 15 months old), and curious to know what had happened during his
illness.19 Whether he ever recovered fully is a moot point because, although he remained occasionally determined to assert himself, both his willpower and his judgement seem to have been permanently impaired. The immediate consequence was the release of the Duke of Somerset, although apparently strict conditions were applied, which should have kept him out of the political arena. At some time in February 1455 the Duke of York resigned his powers into the King’s hands and, on 4 March, Somerset’s sureties were discharged and the charges against him dismissed. The court party swiftly augmented its strength on the council, and the new chancellor was dismissed in favour of the Archbishop of Canterbury. By April the Duke of York and his friends had every reason to fear a regime of partisan revenge and when a Great Council was summoned to Leicester on 21 May, they abruptly withdrew from the court, fearing punitive measures against them. This was tantamount to an act of rebellion, and when the court was on its way to Leicester it was intercepted by York and Warwick with a retinue of some 4,000 armed men. On the court side, Buckingham and Somerset were also ‘well accompanied’ and the result was the fi rst battle of St Albans on 22 May. The courtiers were routed and the Duke of Somerset was killed. Henry was present in person and, after the battle, was honourably conducted to the Abbey, where the Duke of York renewed his homage and fealty. 20 Where Margaret may have been is not apparent but after the battle she retreated to G
reenwich. The Duke of York’s supporters justifi ed his action on the grounds that ‘the government, as it was managed by the Queen, the Duke of Somerset and their friends, had been of late a great oppression and injustice to the people …’ but there are no contemporary complaints to
that effect.21 It must have seemed that York’s domination of the Council would now be secure, but the situation was not in fact so simple. Despite his undoubted feebleness, the King could not now be ignored, as he had been at the height of his illness. Nor was York in a position to displace those offi cers who had been appointed earlier in the year. Most important of all, the death of the Duke of Somerset had left the leadership of the court party in doubt. There was no favourite of suffi cient status. In theory the King himself was the leader, but in practice it was now his strong-minded spouse. As Sir John Bocking wrote on 9 February 1456: ‘The Queen is a great and strong laboured woman, for she spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power …’
