by David Loades
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Consequently, although the Duke of York was again made protector in November 1455, he soon found himself in the impossible position of being confronted by a political adversary who had unique access to the monarch and who could not be removed by any means short of assassination. He resigned the protectorship on 25 February 1456 and Margaret embarked upon a three-year period of unoffi cial but very real power. As long as Henry was King she would be
alter rex. Between the summer of 1456 and the summer of 1459 the court spent almost half its time within her power base in the West Midlands. It was at Coventry in October 1456 that Archbishop Bourgchier was dispossessed of the Great Seal in favour of William Waynefl ete and Henry Viscount Bourgchier was replaced as Treasurer by the Earl of Salisbury.22 At the same time Lawrence Booth became Keeper of the Privy Seal. Waynefl ete was the King’s confessor and Booth the Queen’s Chancellor. Although Archbishop Bourgchier was not a party man, his displacement was a partisan move, as were the other appointments. The Great Council duly confi rmed these offi cers, but Margaret’s fi ngerprints are all over this. Members of the Council were expected to show the same deference to her as they did to the King and on formal occasions the King’s sword was borne before her. When the royal couple entered Coventry (again) in September 1457 Henry was almost invisible behind the pomp that accompanied the Queen. There was no institutional basis and no theoretical justifi cation for such pretensions. Margaret used Edward’s Council as Prince of Wales and her own stake in the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster but for the most part she relied upon sheer will power and strength of character. Although it was the basis of her power, no concept of the consort’s position had ever envisaged such a situation. Only the accepted principle that it was the consort’s duty to uphold the honour of her Lord lent any support to her position and that had always been understood in a quite different sense. Of course, she had allies and resources. Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, John Talbot, Earl of Salisbury, and Thomas, Lord Stanley were all close associates. The overstrained Exchequer could be (to some extent) relieved by using the revenues assigned to Edward, by this time a child of about 5. Margaret’s implacable hostility to the Duke of York may have been partly personal, because both had abrasive personalities, but it may also have been dynastic. York was a Prince of the Blood, who had generally been recognized as Henry’s heir before the birth of the Prince of Wales and would be so again if the Prince should meet with any kind of accident. There is no evidence that York had any designs on the Crown before 1457 but the Queen was sharply suspicious and defensive of her son’s position – so defensive, indeed, that the Duke and his affi nity decided eventually that the only solution to her intransigence was a complete change of regime. She was almost equally fi erce against the Earl of
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Warwick and that was to have serious implications in due course. Although some of Margaret’s aggressive assertiveness has come to us through the medium of Yorkist propaganda, there is plenty of contemporary evidence of the perception that she was the real ruler of England; ‘every lord in England at this time durst not disobey the Queen, for she ruled all that was done about the King, which was a good, simple and innoc
ent man …’23 Her advocacy of Lawrence Booth for the vacant see of Durham in 1457 was nothing if not preremptory. By comparison, Henry appears a man bemused, most notably in public for his passivity, and in private for an almost pathetic desire to reconcile the controversies with which he was surrounded. He was nothing like as hostile to York as Margaret but he seems to have been consistently overruled by her urgent representations. When the French attacked Sandwich in August 1457 (just to remind the English that there was still a war on), Henry did insist on the court returning to Westminster, but far too late for any effective countermeasures to be taken. His greatest effort to effect reconciliation was the so-called ‘love day’ of 25 March 1458, which succeeded to the extent of persuading Margaret and York to process hand in hand, but in the event solved nothing. The partisan nature of the regime was by this time not only obvious but blatant. Neither the Duke of York nor his followers were either admitted to the Council or received any kind of favour. As one observer put it ‘… my lord of York hath been with the king, and is departed again in right good conceit with the King, but not in great conceit with the Queen …’ And therein lay the rub. Henry continued in his ineffectual way to seek some sort of conciliation, but Margaret would have none of it, and she was by this time clearly the dominant partner in the relationship. So the situation continued to deteriorate until the court left again for Coventry in the spring of 1459. By this time someone had decided that the time had come to force an issue. It was not the King, and the suspicion naturally points to Margaret but she may, in this case, have been persuaded by some of her own more extreme supporters. Whoever was responsible, at the Great Council held in Coventry in June 1459, the Duke of York and his leading adherents were indicted for treason. This was, as it may have been intended to be, the signal for a full-scale military confrontation. The two sides were reasonably well matched both in terms of magnates and of the retinues of which both armies were comprised. On 23 September the Lancastrians were defeated at Bloreheath, but about three weeks later were victorious at Ludlow. As Agnes Strickland somewhat melodramatically put it, ‘the martial blood of Charlemagne was fl owing in [Margaret’s] veins’. With the situation thus stalemated, a parliament was convened at Coventry on 20 November, which duly convicted the indicted lords, and on 11 December all those lords who were gathered at Coventry, which meant most of the court 36
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faction, swore a special oath, not only to the King, but also to the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Henry’s crown was now clearly at stake.
York, meanwhile, had returned to Ireland, where his position was unaffected by his attainder. The Earl of Ormond and Wiltshire had been appointed in his place but the King’s writ no longer ran in Ireland and the parliament there continued to support the Duke. His son, the Earl of March, with other Yorkist leaders, took refuge with the Earl of Warwick in Calais, where the King’s writ did not run either. Plainly the realm was now falling apart. On 26 June 1460, March and his colleagues returned to England in force and, after some deliberation, they were welcomed into London. Bypassing the Tower, which was held against them, they set out to fi nd the King at Northampton. There they defeated Henry’s forces on 10 July, killing the Duke of Buckingham in the process, and brought the King back to London. Although he was helpless and virtually a prisoner, their intention seems to have been to renew their allegiance and merely to enforce the repeal of the attainders against them. However, his son’s victory brought the Duke of York back from Ireland with a very different agenda. Parliament had been summoned to meet on 7 October, and on 10 October the Duke made a formal claim to the throne on the ground of lineage alone, without reference to Henry’s incapacity
.24 To his evident surprise, the assembled Lords and Commons did not accept his claim, pointing out the oaths that had been taken to Henry – and to Prince Edward. However, there was no gainsaying the strength of his position, and on 31 October a compromise was agreed whereby Henry would retain the Crown for life, but York would be recognized as his heir in place of the Prince of W
ales.25 That the King accepted this was more a refl ection of his weak understanding than of his weak position, because the attitude of the Lords, in particular, had indicated that a more robust defence might have produced a very different outcome. But why should anyone risk defending a position that the principal had already surrendered? After Henry’s capture at Northampton, Margaret and Edward escaped and fl ed to Denbigh in north Wales, and from there retreated into Scotland. Within a few months the Queen’s worst fears were confi rmed. Henry had (in a sense) defended his own position but had totally failed to defend his son’s. Whatever respect Margaret mi
ght have had for her husband had by now disappeared. She had for some time been the real leader of the Lancastrian party and now she was that formidable animal – a mother in defence of her child. The Duke of York made the serious mistake of thinking that his cause was now won and underestimated both the Queen and her ability to inspire devoted service. He went to the north of England inadequately supported and was defeated and killed at Wakefi eld on 30 December by a Lancastrian army. Despite Shakespeare’s dramatic presentation
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of the scene, Margaret was not present at Wakefi eld, and was responsible for Richard’s death only in the most general sense.
26 She was, however, now in the ascendant, and returned to England at the head of a mixed army of Scots and the affi nities of the northern lords. Marching south, she defeated the Earl of Warwick in a second battle at St Albans on 17 February 1461 and regained control of the King. This was symbolically important because she was still, of course, operating in his name but for all the input which he was now capable of making, she might just as well not have bothered. A stark choice had now been exposed. Did the English want to be ruled by a maverick Frenchwoman in the name of her 8-year-old son or by the Earl of March, the Duke of York’s eldest son who had now inherited his claim? It was the City of London that made the critical move. Alarmed at the thought of a northern invasion, and by reports of indiscipline in the Queen’s army, the citizens refused to admit her
.27 Unable either to take the city or to sustain herself in the hostile environment of the home counties, Margaret withdrew northwards. This was the signal for the Yorkists to rally and many waverers seem to have joined them on the grounds that oaths taken to Henry were now meaningless because of his supine attitude. The Earl of March was proclaimed king as Edward IV in London on 4 March, amid general acclamations. At Towton, on 29 March, he caught up with Margaret’s retreating army and totally defeated it. The Queen, taking Henry and Edward with her, escaped again into Scotland. The god of battles had now spoken to the satisfaction of enough of the lords of England to enable Edward to be crowned at Westminster on 28 June 1461. This was not the end of the war and certainly not of Margaret’s involvement but it did represent a critical turning point. From now on Henry’s court, in so far as it existed, was a court in exile, dependent upon the hospitality of foreign rulers who might wish to use it for their own purposes. At the same time the Queen’s substantial revenues disappeared almost overnight, leaving her similarly dependent. It was Margaret’s misfortune that the supportive James II of Scotland had died in 1460, leaving his young son in the hands of his mother, Mary of Gueldres. Consequently, although the ex-Queen managed to arrange the handover of Berwick to the Scots in April 1461 and apparently promised Carlisle also in return for aid, nothing was forthcoming apart from some rather grudging hospitality. Margaret is alleged to have secured a betrothal between her 8-year-old son and the even younger sister of the new King of Scots but nothing came of it. At the same time Charles VII of France, who might have been willing to help, died on 22 July 1461 and his successor, Louis XI, was much more problematic to deal with. Nevertheless in April 1462, leaving Henry in Scotland, Margaret took 38
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Edward to France with the aid of a sympathetic French merchant, and there she managed to extract 20,000 crowns from Louis in return for a pledge to surrender Calais, but nothing signifi cant in the way of military assistance. By this time Lancastrian support within England was withering away. This was partly because Edward IV was doing quite a good job as king and partly because there seemed to be little point in maintaining an allegiance to so useless a creature as Henry VI, who was in any case run by his wife. A Scottish invasion did eventually take place in March 1463, which rallied enough enthusiasm among the northern lords to enable them to take Alnwick and Bamburgh, but they could not hold them and the invasion soon petered out once the enthusiasm for border plundering had been satisfi ed.
This appears to have convinced Margaret that nothing more was to be hoped for in the north and in August 1463 she returned to France, again taking Edward with her. Whether her relationship with Henry meant anything at all by this time is not known. They had spent a great deal of time apart over the previous three or four years and had probably had no sexual relationship for a decade. After the fall of Bamburgh at the end of 1463, he had fl ed into Lancashire, where he was betrayed and captured early in 1464. Although when she went to France on this occasion it was with the long-term objective of recovering power, it was with Prince Edward mainly in mind, and she seems to have had no scruples about leaving Henry behind. As it transpired they were never to meet again, although letters were exchanged as long as he was at Bamburgh. Once back in France, Margaret redoubled her diplomatic efforts. She was courteously received by the Duke of Burgundy but gained no assistance and, on 8 October Louis XI came to terms with Edward IV at Hesdin, one of the conditions of which was that he should not help the Lancastrians. She retreated to her father’s court at Nancy. The ageing Renée, who was beset by problems of his own, nevertheless accepted a parental responsibility to provide for her. She was assigned the chateau of Koeur in the Duchy of Bar, with 6,000 crowns a year, and remained there until 1468. She still had with her a number of English servants, both male and female, and a hard core of loyal followers, including Sir John Fortescue. The size of her household has been variously estimated at between 50 and 200 and money was always tight. Nevertheless Edward, by this time 11 years old, was apparently given an education suitable to his status and prospects and seems to have grown into a rather warlike youth. Meanwhile Louis’s relations with Edward IV had deteriorated again and the French king began to fi sh in troubled waters. Taking advantage of strains developing in the relationship of the English king with his erstwhile backer, the Earl of Warwick, Louis began to correspond with the latter as early as May 1467.
28 The intention, which was not yet clearly formed, was to detach Warwick and
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the King’s brother the Duke of Clarence, with whom he was closely allied, from Edward’s allegiance, and to use them to restore Henry VI. When the English King signed a new treaty with Philip of Burgundy in 1468, sealed by the marriage of Philip’s heir to the King’s sister, Louis’ intentions hardened. One obstacle in the way of his proposed intention was the implacable hostility of Margaret towards Warwick. It would be diffi cult to restore Henry without her collaboration but so well known were her feelings that she seems not even to have been appraised of the negotiation at this stage. That was probably just as well because when Warwick and Clarence raised a rebellion in England in 1469, surprising and capturing the King, their intentions remained opaque. It appears that Clarence may have been intending to press his own claim and nothing was said about Henry. The latter had been in the Tower since his capture at Waddington Hall and the defeat of the last of his armies at Hexham in 1464 and it may have been doubted whether he any longer had even residual credibility. In any case, his claim was not advanced and the rebellion collapsed in confusion, Edward being somewhat inclined to treat it as a bad joke. Baffl ed, but less defeated than the King believed, Warwick and Clarence retreated to Calais. Having learned from this frustrating experience, the former now made two decisions: fi rst, that he would commit himself to Henry and, second, that he would come to terms with Margaret. Meeting with Louis, he agreed a plan of action, whereby he was to restore Henry with French military assistance and in return would enter into an alliance with Louis against Philip of Burgundy. Prince Edward would accompany him to England and would marry his daughter, Anne. Margaret, however, was not in a co-operative mood. She would at fi rst not hear of the marriage arrangement and was not prepared to allow Edward to go with Warwick. With considerable diffi culty, Louis managed to arrange a meeting between the two, at which a formal reconciliation took place – not without some self-abasement on Warwick’s part
. Anne and Edward were betrothed and actually married at Amboise in August 1470. It was agreed that the Prince would go to England, but only in his mother’s company and after the real work had been done.
On 9 September 1470 the planned invasion took place. Submerged Lancastrian sentiment at once sprang to life and Warwick was able to recruit several noble retinues to his modest army. Meanwhile King Edward, quite inexcusably unprepared, was in Yorkshire. Warwick advanced on London, which received him, if not with joy, at least without hostility. The hapless Henry VI was taken out of the Tower and paraded at St Paul’s as king. What he thought of the proceedings (if anything) is not known. Meanwhile Edward, caught by the treachery of Lord Montague, was left virtually defenceless against the Lancastrian advance. 40
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Accompanied by his brother Richard and Lord Hastings, he fl ed to King’s Lynn and crossed to Burgundy.
29 It appeared that Warwick’s victory was complete and virtually bloodless. He began reshaping the government and addressed himself to the promised French alliance. Attainders were reversed at a parliament that convened on 26 November and new appointments were made. However, relations with the Duke of Clarence became strained as the latter received less than he considered to be his due, and a potentially serious rift began to open in the restored Lancastrian regime. Meanwhile Margaret hesitated, apparently unconvinced by the ease of Warwick’s triumph and King Edward, with Burgundian support, planned his return. Philip knew perfectly well that if Henry became fi rmly re-established he would have a war with England on his hands, whereas if Edward were restored they would be friends. He also found his brother-in-law’s presence in his territories an embarrassment. Consequently, he sent him on his way as soon as possible, with his blessing and a few troops. On 16 March Edward landed on the Yorkshire coast. This time confusion and treachery favoured him because many Lancastrian lords were hostile to Warwick, and, although not prepared to fi ght against him, would not declare their allegiance until Margaret arrived to claim it. A game of blind man’s buff ensued around Coventry, where news reached both sides that Clarence had abandoned Warwick and declared for his brother. In these circumstances the earl was not prepared to risk battle and Edward was allowed to proceed towards London unresisted. Nothing succeeds like success, and his forces were swelled by fresh retinues as they advanced. He reached the capital on 11 April and recovered the person of his ostensible rival, Henry. At the same time news reached Warwick that Louis had signed a three-month truce with the Burgundians. Just at the moment when he most needed them, neither of his main props were available. The French king had withdrawn and Margaret was still stuck at Harfl eur. Until she arrived, neither the Duke of Somerset, nor the Earl of Devon nor the Earl of Pembroke would join him. Warwick had no option now but to risk battle, even on unfavourable terms, and advanced to Barnet where, on 13 April, he confronted Edward’s forces coming from London. The result was an annihilating defeat and his own death. On the same day, Margaret, whose timely arrival might have saved the day, landed with Edward at Weymouth. Confronted with the news from Barnet, a lesser woman might well have re-embarked and returned to France but Margaret was made of sterner stuff. With the courage for which she had always been famous, she went to Exeter and marched north, recruiting men as she went, and this time the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Devon were with her. Her intention seems to have been to cross into Wales to join forces with the Earl of Pembroke, but Edward, who was in hot pursuit, caught
