Queens Consort

by Lisa Hilton

  By mid-May, Somerset realised that York had gone north to raise an army. On 21 May the court set off to confront the rebels at St Albans, sending Marguerite and her ladies to Greenwich for safety. After some discussion, Henry, in an atypical but predictably unintelligent show of decisiveness, determined that the royalist troops should set up their battle base in the centre of the town. At first, it seemed that their barricades would hold off the Yorkists, but Warwick had a party of men creep through the gardens and demolish a group of houses, through which they broke into the marketplace. Henry’s immediate entourage now came under attack. The King’s only contribution to the action was to sit in his armour in his pavilion, praying, but even then he managed to get an arrow wound in the neck and had to run away and hide in a cottage with Somerset. York had Henry removed to more suitable quarters, but for Somerset there was no hope. Cornered in the Castle Inn, Somerset resolved to go down fighting, and rushed on his attackers, taking four of them with him. With his enemy destroyed, York went through the motions of asking Henry’s pardon, which the King had no choice but to grant.

  It would be unwise to see St Albans as dividing ‘Yorkists’ and ‘Lancastrians’ into two neatly defined opposing factions, gearing up for the Wars of the Roses. The battle had been motivated by York’s passion to be rid of Somerset, but it was also an opportunity for the Nevilles to settle private grievances; the only other two important magnates killed that day were Neville enemies. With Henry still unfit even to go through the motions of government, York found it easy to have himself declared protector once more, but his troubles had not died with Somerset. The garrison of Calais had mutinied and there were ongoing disturbances in the west country. York’s challenge was to patch up a consensus in a situation where Henry’s failure as a king had permitted essentially local disputes to fatally undermine national unity.

  Marguerite, it must be said, was no politician. She saw things in black and white. She had been outraged when, as part of York’s Act of Resumption in his first Parliament, her expenditure was ordered to be reduced to 10,000 marks and she was deprived of the power to bequeath duchy of Lancaster revenues. If she had ever had any faith in her husband, it was gone. She now had to protect him, and their child, from the threat York represented, and she saw herself as the successor to Somerset. In 1456 Henry was sufficiently sensible to attend Parliament and York was officially relieved of his commission as protector, but York and the Neville party managed to keep the King away from any serious business, and Marguerite was keen to get him out of London in order to influence him for his own good.

  Accordingly, she left for Coventry Castle with Prince Edward, moving north towards Chester. Henry joined her in August at Kenilworth, and soon Marguerite had persuaded him to replace York’s men with supporters of her own in the offices of treasurer and chancellor. Marguerite’s private chancellor, Laurence Booth, became keeper of the Privy Seal and was then promoted to the see of Durham. As she began to gain some grip in government, Marguerite also concentrated on augmenting her power base in two areas, the duchy of Lancaster lands in the Midlands, where she held the honours of Tutbury and Leicester, and Prince Edward’s earldom of Chester and principality of Wales. She took Edward on a tour of Cheshire and the Midlands, showing him to the people and reminding them that she was the mother of their future King. Little Edward now had his own household, and Marguerite was beginning to draw around her those men she believed would faithfully support his succession when the time came. These included the new Duke of Somerset and his brother, the Percy Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford, whose fathers had died at St Albans, lords Grey and Wiltshire, the bishop of Winchester and the Duke of Buckingham, whose son, Henry Stafford, was married to Margaret Beaufort, herself the strongest claimant to the throne after Prince Edward through her descent from John of Gaunt. The Beaufort connection was heightened by the fact that Margaret was the widow of Edmund Tudor, Catherine de Valois’s son, whose brother Jasper, the Earl of Pembroke, was to be a staunch champion of the Lancastrian cause, acting as the King’s lieutenant in central and southern Wales and receiving the constableship of Carmarthen and Aberystwyth in 1457.

  In March 1458, Henry believed he had inaugurated a reconciliation ceremony whose bombastic symbolism might make even a present-day political spin-doctor cringe. The ‘Loveday’ featured Marguerite progressing hand in hand with the Duke of York to St Paul’s, accompanied by the main protagonists on both sides. The Queen’s clumsy emphasis on York-Lancaster unity now brought into focus what everyone until this point had found it convenient to ignore: that there in fact existed two opposing camps. ‘It is perhaps at this point, ironically at the most overt moment of conciliation,’ remarks Christine Carpenter, ‘that the Wars of the Roses can be said to have begun.’10

  Still, it seemed that Marguerite was regaining control of the situation and at this juncture it is interesting to ask why she seemed so determined to alienate the Earl of Warwick. Warwick had held the captaincy of England’s most important remaining Continental garrison since 1455, though wrangling over wages arrears had meant he had been unable to enter the city for a year. Now, Marguerite pushed the exchequer to starve him of the funds he needed, and as his resources dwindled Warwick resorted to piracy to pay his men. The Queen returned to London in the autumn and attempted to have Warwick deposed and indicted on the charge of attacking the Hanseatic Bay fleet, a crime of which he was entirely guilty but which nevertheless her own policies had provoked. Warwick retreated to Calais after fighting his way to his barge on the Thames. However, Marguerite could still have recognised the possibility of negotiation with the powerful Neville family who, up to November 1458, were not overtly partisan. It was not until the Earl of Salisbury, Warwick’s father, held a family meeting at their seat at Middleham to declare his intention of taking ‘full party with the noble prince the Duke of York’ that the Nevilles were definitively alienated. Why did Marguerite not have the sense to make an ally of Warwick? As events were later to prove, she held a tremendous lure to Warwick’s ambition in the person of Prince Edward. Was it pride or obstinacy that pushed her to force those magnates who remained neutral to take sides?

  It was apparent that England was headed for war. Marguerite was raising troops in Cheshire and the Wirral and in May 1459 3,000 bows were ordered for the royal armoury. Marguerite and Henry were at Coventry, from where they summoned the men of the shires to muster at Leicester. A council was announced for June, but York, Salisbury, Warwick and their supporters were excluded. In response, the Yorkists decided to hold their own council at Ludlow, with Warwick bringing a contingent from Calais. Warwick arrived safely, and from Ludlow York published another of his open letters, declaring his loyalty and asking Henry’s pardon, but insisting that he had been driven to extremity for the good of the realm. Warwick’s father, however, was intercepted by Marguerite’s supporters, and gave the lie to the Ludlow protestations. Very little is known about the encounter between Salisbury and a group of Cheshire men led by Lord Audley at Blore’s Heath that September, but Salisbury had the better of it and Audley was killed. A local tradition claims that Marguerite herself watched the battle from the nearby church tower of Mucclestone, then escaped by reversing her horse’s shoes to lay a false trail. There is no reliability to this story, but it is perhaps the first of the legends that grew up around Marguerite as a warrior queen. Salisbury pushed on to Ludlow, but on 12 October the Yorkist leaders had to face the fact that they were hopelessly outnumbered. Henry himself was there at the head of his troops, and such was the power of majesty that the Calais division, the Yorkists’ crack fighting corps, promptly changed sides. There was little point in a confrontation. York fled to Ireland, his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, galloped off into the night with his Neville cousins, and Warwick and Salisbury, assisted by a Devon man named John Dinham, got away safely to Calais. There could now be no pretence that either side sought a peaceful resolution to England’s problems. This would be a fight to the death.

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bsp; Ludlow taught Marguerite the essential lesson that power lay with whoever controlled the person of the king, as the innate respect for the anointed monarch inspired a powerful reluctance to take up arms against him. Her enemies scattered, the Queen triumphantly summoned a council at Coventry which issued attainders depriving Yorkist supporters of their lands and bestowing them on Marguerite’s men. But Calais was still controlled by Warwick, despite Somerset having been appointed captain in his place. Somerset took up quarters at the port of Guines, from where he launched repeated but unsuccessful attacks against the garrison. The royalists tried to come to his aid by preparing a fleet at Sandwich, but suffered a huge setback when Lord Rivers, the commander, his wife, the Duchess of Bedford, and their son, Anthony Woodville, were taken by a raiding party sent by Warwick and all the ships commandeered. In June 1460 the Yorkists succeeded in taking the port itself, and Marguerite had to accept that an invasion would follow.

  It was shockingly swift. By 26 June, Warwick’s forces were at Canterbury and two days later they marched towards London. Marguerite and Prince Edward remained at Coventry while the King and his supporters made for the capital. They paused at Northampton and set up camp while the Yorkist forces, now sure of Henry’s whereabouts, swung north after only two days in the city. The battle that followed lasted only half an hour. Buckingham was killed in the King’s tent and Henry himself was taken prisoner by Warwick. Marguerite and Edward were attacked as they fled from Coventry, but with the help of Owen Tudor they managed to reach the safety of Harlech Castle in Wales.

  York arrived in London in September, and though Warwick had protested his loyalty to the imprisoned Henry over the summer, it was obvious that the Duke was intent upon the crown. Notably, he displayed the arms of Clarence for the first time as he entered the city. York was descended from Edward III through both his father and his mother, who was a great-granddaughter of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward’s third son. He was clearly eager to exercise the female, as well as the male claim to his right to rule, and to emphasise at this crucial moment that in this respect his position was actually stronger than Henry’s own, since Salic law, which permitted succession only through the male line, did not apply in England as it did in France. York entered the palace of Westminster and ‘went straight through to the Great Hall until he came to the chamber where the King … was accustomed to hold his Parliament. There he strode up to the throne and put his hand on its cushion just as though he were a man about to take possession of what was rightfully his’.11 He did not receive the rapturous reception he clearly anticipated; indeed, his audacity was greeted with of fended silence, but in the Act of Accord of 24 October 1460, he had his way. Parliament decided that Henry would keep the throne for life, but that it would then devolve to York and his heirs. Prince Edward was disinherited, and it would be York’s son, Edward, Earl of March, who would wear the crown in the next generation.

  Marguerite’s cause was now precisely defined. Until this point, she had obviously been acting in Prince Edward’s interests, but with this act her defence of his rights became official. Even operating under duress, it was despicably pathetic that Henry should have concurred with the annulment of his own son’s rights, and unsurprising that Marguerite refused to answer her weak husband’s summons to London. Instead she managed to get a ship for Scotland, where she negotiated with King James II for reinforcements and funds. On her own authority, she offered to trade the stronghold of Berwick for Scottish aid. Meanwhile, Somerset was active in the southwest, and the Percy lands in the north were still loyal. By December, the Lancastrian forces were gathered at Pontefract under the command of Somerset and Northumberland, while the Yorkists were holed up at York’s castle of Sandal near Wakefield.

  The battle of Wakefield was a huge victory for the Lancastrians but a disaster for Marguerite’s reputation. One of her influential biographers has it that she led her troops in person (having boned up on her Livy — apparently her tactics mirrored those of Hannibal at Cannae), and had the head of the Duke of York brought to her, whereupon she slapped the dead face, stuck a paper crown on its head and spiked it on the gates of York. Shakespeare’s version, in King Henry VI Part III, has Marguerite stabbing York with her own hands. York did die on the battlefield, the Earl of Salisbury was executed at Pontefract and the heads of the losers were displayed on the walls of York, but Marguerite herself took no part in the Wakefield executions, though she may well have rejoiced at them. As in the case of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marguerite’s exceptional qualities not only counted against her posthumously but also with her contemporaries. What people were prepared to say and believe of her gives an insight into how she was perceived, and the aftermath of Wakefield portrayed her as terrifying.

  Marguerite led her troops south, but lack of discipline and the perennial problem of supplies soon had the troops stripping the countryside. The Scottish soldiers had a fearsome reputation, and panic began to spread through the Midland counties. The Croyland Chronicle gives a picture of what was rapidly being seen less as a royal campaign than as a barbarian invasion from the north.

  The northmen, being sensible that the only impediment was now withdrawn … swept onwards like a whirlwind from the north, and in the impulse of their fury attempted to overrun the whole of England. At this period too, fancying that everything tended to ensure them freedom from molestation, paupers and beggars flocked forth from those quarters in infinite numbers, just like so many mice rushing forward from their holes, and universally devoted themselves to spoil and rapine without regard for place or person … Thus did they proceed with impunity, spreading in vast multitudes over a space of thirty miles in breadth … covering the whole surface of the earth just like so many locusts.12

  Yorkist propaganda seized on Marguerite’s inability to control her advancing army, to the point where one historian suggests it was their ‘excesses’ that were decisive in the outcome of the conflict. As the Lancastrians made their lawless way down the country, Edward, Earl of March, now the Yorkist leader and heir apparent, encountered Jasper Tudor and his troops en route to Hereford. The battle of Mortimer’s Cross was the first of an impressive series of victories for the young Earl, and also provided the badge he was to adopt as the symbol of his house, the golden sun of York, inspired by what appeared to be three suns in the sky as the armies engaged. Owen Tudor was among the Lancastrian prisoners who were executed at Hereford after the battle. He was reported to have said, ‘That head shall lie on the stock that was wont to lie on Queen Catherine’s lap,’ before the executioner gave the stroke.

  The next confrontation came on 17 February 1461 at St Albans, where Warwick was faced with another Duke of Somerset. For all his subsequent reputation as a kingmaker, Warwick lost the battle, misplacing the captured King Henry in the process. Marguerite and Prince Edward were sheltering in the abbey, and Henry managed to make his way to join them, apparently quite unmolested. Two days later the Lancastrians were prepared to march for the gates of London. The city authorities were terrified that the soldiers would sack the town, and the lord mayor sent a deputation of aristocratic ladies to negotiate the terms of entry. ‘The Duchess of Bedford … went to St Albans to the King, Queen and Prince, for to entreat for grace for the city,’ recorded The London Chronicle. ‘And the King and his council granted that four knights with four hundred men should go to the City and see the disposition of it, and make an appointment with the Mayor and the Aldermen.’ Unusually, this agreement was essentially negotiated between women, so it is disappointing that it proved such a strategic disaster. Marguerite and the Duchess of Bedford were very much on the same side (the Duchess and her husband, Lord Rivers, had, after all, been kidnapped by Warwick during preparations for the attack on Calais, and her son-in-law, John Grey, had just lost his life at St Albans), yet Lady Bedford and her companion Lady Buckingham were so convincing in conveying the fears of the Londoners that Marguerite, fearful of losing their goodwill, lost her nerve instead. She ordered her troops to retreat
to Dunstable as a gesture of good faith and in doing so she may well have set the crown on Edward of March’s head. The panic inspired by the advance of the northmen had done its work and the mood of the citizens was staunchly pro-Yorkist, but Marguerite had the King and she had an army, as well as a group of loyal nobles within the city. The Duchess of Bedford has been praised for ‘saving’ London, but as far as her own side was concerned, it was an own goal.

  In contrast with Marguerite, Edward of March proved himself quick and resolute at this moment of crisis. He joined forces with Warwick in the Cotswolds and together they entered London on 26 February. The people had had enough of Henry’s ditherings and they were exhausted by terror. Prince Edward was a child of seven, but Edward of March was a man, and a big, handsome, fighting man at that. An Italian correspondent reported that there was a ‘great multitude who say they want to be with him to conquer or die’. On 4 March, the nineteen-year-old Earl was proclaimed as King Edward IV.

  The Lancastrian cause was not entirely lost at this juncture. If Marguerite were able to hold out, there was a good chance that Edward, perceived by many as a usurper, would waste his forces and his popularity pursuing her. Edward knew that he had to attack, and do so decisively. In mid-March he set off towards Yorkshire and at the end of the month the two sides met once more at Towton. Chronicle figures are notoriously misleading when it comes to the size of medieval armies, but in this case, even a conservative estimation of the numbers involved gives 50,000 men apiece to both Yorkists and Lancastrians. Towton was perhaps the bloodiest battle of a bloody century, though no eyewitness description has survived. Perhaps the greatest asset the Yorkists had was Edward himself, who fought on foot after his cavalry was routed by Somerset and Lord Rivers. Prepared to go to the death beside his standard, he cut a magnificent figure in the hand-to-hand combat at the core of the battle, all the more so for the conspicuous absence of his opposite number. It was claimed that 28,000 men fell at Towton, and even if this figure is exaggerated, it was felt as a calamity, ‘a last, appalling commentary on the misrule of Henry VI’.13