Tudor Dawn: Henry Tudor is ready to take the crown... (The Tudor Saga Series Book 1)

by David Field

  ‘Slackness I will confess to, Your Majesty — but treason?’

  ‘Would you agree,’ Morton asked him in measured tones, ‘that it would be treason to state openly that you would not raise a hand to resist were the Duke of York to invade?’

  Stanley began to look like a cornered beast in a royal hunt as he searched his memory for some careless word he might have uttered in the recent past in the hearing of some other paid spy of one of the royal officers of State.

  ‘In the way in which you express it, yes it would indeed be treason,’ Stanley conceded,’ ‘but I never said same.’

  Morton smiled triumphantly before continuing. ‘I read from the affidavit of Simon Henshaw, your newly-appointed Groom of the Chamber, who, you will not perhaps be surprised to learn, is also in the employ of Sir Richard, “On the fourteenth day of October last, I heard my Lord Stanley say, to the lady I know as Mistress Broadley, on the occasion of his retirement to her bedchamber, and while the door was still not yet fully closed, that I would not raise a hand were the Duke of York to assert his rightful place on the throne. I mind those words well, because when my Lord became aware that the door was still ajar, he placed a single mark in my hand, and bid me say nothing of what had occurred.” Now then, sir, on your own admission, would you not account those words treasonous?’

  ‘I spoke of the Prince Henry,’ Stanley objected, ‘who is now Duke of York. My exact words, as I can best recall them, were that were he to become King, I would not raise a hand to prevent it.’

  ‘Dissemblance!’ Henry shouted. ‘He was not the Duke of York when you spoke those words, a clear fortnight before his investiture!’

  ‘But he was popularly referred to as same around the Court, Your Majesty,’ Stanley argued.

  ‘But spoken in a certain house in Kent, in the company of someone intimate with the man who had allegedly spirited Richard Plantagenet from the Tower, the reference to “The Duke of York” could only have been a reference to the pretender to that title across the Channel,’ Morton cut in with a finely honed legal distinction. ‘And why seek to bribe the boy into silence?’

  ‘Not for my words,’ Stanley insisted, ‘but because of my actions. He had seen me embrace the lady in her nightdress, and I was anxious that no word of it should get back to my wife. If I might have access to a bible, I will swear to these facts.’

  ‘Under the rules of procedure of this court,’ said Justice Coleridge in his first words of the day, ‘a prisoner is not allowed to give testimony on his own account, merely to answer to the accusations brought against him.’

  ‘What manner of justice is that?’ Stanley shouted, red in the face.

  ‘Royal justice,’ Henry replied quietly.

  Stanley went to the scaffold protesting his innocence, and declaring his undying loyalty to the man who, because of Stanley’s high birth, and a sneaking feeling that he might have got it wrong, insisted that his uncle — the man who had all but handed him his crown — should meet his end by means of a single clean blow of the axe. Any residual doubt Henry might have been experiencing was no doubt dissipated when his men arrived to take possession of Stanley’s estates, which had fallen to the Crown, and would fetch a handsome sum on their resale to some carefully vetted nonentity. Among his possessions was found a collar richly studded with white York roses worked in diamonds, plus a sum of money that would have put an entire army into the field for a sustained period of time.

  Stanley’s execution had a profound effect on what had once been a cheerful and optimistic Court. The security of the Household was consigned on a temporary basis to Sir Reginald Bray, and those reporting for duty in even the humblest corner of Westminster Palace were daily required to prove their identity to Richard Foxe’s men armed with rolls of names and physical descriptions. The corridors closest to the royal apartments were thick with Yeomen of the Royal Guard, a food taster was employed to forestall any possibility of poison, and the only ones allowed near the King were members of the Great Council.

  As predicted, Henry was also the subject of treasonous words spoken under the breath by those whose livelihoods had all been wrecked by his embargo on trade with Flanders. It was not just the merchants who were in the front line of trade, but those who earned their living indirectly from it, such as carriers, boat owners and captains, clerks, lawyers and innkeepers. The wharves at Rotherhithe were almost silent for several months, while the merchants whose warehouses fringed them cursed roundly at the sight of so much English textile output being stored because it could not be traded. The ban on exports to Flanders had not only closed down their most lucrative market, but had allowed their great trade rivals, the Hanseatic League, to take over their markets for woven woollen goods, and the framework knitters were also beginning to feel the financial pinch, since no-one wanted to buy their product simply in order to store it in a rat-infested riverbank warehouse.

  Henry was kept ignorant of most of this by Morton, who was responsible for the seething atmosphere that was building up within yards of the Tower, in the mean streets bordering the wealthier establishments in Thames Street itself. Morton cheerfully reported that the English merchants who had previously been expanding their businesses in Bruges and Antwerp, using largely royal money at ten per cent interest, had nailed up their shutters and moved to Calais. When riots broke out in the dockside areas in mid-1495, Morton was able to convince Henry that it was directed solely at foreign ships that were docking without taking on English crews, or paying English customs dues, and Henry believed it because he wanted to.

  The man most welcome in the royal apartment in which Henry spent most of his time, alone and brooding, while the Queen preferred the more genial atmosphere among her daughters in the royal nursery up-river, was Richard Foxe, who was now openly in overall control of the largest spy network that the nation had ever known. His eyes and ears were concentrated in those home counties south of London that provided the most convenient coastal landing sites for any force from Flanders, bearing in mind the information supposedly sent to the pretender Warbeck by Stanley. Then shortly before sunset one afternoon in late June of 1495, Lord Daubeney urgently sought audience with Henry.

  ‘It is happening, Your Majesty! The Pretender has sailed with a small army, and is expected on our shores within the day!’

  Henry breathed out a long sigh of relief. One way or another, it would soon be over.

  IX

  Perkin Warbeck ordered the first three of his vessels, containing one hundred and fifty of his soldiers, to land on the beach ahead of them through the breaking surf, but there was a commanding shout from the high ground above the beach, and out of the sand dunes rose lines of archers in the livery of England, firing volley after volley as the Flemish troops began dropping by the dozen. Confusion and chaos reigned, while Warbeck watched in horror as his spearhead army was decimated before his eyes. The men on horseback raced down through the dunes to finish off the few surviving Flemings who had waded back through the surf in retreat, hoping to scramble back on board the vessels that had brought them, before they could be cut down by an English axe or broadsword. Only a handful succeeded, and Warbeck ordered his own vessel back out into the Channel, paralysed with shock as he dumbly gave instruction to plot a course to Ireland.

  Richard Foxe had once again triumphed at his own game. Warbeck had been lured out into the open by a series of letters, supposedly from an English knight named Sir Roland Melton, who did not exist. The letters had been penned by Foxe himself, had promised Warbeck that England would rise in his name against King Henry, and had been slipped to their victim by Foxe’s men posing as emissaries from the fictitious Sir Roland. It had then been a simple matter of posting English forces along the south coast until the invading vessels came into sight, and hiding men in the dunes before those approaching from the Channel could get close enough to see them, being preoccupied in looking for the mounted men on shore who, Warbeck had been promised, would convey him to safety while his army gathered in r
evolt.

  Foxe was not, however, smiling when he conveyed the news to Henry.

  ‘I regret, Your Majesty, that the usurper was not lured onto the shore, and therefore remains free. My information is that he is back in Ireland, where he hopes to be crowned as Richard IV by the Earl of Desmond.’

  ‘There will be no reprisals against the Irish, since I rely on the more sensible of them to maintain my peace. As for those who support Warbeck, who are no doubt the same that supported Simnel, they will probably crown an ape next.’

  Even as they were speaking, Warbeck had failed to find the support he needed in Ireland, and was landing in Scotland, where he was well received by King James IV, who saw in this young pretender just the sort of excuse he needed to invade England.

  Henry had just received news of Warbeck’s arrival in Scotland when the first of two family tragedies overtook him. The young Princess Elizabeth had only recently celebrated her third birthday in the royal nursery at Eltham Palace when she began to sicken. She was put to bed, and every royal physician plied their skill in an attempt to halt the slow decline, but to no avail. Queen Elizabeth and her mother-in-law were beside themselves with worry, and Henry made an excuse of the urgency of various matters of State to keep himself at Westminster, and to conceal his own emotions, lest they be seen as a sign of weakness at a time when he needed to appear strong to the rest of the world.

  The news of baby Elizabeth’s death was brought to him late on the afternoon of 14th September 1495, while he was conducting a meeting of his Great Council to discuss the strategy they should adopt against the threat posed by Warbeck beyond the Tweed. Henry ordered a fast horse and a small Yeoman escort, and thundered into Eltham Palace courtyard just as a watery sun was setting over Richmond in the west. He found Elizabeth sobbing over the inert form of their daughter, surrounded by physicians who looked stunned and beaten.

  The young princess was buried in the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, in a service conducted by John Morton, in the Cardinal robes with which the Pope had invested him two years previously. Henry made a point of spending more time at Eltham, particularly after it was confirmed, almost as an expression of consolation by God himself within days of the funeral, that the Queen was again with child.

  Then, shortly before Christmas 1495, it was Jasper Tudor’s turn to leave the family in mourning. He had reached sixty-four years of age, a respectable achievement for the times in which he had lived, but he had grown increasingly depressed by his inability to lead an army of men, as he had so often done in the past. He took to his bed a week before he died, summoned his confessor and a local attorney, and calmly set about dictating his will in the certain knowledge that he was not long for this world. He was proved right on 21st December, and Christmas festivities were placed in abeyance while Henry and his mother went into official mourning. Neither of them attended the funeral itself, Margaret because she was overcome by grief, and Henry because of urgent matters of State. However, Henry arranged for the Mayor of Bristol to act as proxy for him, and to meet the coffin with a suitable retinue as it approached Keynsham Abbey.

  The day following the funeral, Henry was busy initialling Household accounts in his withdrawing chamber when an usher announced the arrival of his mother. He looked up briefly, and saw her standing silently in front of the door that she had closed behind her, the all-too familiar look of disapproval written clearly across her face.

  ‘I am engaged in affairs of State,’ Henry advised her, to break the silence and to justify the lowering of his eyes from the almost hypnotic stare.

  ‘You are too often involved in such matters,’ Margaret replied in a determined voice, ‘when you should perhaps be more concerned with matters closer to your heart — that is, if family still means aught to you.’

  ‘Your meaning?’ Henry asked casually, without lifting his eyes from the account roll, although he would have placed a large wager on what was coming next.

  ‘You would have no affairs of State to concern yourself with, were it not for the uncle who was buried yesterday, and whose funeral you did not even bother to attend.’

  ‘I have already given my reason for my absence,’ Henry replied. ‘We are threatened from Scotland, and if Foxe’s ferrets be correct, also from Cornwall. Uncle Jasper would have been the first to advise me to guard my realm.’

  ‘The realm he all but handed to you, along with my husband,’ Margaret replied stonily. ‘It seems that it is the role of your family to supply all that you require, in return for which they are ignored.’

  ‘Did I not reward Uncle Jasper enough?’ Henry countered.

  ‘Whether you did or no,’ his mother replied, ‘it would have been seen as a noble gesture on your part to have taken two days aside to pay your respects to him as a nephew, rather than as a king. The same respects that are due to your wife, who this very day is laid up in her chambers at Eltham with an aching of the spine that causes her much discomfort.’

  ‘Is there any risk to the child she is carrying?’ Henry asked.

  His mother’s eyes narrowed into a glare. ‘Is that all she is to you? A baby carrier? She is a woman — a wife — and someone who loves you dearly. She bears your children proudly, as would any loyal wife — is she somehow in a different position if she is also bearing heirs to the throne? And what of those royal children that she has already born? Are they not entitled to loving visits from their father, rather than loyal visits from their King?’

  Henry looked up sharply. ‘Were I of a mind to insult the woman who gave me birth, I would be inclined to observe that I visit my children in Eltham more often than my mother visited me in Pembroke.’

  The only answer was a snort, and the slamming of the chamber door. Henry was to learn at a later date that Margaret had ridden, with her retinue, to Keynsham Abbey, in order to leave money for prayers for Jasper’s soul, and for the commissioning of a stained glass window in his memory.

  Perkin Warbeck married Scottish noblewoman Catherine Gordon in January 1496, and Catherine immediately awarded herself the title ‘Duchess of York’, giving birth to their first child in September of that year, almost nine months to the day after their marriage. Foxe had his spies in the Scottish court in Edinburgh, who shared information with the Spanish ambassador to Scotland, from whom he learned that James IV was seeking to undermine the Treaty of Medina del Campo.

  Foxe was also able to confirm what Henry had already guessed — that James intended to use Warbeck as a figurehead for an invasion of England. Henry wasted no time in instructing the Earl of Surrey to ensure that his border territories were constantly patrolled by armed troops, who would be supplied by the Crown, and in order to pay for this he persuaded Parliament to grant him yet more taxes.

  This was far from popular in the city, where cloth merchants were still reeling from the impact of the trade embargo with Flanders, and in Cornwall, where taxes were being imposed in breach of a charter granted over a century earlier that had given the region’s tin extractors an exemption from tax. The mutterings in Cornwall began to translate into physical action, after a local blacksmith named Michael Joseph commenced plotting with a lawyer from Bodmin named Thomas Flamank to raise an army to march on London, and received unexpected support from a member of the old nobility, Baron Audley, who regarded recent events in England as some sort of dynastic plague. In the belief that men of the south-east would rise up once they had arrived in London, the three men began to assemble an army, which had soon risen to fifteen thousand in strength, although it was poorly armed and even more poorly commanded.

  As ever, it was Chancellor Morton who brought Henry the good news and the bad news.

  ‘It is feared, Your Majesty, that if the Cornishmen receive the support of the city merchants, they could fund an army to march on London.’

  ‘And as ever, Morton, I assume that you have brought me the solution to the problem before announcing the problem itself?’

  ‘Indeed, Your Majesty. Foxe a
dvises me that the Flemish are at breaking point with the trade embargo that is also causing such unrest among the city merchants. This might be a good opportunity to negotiate with Philip of Burgundy for favourable terms upon which to lift that embargo. It is now unnecessary anyway, since the Dowager Duchess can offer no new aid to the pretender Warbeck, and is in any case deprived of many of her dowager estates since her meddling in the Warbeck matter has cost the Duchy so much in financial terms.’

  ‘And the Cornish matter?’ Henry enquired.

  Morton shook his head. ‘I must leave military affairs in your hands, Your Majesty. I merely suggest that an end to the trade embargo with Burgundy would silence the London mob, and make them less inclined to support any uprising in Cornwall. They would be too busy, in any case, making up for lost time and revenue by reviving their business interests.’

  ‘Who would you propose that we send to negotiate with Duke Philip?’

  ‘Who else but Foxe, Your Majesty? He knows men’s weaknesses more than most, and I feel sure that if there are favourable terms to be wrenched from Duke Philip while he is at his weakest, Foxe will secure them.’

  ‘I have no doubt that he will,’ Henry replied with a grimace, ‘and I only pray to God that the day does not dawn when I am at that man’s mercy. Instruct him to proceed with the negotiations.’

  Within a fortnight, the deal had been brokered, and the final document was signed in February 1496. It was officially known as the Intercursus Magnus, and unofficially recognised as a humiliating climb-down by the Duke of Burgundy, and a slap in the face for his meddling grandmother Margaret, who realised that she had played her last card, and retired ungracefully to what few estates she had left. The reciprocal customs duties imposed on imports and exports between England and Flanders were so favourable to England that merchants who had recently been cursing Henry so roundly were now heard raising their wine goblets to propose toasts to his long life and good fortune.