Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens (12 page)

F
or 30 years in the 15th century England was torn by the vicious struggle between rival pretenders to the throne. The source of the conflict lay in the deep bitterness of dynastic rivalry. From the sons of Edward III had sprung two great families, the houses of York and Lancaster, each believing it had the legitimate claim to the throne.

Open conflict did not break out until the 1450s when the Hundred Years War with France came to an end. Military minds could then focus on the reign of Lancaster’s Henry VI, whose weakness and increasing insanity seemed to invite an opportunist to grab the reins. Into this apparent power vacuum strode the impressive Edward IV, tall handsome and warrior-like – quite unlike his Lancastrian counterpart.

The woman Edward chose to be his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, was young and beautiful, but of low birth and, more important, Lancastrian. Edward kept the marriage under wraps. When at last he was asked in public whom he should marry, after a moment of embarrassment he confessed his secret. His wife was also a widow; her married name being Grey, of the same family that would produce the hapless Lady Jane of the next century.

The intrigues of the ensuing Wars of the Roses are too complex to cover here but it is curious that such a militaristic name for three decades of conflict involved scarcely half a dozen battles. The clashes tended to go over the heads of the ordinary people – taking place as they did in the palaces of the south and dour castles of the north. In that sense the conflict didn’t constitute a civil war either.

Despite Edward’s military prowess and popularity, he did not bargain for the power of the ‘Kingmaker’, as Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, came to be known. Owner of vast wealth across the Midlands his will, more than any other’s, carried the day.

When half way through the long struggle Warwick switched allegiance to the exiled Henry, King Edward was forced to flee, coming close to drowning in The Wash as he dashed across the North Sea for refuge. Thereupon, the now mad Henry was reinstated on the throne, albeit briefly.

When Edward returned a year later, in 1471, to avenge himself, the Yorkist king was triumphant on the battlefields of Barnet and Tewkesbury. The Lancastrian armies were shattered and, as important, the earl of Warwick was dead. The way was clear for Edward to resume his kingship. Henry was dispatched to the Tower where he lost his head, literally, and Edward ruled for another 12 years, quite a feat in wartime.

T
oo often Richard III’s career is judged by his murder of the Princes in the Tower. The bad press that blackened his character came from two main sources, both posthumous: the biased biographer of Henry VII, who defeated Richard III on the field of Bosworth, and William Shakespeare, who may have read this biography for his information and from it created the caricature of the king we see as a monstrous hunchback.

It is on record that the two Princes were held in the Tower, never to be seen again, and that Richard was responsible for their deaths. Even by 15th century standards the double murder of two innocent children was horrific, and no doubt contributed to Richard’s downfall.

But many wonder if history has yet judged him unfairly. For 30 of the 33 years of his life, Richard was a conscientious administrator and general, deeply loyal to his brother Edward IV, and a faithful husband. Indeed, were he to have died in 1483 instead of his brother, he would have gone down in history as a decent chap. So why did everything go horribly wrong?

The political intrigues that constantly fuelled the Wars of the Roses came to a precipitate conclusion in the events that led to that decisive Battle of Bosworth. The nub of the matter, as always, was to do with dynastic succession. Once the ruling monarch – in this case Edward IV – was dead rival claimants would scurry for supremacy.

Now, Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was set on promoting her son and heir apparent, Edward, to be the next king. But this was complicated by the fact that his uncle Richard, who had so ably supported Edward IV in his affairs of state had been nominated in his will as Protector of the young prince. At this stage, did Richard have designs on the throne or was he content to usher his nephew to it?

Once Edward IV was dead, Elizabeth, being born of lowly stock, was nervous of her position and feared that Richard might gather the aristocracy to support his bid for the crown. Furthermore, many nobles, perhaps including Richard, blamed the queen and her advisors for the death of Richard’s other brother Clarence, who had been sentenced to death for treason. Richard was said to be ‘overcome with grief’, and duly set up two religious foundations to pray for his dead brother and other members of the royal family. A court chronicler of the time wrote that the Woodvilles ‘were afraid that if Richard took the crown, they who bore the blame of Clarence’s death would suffer death or at least be ejected from their high estate’.

Therefore, after her royal husband’s death in April 1483, the queen arranged for her son Edward to be brought from Ludlow to London as quickly as possible for safety sake. The trouble was, too many lords of the land supported Richard in preference to the queen, and through them Richard got wind of her plans. At this point it has to be asked, what was his best course of action?

Queen Elizabeth’s intentions were clear. She was going to get her young son crowned as soon as possible. Indeed preparations were being made for a coronation on 24 June, just weeks away. Once Richard’s responsibility as Protector was dissolved, he would be vulnerable. For Edward, aged twelve, was considered in those days to be nearly an adult. On becoming king, he was not going to favour Richard over his own mother. The solution was simple: to survive, Richard had to rule, and to rule he had to be king. It was a dog-eat-dog situation.

So, on hearing the news that the young prince was travelling to London, Richard and his men headed south, kidnapped the prince and took him to the Tower. The rest, as they say, is history. Richard had also to kidnap the second of Elizabeth’s sons to eliminate his possible accession.

A rumour was circulated that the princes were bastards in any case. With power to his elbow, Richard had little difficulty in persuading parliament to present him with the crown in the absence of legitimate contenders.

Though he won this round, Richard was still up against it. For Elizabeth would not lie down easily. Though she had given up hope of ever seeing her two sons again, she could wrest the crown from this Yorkist usurper by presenting one Henry Tudor, sole surviving Lancastrian claimant, with the hand of her daughter in marriage. She being the daughter of Edward IV would help Tudor’s cause to rule. And so it was, when Richard fell on the field at Bosworth in 1485 – the last English king to die in battle – that the Plantagenet dynasty came to an end, to be replaced by the Tudors. It was a milestone in English history. From now on, the country was no longer beset by medieval struggles in arms but bloomed in the growing prosperity of the modern era.

U
nder the guidance of Henry VII the country laid the foundation of future Tudor strength. Efficient and continuous government, without the enervating preoccupation with war that beset every Plantagenet administration, enabled the nation’s energies to create wealth. The wool and cloth industries expanded bringing more sterling than ever before into the nation’s coffers.

Henry VII was probably the first businessman to be king of England. Not only did he quietly set about building up the country, he was astute enough to seize an opportunity when it came his way.

That opportunity came in the form of an Italian navigator named John Cabot. Having pondered the news of Columbus’s discovery of America five years earlier, Henry had thought of commissioning the Spanish explorer to search out new sources of wealth overseas for British commercial interests. When Cabot turned up with his own promises to find new ocean routes to Japan and China – which were thought to be accessible by sailing west across the Atlantic – Henry was delighted to fund him.

The king made available all that Bristol had to offer, with its long heritage in shipping. Accompanied by 20 English mariners, Cabot set sail from Bristol quay aboard the
Matthew
in 1497 and crossed the Atlantic in 35 days – the first seafarer to cross the northern Atlantic since the Vikings. Unsure of where he had made landfall, Cabot simply named the place New-Found Land, and planted the Tudor flag and standard of St Mark, the symbol of Venice.

Returning to England amid much confusion about where or what he had discovered, most agreed it must be northern Asia, and that the highly valued spice islands would be but a short sail away. The king rewarded the captain’s daring deed with the sum of £10, plus a pension of £20 a year, and, perhaps of greater importance, the promise of a second venture, this time with a larger fleet.

Alas the voyage got lost among the icebergs of Greenland and was forced home. Not long afterwards, Henry VII breathed his last. But the expeditions had set the tone for a century of exploration that would turn the realm into an empire.

N
ever happy with the border line that separated England from their country, the Scots took certain opportunities when they arose to raid the northern counties of England. One highly respected king, who was reputedly obsessed with the arts of war, was 23 year-old James IV, who made several such raids successfully in the 1490s.

In a bid to expand his military ambition, James entertained the idea of allying himself to a pretender to the English throne in the person of Perkin Warbeck. The 22 year-old Warbeck claimed to be none other than Edward IV’s son, Richard duke of York, whom everyone in England believed had perished in the Tower at the hands of his enemy Richard III.

Living in exile, Purbeck further claimed to have support from the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. Having tried to land at Deal in Kent in 1495 and been defeated by Henry VII’s defences, Warbeck was welcomed by James at his court in Edinburgh. Indeed the Englishman was accepted as Richard IV and even married off to the king’s cousin.

Much to Warbeck’s disappointment, however, James was not prepared to undertake a serious challenge to Henry VII’s forces, with or without his ally’s support. Instead, the Scottish king decided on a truce, one which ushered in a new era of peace after two centuries of intermittent conflict.

In 1503, by way of confirmation of this treaty, James married Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. The Stewart thistle and Tudor rose became symbolically entwined in political union. With the death of Henry VII’s eldest son Arthur the previous year, Margaret was now second in line to the throne. Should anything happen to the English king’s second son, Henry, the English throne would pass to James Stewart.

However, a leopard never changes its spots. James could not resist the opportunity to have one more go at the old enemy when Louis XII of France waged war with England, leaving the north country open to attack. Alas, the Scot underestimated the strength of the English army and came unstuck. At the Battle of Flodden he and 10,000 of his countrymen lost their lives in one of the biggest slaughters ever by the English foe.