The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (19 page)

The King-to-be-crowned made a spirited protest in favour of Rivers and Grey: ‘What my brother Marquis hath done I cannot say but, in good faith, I dare well answer for mine uncle Rivers and my brother here, that they be innocent of any such matters.’ But this was unceremoniously brushed aside. Duke Richard was intent on his coup, not interested in the truth or the views of a 12-year-old. He put his nephew under ‘protection’, dismissed the royal servants and sent the escort back to Ludlow. Richard had won the first round. He took his prize back to Northampton while gallopers headed for London with the news that he had ‘come upon him [the King] with a strong force at Stony Stratford and took the new King into his governance by right of his protectorship’.

The flavour of that report indicates that the escort was much smaller in number than the 600 men of Gloucester and Buckingham, and certainly not the 2,000 of popular history. Gloucester and Buckingham celebrated over dinner in Northampton and sent a dish of food from the table to the imprisoned Anthony who sent his thanks but, thinking of his companion, asked that the food be taken onto Richard Grey, ‘who unused to adversity needed comfort the more. He himself was well acquainted with the fickleness of fortune.’

Reports of the abduction brought chaos in London. Hastings was delighted, Queen Elizabeth distraught. Archbishop Rotherham, the Chancellor, hurried to Westminster and found a scene of torch-lit confusion with crates, boxes, furniture and tapestries being dragged from the palace to the sanctuary. To speed the operation a hole had been knocked in the sanctuary wall to pass things through directly from the palace. The Queen was sitting ‘alone, a-low on the rushes all desolate and dismayed’.

By the next day Duke Richard’s advance guard had established control, with pickets patrolling the Thames and guards on the sanctuary gates. Four days later the King-to-be rode into London flanked by his uncles, the new Protector and Buckingham. The prince wore blue velvet and his escort of 500 men were all unarmed and dressed in black; but the column was led by four wagons loaded with barrels of armour, some of which was decorated with the Woodville crest.

Criers escorted the wagons and shouted that Earl Rivers had gathered this armour for use against the Duke of Gloucester. The Londoners were not impressed by the story or display, recognizing it as propaganda. Duke Richard had almost certainly lifted the barrels of arms from Grafton when he took his nephew into protection; it would have been the usual reserve of arms and armour kept by noblemen to equip their levies in time of war.

There is an odd snippet from the days that young Edward had spent with his uncles Richard and Harry. On the flyleaf of a book (now in the British Library) there is the signature ‘R. Edwardus Quintus’ (King Edward V). Some way beneath, as if to demonstrate service, his uncle has written ‘Loyaulte me lie. Richard Gloucestre’ (bound by loyalty). Below again is ‘Sounte me souenne. Harre Bokyngham’ (Remember me often). The boy must have felt fortunate to have two such affectionate uncles.

Duke Richard had decided that the coronation must be postponed, but to allay fears that he had some secret agenda the peers and bishops were asked to swear loyalty to his nephew as King Edward V. He sacked Rotherham as Lord Chancellor and appointed John Russell, the Bishop of Lincoln and a career court official.

Anthony and his two fellow prisoners were sent north to different castles. The Protector at his first Council meeting proposed a charge of treason against them. There was not a shred of evidence, so the Council rejected the charges. None of the members could see any treason, but nevertheless the prisoners remained incarcerated. The Queen stayed firmly in sanctuary with her younger son and daughters but that did not concern Richard. He put guards on the doors, which effectively meant they were his prisoners. The Protector’s immediate problem was Edward Woodville and his fleet.

On 9 May Duke Richard sent his own men to take over command of Edward’s castle at Porchester and Anthony’s at Carisbrooke. He also instructed that Dover and Sandwich be prepared to resist an attack by Edward – good anti-Woodville propaganda. The following day he commissioned ‘Sir Thomas Fulford and one Halwelle to rig them to sea in all haste and go to the Downs [between Deal, on the Kent coast, and the Goodwin Sands] among Sir Edward and his company’.

Also on 10 May he wrote to the Mayor of Plymouth instructing him to hand over two French ships to his authority – might these have been captured by Edward? Then Duke Richard received news of the fleet being around the Solent, because, four days later, ‘Edward Brampton, John Wellis and Thomas Grey’ received writs ‘to go to the sea with ships to take Sir Edward Wodevile’. This sounds more like a move against a small squadron rather than a 20-ship fleet. There were also further instructions to the new custodians of Porchester and Carisbrooke to victual and furnish those ships and the order for a soft line, ‘to receive all that will come except the Marquis, Sir Edward Wodevile and Robert Ratclyff’.22

On the same day (14 May) the unsuspecting Edward sailed into Southampton Water and boarded a merchant ship. He was going about his business calling himself ‘Sir Edward Wydeville knight, uncle unto our said sovereign Lord and great captain of his navy’. That was the description he used as he sequestered £10,201 of English gold coin that he had found on the ship. He signed an ‘indenture...that if it can be proved not forfeited unto the King...[Sir Edward] shall repay...the value of the said money in English merchandise within three month...if the said money to be forfeited then Sir Edward to be answering the King’.23

The sum of £10,201 was a fortune and would weigh some 350lbs (157kg). It was enough to put an army in the field for a couple of months and the equivalent of some 15 per cent of the full annual royal revenue. The receipt implies that Edward believed the gold belonged to the King and he was the best person to deliver it. The actual copy of this indenture that has survived came from King Edward V’s Council, so Duke Richard would be well aware that Edward had the money. The ownership of the money remains a mystery; coincidentally £10,000 (about 50,000 crowns) was the annual payment due under the Treaty of Picquigny, so one possible source was King Louis, who, surprised by English war preparations, might have decided to send the suspended payments. However, this is pure speculation.

In London the change of policy was total. The Protector sent an envoy to ‘the aggrieved Lord Cordes’ to discuss a non-aggression pact and the mutual restitution of ships and goods. Only a month previously Lord Cordes had been dangerous and leading the threat to the realm; now he was the aggrieved. It seems the King’s
‘
Great Captain’ had fought the French, made damages and captured some of their ships. From the Protector’s point of view he was a very dangerous man to have on the loose with his ships, men and a war chest.

The first squadron dispatched by the Protector had been unable to find Edward, which was hardly surprising as he was not in the Downs but in Southampton Water. The second was more successful but its leaders decided not to confront him. Instead, officers surreptitiously rowed out to his ships to subvert the crewmen and soldiers.

They told the soldiers and sailors that Sir Edward was a traitor and offered a big reward for him, dead or alive. They said his officers would be outlawed and the ship owner’s goods confiscated, unless immediate allegiance was given to the Protector. The reaction was mixed; the English soldiers remained loyal to Edward but the Genoese officers and seamen of the hired ships were in a quandary. Mancini relates:

For the purposes of that war the Genoese merchants trading in London had lent these vessels for a fixed time and manned them with Genoese sailors and captains...yet on hearing of the proclamation they realised they could not reasonably remain at war, not indeed without losing their wares and imperilling their countrymen...They had all the more reason for fear since on these two ships had been put a sprinkling of picked English troops, ones that were most devoted to the commander Edward.

Having decided where their best interests lay, it was then a question of how to get rid of the soldiers and to escape from Edward. One of the captains of the two Genoese ships was ‘a man excelling in wisdom and audacious resolution’, who concocted a plan. He arranged a special dinner for the soldiers on board, which was served along with copious quantities of wine and beer. Once the soldiers were happily fuddled, he left them saying he was going to look at the stars and climbed to the forecastle.

The carousing continued until suddenly the captain shouted down. He pretended he had seen new weather, ‘as though by unexpected chance favourable winds began to blow’. He ordered his men to make ready to sail and told the soldiers to clear the decks and go below. After some time the soldiers were called up again on deck and so they came, one by one, up through the hatches. But as they emerged, they were knocked out and tied up. A similar ambush on the other Genoese ship was equally successful. Once the Genoese had control of their ships they hoisted their colours, blew their trumpets and set sail. The rest of the squadron was thrown into confusion and the fleet broke up, with some ships sailing for port.

Edward was left with two ships,
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
. It is remarkable that the officers, seamen and soldiers of these two capital ships remained loyal to him and so became proscribed men. For instance, ‘one William Slater now goone to the see with Sir Edward Wodevile’ was stripped of his office of parkership of Whitemede Park, and on 19 May Sir Robert Radcliffe was deprived of his two farms in the Calais marches. Also on that day Lord Lovell was appointed Chief Butler in place of Anthony, while the park at Grafton had been handed over to a new custodian on 14 May, the day Brampton was commissioned to find Edward.24

The Protector again commissioned ships to seek out Sir Edward and demanded that Earl Rivers be indicted for treason. But the Council refused to accept the proposed charge of treason, although they did agree to postpone the coronation to 24 June.
The Crowland Chronicle
reported:

The powerful Lord Hastings, Chamberlain of Edward IV, who seemed to oblige the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham in every way and to have earned special favours from them, was overjoyed at this new world, declaring that nothing more had happened than the transfer of the rule of the Kingdom from two of the Queen’s relatives to two of the King’s. This had been achieved without any killing or any more spilling of blood than that from a cut finger.

Archbishop Rotherham started to worry about Gloucester’s motives, but Hastings, whose loyalty was not in doubt, assured him there was no danger for the young King to whom both he and Gloucester had sworn fealty. Hastings had never been so well off or so powerful. He had even taken into his protection the late King’s mistress, the beautiful Jane Shore, who had been very special to King Edward, ‘for many he had but her he loved’. She was ‘the merriest’ of the King’s mistresses, ‘ready and quick of answer’ as well as being ‘proper she was and fair’. Lucky Hastings, but around this time his trusted lieutenant Sir William Catesby switched allegiance and started to work covertly for the Protector.

Duke Richard needed to know the strength of Hastings’s commitment to the young princes. It was Catesby who was sent to test his loyalty and ‘found him so fast [to them]...that he durst [go] no further’. This attachment did not suit the Protector. It meant that Hastings was not only loyal to the young King, but in the medium term would be reconciled to the Woodvilles because he would know that the young King could not give up all his mother’s family.

Meanwhile the Protector, with the enthusiastic help of Buckingham, was drawing together the reins of power. On 10 June he secretly sent to the North for military help, ‘against the Queen, her blood, adherents and affinity which have intended to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin the Duke of Buckingham...by their subtle and damnable ways...and also the final destruction and disinheritance of you and all other men of honour, as well of the north parts as other countries that adhere to us’.

It was a brilliant letter accusing the Woodvilles of murder, treason, rebellion and sorcery and appealing to the citizens’ sense of honour, their instinct for the sanctity of inheritance, their regional sentiment and loyalty.25 In reality Richard had made certain that the Woodvilles were incapable of posing a threat to anyone. Even the clerical brother, Bishop Lionel, who seems to have been more interested in university business than state politics, had scuttled straight into sanctuary when he eventually arrived in London.26

A meeting of the Council was called for Friday 13 June, but different instructions were issued to different people. Lords Hastings and Stanley, Archbishop Rotherham and Bishop Morton of Ely were to meet at the Tower, the others at Westminster. Thomas More wrote that Hastings, on his way to the meeting, saw a herald he knew at the Tower wharf where they discussed a previous chance meeting at the same place: ‘In faith man,’ said Hastings, ‘I was never so sorry, nor stood in so great dread in my life as I did when thou and I met here. And lo, how the world has turned: now stand mine enemies in the danger, as thou mayest hap to hear more hereafter, and I never in my life so merry, nor never in so great surety.’ 27

It seems that Hastings was hinting that Anthony’s fate was on the Council’s agenda. He then passed on to join the meeting that opened well enough, with the Protector in fine spirits: ‘My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you send for some of them.’ He then left the meeting and returned an hour later, looking grim. ‘I pray you all, tell me what they deserve that do conspire my death with devilish plots!’ 28