The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (21 page)

Buckingham made a persuasive speech to the mayor and aldermen of London and treated the Lords to the same on the following day. They all, ‘fearing for their own safety, decided to declare Richard King and request him to assume the duties of government’. He accepted and the nation was told that there would still be a coronation, but it would now be the Protector who would be crowned. The full argument and logic of Richard’s right to the throne was then set out in a bill,
Titulus Regius
, which Professor Ross describes as a mixture of specious moralizing and deliberate deceit.

There was no word about the poor little princes, but Mancini, who was recalled to France immediately after the Protector’s coronation, reported, ‘I saw many men moved to weeping and lamentation at the mention of his name. However, I have not yet been able to establish whether he was done away with and, if so, by what means.’

The princes were never seen again. They had been in the Protector’s care and he had absolute power. His contemporaries believed he was guilty of murder, and one of the more reliable of the London chronicles has a persuasive report: ‘as the said King Richard had put to death the Lord Chamberlain and other gentlemen...He also put to death the two children of King Edward, for which cause he lost the hearts of the people.’ 40

Nevertheless the Protector was crowned King Richard III, by the grace of God and with great ceremony, on Sunday 6 July. The master of the ceremony was the Duke of Buckingham, but his wife, Catherine Woodville, Edward’s and Anthony’s sister, was absent. Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor’s mother and married to Lord Stanley, carried Queen Anne’s train and kept her thoughts to herself. After the coronation they sat down to a dinner that was served on dishes of gold and silver. During the second course Sir Robert Dymmock, the King’s Champion, entered, armed and on horseback. He proclaimed: ‘Whoever shall say King Richard the third was not lawfully King, he would fight him at all hazards,’ and to ratify the engagement, threw down his gauntlet. The hall resounded: ‘King Richard, God save King Richard.’ Sir Robert repeated his challenge three times, then drank wine from a gilded cup which he carried away as his fee.41

But the coronation posed questions for honest men. Lord Dynham, in command at Calais, wrote to the new King asking how the officers were to square his accession to the throne with their previous oaths of loyalty to Edward V. King Richard replied with the full text of
Titulus Regius
, which seemed to do the trick, but others were unconvinced. Many of his brother’s lieutenants and retainers had supported Richard while they thought he could provide stability, but once they knew he had betrayed his nephew, then they would only acquiesce until there was an alternative.

On 23 July Anthony’s will was disregarded and the Scales lands were granted to the Duke of Norfolk. Edward Woodville, lurking in the Channel, can have had no doubt about the state of the nation. His two ships had eluded the Protector’s squadrons but the news was very depressing. There were his nephews, the little princes, locked up in the Tower; his brother Anthony executed or rather murdered, together with his old playmate Richard Grey; Hastings summarily executed; bishops locked up and, to cap it all, Duke Richard of Gloucester crowned king. What a litany of disaster.

However, he had £10,201 in gold coin, two good ships42 and a company of soldiers who were ‘most devoted to the commander Edward’. So there he was, cruising in the Channel, wondering what to do next.

‘You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate; there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French Council.’ So, according to Shakespeare, said Henry V, King of England, to Katherine, Princess of France, when he was wooing her after his brilliant victory at Agincourt.2 Henry won her but died after only two years of marriage, leaving a beautiful widow and a very young heir.

There was little agreement on how to run the country but at least there was agreement about the Queen – public interest required the hero’s widow to be on a pedestal, out of the reach of man. However, from a modest background in Wales came a young man with a twinkle in his eye, Owen Tudor, who took employment as a Clerk of the Wardrobe in the Dowager Queen’s household. According to Vergil he was ‘a gentleman of Wales, adorned with wonderful gifts of body and mind, who derived his pedigree from Cadwallider, the last King of Britons’.

One of the better stories has Owen at a dance. The music was fast, the drink flowed, the dancers whirled and Owen, distinctly the worse for wear, collapsed into the Queen’s lap. It was a good way of gaining her attention. Elis Gruffydd, the Welsh chronicler, has a different story: the Queen first saw Owen swimming in a river on a summer’s day. He caught her watching, grabbed her and tried for a kiss. In the scuffle that followed her cheek was scratched, which caused blushing and embarrassment when he was serving her at dinner the following day. Whatever the truth of their courting, Owen and Katherine married secretly and had three children, Edmund, Jasper and Owen (a fourth died young).

French Kate died in 1437 and the Council suddenly discovered that their hero’s wife had not only remarried but had married someone of ‘neither birth nor property’. They were furious and threw Owen into gaol, but he escaped by ‘hurting foul his keeper’. When recaptured he seemed unable to prove the marriage; nevertheless the young King Henry VI, who had no other family, decided to recognize his half-brothers. Edmund, the eldest, was made Earl of Richmond and was later provided with a rich bride; Jasper became Earl of Pembroke, while Owen became a monk.

Edmund’s bride was Margaret Beaufort, but he did not enjoy his luck for long and died soon after, leaving a heavily pregnant 13-year-old widow. Their son was Henry Tudor, the new Earl of Richmond, born in 1457 in Pembroke Castle. Through his mother he had a distant but flawed claim to the throne of England, as his great-grandfather was the legitimized bastard son of John of Gaunt.3 It was enough to make him a pawn in the power game and after the Lancastrian defeat at Towton, Lord Herbert discovered Henry at Pembroke. He took the boy in charge and was granted the – lucrative – wardship, so young Henry spent the next few years in the Herbert establishment at Raglan Castle.

Then came Warwick’s invasion in late 1470. Henry’s uncle Jasper returned and collected Henry from Raglan. However, the battle of Tewkesbury put paid to his plans and Jasper was forced to retreat to Pembroke taking Henry with him. With King Edward’s men following hard on his heels, Pembroke Castle became unsafe. They rode over to Tenby and took a ship for France but bad weather blew them off course to Brittany.

Duke Francis thought his unexpected visitors could be useful and welcomed them. His mother, Jeanne, a daughter of King Charles VI of France, was sister of the late Queen Katherine so Henry was his first cousin, as well as being a cousin of King Louis of France. Vergil observed that he was ‘the only imp now left of King Henry VI’s blood’, which was not true, but what a court historian might be expected to say.

The news reached London where King Edward ‘had intelligens that therles [the Earls] of Pembrowgh and Richmond were transported into Bryteyn’, so he sent an ambassador with instructions to bring them to London. ‘The duke [of Brittany] herd willingly King Edwards ambasage and when he understood therles were so rich a prey he determynyd not to let them go.’ 4

They stayed in Brittany, sometimes under protective custody in the massive octagonal tower at the Château de Largoët, but at other times in almost complete freedom. But they were prisoners and pawns for Duke Francis to use in his diplomatic manoeuvring. However, he also protected them and gave allowances according to their importance: Henry, being (nearly) of the blood royal, received substantially more than Jasper.5

Henry of Richmond, this cousin of kings and princes and possible pretender to the English throne, was 26 in 1483. His mother was now married to her fourth husband, Lord Stanley; she was rich, ambitious for her only child and unconcerned by an old proviso that barred her family from the royal succession.6

Henry appears to have been a natural leader with considerable charm, although he was totally unproven, having spent most of his life kicking his heels in exile. His portrait shows a bony, intelligent face with a big nose, shrewd calculating eyes and a generous mouth. Polydore Vergil, his court historian, wrote, ‘His body was slender but well-built and strong; his height above average. His appearance was remarkably attractive and his face cheerful especially when speaking; his eyes were small and blue.’

King Edward would have liked those Lancastrian earls back in England and under his control but Duke Francis refused to part with his pawns. Anthony had been commissioned to bring them back when he was there in 1472 but had failed. At least the Duke had given King Edward an undertaking that Henry and his uncle would not be allowed to make mischief in England.

However, ten years on and King Edward’s view of the threat seemed to be changing. The previous June he had given permission for Henry to inherit lands worth £400 a year, provided he returned to England ‘to be in the grace and favour of the King’. Perhaps more importantly, there had been a discussion between the King, Margaret Beaufort (Henry’s mother), her husband Lord Stanley and Bishop Morton about a marriage between Henry and the Princess Elizabeth of York.7 Nothing had come of it and now the King was dead while Henry was still the Duke’s ‘guest’ (Vergil says Henry was released from ‘prison’ as soon as Duke Francis heard of King Edward’s death).

Into this fertile territory sailed Edward Woodville in June 1483.
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
had sailed out of the Solent in late May and we know he was in Brittany because on 13 July one of King Richard’s clerks, Thomas Hutton, ‘a man of pregnant wit’, was commissioned to go to Brittany and discuss areas of mutual interest but particularly to ‘feel and understand the mind and disposition of the Duke about Sir Edward Woodville and his retinue, practising by all means to him possible to search and know if there be any intended enterprise out of land upon any part of this realm, certifying with all due diligence all the news and disposition there from time to time’.8

The arrival of the ships with some 200–300 well-armed soldiers and around 130 seamen to join the neglected earls would have caused a sensation. These two Tower ships were brightly painted in vermilion (bright red), gold, russet, bice (sky blue), red, white etc, with standards and long streamers flying and their sides lined with pavesses (wooden shields) decorated with coats of arms in brilliant colours.9

While there is no documentary evidence that tells how Edward arrived or who was with him, circumstantial evidence has him arriving in
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
. Both he and those ships were last recorded escaping from English waters in late May.10 King Richard knew he had a retinue with him and was worrying what he might do with it. Importantly, around then there was a marked increase in Henry’s credibility which coincides with Edward’s arrival at the ducal court and the addition of 200–300 unnamed Englishmen recorded in Vannes.

These men were not there before. Presumably they came from
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
; Edward is the only commander who – with his soldiers – is known to have left England at that date. There is some confirmation in the cases of William Slater (or Sclatter) and William Comersal. In June 1483 Slater had been dismissed as keeper of the park at Whitemede because he had ‘gone to sea with Sir Edward Wodeville’.11 The next time Slater makes the records is after Bosworth, in September 1486, when he is reappointed park keeper at Whitemede and also becomes ‘bailiffe of Chadlyngton’. Later, in March 1488, he was appointed a Yeoman of the Crown.

William Comersal was captain of
The Trinity
in 1478 and, while little else is known of him, it might be assumed he was still her captain in 1483 and so went to Brittany. He was appointed ‘Clerk of the Ships’ in August 1488, the key job of controlling the King’s naval organization. Henry Tudor favoured those who had been with him in Brittany and this would account for the appointment of an ordinary sea captain to a top job.

If
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
docked in Brittany then presumably the ships remained there to form the core of the Tudor navy, rather than going back to face King Richard’s anger. What of the 156.8kg of gold coin? The only reference is rather oblique, Mancini believed Edward had taken the treasure from the Tower, but there was no treasure in the Tower to take. However, perhaps Mancini heard that Edward had taken treasure in a general sense and been told, or assumed, the Tower was the source. Duke Richard would certainly be worrying about Edward and his war chest.

We have no idea where the gold came from or how its owner reacted to the sequestration.12 Did Edward deliver it to the new King-in-waiting, use it to pay his men while they waited or squirrel it away? The records are silent but if the ships and men did stay with Henry, which is probable, then the cost of paying and feeding all those soldiers and sailors would be at least £60 per week, or £3,120 a year. There is every reason to suppose that Edward was an honourable knight and so he would regard himself bound by the terms of his receipt. He was the custodian of the gold and responsible for it to the
legitimate
king. But that was not Richard and, until he knew better, it was his nephew, Edward.

The arrival of
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
heralded the start of the 25-month rush which took Henry from – effectively – being a prisoner, dependent on whim and goodwill, to the crown of England. Edward and his retinue13 had suddenly given the Tudor cause real credibility and wherewithal.