The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (2 page)

Henry Stafford, second son of Anne Neville and Humphrey Stafford. Married to Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond. Uncle of Harry Stafford.

John Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire, third son of Anne Neville and Humphrey Stafford. Uncle of Harry Stafford.

Joan, daughter of Anne Neville and Humphrey Stafford. Married to William Knyvet. Aunt of Harry Stafford.

Humphrey Stafford, younger brother of Harry Stafford.

Edward Stafford, later third Duke of Buckingham, son of Harry Stafford and Kate Woodville.

Henry (“Hal”) Stafford, son of Harry Stafford and Kate Woodville.

Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of Harry Stafford and Kate Woodville.

t h e s t o l e n C r o w n i x Anne Stafford, daughter of Harry Stafford and Kate Woodville.

Humphrey Stafford, deceased son of Harry Stafford and Kate Woodville.

The Woodvilles

Richard Woodville, first Earl Rivers.

Jacquetta Woodville, Duchess of Bedford, his wife. Widow of John, Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry V.

Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, later second Earl Rivers. Son of Richard and Jacquetta. Married to Elizabeth Scales and to Mary Fitzlewis.

Elizabeth (“Bessie”) Woodville, queen to Edward IV. Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta. Previously married to John Grey.

Richard Woodville, later third Earl Rivers. Son of Richard and Jacquetta.

John Woodville, married to Katherine Neville, Duchess of Norfolk. Son of Richard and Jacquetta.

Jacquetta Woodville, married to John, Lord Strange. Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta.

Anne Woodville, married to William Bourchier. Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta.

Mary Woodville, married to William Herbert, later Earl of Pembroke.

Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta.

Lionel Woodville, later Bishop of Salisbury. Son of Richard and Jacquetta.

Margaret Woodville, married to Thomas Fitzalan, Lord Maltravers, later Earl of Arundel. Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta.

Joan Woodville, married to Anthony Grey of Ruthin. Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta.

Edward Woodville. Son of Richard and Jacquetta.

Katherine (“Kate”) Woodville, Duchess of Buckingham, married to Harry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham; Jasper Tudor, later Duke of Bedford; and Richard Wingfield. Daughter of Richard and Jacquetta.

Thomas Grey, later Marquess of Dorset. Son of Elizabeth Woodville by John Grey. Married to Anne Holland and to Cecily Bonville.

Richard Grey. Son of Elizabeth Woodville by John Gray.

x s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m
The Nevilles

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (“the Kingmaker”).

Anne Beauchamp, his wife, Countess of Warwick.

Isabel Neville, Duchess of Clarence, daughter of Richard Neville and Anne Beauchamp. Married to George, Duke of Clarence.

Anne Neville, Duchess of Gloucester, later queen to Richard III. Daughter of Richard Neville and Anne Beauchamp. Married to Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, and to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III.

John Neville, Marquess of Montague, brother of Richard Neville.

George Neville, Archbishop of York, brother of Richard Neville.

The Tudors

Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, married to Edward Tudor, Earl of Richmond; Henry Stafford; and Thomas Stanley.

Henry Tudor, son of Margaret Beaufort and Edward Tudor. Later King Henry VII.

Jasper Tudor, brother-in-law of Margaret Beaufort and uncle of Henry Tudor. Later Duke of Bedford.

Others

Ralph Bannaster, retainer of Harry Stafford.

Edmund Beaufort, styled Duke of Somerset, maternal uncle of Harry Stafford.

Richard de la Bere, sheriff of Hereford.

Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, husband of Anne Neville, Duchess of Buckingham. Stepgrandfather of Harry Stafford.

Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex. Relative of Harry Stafford.

Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Robert Brackenbury, servant of Richard III.

Eleanor Butler, purported first wife of Edward IV. Sister of Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk.

t h e s t o l e n C r o w n x i William Catesby, official of Richard III.

William Caxton, printer.

Cecilia, attendant of Katherine Woodville.

Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter.

Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers, owner of the manor of Weobley.

William, Lord Hastings, courtier and friend of Edward IV.

John Howard, made Duke of Norfolk in 1483. Married to Margaret Howard.

Thomas Howard, made Earl of Surrey in 1483.

Richard Huddleston, servant of Richard III.

William Knyvet, uncle by marriage of Harry Stafford.

Francis, Viscount Lovell, courtier of Richard III.

John Morton, Bishop of Ely.

John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (died 1476). Married to Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk.

Anne Mowbray, their daughter. Wife to Edward IV’s son Richard, Duke of York.

Thomas Nandyke, physician and astrologer of Harry Stafford.

John Nesfield, servant to Richard III. Custodian of Elizabeth and Katherine Woodville.

Katherine Neville, Duchess of Norfolk. Married to John Woodville.

Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.

Richard Ratcliffe, official of Richard III.

Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York.

Thomas St. Leger, lover and later husband of Anne, Duchess of Exeter.

Elizabeth Shore, mistress of Edward IV.

Thomas Stanley, third husband of Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond.

Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells.

George, Lord Strange, son of Thomas Stanley. Married to Joan, niece of Elizabeth and Kate Woodville.

Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk. Sister of Eleanor Butler and mother of Anne Mowbray.

x i i s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m Thomas Vaughan, chamberlain of Edward IV’s son Edward, Prince of Wales.

The Vaughan family, residents of Tretower in Wales, unrelated to Thomas Vaughan.

John de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

Christopher Wellesbourne, servant of Richard III.

Richard Wingfield, servant of Kate Woodville.

“Now take heed what love may do, for love will not nor may not cast no fault nor peril in nothing.”

—
Gregory’s Chronicle
, on the marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville

i

Harry: November 1, 1483

You might think that the last night of a condemned traitor would be a rather solitary affair, but you would think wrong, for the last couple of hours have been bustling with people coming and going. In some ways I welcome the commotion; it keeps my mind from the object that lies hard by my lodgings here at the Blue Boar Inn in Salisbury. It is a scaffold, and I will be its first, and probably its last, occupant, for it has been built just for me. Such is the fate of a man who tries to take a king from his throne, and fails.

Yet I do wish that things were more peaceful so I could better gather my thoughts, for what I say in the next world about my life will determine whether I am saved or damned. The best way to explain myself, I suppose, is to start at the beginning.

People who knew all of us say—or said, for there are few of them alive now—that I favor my mother more than my father. I will have to take their word for it, for he died just a month or so after I turned three. I remember a man who bounced me on his shoulders and held me on his lap when I saw him, which was not all that often, and I remember the scar on his right hand, which I would trace wonderingly because it made the hand so different from my mother’s, soft and white, and my nurse’s, plump and scarred by nothing worse than years of honest labor.

Father’s scar was from the battle at St. Albans in May 1455. The battle had

2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m been a disastrous one for my family. My mother’s father, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, had died there, and his eldest son, Henry, had been hauled away insensible in a cart, more dead than alive. My paternal grandfather, Humphrey, had had his face slashed, and my father too had been badly injured. Worse, the battle had left the Duke of York the ruler of England in all but name, and my family had fought for the House of Lancaster.

All of this must have dispirited my parents, and I like to think I cheered them a little when I was born on the fourth day of September of that year and when I was named not Humphrey, the name my father and his father bore, but Henry, after the king for whom they had fought. I do hope indeed I cheered them, for in my eight-and-twenty years in this world I do not think I can say that I have done so for many people.

In the fall of 1458, the pestilence, which in those days still swept through England regularly, paid one of its dreaded visits. It did what the Yorkists had failed to do—kill my father. As I was now the heir to the dukedom of my grandfather, he and my grandmother wished to take custody of me. So to their care I went, once the pestilence had stopped its raging and it was considered safe for me to travel. I was not much upset at the change. The two mainstays of my existence at that time were my nurse and my puppy, and both went with me.

I came to know my grandfather somewhat better than I had my father, being more of an age now to observe what went on around me—and being doted on by my grandparents besides that. (Four of their seven sons had died young, my father had just died, and neither of my surviving uncles, Henry and John, had sons yet. I, therefore, was precious.) Grandfather, Humphrey Stafford, was a good man who tried to do what was best for England and to protect King Henry while trying to reach some sort of accord with the Duke of York. If only he had lived longer for me to profit by his example!

As I settled into my new life with my grandparents, Fortune’s Wheel, which had been spinning back and forth with regularity, spun in the direction of Lancaster. As a result, not long before the Christmas of

t h e s t o l e n C r o w n 3

1459, visitors arrived at my grandparents’ Essex manor of Writtle: Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, and her three youngest children, Margaret, George, and Richard. Cecily was my grandmother’s younger sister.

Needless to say, she and my Lancastrian grandmother had not been on the warmest of terms as of late, and though we politely referred to her and her children as our guests, it was no social visit the Duchess of York was paying now. The Duke of York was in exile, and his wife had been placed in my grandmother’s custody at the order of King Henry.

Since the youngest of the York children, Richard, has proven to be the death of me, I wish I could say there was a sense of doom from the first day of our meeting back at Writtle, but of course there wasn’t. I was four at the time, just a month shy of being three years younger than Richard and nearly six years younger than George. My younger brother, Humphrey, who had been born shortly before my father died, was living with my mother. Thus, up until now there had been no other boys in the household except for pages, whose duties kept them to themselves. Naturally, I was delighted by this new company. I tagged along behind the York brothers, did my best to insinuate myself into their games, and tried with all my might to impress them. I am sure they regarded me as a thoroughgoing nuisance—and a Lancastrian nuisance at that. Probably I was an annoyance in another way as well. At the time, neither Richard nor George was a duke or a king’s brother; they were simply two younger sons, far less important in the grand scheme of things than their father or their two older brothers, Edward and Edmund, both of whom were earls. Even at my young age, I, on the other hand, knew full well that I would be the next Duke of Buckingham, heir to one of the richest estates in the realm. I probably pointed this out more often than was strictly necessary.

Yes, I must have been completely insufferable.

Grandmother counted Queen Margaret among her dear friends and often said that the queen was only doing what was right, fighting for her husband’s throne and that of her dear little son, Edward. She could not forbear from expressing this opinion to Cecily, who as Duchess of York

4 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m held a view that was considerably to the contrary. Because of this, there was occasional tension in the household, but for the most part, the sisters rubbed along well enough. Both, after all, were worried for their husbands and sons, and both knew that their lives could be changed at a stroke of a battle ax.

For about seven months, we lived together in this fashion. Then, one day in July 1460, I was confined indoors with a bad cold, much to my disgust, for it was the first day in several that it had not rained. George and Richard were outdoors shooting at butts, and I deluded myself that I had improved my skill enough to give them at least a hint of competition. Some men came to see Grandmother on business, and she left the solar where the rest of us had gathered and was gone awhile. I was tossing a ball to my dog, and Cecily and her daughter Margaret were at their embroidery, when Richard and George rushed into the room as Cecily was critiquing Margaret’s stitches. “Mother! Do you know what has happened?”

“Obviously not. George, when will you learn not to interrupt?”

“It is important, Mother. Truly. We heard it from the servants of the men who came here just now. Mad King Henry has been taken captive by the Earl of Warwick and Ned!”

“It was at a place called Northampton,” put in Richard.

“It’s a disaster for Lancaster, Mother! The men who were guarding that fool Henry’s tent were killed by the Kentishmen. They didn’t stand a chance. The Earl of Shrewsbury, Egremont, the Viscount Beaumont—and best of all, the Duke of Buckingham! Dead, all of them! The rats.”