Tudor (64 page)

11
.
  
Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan, 1385–1618, London HMSO (1912), pp. 18–19. The queen would be twenty-three in March.

12
.
  
PRO E404/69/145.

13
.
  
According to legend, the fourth-century saint had provided a poor father with dowries for his daughters by secretly throwing bags of gold into his house, where they landed in stockings hanging by the fire (and, of course, he became, in modern times, Father Christmas, a name from old English folk stories).

14
.
  
English Works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1469–1535): Sermons and Other Writings, 1520–1535
(ed Cecilia A. Hatt), p. 9; Caroline Halsted,
Life of Margaret Beaufort
(1839), p. 11.

15
.
  
Jones and Underwood,
The King's Mother
, p. 38.

16
.
  
Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV of France.

17
.
  
From whom George III was descended. Lindsay C. Hurst, ‘Porphyria Revisited' in
Medical History
26 (1982), pp. 179–82.

18
.
  
The queen named him after the saint and king, Edward the Confessor. This information is later mentioned in the main text. I have not done so here in an effort to reduce the blinding effect of a storm of names.

19
.
  
The abbot was called John Whethamstede. Peter Burley, Michael Elliott and Harvey Watson,
The Battles of St Albans
(2007), p. 35.

20
.
  
Probably inspired by Shakespeare's
Henry VI Part I
. In the relevant scene Richard, Duke of York, quarrels with Margaret Beaufort's uncle, Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. The two men ask others to show their respective positions by picking a rose – red for Somerset and white for York. The ‘quarrel of the two roses' was first mentioned in 1646; see Michael Hicks,
The Wars of the Roses
(2010), p. 13. Walter Scott coined the term ‘Wars of the Roses' in his 1829 novel
Anne of Geierstein
.

21
.
  
The earliest association with the House of Lancaster that I have found is the painting of the pavilion of Henry Bolingbroke, for the (cancelled) trial by combat he was to have with Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, in 1398. According to the French chronicle
Traison et Mort
it was covered with ‘
rouge fleurs
'; Dan Jones,
Plantagenets
(2012), p. 573. It was thanks to the Tudors that by the time Shakespeare wrote
Henry VI Part I
, the red rose was as indelibly associated with Lancaster as the white rose was with York.

22
.
  
The white rose associated with York was not used, as far as is known, as a badge by Richard, Duke of York. It has been suggested, however, that his ancestors the Earls of March may have done so.
This seems very possible given the family's importance in subsequent Yorkist claims to the throne. His son Edward IV, his daughter Margaret of Burgundy, and his other son Richard III all used the white-rose badge.

23
.
  
Sir William Cary of Cookington, who fought at the battle of Tewkesbury on the Lancastrian side in 1471, had white roses on his coat of arms. See Davies, ‘Information, disinformation . . .' , op. cit., n. 75.

24
.
  
Galar y Beirdd: Marwnadau Plant / Poets' Grief: Medieval Welsh Elegies for Children
(ed and tr. Dafydd Johnston) (1993), pp. 53–5.

25
.
  
Plague was recorded in England and Wales in eleven of the eighteen years between 1442 and 1459.

26
.
  
Henry VII built his father a modest Purbeck-marble tomb in the Franciscan monastery church and invested a few pounds for prayers and Masses to be said for his soul. It was erected in 1503, when Henry VII had been king for eighteen years, and he invested £8 a year towards a chantry for his father. See Cliff Davies, ‘Representation, Repute, Reality' in
English Historical Review
124, issue 511 (December 2009), pp. 1,432–47. The tomb was destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Edmund's grandson Henry VIII, and Edmund's body was moved to St David's Cathedral. Today the site of the ancient monastery is a shopping precinct. Although it was originally named Greyfriars after the monastery, the precinct was rebranded in 2010 as Merlin's Walk. Local councillors argue that legend sells better than the town's actual history.

27
.
  
As she recorded later to John Fisher; Jones and Underwood,
The King's Mother
, p. 40.

28
.
  
Eighty years later a visitor to the castle was to be shown a new chimney piece being built in the same room overlooking the river. It was carved with the heraldic badges and arms of the first Tudor monarch and was built to commemorate his birth.
The Itinerary in Wales of John Leland
(ed Lucy Toulmin Smith) (1906), p. 116.

29
.
  
Henry Stafford's elder brother (who died later that year) was already married to a Beaufort cousin, who had borne a son. Also called Margaret, she was the daughter of the 2nd Duke of Somerset killed at St Albans.

30
.
  
This is taken from John Fisher's obituary sermon for Margaret; see
English Works of John Fisher
, op. cit.

31
.
  
Margaret's mealtime routine was very similar to that of Cecily, Duchess of York.

32
.
  
No one was certain what triggered the rebellion, but it was said to have occurred when God revealed to the angels that His son was to be born a man, in Christ, and that the angels would worship him.

33
.
  
Brut Chronicle, quoted in Keen,
English Society
, p. 194.

34
.
  
Dominic Mancini,
The Usurpation of Richard the Third
(ed C. A. J. Armstrong) (1969), pp. 100, 101.

3
     
A Prisoner, Honourably Brought up

  
1
.
  
The duke looked back to the time of Henry VI's grandfather. Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) had overthrown the failing king, Richard II, and taken the throne as Richard's heir. York claimed that his ancestor, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, had been the rightful claimant. He was the senior heir in the female line of Edward III's granddaughter, Philippa. But Edward III had entailed the crown through the male line and Henry VI was descended from his fourth son, John of Gaunt, founder of the House of Lancaster (and father of Henry IV); Richard, Duke of York from the fifth son, Edmund of Langley. York soon found he had little support for his claims. It was an argument that would nevertheless persist long after his death.

  
2
.
  
Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles
(ed James Gairdner), Camden Society New Series XXVIII (1880), p. 77.

  
3
.
  
On 20 February 1460. W. H. Blaauw, ‘On the Effigy of Sir David Owen' etc., in
Sussex Archaeological Collection
7, 845, p. 24.

  
4
.
  
Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas,
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty
(2011), pp. 52, 53, 192.

  
5
.
  
David Owen was born in Pembrokeshire. See Davies, ‘Representation, Repute, Reality' in op. cit. Also Blaauw, ‘On the Effigy . . .' in op. cit., p. 25. Jasper also would not forget his father. In his will he paid for prayers to be said for the souls of both his parents and bequeathed the Greyfriars one of his best gowns of cloth of gold for a priest's vestments.
Testamenta vetusta: being illustrations from wills, of manners, customs, &c. as well as of the descents and possessions of many distinguished families. From the reign of Henry the Second to the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Volume 1
(ed Sir Harris Nicolas) (1826), p. 430.

  
6
.
  
30,000 out of a population of three million seems probable. See Michael D. Miller, at
http://www.warsoftheroses.co.uk/chapter_56.htm
. Other estimates are, however, much higher. The usually cautious Charles Ross estimates 50,000. See Charles Ross,
Edward IV
(1974), p. 36.

  
7
.
  
In 1996 a mass grave of the dead was excavated. The corpses showed multiple injuries to their skulls and the forearms they had raised to defend themselves.

  
8
.
  
D. H. Thomas,
The Herberts of Raglan
(1994), p. 26.

  
9
.
  
Blaauw, ‘On the Effigy . . .' in op. cit., p. 25.

10
.
  
Herbert, whom Henry VI had knighted with Jasper and Edmund Tudor, had been raised to the peerage that July.

11
.
  
The governor was Sir John Skidmore.

12
.
  
Especially her property at Bourne in Lincolnshire, and Stafford's father's castle, Maxstoke in Warwickshire.

13
.
  
Jones and Underwood,
The King's Mother
, p. 42.

14
.
  
Kate Mertes, ‘Aristocracy' in
Fifteenth-Century Attitudes
(ed Rosemary Horrox) (1994), pp. 55, 56.

15
.
  
Mancini,
Usurpation of Richard the Third
, p. 65.

16
.
  
This was not a new idea. Long royal pedigrees had been popular in the past – Henry VI had one that traced his lineage back to
Adam (Henry VII later used it as the basis of his own which still hung at Richmond Palace when Elizabeth I died). They were handwritten because William Caxton did not set up the first mechanical printing press in England until 1476.

17
.
  
The rose symbol also represented Edward in a more personal way. Yorkist poets referred to Edward as the ‘rose of Rouen': the word ‘rose' denoting a person of exceptional quality, and Rouen being his birthplace.

18
.
  
Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘English Events in Caspar Weinreich's Danzig Chronicle of 1461–1495' in
Ricardian
7, No. 95 (December 1986), p. 313.

19
.
  
Ibid.

20
.
  
Sir John Grey of Groby died of battle wounds in 1461.

21
.
  
Earlier marks of favour included Margaret being granted the confiscated Beaufort manor of Woking in Surrey in 1466.

22
.
  
For a fifteenth-century lamprey recipe, see
http://www.godecookery.com/nboke/nboke68.html
.

4
     
The Wheel of Fortune

  
1
.
  
Thomas,
The Herberts of Raglan
, p. 61.

  
2
.
  
The co-commander was the Earl of Devon.

  
3
.
  
The ragged staff on its own was simpler than the full bear and ragged staff used on his seals. The staff represented the branch of a tree, which an ancestor had, in legend, used to kill a giant. The bear was also sometimes used as a separate badge.

  
4
.
  
This brother-in-law was Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers, who would be killed fighting for Richard III at Bosworth. One of his daughters was later married to a son of Owen Tudor's illegitimate son, David. Herbert had been made Earl of Pembroke by Edward IV, i.e. he was given Jasper's title.

  
5
.
  
Jones and Underwood,
The King's Mother
, p. 49.

  
6
.
  
As yet, neither Warwick nor Edward had sons, and Warwick hoped his daughter's marriage to Edward's heir would mean he would see
a future grandson one day become king. Clarence agreed to depose his brother and become king in his place, with Warwick's daughter as queen. The two children of this marriage were to be significant figures in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. But the Battle of Edgecote Moor did not end in Edward IV's deposition. It was far from evident that Clarence would make a better king than Edward and as a younger brother he had less right, so his candidature attracted little support. Warwick and Edward were thus obliged to come to terms – although they did not do so for long.

  
7
.
  
Lord Ferrers had been present at the fall of Harlech.

  
8
.
  
The arrival of Herbert's forces in Harlech is recalled today in the marching song ‘Men of Harlech':