Royal Murder Read online

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  In 1453 the Hundred Years’ War came to an end when the French slew Lord Shrewsbury, England's last military hope, in Gascony; now all that remained of Henry V's conquests was Calais. Then, in August, the king mysteriously lost his reason; according to one chronicle “by a sudden and terrible fear he fell into such infirmity that he had neither natural feeling, nor sense of reason nor understanding, nor could any physician or medicine cure him.” When Queen Margaret gave birth to a child on October 13, the poor king merely stared at his son vacantly.

  The birth of Prince Edward may have ended York's chances of ever succeeding to the throne but it increased his chances of gaining power in another direction.

  As the king's oldest adult relation York now could: see himself in control of the kingdom as regent for the next sixteen years but, as he was mistrusted by the House of Lords, he had to be content with the title of Protector and Defender of the Realm. Nevertheless the White Rose was in the ascent.

  At a Council meeting held in November York's ally the Duke of Norfolk demanded that Somerset be impeached for “the loss of two so noble duchies as Normandy and Guienne” and for corruption, with the result that he was sent to the Tower.

  At Christmas, 1415, the game of power took a dramatic and unexpected turn — King Henry regained his senses. According to the Paston Letters, “On Monday afternoon the Queen came to see him and brought my Lord Prince with her. And then he asked what the Prince’s name was, and the Queen told him Edward; and then he held up his hands and thanked God therefor. And then he said he never knew til that tyme nor wist not what was said to him, nor wist not where he had be while he hath be seke til now. And my Lord of Winchester was with him on the morrow after Tweltheday and he spake as well as ever he did. And he saith he is in charitee with all the world, and so he would all the Lords were.”

  Although he was still weak from his illness, Queen Margaret hurried Henry to Westminster where he dissolved Parliament and ordered the release of Somerset. Having lost the protectorship the Duke of York, bitterly aware that he was now further from power than before, retired to his castle at Sandal. Here the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Salisbury and his son the Earl of Warwick, soon to be known as the King-Maker, hurried to join him. It was soon agreed that the only hope for the Yorkist cause lay in open war. The nobles dispersed to recruit their forces, meanwhile the piously optimistic Henry planned a Council meeting at Leicester to debate ways of promoting conciliation between Somerset and York. Alas for Henry’s good intentions — before the meeting could take place news reached him that Warwick had joined up with York and Salisbury on their march from the north, and by May 20 they were at Royston with three thousand troops.

  Next day the king led a force of less than two thousand to Watford where the men slept briefly before marching through the dawn to St Albans. Here they took up positions in St Peter’s Street while the Yorkist army stood within bow shot to the south-east. The Duke of Buckingham was sent to York to ask “the cause for which he had come there with so many men.”

  He replied that they had come as true subjects wanting their king to deliver to them “such as we will accuse.”

  This reply enraged the usually mild Henry.

  “I, King Henry, charge and command that no manner of person, of what degree, or state, or condition that ever he be, abide not but void the field and be not so hard as to make any resistance against me in mine own realm, for I shall know what traitor dare be so bold to raise a people in mine own land . . . And by the faith I owe to St Edward and to the crown of England, I shall destroy them every mother’s son; and they shall be hanged and drawn and quartered that may be taken afterward, of them to have example to all such traitors to beware to make any such rising of people within my land, and so traitorly to abide their King and governor. And for a conclusion, rather than they shall have any lord here with me at this time, I shall this day for their sake and in this quarrel myself live and die!”

  Queen Margaret must have felt a brief moment of pride in him.

  Soon afterwards the royal standard was unfurled, signifying that the king was now at war and any Englishmen who opposed him were guilty of treason. Yorkist banners fluttered a vivid reply and the first battle in the Wars of the Roses began.

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  The royal army had a good defensive position but the Yorkists attacked with inspired desperation — now that they were officially traitors they knew that if they lost all they could expect would be the horrors of disembowelling and castration, their estates would be seized by their rivals and their families disinherited. The Duke of York attacked the barricades at the town entrance while Warwick led his men through some gardens and made a surprise attack on the royal troops. As the cry “A Warwick! A Warwick!” echoed through the narrow streets York redoubled his efforts and forced an entrance creating confusion among the defenders. Abbot Whethamstede, who gazed down on the battle from the top of the abbey tower, wrote: “Here you saw one fall with his brains dashed out, here another with a broken arm, a third with a cut throat, and a fourth with a pierced chest, and the whole street was full of dead corpses. Four of those who were the King’s bodyguard were killed by arrows, and the King himself was struck by an arrow in the shoulder.”

  As the royal troops faltered and then began to flee between the houses and through the gardens Henry’s remaining bodyguard hustled him into a tanner’s house while Somerset and some of his retainers sheltered in the Castle Inn. When Yorkist men-at-arms began to hammer on its doors the duke rushed into the street at the head of his men. As he gazed wildly round the scene of defeat his heart must have faltered when he saw the inn sign above his head, for a soothsayer had predicted that he would die beneath a castle. And die he did, though he slew four of his enemies before being struck down by a battleaxe.

  Soon afterwards Henry was found by York, Salisbury and Warwick.

  “God be praised, Sire, the traitor Somerset is dead!” said York as he went on his knees. He then asked pardon for having imperilled the king’s person and declared that he had taken up arms only against the false ministers who had surrounded him.

  Despite the agony of the defeat, Henry was mindful of his subjects and as the Yorkist troops began to sack St Albans he asked his fawning captors “to cease their people and that there should be no more harm done.”

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  Henry was taken to London where he had no option but to summon a Yorkist Parliament, but the shock of his defeat and the arrow wound brought the return of his malady and in July, 1455, he was once more shut away from public sight, this time at Hertford Castle where Queen Margaret had custody of him and little Prince Edward. The Duke of York was declared Constable of England, and Parliament censured the queen, declaring “that the government, as it was managed by the queen, the duke of Somerset, and their friends, had been of late a great oppression and injustice to the people.”

  Just when it seemed that York had achieved all that he had schemed for, his triumph was snatched away from him. Once again King Henry recovered his sanity and on February 24, 1456, he made a surprise visit to Westminster where he told Parliament “that being now recovered by the blessing of God, he did not think his kingdom was in any need of a protector, and requested permission to resume the reins of empire.” York was not there to rally his party and the members could think of nothing to do other than meekly acquiesce to the royal request.

  In the moves which followed Henry was a pawn rather than a king, while Margaret assumed the role of the queen on a chessboard. The saintly Henry did not seek revenge on those who had fought against him, rather he worked for the reconciliation of the factions whose hatred of each other had been tempered by the blood-letting at St Albans. To avert further violence the king summoned the Council to meet in London at the beginning of 1458 to try and find a solution to the “variancies as be betwixt divers lords of this our realm.”

  The “divers lords” came each with a private army and such was the tension between the Red Rose
and the White that the Lord Mayor had four thousand armed citizens on patrol at night, and a thousand more than that during the day, to ensure that London did not become a battleground. Despite the inauspicious start Henry persevered, and a token peace was reached when it was agreed that the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick should found a chantry at St Albans where masses would be sung for the repose of the slain, that York would pay five thousand marks to the widowed Duchess of Somerset and the Earl of Warwick would pay a thousand to Lord Clifford as compensation for the death of his father in the battle.

  This agreement was celebrated on March 25 when the king led a procession of Lancastrians and Yorkists to St Paul’s, the lords of the opposing parties walking side by side, and followed by Queen Margaret on the arm of York. To see such bitter foes thus united made the spectators marvel at the king’s victory as a peacemaker, but it was a hollow victory. After the nobles returned to their estates the spirit of detente evaporated and the old intriguing was resumed. Deep in the tangle of plot and counterplot was the queen, determined as ever to destroy the Yorkist party, to avenge past injuries and to ensure that the throne of England would be secure for her son. And she knew that the only way to eradicate the White Rose was by the sword.

  By spring of 1459 the queen had a warrant issued for Warwick’s arrest and once more the country was heading for civil war. Both sides mustered troops, and on October 13 the Yorkist forces faced a royal army of superior numbers across the River Teme at Ludford, near Ludlow. Queen Margaret had assembled an army of over thirty thousand, and it was written that some of her troops had been enlisted “for the love they bore to the King, but more for the fear they had to the Queen, whose countenance was so fearful and whose look was so terrible that to all men against whom she took small displeasure her frowning was their undoing and her indignation was their death.”

  The main strength of the Yorkists, who were commanded by York, Salisbury and Warwick, was several batteries of cannon. In order to encourage his men, who were dispirited by the size of the Lancastrian army, the duke announced that King Henry had died and had an outdoor mass sung for him. But across the river King Henry was far from dead and behaving in a typical way by offering pardons to his enemies if they would lay down their arms. And it was such a promise that brought him an almost bloodless victory.

  The new Duke of Somerset managed to get a letter to Sir Andrew Trollop, marshal of the Yorkist army, in which he reproached him for waging war against his sovereign lord and added that if he and his followers “wished to return to serve the King, he would pardon everything and give them great rewards.” Sir Andrew democratically discussed the offer with the six hundred men he had brought from Calais with the result that when night fell they crossed over to the royal lines. This defection demoralised the rest of the troops, and they too melted away.

  When the sun rose all that remained of the Yorkists was their banners fluttering over a deserted field.

  The Duke of York fled to Ireland, his eldest son Edward, Earl of March, escaped to Calais in company with Salisbury and Warwick. But fortune was to be as fickle with the Red Rose as the White. On July 10 the next year a Yorkist army was once more arrayed against the king outside Northampton, and ironically it was a defector which brought defeat to the royal forces. The half-hour battle began at two o’clock in the afternoon. Rain had been falling with the result that the king’s cannon would not fire, and as the Yorkists reached a flooded trench Lord Grey de Ruthyn, the commander of the royal vanguard, suddenly displayed the Ragged Staff emblem of Warwick and ordered his men to assist the Yorkists, after which the combined force smashed the centre of the Lancastrian line. In the rout which followed Warwick ordered the Yorkist troops to spare the common soldiers but to slay the leaders and the gentry. Things had reached such a bitter point that gentlemen were no longer ransomed. It was now a fight to the death — what was the point of ransom when the victors attainted the vanquished so that their estates were subject to forfeiture whether they lived or died? Among the Lancastrian dead were three hundred knights and gentlemen, including the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Shrewsbury.

  On the steaming field Warwick and the Earl of March hurried to the pavilion over which hung the sodden standard of the king. They found Henry was seated alone. As at St Albans his captors dropped to their knees and declared that they were his true liegemen, after which he was escorted to London where he remained a captive figurehead.

  York arrived in the capital from Ireland to attend the Parliament “with great pomp and no small exaltation of spirit,” and it was rumoured that he was going to dispute Henry’s right to the crown, claiming direct descent from Henry III while the king was descended from the usurper Henry IV. In the Hall of Westminster he strode up to the empty royal throne and ran his hands over the cushions as though he was about to sit there. It was a dramatic moment, and according to a chronicler, “he turned his face to the people. Standing beneath the canopy of state, he looked eagerly for their acclaim.”

  But there was no acclaim, only a silence which told York that he had misjudged the moment. Now that the king’s unpopular advisers were dead or fled there was no wish for mild Henry to lose the throne, or to see the ambitious York gain it. At last the Archbishop of Canterbury broke the hush by asking York if he would go with him for an audience with the king.

  “I know of no one in the realm who would not more fitly come to me than I to him,” snapped the duke and when he entered the palace he broke open the doors of.the king’s apartments where he was to lodge “more like a king than a duke,” while Henry “gave him place” and retired to the queen’s apartments. York emphasised the king’s position by putting a guard outside them.

  On October 16, he formally laid claim to the crown to the embarrassment of the Chancellor, the Lords, the King’s Justices and all concerned. No one wanted to be held responsible for deposing Henry, on the other hand there was no desire to thwart the Duke of York who was now the most powerful man in England.

  When Henry heard of the claim from the lords, he said simply, “My father was king, his father was also king. I have worn the crown forty years from my cradle; you have all sworn fealty to me as your sovereign . . . How then can my right be disputed?”

  The main legal objections to the duke’s claim were that by swearing fealty to King Henry in the past he had renounced any right of descent, that Parliament had confirmed the right of Henry IV and his heirs to the throne, and that this right had been accepted for three reigns. In the end a compromise was reached in which it was decided that Henry would “keep the crown, and his estate and dignity royal, during his life, and the duke and his heirs to succeed him in the same.” And to endorse this York was created Prince of Wales, though it was little consolation to York who, at the age of fifty, was ten years older than the king.

  The news that her son Edward had been deprived of the right to inherit his father’s throne stung Queen Margaret into action. She had not been with Henry at the Northampton defeat, and when news of it had reached her at Eccleshall Castle she had fled to Wales with the young prince. On the way she was robbed by one of her own servants “who despoiled her and robbed her and put her in doubt of her life,” but once she crossed the border she found sanctuary until York was declared Prince of Wales (a title already borne by her son) upon which she travelled secretly to Scotland to raise an army. Though she was not successful there, her old supporters began to rally to her cause until she had fifteen thousand men under arms.

  Early in December, 1460, York marched north from London to confront the queen who was with her army at Pontefract. He made his base at Sandal Castle, close to Wakefield, and a truce was agreed to avoid fighting during the twelve days of Christmas. On December 30 a Lancastrian force approached the castle, and the duke, infuriated at this breach of the truce — or, according to some chroniclers, the taunts from Queen Margaret that it ill-behoved a potential king of England to skulk before a woman — had his gates flung open to sally forth
with his army. He attacked the Lancastrians near Wakefield, only to find that he had fallen into the queen’s trap. The first Lancastrian force had been a decoy to draw him from the safety of his castle to where a much larger one was hidden in ambush. No sooner had the fighting started than the Yorkists were surrounded by two wings of the queen’s army which had been lying concealed.

  The Yorkists were taken by surprise and numbers and, in the swift slaughter which followed, the Duke of York was among the two thousand slain. When his corpse was found the head was struck off and decorated with a paper crown.

  “Hail, king without a kingdom,” mocked the jubilant Lancastrians. Later the trophy was spiked above the Micklegate Bar at York, along with the heads of other White Rose nobles.

  After Wakefield the victorious army marched south as it was the queen’s intention to save King Henry from the clutches of Warwick. On February 17, 1461, she defeated him at the second battle of St Albans. At the end of the day, after three thousand men, most of them Yorkists, had been killed King Henry was found beneath an oak tree from which he had watched the battle, laughing and singing and “smiling to see the discomfort of the army.” He was soon joyously reunited with his queen and his eight-years-old son whom he knighted. The next day the little fellow, dressed in purple velvet, was allowed to sit in judgement on two prisoners who had been Henry’s escorts and who had stayed with him through the battle on his assurance that they would come to no harm if the Lancastrians won.

  “Let them have their heads taken off,” piped the boy.

  “May God destroy those who taught you that manner of speech,” said one of the condemned men in horror.

  * * *

  For some obscure reason the Lancastrians turned north again, giving Warwick the chance he needed to earn his nickname of King-Maker. With Henry in the care of the triumphant queen he knew that he could never be used as a political figurehead again, therefore he must give the country a new sovereign. On March 4 he had Edward Earl of March, the son of the slain Duke of York, proclaimed king at St Paul’s in London, after which the sceptre was bestowed upon him in Westminster Abbey. Both Warwick and the new Edward IV knew that this was merely a gesture —the crown still had to be won by force of arms. And this took place in the frozen fields between the villages of Towton and Saxton, ten miles south of York, on Palm Sunday, March 29, 1462. Warwick slew his horse with his sword in front of his troops as a dramatic pledge that he would fight on foot beside them, and Edward ordered that no quarter should be given. Then, at nine o’clock in the morning, the bloodiest, battle of the war began.