Chapter VII The Last Battle of the Rival Roses
“May this be borne? How much of agony
Hath the heart room for?”
—FELICIA HEMANS.
One enemy remained for Edward IV. to vanquish, and it was a woman: a woman whose hand he had kissed upon the knee, and whom his Queen had served in her chamber. So long as husband and son were left to fight for, so long Marguerite of Anjou was irrepressible and invincible. When they were not, the complete indifference of despair with which she let the sceptre drop from her hand, proved that it was not it which she had loved, but them.
Yet the dreadful news which met her at Cerne Abbey for one moment overwhelmed the eager and resolute spirit. King Henry was once more a captive, and Warwick—who united the strange characters of her worst enemy in private, and her sole reliable friend in public—could be neither enemy nor friend any more for ever. The bright head was bowed down, and tears, such as Marguerite was rarely seen to shed, came rushing from her eyes.
“Oh, let us give it up!” she cried. “Edward, let us go back to France, and give up the struggle!”
“I cry you mercy, Madame my mother!” was the ringing answer of the Prince. “Never, while another battle may retrieve all! Look, I pray you—have we not yet the Duke of Somerset”——
“Not to be trusted,” said Marguerite, under her breath.
“And my Lord of Oxford”——
“Who fled from us at Barnet.”
“And my Lord of Devon”——
“Well, yes—I think he may be.”
The Prince dropped on one knee, and clasped his mother’s hand in his.
“And, sweet Mother, have you not me?”
The Queen clasped her darling in her arms, and bent her fair head low upon his darker locks.
“Mon chéri, mon mignon!” she cried tenderly, in her own language, not often used now, for English had become almost the mother-tongue to the woman who had been Queen of England since she was a maiden of sixteen years. “Aye, my streak of sunlight, I have thee!—and never will I let thine inheritance calmly fall into the hands of thine enemies! Come, let us be up and doing. When, on the day of mine espousals, I set the Rose of England in my bosom, did I not know that I must wear it with all its thorns?”26
The momentary sensation of irresolute hopelessness was passed, and Marguerite was herself again. She held a council of war, at which it was decided that they should march on the western provinces, which were more loyal than the midland wherein Warwick had held sway, or the northern of which Edward was Duke. The ladies were to be left behind in sanctuary, except the one or two in personal attendance on the Queen, who knew well enough that whoever might constitute the body of the Lancastrian party, she was and had always been its soul: and that however her forces might acquit themselves with her, they were not likely to do well without her. The Countess of Warwick, with her daughter of Clarence and their suites, had crossed the Channel separately from the Queen, and had taken refuge at Beaulieu Abbey. But nothing would tempt the young Princess of Wales to join them. Whether in life or in death, where her heart’s lord was, there also would she be.
The Countess of Devon, in attendance on the Queen, and Lady Katherine Vaux, in waiting on the Princess, were the sole women who accompanied the army. From Bath they marched on to Bristol, intending to join the Earl of Pembroke, Jaspar Tudor, who was coming from Gloucester with his men. But when the Queen’s army attempted to pass the Severn, they found themselves intercepted by the men of Gloucester, who urged their necessary “obeissance to their Duke.” Marguerite turned aside, and went on to Tewkesbury.
Perhaps few places in England are less changed than Tewkesbury from the appearance they presented in the fifteenth century. Not only the grand old Abbey (alas! restored), but the Bell Inn within a stone’s throw, the old winding High Street and its hostelry the Bear, are very little altered in outward seeming from what they were on that night of the third of May, when Marguerite of Anjou drew up her troops in “the Bloody Field” outside the town. Edward was at Tewkesbury in person, awaiting what either side felt instinctively would be the last and decisive battle in the Wars of the Roses.
Early the next morning, the Prince of Wales, who was to command the army, took leave of the royal ladies.
Clasp him close, poor mother! cling to him, young wife! You will do it never, never any more. It was no act of the Prince, whether of commission or omission, that lost the day. Victory hung yet in the balance, when Somerset, traitor to his last breath, fled from his young gallant master, followed by Hugh Courtenay: and from that moment the field was King Edward’s.
The Prince was taken. The craven Somerset fled to the sanctuary of a church, and he was followed by Humphrey Audley (who had York blood in his veins), Henry de Ros, James Gower, the Prince’s standard-bearer, and many more. But Prince Edward, most valuable prisoner of all, was taken before the conqueror in his royal pavilion. What followed is well known,—King Edward’s contemptuous query—
“How camest thou, young man, to bear sword against me?”
It was met by Prince Edward’s defiant reply—
“I came to recover my father’s kingdom, and mine own inheritance, out of the hands of them that had no right to hold it.”27
Some chroniclers say that Edward dashed his gauntleted hand in the face of his young cousin. Others assert that he merely flung a sign to those around him. Either action was well understood. Hastings, the King’s faithful servant, and Thomas Grey, his step-son, the affianced of Anne of Exeter, hurried Prince Edward out of his presence to the next tent, where the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester were standing. There they flung him down. One cry of pitiful appeal rang through the evening air—“Clarence! Brother!” but Clarence stood deaf and motionless. Gloucester was equally still, but from a very different motive. Then came a second and a lower moan—“Jesu, Doming!” That was heard. Another instant, and they had no more that they could do. Edward Plantagenet was with God.
Not that night did Marguerite of Anjou learn all the awful news in store for her. She heard—from the gentle lips of John Combe—that her army was routed, and the day lost: heard it, with the young Princess by her side, seated in that charette in which it had been so difficult to keep her, for she suspected already that fate was going against her, and she was scarcely restrained from mounting her horse, and taking the command of her troops. The one worst item—the loss of her boy—did not reach her then. But what she did hear made her sink down in the charette, “half-dead.”
Those about the Queen—very few they were—felt the necessity of doing for her what she was not in a position to do for herself. They hurried the royal ladies away from their dangerous place to a little religious house outside Tewkesbury, where they entered them in sanctuary. Alas for their innocence, if they expected Edward of York to keep promises or reverence sanctuary! At that moment he was presenting himself with drawn sword at the door of the church where so many of the Lancastrian nobles had taken refuge. All honour be to the brave priest who, pix in hand, resolutely barred the victor’s entrance, until he had given a solemn promise of pardon to the fugitives. Alas for the fugitives, that they trusted it! All might have escaped, but trusting to that honour of which Edward knew so little, they remained in their asylum until the Monday, when they were marched out and beheaded before the door. Somerset richly deserved his fate: but this cannot be said of many others. Even Humphrey Audley was not spared, though King Edward and he were second cousins.28
Notwithstanding all his specious words, ties of blood, no less than those of gratitude, weighed as nothing with Edward of York when a man stood in his way.
There was a long funeral procession that day in Tewkesbury Abbey. The Duke of Somerset, as we are told by his herald, who was present, was buried “before the image of Saint Jame at an autar in ye said monastery churche on the northe parte.”29 But it was in the very midst of the church, just under the tower, that they laid the flower of the Red Rose, “the gallant-springing young Plantagenet,” who in the endeavour to recover his father’s kingdom had sacrificed himself. The rest were buried in one great grave, dug close to that of the Prince in the nave of the Abbey.
The next step on the part of Edward was to capture the two hapless ladies who had taken refuge in the little nunnery. Sir William Stanley—an old enemy of the Queen—was sent to do this; and he is said to have behaved as brutally as he well could, and in particular to have broken to the bereaved mother the news of her boy’s death in the most inhuman manner. Driven almost to frenzy by the suddenness and anguish of the blow, Marguerite broke forth into passionate execrations upon Edward and all his posterity, which Stanley had the cruelty to repeat to the conqueror, when, on the 11th of May, he brought his prisoners to Coventry. The royal mourners were conveyed southwards together, captives in the victorious train of the Rose of Rouen.
One more attempt, however, was to be made in the Lancastrian cause, like the last expiring gleam of a candle ere it dies out. The Governors of Calais, Sir Walter Wretill and Sir Geoffrey Gates, despatched the brave, if somewhat rash, Thomas Fauconbridge “to raise Kent, and deliver King Henry from the Tower.” It was only a dying flash, but it roused the Yorkists to instant action. Lord Rivers was sent down to Kent and Lord Bourchier to Essex by the Council; Lord Dudley, with a hundred soldiers, was put in charge of the Tower, where defensive works were cast up in haste in less than a week; Lord Hastings was despatched to supersede the Governor of Calais, and Lord Pembroke sent to South Wales “to capture rebels, and reduce the King’s castles to his obedience.” The citizens of London, that unknown and difficult quantity, were complimented by the gift of two tuns of red wine, “expended on them after the conflict at Mile-end against the rebels.”30 For the safe custody of Rochester Castle, a squire of the body was sent down, by name Thomas St. Leger, of whom we shall hear again.
The insurrection was quashed. But how many more might arise? It was no doubt extremely inconvenient to be perpetually in risk of another; and Henry VI. had still friends enough to make Edward’s throne a very uneasy seat. So long as the Lancaster King lived, the York King would have a thorny time of it. There was only one way to end the difficulty: and there was one man who was ready to take it.
On the twenty-first of May, King Edward, accompanied by his brother of Gloucester, and carrying his captives in his victorious train, made his triumphal entry into the City of London. The Queen and Princess were lodged in the Tower. They were now under the same roof as King Henry. If any ray of hope ever entered Marguerite’s heart after Tewkesbury, it must have been that night, at the thought of a possible meeting with the husband from whom she had been parted for six weary years. She may well have imagined that fate had done its worst, and no further sorrows could yet be in reserve for her. But the worst had only begun to come. Whether it were that night or a few days later,—within one week from her imprisonment in the Tower, Marguerite of Anjou was a widow.
When and how did Henry VI. die? The how has often been disputed: but the when has generally been considered less doubtful. The popular belief for centuries was that, weary of the continual risk and fear, Gloucester went to the Tower on that same night of his arrival in London, and with one stroke of his dagger ended the Wars of the Roses, and the sorrows of Henry of Lancaster. The courtier Comines writes cautiously: Henry was killed by Gloucester, “if what was told me be true.” Had he in his heart believed it untrue, would he have thus mentioned it? One dry old chronicler remarks that Henry died on the twenty-first of May, “the Duke of Gloucester and his men being in the Tower that night.” Stow says that his body was carried to St. Paul’s in an open coffin on the 22nd. Stow, Sandford, Baker, and Mezeray have no doubt of the murder. It was not until the last century that it was ever questioned, and then by writers who were desirous to whitewash the decidedly black character of Richard III. But so far as I know, no one has ever noticed on either side the singular fact recorded on the Issue Roll, that Henry did not die on the twenty-first at all. There may have been some reason—now perhaps inscrutable—why Edward wished to convince the public that Henry did die on that day: but his own Roll, meant for no eyes but those of safe persons, unquestionably indicates that Henry was living until the 27th of May, six days later. His “diet” is charged until the latter day. There may have been some show of reason, as putting a stop to all future trouble, why the public should believe Henry to be dead when he was not: but what possible cause could there be for entering on the Roll a false statement with the object of showing Henry to be alive when he was really dead? The question of course arises, whose was the body exposed to view in St. Paul’s on the twenty-second?—even if we put aside the sensational item that the corpse bled wherever it rested, on account of the presence of the murderer as chief mourner. The Roll above mentioned, which gives the expenses of Henry’s funeral, makes no mention of the day of burial. Perhaps the difficulty is best left unsolved, with just one statement—that Gloucester was perfectly capable of the crime laid to his charge: and that the main point of circumstantial evidence in determining the question, is to decide whether Gloucester was or was not at the Tower on the 27th of May.
The strongest evidence known to me in Gloucester’s favour is the assertion of Fleetwood, adopted by the usually careful and accurate Carte, that Henry was found dead, probably of apoplexy, on the night of the twenty-first of May. This was of course the York version of facts. But if, as has been shown, the date is conclusively disproved by the testimony of the Issue Roll, may not the circumstances be equally far from true? It was so exceedingly in the interest of Edward that Henry should die just at that moment, that the suspicion of his death having been humanly assisted will never be removed as long as the world lasts.
Very little expense attended the funeral of the dead. Twenty ells of linen cloth, wax, and spices, were provided; two men only carried torches (the number usually corresponding with the years of the deceased); a few soldiers of Calais watched the corpse; and to five orders of friars a pittance was given for masses, wretched indeed when compared with the usual outlay. The whole cost was under £43—just the price that King Edward paid about the same date for a crimson velvet jacket.
There is nothing but pure fancy as the source of the scene imagined by our greatest dramatist, wherein Gloucester makes love to the young Princess of Wales when she officiates as chief mourner at King Henry’s funeral. The poor Princess was an outlaw and a prisoner in the Tower at that moment, and assuredly never held any such position, any more than she lent willing ear, whether first or last, to any such words.
The body of King Henry was buried at Chertsey Abbey, where it rested until Gloucester himself was King, when, on the 12th of August, 1484, it was finally removed to his birthplace, Windsor.
Many days had not elapsed after the funeral of the dead King, when London was startled with the news that the Princess of Wales was missing. How she had made good her escape no man knew: that she was no longer a prisoner in the Tower was the one thing certain. Princess, indeed, no one now called her. As her father’s daughter, she was still the Lady Anne: and this title now replaced the royal one. The first idea was that she had taken refuge at Beaulieu with her mother; but this was soon found to be a mistake. The Countess of Warwick was still in sanctuary, though her elder daughter, the Duchess of Clarence, had departed at once to take her proper place at Court as King Edward’s sister-in-law: and from her honorary imprisonment poor Lady Warwick was inditing pitiful letters to every person whom she thought likely to have any influence with King Edward, in the hope of procuring her pardon. She addressed herself to every member of the royal family in turn; and she notes as a special grievance in the petition she presently offered to the King, that “in the absence of clerkes, she hath wretyn l’res with her owne hand.”31
Bitterly she complains that the King had sent letters to the Abbot of Beaulieu, on account of some “synester informacion to his said Highness made,” with orders to keep her in strict prison, which was a deep grief to her. She pleads her sore poverty, being cut off from all enjoyment of her jointure and dower of the earldom of Salisbury, and also from her own Despenser lands and earldom of Warwick: and lastly, she represents that she has no opportunity of putting her case into the hands of any solicitor, nor, if she had, is there one that would dare to undertake it.
Edward paid little attention to this sad appeal. Clarence had his brother’s ear: and Clarence had set his mind upon one thing,—to hand down to his children the vast Warwick inheritance, undivided. In order to do this, he grudged his mother-in-law every unnecessary penny: and he determined that so far as in him lay, his sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, should never marry again. There was much danger of this calamity: not because of any wish to that effect on the part of the girl-widow, whose heart was buried for ever in the nave of Tewkesbury Abbey, and whose sole ambition was to creep out of sight and hearing of the hard, cold world, into some quiet corner, where she could wait undisturbed until God called her to rejoin her dead. The danger arose not from her, but from the Duke of Gloucester. From his early boyhood, Richard of York had loved Anne Neville; or rather, to put it more accurately, he loved himself, and he found in Anne Neville a plaything the possession of which was necessary to his happiness. That he did not love her, he plainly showed by his actions. Had he done so, he would have let her alone, which was all the grace she asked at his hands. But Gloucester, like most human beings, looked upon love and persecution as exchangeable terms. He wanted Anne Neville: whether she wanted him was a point quite unnecessary to take into the account. And Anne did not want him. On the contrary, she intensely disliked him. It was not possible for her to compare to his advantage such a man as this, whose soul was ten times more crooked than his body, with her tender, brave, gallant young Plantagenet, whose death
“had made all earth and heaven
One vaulted grave to her.”
It was not his disadvantages of person which made Anne shrink from Gloucester like a bird from a snake. Had the characters been exchanged, matters might have been very different.
These being the circumstances of the case, Anne had lent a willing ear to the overtures of Clarence, who sent her secret messages during her imprisonment, offering to deliver her from the Tower and keep her in hiding from Gloucester. His object was to prevent her from requiring her share of the Warwick lands: hers was to get rid of persecution from a man whom she hated. Both being agreed upon the means, however they might differ in the object, Clarence contrived to steal Anne out of the Tower, and secreted her in a very romantic manner. The Princess of Wales was actually placed in service, as a cook, in “a mean house” in the City of London. So thoroughly was she concealed, that nearly two years elapsed before the indefatigable Gloucester succeeded in discovering the place of her retreat.
King Edward appears to have been at this time in a most gracious frame of mind, which he evinced by scattering pardons and honours broadcast on all sides. Fauconbridge, the latest insurrectionist in favour of the House of Lancaster, was not only pardoned, but made Vice-Admiral. Bishop Waynflete, Lord St. John, and even the Earl of Oxford, were taken into favour. The poor Countess, his mother, who was Warwick’s sister, was left in such poverty for some time that she was reduced to earn her bread by her needle, until Edward was pleased to awake to the fact of her existence, and to grant her a pension of £100 per annum. The Duke of Gloucester was created Lord High Chamberlain, the Earl of Wiltshire Chief Butler, and the Earl of Essex Treasurer of the Exchequer. The castles of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton—possessions of Warwick—were granted to Gloucester, who had always been Edward’s favourite brother, notwithstanding the anger of Clarence at this poaching on his preserves. The King also granted all the lands of John Lord Lovell, deceased, to his sister the Princess Elizabeth and her husband, John Duke of Suffolk, son of the famous Duke who had been the counsellor of Queen Marguerite. This was a stroke of policy, for Suffolk was a Lancastrian. But now that Henry VI. and his son were dead, numbers of Lancastrians came in and offered themselves as henceforward loyal subjects of Edward IV., who had now in their eyes become the rightful King. Thomas Earl of Ormonde led the van: and he was followed by Jaspar Earl of Pembroke, the late King’s half-brother, by the Duke of Exeter from his prison, various members of the Courtenay and Clifford families, and among others, not least, by Margaret Duchess of Somerset, the mother of the only person living who could on any pretence of right dispute the crown with Edward. This was Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, heiress of the Beauforts, and widow of Edmund Tudor, the elder but deceased half-brother of King Henry. The Beauforts, who were the illegitimate children of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford, the lady who afterwards became his third wife, had been formally legitimated in 1397, by a patent which distinctly pronounced them capable of succeeding, to all “honours, dignities, positions, and offices, public and private, whether permanent or temporary, and to all feudalities and nobilities, by whatsoever name known, whether dukedom, princedom, earldom, barony, or other fief, mediately or immediately held of us... as if they had been born in lawful wedlock.”32
This language undoubtedly qualified the Beauforts for the royal succession, and was meant to do so:33 but at the time the patent was drawn up, there was little reasonable probability of any such event, for not only the reigning Sovereign, but the whole House of Lancaster, lay between them and the throne. But now that the royal family was reduced to the children of Richard Duke of York, and the heiress of the Beauforts, Edward IV. was very naturally jealous of the latter. Under the old law, she stood before him; and it was therefore necessary for his peace that some bar should be provided to her further advance. This was the more desirable, since she had a son, a clever youth of fifteen years, concerning whom an anecdote, very awkward for Edward, was in circulation among the populace. Five years34 before this, Jaspar Tudor, going into Wales, where young Richmond was residing with Lord Pembroke, had brought him back with him, and presented him to King Henry. The King was reported to have said, laying his hand on the boy’s head as he spoke,—
“Much striving there is between us; but this is he to whom both we and our adversaries must submit.”
There can be little doubt that Henry regarded his young nephew as his heir presumptive, a fact which in itself was likely to rouse Edward’s jealousy against the boy: and even now a popular reaction was beginning in favour of the deceased King, which took the form of reverence for the sanctity of his life, and disposition to believe in his powers of prediction. The last item was rather helped than hindered by his predisposition to insanity, for in the Middle Ages a man with impaired intellect, in whatever form, was always regarded as one with whom God held direct communication. The particular form of madness which had afflicted King Henry, and which was characterised not by any kind of passion or violence, but by silence and dreaminess—an apparent absence of the soul from the body—was especially looked upon as indicative of inspiration. King Henry’s own account of these attacks of aberration was that they were simply a blank to him, and that he had not the slightest idea of any thing that had taken place. It may be that to a man of his tender, sensitive, affectionate nature, placed as he was in these dreadful circumstances, these seasons, resting both mind and body, were God’s greatest mercy. At this early date after Henry’s death, a strong wish for his canonisation had already arisen. Had those who aspired to canonise him after death been a little more friendly to him in life, it would have been a state of things much more to his advantage. But this is human nature. We worry our friend into his grave, and then we call him poor dear So-and-so, and wear his portrait in a locket.
All these facts tended to make Edward’s throne an uneasy seat, and caused him to be very anxious to get hold of young Richmond. His grandmother, the Duchess of Somerset, had returned to her allegiance: but his mother, the Countess of Richmond and Wiltshire, made no sign. His uncle Jaspar was watching over the boy; and no sooner did he hear that Edward was endeavouring to discover him, than he fled with him across the Channel, and delivered him into the safe keeping of the Duke of Bretagne.
Seeing that his dangerous rival had escaped his hands, Edward thought it desirable to assure himself of the fidelity of his nobles to his son. The little child of eight months old was created Prince of Wales, Duke of Lancaster, and Earl of Cornwall; and on the 3rd of July, in “the Parliament Chamber” at Westminster, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal swore allegiance to him.35 Among those who took this oath is specially named, third on the list, his uncle of Gloucester. An entire household was appointed for the baby Prince—Chancellor, Seneschal, and Chamberlain.
On the 27th of August, a patent of pardon was issued for five Lancastrians. Three were men of no note. The others were described as “Henry, calling himself Duke of Exeter,” and “Jaspar Owen, calling himself Earl of Pembroke.”36 It was not, however, for three weeks after this, that Exeter was suffered to leave his prison. He came out to find such a pestilence raging all over the country as had not been known in England for many years—scarcely since the “black death” in the reign of Edward III. No borough town in England was free. King and Queen went on pilgrimage to Canterbury as an expiation for the sins which had caused it. But, as a set-off to this humiliation, the personal expenses of King Edward for this half-year—the bloodiest period of his reign—amounted to a sum which no previous King of England had ever approached. The details of this expenditure, from April to September, 1471, will be found in the Appendix. They throw more light on the King’s character than pages of description.
Perhaps, had Edward—and it may be more than he—carefully studied his account-book, it might have given him some intimation of the quarter wherein those sins lay for which he rode to Canterbury to do penance.
Notes
26 The last sentence is in the actual words of the Queen, though not spoken on this occasion.
27 Only the opening words of this speech are commonly quoted.
28 He was the younger son of Alianora de Holand, Lady Audley, daughter of Constance of York, King Edward’s grand-aunt.
29 Harl. MS. 545.—This tomb was removed at a later date, and is now on the south side of the chancel.
30 Issue Roll, Easter term, 11 Edw. IV. This Roll is one of the most interesting state papers ever penned.
31 Cott. MS. Jul. B. xii., fol. 317.
32 Patent Roll, 20 Ric. II., Part 2.
33 The qualifying words “the royal dignity excepted,” are over-lined, in blacker ink and in a later hand than the original entry.
34 This is the date usually given; but an earlier one is more likely to be true, since in 1466 King Henry was a prisoner.
35 Close Roll, 11 Edw. IV.
36 Patent Roll, 11 Edw. IV., Part I.—The scribe probably omitted a word, and meant to describe the son of Owen Tudor as Jaspar ap Owen.