Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses Page 20

  And in deed and in truth perhaps, Marguerite’s ghost did live on—lived on, for example, in the mind of Richard of Gloucester, eyeing the accession of a twelve-year-old to the throne with all the paranoia of one born into the time of Marguerite’s battles to rule the country for her infant son, in the time of Henry VI’s insanity. Such a young ruler as Edward would surely be susceptible, as Marguerite’s own son had been, to his mother’s influence.

  The stories of the next few years are usually told in terms of men: their battles, betrayals, and brutality. But women’s choices, women’s alliances—the accommodations they had already made and the slights and losses they had already suffered—would play a crucial part in the events ahead. They would, in time, help to steer England out of the carnage of the Cousins’ War and into a new era.

  PART IV

  1483–1485

  15

  “WEEPING QUEENS”

  For my daughters, Richard,

  They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens

  THE TRAGEDY OF RICHARD THE THIRD, 4.4

  The marriage of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV had been one of the great royal love stories, combining physical passion with warm domesticity. It had rewritten the rules of royal romance, with all the implications that would have in the next century, when Henry VIII used passion as often as policy in choosing his brides. There can be little doubt that under normal circumstances, Elizabeth would have allowed herself to mourn most sincerely. But the circumstances were far from normal, and there was no time for mourning, for a queen fighting for position in her son’s minority.

  Edward IV’s death left a twelve-year-old boy to be declared the new king—a difficult transition in any but the most stable country. “Woe unto the kingdom where the king or lord is a child,” thundered Ecclesiastes, in a warning that now may well have darkened many an English outlook. England had looked relatively secure in the preceding years, but its happy exterior had masked ongoing internal divisions, fractures that could only have been mended by the accession of a strong and adult king. Politics that were viable while Edward IV was alive were now a potential catastrophe.

  Christine de Pizan took special pains to provide advice for the princess in a war-torn land, widowed while her son was still a minor, that she should “employ all her prudence and her wisdom to reconcile the antagonistic factions.” It was good advice, but hard to know how Elizabeth Woodville was to follow it. Richard of Gloucester was riding high; the Parliament of January 1483 had acknowledged and rewarded his efforts against the Scots. Perhaps it had been in response to his high profile that in the same month, Anthony, Elizabeth Woodville’s brother, seemed to be trying to bolster Woodville power. In February and March, Anthony had been making sure that his appointment as Prince Edward’s governor was renewed and requesting confirmation of his right as such to raise troops in Wales.

  In the blame game that has lasted more than five centuries since Edward IV’s death, the question of who took the aggressive initiative—or who was merely getting their retaliation in first—has been argued endlessly. The main protagonists, after these last decades, all brought with them the memory of experiences enough to make anyone wary. Elizabeth’s recollections, perhaps, were of the downturn in fortune that had followed the death of her first Grey husband and of her feeling when her second husband’s crown had been snatched back from him in 1470. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, for his part must have remembered that the last two Dukes of Gloucester, Henry VI’s uncle Humfrey and Richard II’s uncle Thomas Woodstock, both holders of the reins during a royal minority, had both died imprisoned, amid rumors that their deaths had not been natural. Richard must, moreover, have remembered all too clearly the time of Henry VI’s insanity, when Marguerite of Anjou attempted to take over in her infant son’s name. With Elizabeth Woodville maneuvering in London, it must have seemed a most alarming precedent.

  Richard, as the ranking, the only royal, uncle of the new boy king, had recent custom on his side: during the infancy of Henry VI, the country had been run by Henry’s uncles. But Edward IV’s death caught his brother Richard unawares, in the distant North of England, and for the moment he was powerless to act. Still, Richard was aligned with the “king’s men,” led by the deceased sovereign’s great friend Lord Hastings, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Suffolk, and the Earl of Lincoln (the latter two being respectively brother-in-law and nephew to Edward IV through his sister Elizabeth). Buckingham had reputedly never forgiven Elizabeth Woodville for marrying him, as a child, to another Woodville sister he considered beneath him and may also have felt that the Woodvilles had deprived him of the influence in Wales his Marcher lordships should have allowed him to enjoy. Hastings and the queen had a different quarrel, says More: she was resentful of not only “the great favour the King bare him [but] also for that she thought him secretly familiar with the King in wanton company.” Some of these men had been at court and clustered around the deathbed when Edward IV died. The king had bade them to “each of you love other,” and, for the moment at least, they had agreed. The royal council met immediately, and Elizabeth Woodville met with them. There was, however, to be no question of her having an actual regency, nor of her having even the measure of influence she’d been given when her husband went to France in 1475, or the generous allowance of control given to her when her son’s council as Prince of Wales had been set up. Her husband was dead, his wishes no longer paramount.

  Perhaps there was never any question of anyone having a regency as such. What Henry VI’s senior uncle had held in the king’s infancy was a protectorate, which allowed the incumbent to “protect” prince and state without giving him regal powers. It would be said by some that Edward IV had wanted his brother Richard to occupy such a position. But Richard was not in London to make any such claim; he must have felt that events had overtaken him, just as Elizabeth must have felt herself cast adrift by the sudden loss of the man from whom all her influence had derived. But arguably for the wider Woodville clan—those not suffering her intimate grief—this looked like an opportunity to grasp even greater power. It was, after all, they in whose company and under whose guidance the new young king had been reared.

  The council, in any event, made a decision that they hoped would neatly evade these problems. The dead king’s son, who should soon be crowned Edward V, might become a legal adult with his coronation—he was, after all, twelve, and Henry VI had been declared adult when not that much older—a device that would allow the council to govern under the boy king’s nominal rule. It looked like a balanced and a viable decision (the system had been used for Richard II), but it ignored one thing. A twelve-year-old was inevitably going to fall under somebody’s sway, and he would have ever more opportunity to respond to their influence as he neared maturity and exercised more actual governance. And of course, that somebody, or those somebodies, was likely to be the maternal line of his family, which had surrounded him since infancy.

  Dominic Mancini, the man who dismissed Edward’s daughters, was, ironically, the man who describes how Richard (incited thereto by Hastings) wrote to the council after news of his brother’s death, urging his rights and his long tradition of loyalty. “He had been loyal to his brother Edward, at home and abroad, in peace and war, and would be, if only permitted, equally loyal to his brother’s issue, even female (eciam mulieribus), if perchance, which God forbid, the youth should die.”

  Prince Edward had received the news of his father’s death on April 14, just five days after the king’s passing; two days later, a letter declares his intention of setting out from Ludlow for London “in all convenient haste.” There was considerable debate as to the number of men who should accompany him on his journey, Mancini said: some “suggested more, some less.” All who were present, Mancini added, keenly desired that this prince should succeed his father in all his glory, but they also feared that, if the Woodvilles were allowed to escort young Edward to his coronation “with an immoderate number of horse,” it would be impossi
ble subsequently to get rid of them.

  Hastings particularly, who had always been at odds with the Woodvilles, warned that for them to bring young Edward to London with an army would send the wrong signal, and Elizabeth got the point. Indeed, Crowland describes how “the Queen most beneficently tried to extinguish every spark of murmuring and disturbance, and wrote to her son, requesting him on his road to London, not to exceed an escort of two thousand men.”

  It was April 24 before young Edward, with his uncle Anthony Woodville and his half brother Richard Grey, finally left Ludlow for London. Richard of Gloucester was also on his way south, leaving his wife, Anne Neville, behind in the North. It may seem strange—or significant—that Anne herself was not on the way down to take part in her nephew’s coronation, scheduled for less than a week away. But there is no way to know just how far, at this stage, Richard’s own plans went, let alone how much he had confided in his wife.

  When young Edward’s party diverted to meet his uncle Richard on April 29, in Northamptonshire, there was no apparent reason to fear. Richard, after all, had already written “so reverently, and to the Queen’s friends, there so lovingly,” says More, that they “nothing earthly” mistrusted. He had moreover himself sworn, and required all northerners to swear likewise, an oath to the new king, Edward V.

  With the young King Edward left at Stony Stratford for the evening, Richard (and Buckingham, who had joined him) invited Rivers to dine where they were staying at Northampton, some eleven miles away. The party made, More says, “much friendly cheer” and parted with “great courtesy.” But the next morning when Rivers came to leave, he found he was locked in, arrested by Richard’s men. Meanwhile, Buckingham rode to Stony Stratford to inform Edward that his uncle Anthony and both of Edward’s half brothers (among others) stood accused of attempting to rule him and to cause dissension in the realm.

  Edward, if Mancini is to be believed, answered courageously and to the point: these were the ministers his late father had given him, and he trusted his father’s judgment. Concerning the government of the kingdom, “he had complete confidence in the peers of the realm and the queen.”

  If it was a comment intended to placate Buckingham, it didn’t work. “On hearing the queen’s name,” says Mancini, “the duke of Buckingham, who loathed her race, then answered, ‘It was not the business of women but of men to govern kingdoms, and so if he cherished any confidence in her he had better relinquish it.’” Anthony Woodville and Richard Grey were sent north, to be held in one of Richard’s castles.

  When Elizabeth heard the news, Richard’s actions must have seemed to her the opening moves of a great coup, and her first reaction was to strike back. “When this news was announced in London the unexpectedness of the event horrified every one,” Mancini reported. Elizabeth and her eldest Grey son, Dorset, began collecting an army, “to defend themselves, and to set free the young king from the clutches of the dukes.” Unfortunately for them, they found their fellow nobles reluctant to answer their call and “perceived that men’s minds were not only irresolute, but altogether hostile to themselves.” Some people said openly that it was more appropriate for the young king to be with his paternal uncle than with his maternal uncles and uterine brothers.

  Other sources suggest instead that Elizabeth with her children fled into sanctuary at Westminster the minute she heard the news—and flee she certainly did. She surely cannot be blamed for hiding, though it has often been seen as hysterical and unnecessary, a move designed to put Richard, whom she saw as her enemy, at a disadvantage. Not all observers, however, are so skeptical about her motivations. More describes how Elizabeth escaped into sanctuary “in great flight and heaviness, bewailing her child’s ruin, her friends’ mischance, and her own infortune, damning the time that ever she dissuaded the gathering of power about the king.” Her eldest son, Dorset, and her brother Lionel, the bishop, were to join her. Edward IV had confirmed Westminster’s sanctuary rights after the queen’s last residence there. But Edward himself had not respected sanctuary rights, when it suited him to choose differently.

  Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, had gone to Elizabeth in the midst of her flight, and described a scene of chaos: “much heaviness, rumble, haste and business, carriage and conveyance of her stuff into Sanctuary, chests, coffers, packs, fardels, trusses, all on men’s backs, no man unoccupied, some loading, some going, some discharging, some coming for more, some breaking down the walls to bring in the next way.” The queen herself, as More reports Rotherham’s finding, “sat alone low on the rushes all desolate and dismayed.”

  Rotherham comforted Elizabeth in the best manner he could, and, he gave into her custody the privy seal—the royal stamp, used to authenticate official documents—of which he was keeper. It showed there was still a game to play. But the archbishop regretted his impetuous move and the next day sent to ask for his seal back. After all, Richard had not moved against the Crown as such. Hastings (who, in Crowland’s words, was congratulating himself that the whole affair had been accomplished with no more bloodshed than “might have come from a cut finger”) was reassuring those in London that Richard was still faithful to his brother’s wishes and that nothing whatsoever had been done save a transfer of power from one to another side of the new king’s family. And his excuse worked, to some degree.

  On May 4, the young Edward entered London, riding in blue in a splendid procession, obsequiously attended by Richard, who had technically done nothing to breach his oath of loyalty. This should have been the day of Edward’s coronation, but that event was now postponed to the end of June.

  On May 7, a meeting was held at Baynard’s Castle, Cecily Neville’s London residence, at which the most powerful lords of the country, spiritual and temporal—Richard of course among them—officially took possession of Edward IV’s goods, seals, and jewels on the grounds that they were executors of his will. Richard, says Mancini, had arrived in London preceded by four wagons loaded with arms and bearing the Woodville emblems, which he claimed were designed to be used against him. The excuse was obviously a fake—Mancini says everyone knew the weapons had really been collected back in Edward IV’s day, as part of the government’s preparation for a possible war with Scotland—but Richard’s move must have appeared as another ominous sign to Elizabeth in sanctuary.

  While Elizabeth’s power was draining away, Richard’s was growing. At a council meeting of May 27, Richard was declared the man most fitting to be declared protector of the realm. He would hold the post, however, only until Edward was crowned and declared of age just four weeks later, an impending development that opened up the prospect of fresh dispute and may have played a part in pushing Richard to seek a more definitive solution.

  Sometime in the few weeks after his arrival, the young king was moved, at Buckingham’s suggestion, from the Bishop of London’s palace (too small for a full royal retinue) to the Tower. There was nothing sinister in that, necessarily—the place was a regular royal residence and traditionally used by monarchs in the run-up to their coronation. Moreover, it is hard to think where better Edward could have gone; the out-of-town palaces like Sheen and Eltham were too distant, and Westminster was ineligible because of his mother self-immured there such a short distance away.

  Whether or not Richard had originally been opposed to his nephew’s rule, his hostility was becoming more apparent. There does seem to have been a tentative plan for Richard to have continued his role at the head of government beyond the coronation, but there must also have been a fear that a king once declared of age would recall his mother and her family to his side. And the Woodvilles still represented a threat: Elizabeth’s brother Edward had been commanding a fleet in the Channel to guard against the French, but now the English authorities ordered his soldiers to desert, while he himself was to be seized; in fact, he escaped with two ships and made his way to Henry Tudor in Brittany.

  It is possible that Richard was already taking steps toward claiming t
he throne for himself. It has been suggested that, in the early days of June, Bishop Stillington told the council that he had married Edward IV to Eleanor Butler before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, which was thus rendered invalid. One chronicle describes doctors, proctors, and depositions being brought in to the lords. A case was being prepared.

  Still, London seems to have maintained an eerie calm. A letter from Simon Stallworthe to Sir William Stonor on June 9 reports that the queen “keeps still at Westminster.” “My Lord Protector, My Lord of Buckingham with all other lords as well temporal as spiritual were at Westminster in the Council Chamber from 10 to 2, but there was none that spoke with the Queen.” There was, he says, “great business” about the young king’s coronation, which was scheduled for just two weeks away, and when he adds that “My Lady of Gloucester”—Anne Neville—came to London “on Thursday last,” the assumption must still have been that it was to attend this ceremony. The Parliament that always followed a coronation had been called, a sign that government was functioning normally. But there is perhaps a hint that even outside the Protector’s rooms, other possibilities were being mooted, when Stallworthe urges Stonor to come to town “and then shall you know all the world.”

  What tranquillity lingered over London, however, would soon be shattered. On June 10 and 11, Richard wrote respectively to the city of York and to Lord Neville of Raby asking them to bring troops from the North with all diligence “to aid and assist us against the Queen, her bloody adherents and affinity; which have intended and daily doth intend to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin the Duke of Buckingham and the old royal blood of the realm.” It would have been reasonable for Richard to assume that Elizabeth was still hoping—plotting—to overthrow him, although her Grey son and her brother, hostages in Richard’s custody, may have given her pause. But it is hard to believe Richard really feared she still had the means to put her hopes into effect—the more so because of what happened on June 13.