Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (19 page)

Meanwhile the king revelled in his newfound wealth, ‘very often dressed in a variety of the costliest clothes very different in style’ from what contemporaries had been used to, as the Crowland Chronicler described: ‘the sleeves of the robes hung full in the fashion of the monastic frock and the insides were lined with such sumptuous fur that, when turned back over the shoulders, they displayed the prince (who always stood out because of his elegant figure) like a new and incomparable spectacle set before the onlookers’. Edward’s expensive tastes in clothing were not the only excesses that the king had taken to indulging in. In addition to his constant womanising, that Thomas More later claimed was ‘insatiable, and everywhere all over the realm intolerable’, Edward, who had once displayed the slim physique of a warrior, had taken to eating too well. At Picquigny, Commynes had observed that Edward was ‘a very good looking, tall prince’ but that ‘he was beginning to get fat and I had seen him on previous occasions looking more handsome’. In middle age, the king had begun to take his feasting to extremes. ‘In food and drink he was most immoderate’, Mancini observed, adding that ‘it was his habit, so I have learned, to take an emetic for the delight of gorging his stomach once more’. As a result, the king’s once ‘fine stature’ (‘previously he had been not only tall but rather lean and very active’) had ‘grown fat in the loins’.

When Edward fell ill and his condition deteriorated suddenly, resulting in his death on 9 April 1483, aged just forty-two, the king’s demise came as a surprise to many: he was ‘neither worn out with old age nor yet seized with any known kind of malady’, the Crowland Chronicler wrote. Mancini related the popular opinion that ‘they say another reason for his death was, that he, being a tall man and very fat though not to the point of deformity, allowed the damp cold to strike his vitals, when one day he was taken in a small boat, with those whom he had bidden go fishing, and watched their sport too eagerly. He there contracted the illness from which he never recovered, though it did not long afflict him.’ Possibly Edward died of a stroke, termed by Commynes as ‘apoplexy’, resulting from ‘the limits of his excesses’; what matters is not exactly how the king died, but the very fact that he had died now, leaving his heir Edward, Prince of Wales to inherit his throne aged just twelve. A child king upon the throne was the last thing that
Edward would have wanted to leave behind; in 1377 and 1422 the realm had managed to establish a regency council to mask the inadequacies of minority rule, yet given the instability of the previous decades, and the novelty of the Yorkist monarchy, a new chapter of uncertainty was about to be opened.

PART TWO:

ASCENT

4

USURPATION

A
s Edward lay on his deathbed, he had managed to add ‘several codicils’ to his will. According to Dominic Mancini, he had directed that Richard should become sole protector of his young son Edward V. Richard himself had been in the north at York when he was taken by surprise by the suddenness of his brother’s death. On hearing the news, he had summoned the northern members of the nobility to him to ‘hold a solemn funeral ceremony’ where they pledged their loyalty to ‘the king’s son; he himself swore first of all’, while he sent ‘most pleasant letters’ to Queen Elizabeth consoling her and promising ‘to come and offer submission, fealty and all that was due from him to his lord and king, Edward V’.

As the dead king’s body lay in state at Westminster, a sense of unease over the future direction of the realm had already descended. John Gigur, the warden of Tattershall College in Lincolnshire, wrote to his patron, the Bishop of Winchester, on 19 April, beseeching him ‘to remember in what jeopardy your College of Tattershall standeth in at this day; for now our Sovereign Lord the King is dead, we know not who shall be lord nor who shall have the rule about us’. As noblemen and prelates gathered in the capital for the king’s elaborate funeral ceremony, behind the scenes a debate raged among royal councillors between two sides, that of the king’s blood family, his mother Queen Elizabeth and her wider kin the Woodvilles, and noblemen at court who had resented their rapid rise to power and now feared the influence that they might hold over the young king.

Edward had been fully aware of the problems that his queen and her kin had created at court; the constant quarrels between the Woodvilles and other members of the nobility had annoyed him, ‘yet in his good health he somewhat less regarded it, because he thought whatsoever
business should fall between them, himself should always be able to rule both the parties’. Many at court continued to blame the queen for Clarence’s death, while the Woodvilles had failed to shake off their reputation as parvenus; ‘they were certainly detested by the nobles’, Dominic Mancini wrote, ‘because they, who were ignoble and newly made, were advanced beyond those who far excelled them in breeding and wisdom’.

To the evident discomfort of many, including Edward’s close friend William, Lord Hastings, the steward of the household Thomas, Lord Stanley, and more traditional members of the aristocracy such as Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, the Woodvilles had slowly been tightening their grip upon some of the key offices of state: by the beginning of 1483, the queen’s brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers was the master of the Prince of Wales’s household, his brother Sir Edward Woodville was shortly to take command of the navy while another brother Lionel was Bishop of Salisbury. The Marquess of Dorset was deputy-governor of the Tower of London.

The Woodvilles seemed to hold every card. The young king remained in the possession of Earl Rivers at Ludlow, while Dorset had seized all of the king’s treasure and munitions in the Tower, which he was now guarding. At the first meeting of the council, they sought to press home their advantage. Their military strength was increased with the council’s decision to give command to Sir Edward Woodville of 2,000 men at a cost of £3,670 to set sail with the royal fleet at the end of April, ostensibly to tackle ongoing piracy in the Channel. The date of the coronation was also hastily arranged; despite calls from some ‘who said that everything ought not thus to be hurried through’ and that the ceremony should wait for Richard’s return from the north, the date was quickly fixed for 4 May. ‘We are so important,’ Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, is reported to have replied, ‘that even without the king’s uncle we can make and enforce these decisions.’

The Woodvilles made it clear that it would be unacceptable for Richard to become sole protector, fearing that if he did so, they ‘would suffer death or at least be ejected from their high estate’. When it came to a vote, their superior numbers meant that instead, it was resolved that ‘the government should be carried on by many persons among whom the duke … should be accounted the chief’. In a tense showdown, other
members of the council were not going to allow the Woodvilles to get their own way entirely; ‘the more foresighted members’ argued that the family ‘should be absolutely forbidden to have control’ of the king until he reached his majority. An argument also broke out concerning the number of horsemen that should accompany the king into London, with Hastings protesting that he would rather flee to Calais, where he was captain of the garrison there, than await the king’s arrival with a large army. Hastings’ determination to limit the new king’s retinue grew out of fear: ‘He was afraid that if supreme power fell into the hands of the queen’s relatives they would then sharply avenge the alleged injuries done by that lord. Much ill-will, indeed, had long existed between Lord Hastings and them.’

Eventually Queen Elizabeth, ‘desirous of extinguishing every spark of murmuring and unrest’, agreed to his demands, writing to her son’s household in Ludlow that his numbers that accompanied him to the capital should be limited to 2,000 men. It was to prove a significant concession, the full consequences of which Elizabeth and the Woodvilles had underestimated. They had also underestimated Hastings, who had no intention of not allowing the dead king’s wishes to be observed. Hastings was a devout Yorkist, whose father had been a retainer to Richard, Duke of York. Hastings’ star rose with Edward’s accession to the throne; he followed him into exile, and was rewarded for his loyalty with the lieutenancy of Calais, replacing Rivers who had angered Edward by planning to go on crusade in Portugal. During the 1470s, as his wealth and influence increased, including his appointment as Lord Chamberlain, Hastings emerged as Edward’s chief adviser and confidant. He intended to remain loyal to his former master’s wishes to the last.

Hastings also understood that unless Richard was granted the protectorship, his own future at court was under threat. Queen Elizabeth had never forgiven Hastings for being ‘the accomplice and partner’ of the king’s ‘privy pleasures’, especially since he had quickly taken to living with the dead king’s mistress Elizabeth Shore immediately after Edward’s death. Hastings had apparently also continued to maintain ‘a deadly feud’ with the queen’s son, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset, resulting from a quarrel over mistresses that they both ‘attempted to entice from one another’; two days before his death, Edward had
attempted to reconcile the two men, though ‘latent jealousy’ still remained.

For these reasons Hastings remained convinced that as the king’s brother, Richard was the best person to act as the young king’s guardian. The duke was also Hastings’ ‘long standing’ friend ‘in whom he had the greatest trust’, from whom he probably hoped he might receive advancement if Richard was granted the protectorship. He now sought to do everything in his power to ensure that this happened.

After the council meeting had ended, Hastings sent messengers to Richard, informing him of the outcome of the council meeting and its decision to prevent Richard from taking up his position as Protector. He urged Richard to leave the north immediately and to ‘hasten to the capital with a strong force’; at the moment he felt ‘alone in the capital’ and believed his life was ‘not without great danger, for he could scarcely escape the snares of his enemies’.

Hastings was confident, however, that if Richard brought a ‘strong force’ with him, he would easily be able to match the two thousand troops that Rivers had been limited to bringing to London for the coronation. He also broached a more radical course of action, urging Richard to intercept Edward and his household before they had the chance to enter the capital. Richard would need to take the young king ‘under his protection and authority’ before he entered London, seizing his household men around him ‘before they were alive to the danger’.

Receiving Hastings’ message, Richard understood that he needed to act fast. He began to mobilise his forces to march south, but to avoid this being seen as an overtly hostile act, he sent letters to both Queen Elizabeth and the council seeking to reassure them of his loyalty to Edward V. In his second letter, however, Richard insisted that he was best placed to act as his nephew’s protector. Making the contents of this letter public, it was reported that

The letter apparently had ‘a great effect’ on the public, who ‘now began to support him openly and aloud, so that it was commonly said by all that the duke deserved the government’. A popular general, whom Parliament had formally congratulated several months earlier for his victories over the Scots, Richard had seemingly won the people over to his side. Marching to London, he was determined to claim guardianship of his nephew and seize control of the office he believed was rightfully his own.

News of Edward IV’s death had been slow to reach Ludlow, where the new king had been residing, devoting himself to riding, hunting and ‘other youthful exercises’, with a messenger only reaching the prince to inform him of his father’s death and his accession five days later on 14 April.

As Prince of Wales, Edward had been guarded at Ludlow by his uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers. Rivers had been chosen as the Prince’s mentor on account of his learned background; fluent in several languages, he was one of the most cultured figures at the Yorkist court. Rivers had also built up a reputation as an excellent jouster who had fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury. An influential patron of literature, he was considered ‘a kind, serious and just man’.

As soon as Rivers received news that Edward had acceded as king, he prepared to depart from Ludlow for the capital ‘with all convenient haste’, yet a delay of almost ten days to collect an adequate number of forces meant that Richard was able to dictate proceedings. Sending letters to the young king and Rivers, enquiring ‘on what day and by what route he intended to enter the capital’, he asked if ‘they could alter their course and join him, that in their company his entry to the city might be more magnificent’.