Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (25 page)

Arrested and taken to Shrewsbury, on 31 October the duke was handed over to Sir James Tyrell and taken under armed guard to Salisbury, where Richard had journeyed with his army. The duke pleaded to be granted an audience with the king. This Richard refused; instead, he was executed in the market place in front of the king and his army on All Souls’ Day, 2 November, the method of his execution by the axe
being the one concession to the duke’s royal ancestry. The following day, confident that the rebellion was all but over, Richard marched westwards, determined to crush the rising. News of Buckingham’s execution had left the rebels ‘so dismayed that they knew not which party to take’. A brave final stand was made at Bodmin on 3 November, when Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, and Edward Courtenay issued their own proclamation, declaring a call to arms to their ‘other king’ Henry VII. It was to be a hopeless last stand as the king’s forces marched into Exeter, and a general sense of panic erupted. The Courtenays, together with Thomas, Marquess of Dorset and other members of the nobility and gentry who had conspired in the rebellion and ‘as many of them as could find ships in readiness’ took to the seas, bound for Brittany. John Cheyney and Giles Daubeney made their escape together with another rebel from Exeter, John Halwell, on a boat belonging to Stephen Calmady from Devon.

A ruthless search for those hiding in the shelter of friends or the protection of sanctuary ensued. Richard’s own brother-in-law Thomas St Leger, the husband of his sister Anne, was unfortunate enough to be captured. In an attempt to save his life, ‘innumerable sums’ of money were offered, but Richard was in no mood to forgive such an act of betrayal from a member of his own family. St Leger was hung from the scaffold, drawn and quartered on 12 November.

Those more fortunate arrived across the Channel with tales of miraculous escape. The Cornish knight Sir Richard Edgecombe, who had previously sent money to Henry in exile, had been tracked down by Richard’s men and chased through woods near his house at Cothele on the Tamar gorge. He was only saved through his own quick thinking when, with Richard’s men closing in on him, ‘fast at his heels’ and his capture and likely death imminent, he found a large stone and placing his cap on top, rolled it into the water. Making a large splash, the rangers, ‘looking down after the noise and seeing his cap swimming, thereon supposed that he had desperately drowned himself, gave over their further hunting’.

Those who joined Edgecombe in flight from Exeter included the Marquess of Dorset and his young son Thomas Grey, the Courtenays, Sir Robert Willoughby, Sir Thomas Arundell, the head of one of the most important families in Cornwall with strong Lancastrian
sympathies, and whose sister was married to another fleeing rebel, Sir Giles Daubeney. Elsewhere, in spite of the failure of their risings and being in the less advantageous position of being distant from the coast, other leading rebels were able to slip the king’s net, boarding boats destined for across the Channel. They included Bishop Lionel Woodville, Sir Edward Woodville, John Welles, Sir John Cheyney and his two brothers, together with Sir Giles Daubeney and Edmund Hampden who had taken part in the Salisbury rebellion; in Kent, the brothers Thomas and William Brandon, along with Richard Guildford and Edward Poynings had also managed to escape, as had the Newbury rebels Sir William Berkeley and John Harcourt. Bishop John Morton, faring better than the Duke of Buckingham, had fled Weobley into the marshy wastelands of the Fens in his diocese, before crossing unnoticed into Flanders where he was joined by Christopher Urswick. It proved to be nothing less than an exodus of some of the most influential members of court, and most valued members of the southern gentry.

In total, over 500 Englishmen had decided they had no other choice but to weigh anchor and set sail for an uncertain future with an equally unknown figure, whose remote claim to the throne remained their only hope. In desperation, each of their futures had become forged to a mysterious young Welshman whom most had never even met.

Richard returned to London triumphant, even though no battle had been fought. The cost of his expedition, however, had come ‘at no less expense than if the armies had fought hand to hand’. Still, even the king understood that, with the successful flight of so many rebels across the sea, joining Henry’s standard, his victory was a pyrrhic one. The rebellion had been defeated, yet its authors had lived to return to fight another day. As Richard pondered the consequences of the violence that had occurred that autumn, together with the fundamental breakdown in the natural order, he grew increasingly agitated, ‘vexed, wrested and tormented in mind with fear almost perpetually of the earl Henry and his confederates return; wherefore he had a miserable life’. He was determined more than ever ‘finally to pull up by the roots all matter of fear and tumult and other by guile or force to bring the same about’.

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Exhausted from their journey and the battering that they had received as their ships were tossed around in the stormy seas of the Channel that had left them washed ashore miles from their intended destination in Brittany, Henry and his party spent three days on the coast refreshing themselves from the ‘toil and travail’. Having sent his ships onward to Brittany, Henry was determined to return with part of his company on foot. In order to seek permission to pass through Normandy, he sent ambassadors to the new French king Charles VIII. A Breton chronicle written by Alain Bouchard suggests that when Charles VIII’s guardian, the twenty-two-year-old Anne of Beaujeu discovered Henry had landed in France, she sent him to Charles VIII ‘where he was welcomed with honours’, and after remaining for a few days at the French court returned to Brittany where he was finally able to inform Francis II and his treasurer Pierre Landais ‘of his misfortunes’ and return to Vannes.

In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. For the French government, plagued with its own internal problems since the death of Louis XI several months before, no effort was made to take advantage of Henry’s desperate situation. The French regency government might have been expected to intercept him and take possession of a man whom Louis himself had sought to obtain for his own political purposes, but instead it chose only to take pity on the failed pretender, sending François, lord of Lau to meet him. Henry was given an escort by Henri Charbonnel to the monastery of Saint-Sauveur de Redon, at a cost of 1,051 livre tournois 12s 6d, where he was then freed to make his journey back to Francis II’s court in Brittany. The decision of the French to let Henry slip through their hands might be seen as a missed opportunity, yet it also reveals how low Henry’s stock had fallen on the international stage; after his ignominious return, with his fleet scattered and rebellion at home having been mercilessly crushed, Henry could be considered little more than an impoverished exile, whose defeat had called into question his usefulness as a diplomatic counter, let alone any chance of recovering the throne, his claim to which was at best remote. The dire reality of Henry’s fortunes was summed up by the chronicler Commynes who, reflecting on what had taken place, noted that although ‘God had suddenly raised up against King Richard an enemy’, it was judged that
Henry ‘had neither money nor rights to the crown of England’.

When he finally reached Brittany, Henry was informed that Buckingham was dead. Matters could hardly be worse, Henry must have considered, as he ‘much lamented’ the devastating news. But there was to be a glimmer of hope. For Henry had not arrived in Brittany alone. Henry was told how that, since the failure of the rebellion, those who had managed to flee England had sought protection in exile at Duke Francis’s court. Most prominent among them was Queen Elizabeth’s brother, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset, who had arrived together with a ‘great number’ of English gentlemen at Vannes shortly before. They now looked ‘to seek’ Henry and make contact with him.

Polydore Vergil records that Henry travelled to the ducal capital at Rennes, where he sent for Dorset and the other exiles who had arrived at Vannes. Uncertain whether Henry himself ‘had fallen into the hands of King Richard’, when Dorset and his followers learnt that Henry had arrived safe back in Brittany they ‘rejoiced wondrously’ and travelled quickly to Rennes, where after ‘much mutual congratulation made’ they spent several days in ‘dealing in their cause’.

If the number of English exiles who sought out Henry were at first few, as men made their individual journeys towards Francis’s court, the numbers soon swelled into a colony of several hundred. Their rebellion may have ended in failure, but the effect of that failure had been for each man in his desperation to throw in his lot with Henry Tudor. Many of course had been loyal to Henry’s cause from the beginning, coming as they had from the households of his mother Margaret Beaufort and Thomas Stanley; Richard Pigot and John Browne had both been involved in the arrangements made by Margaret and Stanley for the inheritance of her estates in 1482; other exiles such as Sir John Risley, Seth Worsley and John Edward had strong connections with Thomas Stanley’s own affinity.

For others, however, coming face to face with Henry, an unknown Welshman who many probably had never even heard of before Richard’s usurpation, let alone ever considered a serious challenger to the throne, the experience of meeting the exiled Lancastrian must have been muted. For those once loyal Yorkists, men who had fought against Henry’s own relatives in the civil wars, the very act of paying him homage must have seemed nothing less than bizarre. Edward IV’s household men such
as Sir Giles Daubeney, or Edward’s standard bearer John Cheyney, the Master of the King’s Horse, must have reflected in a state of disbelief the course of events that had witnessed their lives transformed, to the extent that they now came to find solace in the company of a man their dead master had spent years in vain attempting to capture. Other men came to Henry with their own personal grievances still agonisingly fresh in their minds. John Harcourt had been a prominent member of William Lord Hastings’ retinue before his master’s execution. Then there was the Woodville affinity, represented by Sir Edward Woodville, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset and Lionel Woodville, Bishop of Salisbury, whose authority as the king’s relatives had evaporated upon Richard’s accession; still in mourning for the disappearance of Edward V and his brother and still uncertain as to the eventual fate of Queen Elizabeth and her daughters imprisoned in sanctuary at Westminster, a burning sense of revenge must have crowded out any reservation they might have of turning to their former Lancastrian foes for support.

It was a remarkable assortment of men from every variety of political background; only their hatred of Richard and their own pitiful sense of desperation united them. Yet in desperation, only desperate measures could suffice. At Bodmin, Henry had been proclaimed as ‘the other king’, though this claim had been made in haste, as the dying embers of revolt flickered away. Now those who sought Henry’s side had little choice but to consider this unknown Welshman their candidate for the throne. It mattered little that Henry’s claim to the throne may have been weak. If it was the only claim that they could cling on to in the hope of deposing Richard, it was claim enough. Yet Henry also recognised that if he were to hold his coalition of exiles together in support of his candidacy, he would need to go further.

In the previous months his mother Margaret had sought to raise the prospect of a marriage between Henry and Edward IV’s eldest daughter Elizabeth of York, thereby cementing an unheard-of alliance between the houses of Lancaster and York, uniting the country around a joint claim to the throne held by Henry and Elizabeth together. Now Henry was willing to reassure his Yorkist converts that he would take the young princess as his bride. Moreover, he was determined to impress upon his Yorkist supporters that he would place past divisions behind him by creating a tangible and lasting union between the Lancastrian
and Yorkist dynasties. Henry himself recognised that his claim to the throne would not stand scrutiny as merely a step-nephew to Henry VI; through marriage to Edward IV’s daughter, however, the royal family that he hoped to create would have its bloodline from Edward III descended from several branches, strengthening its legitimacy and his right to rule as king. For the Woodvilles and those members of Edward IV’s Yorkist household, Henry’s pledge to marry Elizabeth of York gave them renewed hope that rather than merely campaigning for an unknown Lancastrian usurper, they would be restoring their own family name and fighting for the memory of their dead king, returning the legitimate ruling line of the house of York, in the person of Elizabeth of York, back to the throne.

Before the Woodvilles and the Yorkist exiles would commit their support to Henry’s cause, they first demanded that Henry commit himself under oath to the marriage. This took place on Christmas Day, 1483. The Breton chronicle suggests that the alliance was sworn in the cathedral at Vannes, in the presence of the Duchess of Brittany, though Vergil places the ceremony at Rennes:

Henry had ‘almost an assured opinion’ that, despite the failure of his first invasion, his position was now strengthened. If any future invasion were to be a success, however, he would need to secure Duke Francis’s backing, convincing him that his initial investment in the escapade in November had not been wasted. Henry returned to the duke, reporting what had occurred and at the same time urging him to provide more aid and money, ‘that he might return forthwith into his country, much desiring his presence’, promising that he would repay ‘what so ever
he should receive, and in time to come plentifully requite the duke’s singular liberality with all endeavour, care and diligence’. What other promises Henry made have gone unrecorded, though an understanding must have been reached between the two men that if Henry were successful, as king he would commit to securing and preserving the fragile independence of Brittany against the might of France.