Richard The Chird (16 page)

Meanwhile, the morning after his visit to the Tower, Richard set off in pursuit of the Bastard of Fauconberg. Edward soon followed with reinforcements, but when he reached Sandwich the Bastard had already submitted himself and his fleet to the Duke of Gloucester and been promised pardon. The King and his brother returned to London. The campaign was over.

In the space of twelve fierce months, Richard had become the King's first general, the chief prop of his throne, and his most trusted officer. He was not yet nineteen.

l?att Watt

lord of the Borth

I

Anne*

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings

WHILE the great actors in these events shook the kingdom with their struggles, there were others who received buffets but gave none, who had no ambition to seek conquest but would suffer grievously in defeat. Such were the women of these passionate combatants, and of these none was more violently tossed upon the sea of strife than Warwick's frail daughter Anne Neville.

She was not yet fourteen years old that March day in the spring of 1470 when her father and her brother-in-law rode away from Warwick Castle to unseat King Edward and make Isabel Queen of England. With her mother and her sister, who was expecting a child in about six weeks, she endured a month of anxious days. Then Warwick and Clarence, shorn of most of their followers, galloped into the castle courtyard, fugitives. The women learned that they too must flee; in a few hours the party set out southward in hot haste. At Exeter, the ladies of the House of Neville were hastily packed aboard a small vessel. As it was approaching

Calais, Isabel's labor began. Guns cracked; the ship swung about —Calais refused to admit Warwick's fleet. In a rude cabin Anne and her mother did what they could for Isabel. Wine might ease her labor a little, but there was no wine. Alarmed for his daughter's safety, Warwick sent to Lord Wenlock, deputy governor of Calais. Wenlock obligingly dispatched wine for Isabel, but informed the Earl that the harbor would remain closed to him. Isabel's baby was born dead, or died within a few hours. Anne helped her mother prepare the little body for burial, and the sailors then slipped it into the sea. 1

Not long after Anne found herself in Normandy, her fortunes underwent a bewildering change. On Warwick's return from his interview with King Louis, she was informed that she might become the wife of Prince Edward, son of her father's greatest enemy, Margaret of Anjou. A month later, she learned that her betrothal had been ceremoniously announced at Angers and that, as soon as her father reconquered England for Henry VI, she would wed the Prince. She was coldly welcomed into the household of Margaret of Anjou at Amboise, and here for the first time she met the arrogant and boastful youth of sixteen who was to be her husband. Prince Edward's disposition reflected the schooling in hatred and revenge which his passionate mother had given him. "This boy," the Milanese ambassador had written three years earlier, "though only thirteen years of age, already talks of nothing else but of cutting off heads or making war, as if he had everything in his hands or was the god of battle. . . ." 2

About December 13, Anne was wedded to Edward by the Grand Vicar of Bayeux, who had secured a dispensation for the marriage from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It was something of a hole-and-corner affair. Queen Margaret, perhaps under pressure from Louis XI, fulfilled her bargain, but left herself as free as possible to disavow or annul it later. In all probability, Anne never shared a marriage bed with the Prince. The day after the ceremony the young couple and their mothers set out for Paris. 3

Four months later, on Easter Sunday, Anne returned, with her husband and mother-in-law, to the land of which her invincible father was now master. She was smitten the next day with the

news that even as she had been disembarking, her father and her uncle Montagu had been slain at Barnet. In the midst of Lancastrians feverishly planning to attack King Edward, she was alone with her grief. Borne along with Margaret's growing army, she was doubtless too stricken to be aware that she was no longer regarded as of any consequence. Early on the morning of Tewkes-bury, as trumpets presaged the opening of the battle, she was hurried into a boat with the Queen and her attendants. On the other side of the Severn the ladies took shelter in a house of religion. That afternoon a fugitive brought the crushing word that the day was lost and King Edward harrying the vanquished; the man had no news of Prince Edward. They heard nothing more till Sir William Stanley found them three or four days later. With the others Anne was brought to Coventry, a bewildered and despairing girl.

Doubtless Richard of Gloucester saw her, briefly. Clarence took her in charge and sent her to Isabel. When Richard returned from Sandwich to London, he probably sought out Anne in the household of the Duchess of Clarence. In childhood they had known each other well. Now Richard was the mightiest subject of the kingdom, the conqueror of her father and her husband. She was only the landless daughter of a dead rebel; her father's estates were the prize of the Crown; her mother's estates were being seized by George of Clarence. Richard doubtless had small opportunity to offer her comfort. However sympathetic Anne's sister may have been, her brother-in-law would treat her with scant state and keep her out of sight as much as possible—he had no wish to remind the world, or his brother Richard, that if the Countess of Warwick was to be deprived of her property, Anne was the legal heiress to half of it. 4 *

Richard, for his part, was busy helping the King to pick up the reins of government and was preparing to go north against the Scots. He was again Constable and Admiral of England. While Edward was marching from Coventry to London, he had given his brother Warwick's office of Great Chamberlain and soon added the stewardship of the Duchy of Lancaster beyond Trent. Still other grants and powers flowed from the grateful King.

Though Richard had become, in 1469-70, the virtual viceroy of Wales, his heart lay in the North; and since the Lancastrians were still capable of stirring up trouble there, the Scots were "furrowing" the borders, and Northumberland, whose allegiance was ambiguous, held the greatest strength in the region, Edward was happy to transfer his brother's seat of power from the Welsh Marches to Yorkshire.

Richard resigned the offices of Chief Justice and Chamberlain of South Wales to the youthful Earl of Pembroke. 5 * In return, he obtained in the North the lands and the supreme command which had once been Warwick's. Already Warden of the West Marches toward Scotland, he was given authority over the Earl of Northumberland, Warden of the East and Middle Marches. 6 A few days before he set forth on his campaign against the Scots, he received Warwick's estates of Middleham, Sheriff Hutton, and Penrith; and two weeks later the grant was enlarged to include the whole of the Earl's holdings in Yorkshire and Cumberland. Richard had won his way back to Middleham Castle. 7

Anne Neville had once been happy at Middleham, too; now she was helpless and miserable; she had been a companion of Richard's childhood; she might lay claim to half her mother's great estates. Before he left London, Richard secured the King's permission to make her his wife.

His work on the border was quickly accomplished. Though the Bastard of Fauconberg, who had gone northward with him, deserted his new-found allegiance and had to be executed, Richard apparently taught the Scots a sharp lesson. By early August, James III was expressing his great willingness to negotiate infractions of the truce.

In late September, Richard hurried south. When he sought Anne at Clarence's London house, Clarence declared angrily that the affairs of the Nevilles were entirely in his hands and that Anne Neville was not for the Duke of Gloucester.

It was a nasty blow, coming from the elder brother who still, it seems, cast something of his old spell despite his recent treason. But Richard had no intention of relinquishing Anne. He took the qxtiet way of appealing to the King for justice. Edward in-

formed Clarence that he was not to interfere with Richard's suit. On returning to his brother's town house, Richard found that Clarence was ready for him. Anne Neville, George declared, was not in his household. When Richard, having satisfied himself that the statement was true, demanded to know where she was, Clarence had his answer pat: since he was supposed to hold no right of wardship over Anne, he could not consider himself responsible for her whereabouts. He neither knew nor cared where she was.

Grimly Richard set to work to find her. And find her, he somehow did. Disguised as a cook-maid, she had been hidden in the kitchens of a dependent or friend of Clarence's. Richard escorted her to the sanctuary of St. Martin le Grand. It was the only refuge which would protect her from her brother-in-law without placing her under obligation to himself. If any other motive besides a delicate and honorable consideration for her feelings prompted him to this solution, it is not evident. 8 *

King Edward showed his attitude in the matter by conferring on his younger brother, on December 4, a vast grant of lands and manors forfeited by the Earl of Oxford and other rebels. 9 Yet, though he could not help revealing his affection and gratitude toward Richard, the King was anxious, for the peace of his realm, to reconcile his two brothers. Clarence was in a spiteful and dangerous mood. He meant to have Anne Neville's inheritance at any cost, for Richard's new offices and Richard's possession of Warwick's northern lands festered in his mind. In an attempt to placate Clarence, the King requested his two brothers to appear before his council in order to debate Clarence's claim of guardianship over Anne. "So many arguments," says the Croy-land chronicler, who witnessed the scene, "were, with the greatest acuteness, put forward on either side . . . that all present, and the lawyers even, were quite surprised that these princes should find arguments in such abundance by means of which to support their respective causes." 10 Since Richard was no match for his eloquent brother in the art of persuasion, it was probably the cogency of his plea which balanced the charm of his brother's tongue. Clarence's claim was, in fact, neither legal nor equitable. 11 *

The King's council cautiously suspended judgment; Edward continued to look for a way of mollifying George without injuring Richard.

It was no happy season that Richard spent at court this Christmas. Anne was still in sanctuary. Woodvilles seemed as numerous and as assertive as ever. And always there was brother George, glowering and implacable. Some two months later, Sir John Paston reported that, on February 16 (1472), the King and Queen, accompanied by the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, had gone "to Sheen to pardon, men say not all in charity." Paston added that the King "entreateth my lord of Clarence for my lord of Gloucester, and, as it is said, he answereth that he [Richard] will have my lady his sister-in-law but they shall part [share] no lyvelode [estates]." 12

This surly rejoinder Richard, to the King's great relief, was ready to accept as a basis for reconciliation. Soon after, an agreement was reached. Clarence signified his willingness for Richard to marry Anne, and at the King's special request, grudgingly agreed—on condition that no grant of lands made to himself would ever be canceled by Parliament or any other authority— that Richard should have Middleham and some of Warwick's other Yorkshire estates, which Edward had already given him. Richard, for his part, relinquished to Clarence the remainder of Warwick's lands and property, including the manors Warwick had held in his wife's right; he surrendered to Clarence the office of Great Chamberlain of England in exchange for the much more modest office of Warden of the Royal Forests beyond Trent; and he agreed that Clarence should be given the earldoms of Warwick and Salisbury. If he was seeking to marry Anne Neville merely in order to augment his estate, he had made a remarkably poor bargain. 13

Richard sought out Anne in St. Martin's sanctuary. She came forth at once to be his bride. Since they were cousins they needed an ecclesiastical dispensation to wed, but Richard was in no mood for waiting. Without the dispensation and, apparently, without any ceremony, they were immediately married. 14 * Then turning their backs on the splendors of London and Westminster, they

speedily retired to the castle in Wensleydale which spelled home to them both. The arrogance of the Woodville tribe and the surly company of George of Clarence could stir only painful memories for Warwick's daughter; and Richard, oppressed by the acrid hostility of one brother and the relapse of the other from magnificent leader into sybaritic King, chafed to breathe the free air of the moors. In their feeling for the past and their shrinking from the life of court, the twenty-year-old bridegroom and the sixteen-year-old bride seem to have been thoroughly compatible.

By the late spring of 1471, Richard and Anne had established themselves at Middleham to begin the task of maintaining order and of winning hearts in the North. The summer passed tranquilly. In the late fall Richard had to journey to London to attend Parliament. If he returned to Middleham for Christmas, he was probably again in the capital for the parliamentary session which lasted from February to April. During this year of 1473* Anne gave birth to a son, who was named Edward, doubtless in honor of his royal uncle. By this time Richard's and Anne's domestic happiness had been darkened by a familiar shadow. George of Clarence was again seeking to trouble them, and the rest of the realm as well.

Clarence had been born with the taste of the world sour in his mouth, and no amount of goods or honors could sweeten it. Before Richard and Anne had left London, he was dabbling in conspiracy with that habitual intriguer George Neville, Archbishop of York, whom Edward had pardoned and set at liberty as soon as he recovered his kingdom. The Archbishop, in his turn, was in touch with that unquenchable Lancastrian the Earl of Oxford, who was making futile raids against Calais with the French King's help. To lessen Clarence's temptations, King Edward arrested the Archbishop at the end of April and sent him for safekeeping to Hammes Castle, one of the fortresses protecting Calais. Clarence subsided only momentarily. Mistily there hovered before him a golden crown. Since the Lancastrian Parliament of 1470 had declared him heir to the throne after Prince Edward, and since Prince Edward and Henry VI were both dead, was he not