Shakespeare's Kings (96 page)

The
carnage
at
Tewkesbury
was
enough
to
earn
the
battlefield
the name
of
Bloody
Meadow
-
a
name
still
locally
current
today;
but
it was
nothing
compared
to
the
massacre
that
followed.
Edward's
men took
no
prisoners.
Those
of
the
defeated
Lancastrians
who
failed
to make
their
escape
from
the
field
were
cut
down
where
they
stood;

others
sought
sanctuary
in
the
great
abbey
that
still
dominates
the
town, but
the
Yorkists
smashed
down
the
doors
and
slaughtered
every
one
of them,
shedding
so
much
blood
that
the
building
had
to
be
closed
for
a month
before
it
could
be
reconsecrated.
¹
Somerset
and
several
of
his colleagues
who,
like
him,
had
betrayed
Edward
not
once
but
twice, were
beheaded;
those
leaders
who
had
never
wavered
from
the
Lancastrian
cause
were
spared
and
pardoned.

The
fate
of
Edward,
Prince
of
Wales,
is
uncertain.
According
to
most accounts
he
was
killed
in
the
battle;
Hall,
however,
claims
that
he
was taken
prisoner
by
the
King's
former
tutor
Richard
Croft,
who
delivered him
up
to
the
King
as
the
result
of
a
proclamation
to
the
effect
that anyone
doing
so
would
be
rewarded
with
an
annuity
of
,£1
oo,
the Prince's
life
being
guaranteed.
He
was
brought
before
Edward,
who asked
him
'how
he
durst
so
presumptuously
enter
his
realm
with banner
displayed?'
The
boy
replied,
'To
recover
my
father's
kingdom', whereupon
the
King
struck
him
with
his
gauntl
et
and
Clarence,
Gloucester,
Dorset
and
Hastings,
who
were
standing
by,
ran
him
through with
their
swords.
He
was
seventeen
years
old.

His
mother,
Queen
Margaret,
had
not
been
present
at
the
battle.
She had
retired
with
her
ladies
to
a
'poor
religious
place'
on
the
Worcester road,
and
was
still
there
three
days
later
when
she
was
taken
prisoner. Brought
before
the
King
at
Coventry,
she
was
carried
on
to
London, where
on
Tuesday
21
May,
as
part
of
Edward's
triumphal
entry
into
the city,
she
was
paraded
through
the
streets
before
her
grimly
smiling
rival Elizabeth.
For
the
next
four
years
she
was
under
what
might
be
called house
arrest,
living
in
adequate
style
but
consta
ntly
transferred
from place
to
place.
In
1475
Louis
XI
succeeded
in
ransoming
her
for
50,000 gold
crowns
and
a
renunciation
of
all
rights
to
the
English
throne.

And
what,
finally,
of
King
Henry
himself?
On
the
night
of
that
same 21
May,
he
died
in
the
Tower.
Once
again,
the
circumstances
of
his death
are
unclear.
According
to
the
subsequent
proclamation,
it
was the
result
of
'pure
displeasure
and
melancholy';
but
both
in
England

1. Tewkesbury Abbey contains another curious relic of the battle: the door of the sacristy, which is actually the westernmost of the chevet chapels on the south side, is covered on its inner face with metal plates made from the armour worn by soldiers who were killed on the field. And immediately behind the high altar, an iron grating in the floor marks the vault in which the Duke of Clarence was buried after his murder seven years later.

and abroad it was an open secret that he had been murdered, almost certainly by Richard of Gloucester. The most circumstantial contemporary account (by John Warkworth, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, writing some twel
ve years later) reports that he
was put to death the
21st
day of May on a Tuesday night betwixt xi and xii of the clock, being then at the Tower the Duke of Gloucester, brother to King Edward, and many other; and on the morrow he was chested
¹
and brought to St Paul's and his face was open that every man might see him. And in his lying he bled on the pavement there; and afterwards at the Black Friars was brought, and there he bled new and fresh; and from thence he was carried to Chertsey Abbey in a boat and buried there in Our Lady's Chapel.

According to tradition, Henry was murdered in the Octagon Chamber on the first floor of the Wakefield Tower. His death seems to have been a violent one: when his coffin was opened in
1910,
the skull was found to be 'much broken'.

Though widely hailed as a saint and martyr - and despite repeated overtures by Henry VII to Pope Julius II in Rome - Henry VI never received formal canonization. Nor, one suspects, did he deserve it. True, he was genuinely pious, unswervingly faithful to his wife, tender and solicitous to his family; but so are many men. Saints should be made of sterner stuff. In temporal rulers, too, there is no place for the innocence, unworldliness and humility that constituted so great a part of Henry's character. But for the accident of his birth, he would have led a quiet, uneventful life of scholarship and devotion; as King, he was a disaster - swayed by every breeze, puppet of every faction, totally unable to control or direct his kingdom as it drifted further and further into chaos. Having succeeded to the throne at the age of only nine months, he reigned for nearly fifty years - perhaps the saddest half-century in English history. His death, doubtless, was horrible; but it came not a moment too soon.

4

king
.

Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade

To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,

Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy

To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?

king henry vi part iii

Nowhere is Shakespeare's extraordinary ability to turn a chronicle into a drama more impressively demonstrated than in the third part of
King Henry VI.
Its two predecessors both contain scenes of battle - in
Part I
,
indeed, the fighting in France is portrayed with vigour and considerable brio - but it is only in the last play of the trilogy that the author is called upon to encapsulate in little more than two hours what is virtually the entire course of the Wars of the Roses, from the aftermath of the first battle of St Albans in
1455
to the defeat of Queen Margaret at Tewkesbury sixteen years later. Now at last, with all the inevitability of Greek tragedy, the House of Lancaster suffers retribution for the atrocity committed at the end of the previous century: the deposition and murder of Richard II and the usurpation of his crown by Henry IV are finally avenged. And the consequences of the outrage are visited not just on Henry and his successors but on the country as a whole: England loses France, is burdened with a detested French queen, and rapidly descends into anarchy. After Tewkesbury, however, it seems that Henry's crimes have been finally expiated. It will be another fourteen years before the sun of York suffers its final eclipse, but already the last of the Lancastrians, John of Gaunt's great-great-grandson Henry of Richmond, has made his appearance on the stage. He is described in the
dramatis
personae
quite simply as 'a youth'; but it was he, as Shakespeare's audiences well knew, who was to inaugurate the great dynasty of the Tudors and, with it, well over a century of prosperity and peace.