The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (25 page)

King Richard’s positioning was paying off, for the royal army was fighting downhill and they had more men. The Tudor vanguard was being forced slowly back, down the hill.14 At some point, according to Polydore Vergil, they executed a very disciplined manoeuvre. They disengaged, withdrew a few paces, regrouped and attacked in a tighter formation. Norfolk, ‘commanding the royal vanguard, does not seem to have been able to respond with the same level of coolness and expertise...such a model advance would have earned praise from leading exponents of fifteenth-century continental warfare’.15 That tactic would need experienced men who had fought and drilled together.

This was about the time that Henry Tudor and his escort left their shielded position behind the mainguard and cantered towards Sir William Stanley. Perhaps they were going to plead for Stanley to join them but it could have been to bait a trap. Henry was in open ground and appeared vulnerable. King Richard, demonstrating true Yorkist courage and dash, took the bait and led his household troops in a charge down the hill straight at his enemy. Henry and his team probably scuttled off to take refuge within a French unit of pikemen who formed a ‘hedgehog’, or it may have been a straight cavalry action. There is a fragment of a letter from one of the French soldiers: ‘he [Henry] wanted to be on foot in the midst of us, and that is partly the reason why the battle was won’.16 Whether contrived or accidental, it was the opportunity Sir William had been waiting for and he launched his red-coated cavalry. The King saw them bearing down on him and shouted ‘Treason! Treason!’

All three groups collided and engaged in savage fighting. King Richard hacked his way towards Henry, getting close enough to kill the Tudor standard bearer, but his troop was overwhelmed. In the main battle Sir William Catesby was looking for the royal field commander:

Rescue! My lord of Norfolk, rescue rescue!

The King enacts more wonders than a man,

Daring an opposite to every danger.

His horse is slain, and all alone on foot he fights,

Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death.

Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost! 17

Then
The Crowland Chronicle
reports: ‘King Richard, after receiving many mortal wounds, died a fearless and most courageous death, fighting on the battlefield.’ The last Plantagenet king, ruthless in the pursuit of power, was dead. His body was stripped naked and thrown over the back of a horse like a dead animal for later display. The battered crown was retrieved from under a thorn bush and placed on Henry Tudor’s head by Sir William Stanley while the soldiers shouted, ‘God save King Henry, God save King Henry.’ The ‘Song of Lady Bessie’ chants, ‘They hewed the crown from his head, knocked him down, beat his basnet [basinet, a conical helmet] into his head, dashing his brains out, then carried him to Leicester.’ 18

The body count was 1,000 from the royal army, most of whom were killed after Richard’s death in the mopping up which ranged over two bloody miles. On the Tudor side, a mere 200 were dead. King Richard, the betrayer, had himself been betrayed, certainly by the Stanleys, by others who were unconvinced he would or should win and by Northumberland who had never moved his men up to the action. He now came forward to kneel in homage to King Henry, but not all the defeated were able or quick enough to do that.

Treason doth never prosper.

What’s the reason?

Why, if it prosper,

None dare call it treason.

So wrote Sir John Harrington, an Elizabethan wit whose great-grandfather had fought for King Richard, having previously been ‘granted a parcel of lands’ for capturing the Lancastrian King Henry for Edward IV. But now the ancestor was on the wrong side and so in his descendant’s view ‘he was fool enough to loose them’.

King Henry made a triumphant entry into Leicester where King Richard had so recently been cheered out. The innkeeper at the White Boar, where Richard had stayed and left his bed, hastily painted the boar on his inn sign blue, thus converting it to a Lancastrian badge.

The
Crowland
chronicler quotes a poem that finishes, ‘the tusks of the Boar were blunted and the red rose, the avenger of the white, shines upon us’. But the red rose was only shining on the battlefield and it was important for Henry to establish his authority throughout the country. The God of battles had confirmed his hereditary right to the throne and acclamation on the bloody field itself had rounded off the procedure, but there were loose ends. Edward of Warwick, Clarence’s young son, was secured and sent to the Tower while Princess Elizabeth of York was brought out from custody and restored to her mother. Twenty-eight of Richard’s close followers, dead or alive, were attainted.

Henry started to run his new kingdom, which must have been difficult, for it was completely outside his experience. It took 12 busy days to reach London where the first ceremony was a procession to St Paul’s Cathedral with a formal presentation of his three battle standards: the banner of St George, the red fiery dragon of Cadwallader and the dun cow painted upon ‘yelowe tartene’.

Henry seemed to have an instinctive grasp of
realpolitik
and quickly gathered together the threads of government, but never having ruled anything he would need to be well served by professionals who guided and perhaps even made policy. His first secretary was Richard Fox and in expanding his executive team he presumably relied on character assessments by those he trusted, such as Edward. There was considerable patronage at his disposal and he used it to reward those who had served him ‘by yonde the see as over this side’ and who had been exposed to ‘great charge, labour and jeopardy’.19 Uncle Jasper became Duke of Bedford, Thomas Stanley Earl of Derby, Edward Courtenay Earl of Devon, and Richard Woodville (Edward’s elder brother) was confirmed as the third Earl Rivers, while lower down the ladder a number of Welshmen were given jobs at court.

Edward himself received two grants. The first was his original holding of the castle, forest, warren and town of Porchester, together with governance of the town of Portsmouth and the wages to pay the staff. The other was Captaincy of the Isle of Wight, together with the lordship of Carisbrooke Castle and all the King’s castles, lordships, lands and franchises there. This was a new grant and uniquely it was ‘in tail male’, which meant it was his to leave to his son, should he have one. Both the deeds are dated 16 September 1485, just three weeks after the battle.20

Carisbrooke was of great strategic importance, a castle of such strength that the French had failed to capture it when they invaded 100 years before. Anthony had further strengthened the castle and had the Woodville and Scales badge carved high above the entrance gate, which was ‘flanked by two noble towers’ (a part of the badge is still visible). An indication of rental value comes from a grant in 1495 to a Sir Reginald Bray of roughly the same thing, ‘with manors, rights and privileges at an annual rent of £308-17s-8d’.

The castle and holdings in the Isle of Wight were a handsome reward that also generated revenues from ‘fees and advowsons, frankpledge, wreck of sea and other liberties’. But it also carried responsibilities, such as inquiring into a complaint from merchants of ‘Rone’ in Normandy, now that France was an ally. Their vessels carrying salt and other goods had been boarded and plundered by two English ships which had ‘cast her men ashore in Normandy [unharmed], taken her to the Isle of Wight and there distributed her cargo’. Edward was commissioned to arrest ‘the pirates’ and compel restitution. If they refused then he was to take them before the King in his Council.

Edward’s own disposable wealth seems to have been remarkably small; the only record is dated 24 September 1485, a week after these grants, and refers only to an annuity of £50. It was presumably the annuity he had taken in exchange for the manor his mother left him in 1472. The will says that if Edward should die ‘without heirs of his body begotten’ then his brother Richard would inherit, a sensible consolidation of family wealth, but if Richard should die without an heir then the annuity was to be divided between his poorer sisters and a niece: Anne, Margaret, Joan and Elizabeth, the daughter of the deceased sister, Mary. If they all died without heirs then it went to his rich sisters, Elizabeth, Queen Dowager, and Katherine, Dowager Duchess of Buckingham. This is sensible and – such as it was – the inheritance would be split between those who needed it most, unless the head of the family produced children.21 This seems a complicated arrangement for an annuity of just £50 a year but it was all he had.

There was a spectacular coronation of Henry on 30 October 1485. Everyone was decked out in great finery22 and at the banquet that followed Sir Robert Dymmock, still the hereditary Champion, again threw down his gauntlet and challenged all comers to dispute King Henry’s rights. There were no takers. Once crowned, the new King had his realm to govern and there was a backlog of business. The coronation tournament was postponed to allow his first parliament to sit and affairs of state be dealt with.

The papal envoy reported great activity: Northumberland and two bishops were released, Surrey was still under arrest, the Princess Elizabeth had been declared Duchess of York and ‘the king will marry her’, and ambassadors had arrived from France, Austria and Brittany.23

Only 18 nobles had attended the coronation out of the total peerage of 30; the others were dead. The ruling class had been much depleted by the last 35 years of war, even though there had only been some 13 weeks of actual fighting. The ‘Cousins’ War’ (or arguing over the crown) had resulted in the violent deaths of three kings, one prince of Wales, nine dukes, one marquis, 13 earls, 24 barons, innumerable knights and many soldiers. There was a gap at the centre of the kingdom and that presented Henry with the opportunity of shaping a new form of government.

Those who survived made the best of it and the extant Woodvilles were once again close to the centre of power. A week after the coronation Jasper married Catherine, Edward’s sister and Buckingham’s widow, a good strategic arrangement that put the late Duke’s considerable power firmly in the royal family’s hands.24

In January 1486 King Henry married the Princess Elizabeth, Edward’s niece. In her portrait she appears pretty, blonde and curvaceous.25 A Venetian called her ‘very handsome’ and the Portuguese ambassador reported that she was ‘of medium height with large breasts’. The three-month period had given just enough time to get papal dispensation for the marriage, canonically necessary as they were related (in the fourth degree from John of Gaunt) and also to reverse Richard’s law, which had declared her a bastard. Perhaps it also allowed time for a little wooing.26

Immediately after the wedding Edward asked King Henry for permission to go to fight the Moors in Spain. It was a curious request for a man who had been in exile for the last two years and would be needed by his new king to help run the country. There is a strong echo of his brother’s decision to go crusading back in 1472. One wonders if it was in fulfilment of a vow made during the hard times. But what of Anthony’s will? Did Edward not care about his inheritance? ‘I, Anthony Wodevile, in the castle of Sheriff Hutton, bequeath...the lands that were my first wife’s, the Lady Scales and Thomas Lord Scales her brother’s to my brother Sir Edward Wodevile.’

Andrew Dymmock, the family lawyer and man of business, was an executor of the will and is described in it as capable of proving and protecting the titles to the Scales estates, which Anthony had acquired through his first wife, Elizabeth, the Scales heiress. Dymmock had worked for Anthony for nine years and ‘documents show him to have been one of the most busy and versatile men in the earl’s employ’.27 Interestingly King Henry made him Solicitor General on 15 November 1486, an appointment that surprised the author of
Judges of England
, who wrote ‘it has always been a puzzle why Dymmock, well born though he was, should have been promoted so promptly by Henry to the place of law officer of the Crown’.28

There could have been no better recommendation than Edward Woodville’s when the new King was looking for an able lawyer. It is also interesting that within a couple of months of Bosworth, John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester, was appointed Chancellor of England. He was a close Woodville friend and had been tutor to the late Prince of Wales under Anthony.29

It was presumably Andrew Dymmock who properly enrolled Anthony’s will in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, but there is no subsequent entry recording the granting of probate. It was also presumably Dymmock who on 13 October arranged for the writ of
diem clausit extremum
(the old equivalent of probate) to go to the escheators of Northampton, mid-Kent, Essex, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire ‘as to the possessions and next heir’ of Anthony Woodville.30

Edward, one of the heirs, was high in royal favour and the executors were very much alive, but it seems that Edward was uninterested in that inheritance. It is too long ago to be sure of the reason but it does suggest that Edward was not driven by lust for property or power. Perhaps he was thinking of higher things.

What happened to the Scales lands? They went to third cousins of Anthony’s late wife, great-great-granddaughters of a Lord Scales who had died more than a century before. What happened to Edward? He went crusading.

Edward sailed for Spain with 300 men in January or early February 1486. Presumably these men, or the majority of them, had been with him at Bosworth, in France, in Brittany and in
The Falcon
and
The Trinity
. While a vow may well have driven Edward, what of his men? Did they follow him for love or money? Probably both!