The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (9 page)

Meanwhile the social whirl went on, ‘and Mons. The Bastard prayed the ladies to dine on the next Sunday, and especially the Queen and her sisters: and he made great preparation’. But the celebrations were cut short. The Bastard was urgently recalled to Burgundy because his father, Duke Philip ‘the Good’, had died on 15 June 1467. Some of the ladies may well have been disappointed, as Antoine loved women, rather like his father who had 24 documented mistresses. Indeed, the following year at the chapter of the Golden Fleece, the Bastard was admonished for ‘fornication and adultery’, despite his ‘valour, prowess and prudence and several other good habits and virtues’.

Three months later Anthony sailed to Burgundy at the head of an embassy to arrange the marriage of the King’s sister, Margaret, to the new Duke of Burgundy, Charles, the Bastard’s half-brother. The embassy, perhaps with Edward as his brother’s page, was also tasked with organizing a trade treaty together with a new anti-French alliance between Burgundy, England and the Dukedom of Brittany. The anti-French alliance proved easy to arrange but the dowry, which was eventually agreed at 200,000 gold crowns (£41,666-13s4d), had to be paid in instalments, and trade agreements took a difficult three months to negotiate. This was probably made harder because apparently Duke Charles did not wish for the marriage, or so reported Philippe de Commines, then a Burgundian advisor.

Eventually it was time for the wedding. Vows were exchanged in the town hall at Damme, a little port just downstream from Bruges, on 3 July 1468; the wedding mass was celebrated and then the party moved on to Bruges. It was a brilliant, courtly and extraordinarily lavish affair that lasted for nine days, with jousts, plays and dinners. The high Gothic crown Margaret brought with her and wore is now kept in Aachen Cathedral. It is a dainty crown of plain polished gold, decorated with a simple jewelled lozenge pattern, bands of pearls and eight huge jewels, above which are eight high spikes, each topped with a five-sided flower. It belongs in a fairy tale.

The Tournament of the Golden Tree was the most elaborate spectacle ever staged by any of the Dukes of Burgundy, and this was the joust that accompanied the wedding celebrations. Anthony broke 11 lances against Adolf of Cleves, a highly regarded fighter (who actually broke 17 and so was declared the winner). The Bastard had decided not to compete against Anthony because they were
frères d’armes
, having fought against each other in the lists, and so he had nominated Adolf to guard the
pas
.

Unfortunately, while the Bastard was watching the event, a horse kicked him and broke his thigh. He did not allow this to spoil the day and insisted the jousts went on. They did, and the final prize was awarded to John Woodville, an elder brother of Edward’s, although Olivier de la Marche says that his youth and good looks were the reason. The reports of the banquets show them to have been gargantuan and amazing: one had 30 courses and another had the dishes served in 30 little ships, each of which was a 7ft (213cm) model of a three-masted carrack, floating on a silver lake. And so it went on.12

William Caxton was the headman of the English colony in Bruges who formally welcomed Margaret. It is clear from Caxton’s own account that he later advised her on a number of matters and they also discussed politics and trade (she was an active dabbler in the cloth trade). More importantly she commissioned him to undertake the translation of the
Recuyell of the Histories of Troy
. There is an engraving that shows Caxton presenting a book to her.13

That autumn the new alliance was to be put to the test when Brittany and France started skirmishing along their border. King Edward appointed Anthony, now aged 26, to be ‘Captain of the King’s armed power proceeding to sea and elsewhere for the resistance of the King’s enemies’. The commission was for five knights, 55 men-at-arms, 24 shipmasters, 1,076 sailors and 2,945 archers for three months.14 Anthony probably took his brother, Edward, as his page, who would then have been ten or 11. This would be logical and the start of the naval experience that would have him commanding the fleet 15 years later.

Faced with an allied front King Louis ostensibly came to terms with Duke Francis of Brittany, but this did not deter Anthony, who took his fleet to sea in October. He cruised the Channel in appalling weather and recaptured Jersey, which had been in French hands for the last six years. Anthony and his fleet were back at the Isle of Wight a month later. But it was unsatisfactory for King Edward: all he had for about £18,000 of expenditure was the reconquest of Jersey, while Duke Charles of Burgundy had proved a most unsatisfactory ally; he had made a private settlement with King Louis (the Treaty of Peronne, October 1468) by which he had undertaken not to aid the English if they invaded France.

Meanwhile Edward’s sister, Queen Elizabeth, was very active around the court. She had been given lands worth 4,000 marks a year.15 and was now busy arranging suitable marriages for her family. Four of her sisters were married to the richest available nobles,16 while Thomas, her eldest son by her first husband, had married the King’s niece, the only child and heiress of the Lancastrian and recently attainted Duke of Exeter. Her second brother, 20-year-old John, had married Warwick’s aunt, the immensely rich Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Some people disapproved, as she was 65 and had already survived three husbands (and would outlive John). Presumably she liked them young.17

All in all, it meant that the King had effectively arranged for his wife’s family to be raised to a suitable status without funding it himself. These activities irritated much of the establishment, who disliked being upstaged, to say nothing of the upstart Woodvilles having the best available heirs and heiresses. In the fifteenth century marriage was a business aimed at finding suitably rich spouses while love was reserved for dreamy ideals, courtly or adulterous affairs. But apart from marriages, the family gained little direct financial benefit from their royal connection, particularly when compared to noblemen such as the Lords Hastings and Herbert or Warwick’s family, the Nevilles, all of whom received far more than the Woodvilles in titles, lands, offices and money.

However, the Woodvilles did make the best use of their easy access to the King and so became powerful lobbyists. Influence was hugely important, and while Warwick, ‘the over mighty subject’, resented the family and their increasing importance, his real problem was his own declining influence.

Apart from finding his in-laws useful, it seems the King also liked them and certainly supported them. For instance, when he sent the Earl of Worcester to govern Ireland in September 1467, it was King Edward who encouraged Worcester to sell two of his key appointments to them, that of Constable of England to Lord Rivers and Constable of Porchester to Anthony. To coincide with this purchase Anthony was granted the Captaincies of the Isle of Wight and Carisbrooke Castle, the latter acquired from a follower of Warwick, the ownership (effectively private equity) in these positions being exchanged for four of the manors from Jacquetta’s Bedford inheritance. In these arrangements the King merely renounced the rights of the crown and confirmed the new appointments.

But such moves fuelled the establishment’s antipathy towards the Woodvilles, as Mancini surmised, ‘mostly because of...jealousy which arises between those who are equal by birth when there has been a change in their station’. To rub salt into the wound, Lord Rivers was elevated to an earldom and made Treasurer of England. As the court jester joked, ‘The Ryvers are so high he could scarce escape them.’ 18

This was the court where Edward Woodville grew up, his family working closely together with his sister right at the centre and the old nobility watching for mistakes. Unfortunately the Queen did make enemies and irritated a number of people. She was certainly manipulative and sometimes unwise, but has been unfairly blamed for a number of events. For instance, she is said to have brought about the death of the Earl of Desmond because he had disparaged her. There is no evidence to show that she had anything to do with his execution. It was simply a matter of Irish politics.

Lord Worcester had been appointed Lieutenant of Ireland in place of Lord Desmond. His job was to sort out the mess of the day. On his arrival in Ireland, he gathered information, made his inquiries, worked out his plan and then held a parliament at Drogheda where Desmond was attainted for, ‘Fosterage and alliance with the Irish [enemy], giving the Irish horses, harness [armour] and arms and supporting them against the faithful subjects of the King’, i.e. encouraging and arming the rebels.19

Desmond was found guilty and sentenced to death. Worcester may have been a ruthless, cunning man but his integrity is unquestioned, and in ordering Desmond’s execution he would be certain that he was improving the security of the realm. The Queen’s involvement is most unlikely. She could certainly arrange patronage and access but her influence on actual government was no more than marginal at most.

Real government of the country was by the King, with his Council to help and advise.20 The King’s objective was to ‘maintain the peace both outward and inward’, or so wrote Sir John Fortescue, the leading political theorist of the day. The Council was the inner circle of the powerful men of the land, the great and the good, the forum where the King tested his ideas and gathered a consensus for his plans, which could be tricky when there were ‘over-mighty’ members such as Warwick.

King Edward’s solution was to use the Woodvilles and other friends as a counterbalance, which made Warwick very aware of his declining influence. He issued his own proclamation criticizing the King for ‘his estrangement of the great lords of his blood’. The King ignored him, and Earl Rivers as Lord Treasurer remained a powerful member of the King’s executive team, which had its hands full trying to keep abreast of Lancastrian plots.

Just such a plot was uncovered in 1468 when 18 people were arrested, among them Sir Thomas Cook, a considerable City merchant living in conspicuous luxury. At the time, Lord Rivers was the Lord Treasurer and so responsible for taking surety and collecting fines. He was certainly so vigorous in the pursuit of his duties that it has led to the affair being used by some historians as proof of the Woodvilles’ cupidity.

Unrest continued, with a disgruntled Warwick persuading Duke George of Clarence, the King’s brother and heir presumptive, to join him in sedition. The result of their machinations was a rebellion that broke out in June 1469 while King Edward was on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk (an important shrine since a vision in 1061; it also claimed to have a phial of the Virgin’s milk). The King was dangerously far from his power base and so rode north, recruiting while his companions – including several Woodvilles and presumably young Edward – galloped off to gather aid.

Anthony went to raise men from nearby Middleton, his home outside King’s Lynn, while Lord Rivers and his second son, John, were dispatched to the marches of Wales, strong Yorkist territory. There had been marching, counter-marching, skirmishes and battles that ended in a royal disaster. The King could only order his little group of followers to split up and run for cover.

Warwick was a ruthless and arrogant adversary. He executed men as he felt inclined and without the slightest regard for the laws of either God or the land. Lord Pembroke and his brother, Sir Richard Herbert, were caught, taken to Northampton and beheaded. Lord Devon was captured and executed. Lord Rivers and John Woodville were caught beyond the Severn, taken to Warwick and Clarence at Coventry and then executed. John, with his drooping moustache, may lie in the church at Grafton with the other Woodville tombs.21

The King was caught at Olney on his way to London. Appearing to accept defeat, he was put under house arrest at Warwick Castle. But the Earl soon found it difficult to control the country without a cooperative head of state. Law and order broke down, there was rioting and powerful men took or tried to take what they wanted. The Duke of Norfolk laid siege to the Pastons at Caistor Castle; the Duke of Clarence organized an attack on Anthony’s house at Middleton; Berkeleys fought Talbots in Gloucestershire and Stanleys fought Harringtons in Lancashire. There was rebellion in the north and fear of rebellion in Wales.

To stop the chaos Warwick needed formal royal authority, and it was this that gave the King his chance. Assenting to a number of measures, he then sent for his Council and announced he was going to London. Warwick, nonplussed, let him go, and so by force of personality the King was back in power by late October. The Milanese ambassador at the French court was amazed:

From England we never hear one thing like another, but always more different than day is from night. The last intelligence received thence by the king here is that the Earl of Warwick had gone north to take possession of the castles and estates of those lords whom he had caused to be beheaded. The King of England was with him, going freely to amuse himself by hunting wherever he chose. One day, being in the country, he took the road towards London, and entered that city, where he was very gladly and cordially received, as it seems that the king is much beloved by the men of that city, while the earl is hated.22

Anthony became the head of the family as the second Earl Rivers and was also made Hereditary Constable of England, although he immediately resigned that position to Duke Richard of Gloucester, the King’s youngest brother. Already a Knight of the Garter, a large landowner, Captain of the Isle of Wight, Constable of both Carisbrooke and Porchester Castles, Anthony was an important figure with particular responsibility for a crucial part of the coast.

Young Edward Woodville would then have been about 12, which was the age when noble boys moved from paging to squiring, when they learned to wear their armour and to ride cleanly and surely.