The Last Plantagenets (44 page)

The five Tudor children were kept in a nunnery in care of the Abbess of Barking until Henry VI came of age. He then asserted himself by looking after this brood of half brothers and sisters with an affectionate care. Edmund, the first son, was made Earl of Richmond. Jasper, the second, was created Earl of Pembroke, and it was in his tall western castle that the son of the Richmond family was born. The third brother, Owen, took holy orders. Of the two sisters, Jacina married Reginald, Lord Grey of Wilton; the other became a nun. It is said that the gentle Henry VI became quite fond of his half brothers and sisters and gave them every honor, save an acknowledgment of legitimacy.

Poor Katherine’s body was not to be allowed the calm of one resting place. When Henry VII became king he found it necessary to demolish her tomb because he needed the space for the elaborate new chapel he was erecting. The epitaph her son had placed above her was removed and in its place a long poem was chiseied into the stone, concluding with these lines:

Thrice happy wife and mother! After this absurd and inelegant epitaph, could any historian of the day do else but assert the legitimacy of the union?

The tomb over the body of the dowager queen was never raised again, but the coffin was opened and it was found that the body had become almost mummified and had remained in an unusual state of preservation. The bier was kept open for three centuries for the benefit of curious visitors. In the reign of Charles II a fee of tuppence was charged for looking at the brown and wizened countenance. Samuel Pepys paid his tuppence and that night, in excessive bad taste, wrote in his diary that he “this day kissed a queen.”

E
NGLAND was tired of boy kings. There had been Henry III who was eight years old when they placed the crown on his head and who turned out to be a devious and petty man without dignity or courage. Then there had been Richard II who had too much dignity and great courage when aroused but who, after a good start, became a bad king. And now here was Henry VI, an infant of less than a year, with England in the midst of a major war and with two factions at home fighting for control of the government.

Nothing good could be expected under the circumstances. Henry became a gentle and devotional boy, with the qualities which often go with early piety—a little smugness, some stubbornness, and a certain inflexibility. He grew into a saintly man and it was a pity he could not have gone into the church. Certainly he was ill fitted to hold the factions in control, to direct the war in France, and, in the end, to fight a cruel civil war which went on and on, through triumphs and defeats, to end in his mysterious death in the Tower.

The dissensions at home were due, as usual, to royal uncles. Bedford the reliable, in whom the late king had trusted implicitly, was in command of the armies in France. The youngest of the surviving uncles, Humphrey of Gloucester, acted as protector. Although he had won the good will of the people, Humphrey was weak, rash, and selfish. He always put his own interests first and fatally weakened the English cause by antagonizing the Burgundians. The other faction was the Beauforts, descendants of John of Gaunt by his third wife, Katharine Swynford, who took their name from Beaufort Castle in Anjou, where the children had been born. This branch of the family had never been popular although they were handsome, polished, and able. The public
dislike for them was due to a feeling that they were interlopers, and in equal degree perhaps to their wealth.

The strongest member of the Beauforts was Henry, the third of the original brothers, who had taken holy orders. He had become Bishop of Winchester and had been appointed chancellor by Henry V, holding that post when the warrior king died. Beaufort had a secret desire (which everyone suspected) to become Pope. If conditions had been different he might have achieved his ambition, having charm, a subtlety of wit, and a great gift for diplomacy, in addition to being the possessor of unusual wealth. But the schism in the papacy had become three-sided and the church was degenerating into a state almost of impotence. The result was a tendency in national churches to conduct their own affairs without much control from Rome or the other centers of the papal triangle.

Beaufort appeared at the Council of Constance, which had been called to discuss unification and reform, wearing the robe of a pilgrim. He played an important part in the election of Martin V as the one Pope and was made a cardinal as a reward. Later he was selected to direct a campaign in Bohemia against the religious reformers. If he had succeeded, he would have been an overwhelming favorite to follow Martin. This left him on the wrong side of the fence in England, where the people were convinced he put Roman interests first.

To counterbalance this weakness in his position, Beaufort had one great asset: he stood strongly for peace with France. This served to open a wider breach with Humphrey, who was openly for war. Humphrey, in fact, seems to have followed closely in the footsteps of the leading malcontent in Richard’s reign, Thomas of Woodstock, in his ambitions and policies and, as it developed, in his sudden end.

The boy king inclined to the Beaufort side from the beginning. He liked his uncle Henry and had small regard for Humphrey. The cardinal, moreover, was always ready to advance money when it was needed. At one time the Crown owed him close to £30,000, a sum so great that it was believed he had been helped by others in raising the money. At several stages the hostility between the cardinal and “good Duke Humphrey,” as the unthinking populace called him, blazed into open conflict. Throughout it all the young king maintained his personal preference for the cardinal and gave his full support to the movement for peace.

When Bedford died in 1435 it was plain to everyone, except perhaps to Duke Humphrey, that there was no longer any hope of a successful prolongation of the war. This gave Cardinal Beaufort the upper hand.

King Henry had reached his twenty-fourth year. He was handsome in a quiet way, but without the spectacular good looks which had become almost a hallmark of the family. None of the designing beauties about the court had succeeded in causing the slightest flicker in the royal eye. He dressed simply and refused to bedeck himself in sparkling regalia. Extremes of fashion were not for him and he even refused to wear the fancy shoes of the period. Henry’s concern was more in the educational endowments he was setting up at Cambridge and Eton than in tournaments or masques, or in fact any form of court foolery. He eschewed the swearing of oaths and spent many hours each day over his prayers. A grave, studious, and earnest young man.

The time had come for a royal match to be arranged, and one day a Frenchman named Champchevrier brought a portrait for his inspection. It showed a young girl with the bluest of eyes and with golden hair in ringlets about a heart-shaped face. Someone has described her as a
petite créature
, and so it may be assumed that she was small and with, perhaps, the first hint of plumpness. The king, studying the canvas with eager interest, decided that she looked vivacious and intelligent as well as lovely.

He was asked if he thought her attractive and replied with his only expletive.

“St. John, yes!” he said.

It was the portrait of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou, who came from one of the most unfortunate and poverty-stricken of families. Her father, René of Anjou, had been captured in a struggle for territory and was paying off his ransom slowly and painfully—painful for those who had to collect the money but not for René, who was an enthusiastic dilettante in the arts and was more interested in his painting and in twanging out new melodies on the strings of a harp. The princess, who was just fifteen years of age, resembled her father in a lively appreciation of the arts, but in no other respect. She had a tongue which delighted everyone with its wit and which could counter with the most deadly riposte. A French commentator wrote of her: “There was no princess in Christendom more accomplished than my lady Margaret.” And behind this entrancing façade there was, unsuspected as yet, a will of iron and a spirit which nothing could curb or extinguish.

Although the Angevin princess would have no dower, and territorial concessions had to be made (Parliament was furious at the need to give
up several provinces), the match was arranged. The young Margaret had been staying at the French court and had so entranced the royal family that the king rode some distance with her when she began her journey to England, finally turning back with tears flowing down his cheeks. By the time the party reached England it was realized that the bride-to-be had practically no wardrobe. It would be a great mistake to let the people of England see her in such modest and even shabby clothes.

It happened that Henry was also short of funds at the time and he had to raise money in a great hurry, on the security of the Crown jewels. Margaret remained at Southampton until a dressmaker named Margaret Chamberlayne could get there, in a mad clatter of horse’s hoofs, to make suitable clothes for her. It took some time to complete the work but finally Margaret was ready and was escorted to London, where she met the king for the first time. He thought her more lovely than the portrait. The people of London, forgetting their disapproval, were delighted with the diminutive beauty. This was a natural reaction for, of the royal consorts who had come from France, the impoverished little Angevin was acclaimed by common consent as the fairest of all. Her emblem flower, the daisy, was in every cap in London. Henry, already deeply in love, had the daisy engraved on all the royal saltcellars.

It was soon apparent that the young queen would dominate the king. When they had any differences, which was very seldom, her will prevailed. The king was so enamored of her that he ordered a costly program of decoration in all the royal residences, which had been allowed to fall into shabbiness and disrepair. He made no protest when she displayed her resentment openly over the efforts that Duke Humphrey had made to prevent the marriage. The good duke, in fact, found himself completely out of favor and compelled to stand by glumly while the Beauforts were accorded every favor. The king himself seldom saw his uncle and never did more than toss him a few grudging remarks.

The feud came to a head two years later. Parliament was summoned to meet at Bury St. Edmunds. It was early in February and the blustering winds heaped up snow in the streets, making it necessary to close all shutters and to huddle with candles over inadequate fires. Despite the hardships of travel, the queen accompanied her royal spouse and they arrived in the town with a large armed escort. The nobility had received orders to report in force and the town resounded with the tramp of armed feet. Over all this hung an air of mystery and suspense. Did the king anticipate an attack on his person? Men with blue noses huddled on street corners and asked one another this question.

The answer was supplied on the belated arrival of Duke Humphrey. He came with nearly a hundred horsemen in response to the general order. Half a mile from Bury he was met by royal heralds with orders to go at once to his lodgings in the North Spital of St. Saviour’s. That evening a party of noblemen waited on him and put him under arrest on charges of treason.

The duke was dumbfounded at this. It had never occurred to him, apparently, that the course he had followed could be open to criticism. What he wanted to do himself must always be right and proper. Was he not high in the order of succession? If he found fault with the young king, and if he ran counter to national policy, as he had done in alienating the Duke of Burgundy, how could
he
be called to account?

At the same time three of his servants were placed under arrest on charges of plotting the death of the king. Three days later twenty-eight more of his men were seized and sent to various prisons throughout the country. Later they were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death, although the tenderhearted king did not allow the sentences to be carried out. All this was unknown to the duke, who had fallen into a coma. He had been in bad health for some time, owing to early excesses and debauchery, and the shock was too much for him. Five days later it was announced that he was dead.

Considering the slowness of all means of communication, the news of his death swept across England with great speed and, of course, caused rumors of foul play. Was this not a repetition of the death of Thomas of Woodstock? The people do not seem to have blamed the king, whose reputation for saintliness was too well founded for that. They thought of many other reasons for the supposed murder, including the inevitable supposition that the sweet voice of the beautiful French wife, who was known to have been at odds with Humphrey, had whispered in the royal ear.

All the troubled events of the next forty years stem back to this unexplained episode. Certainly it was a major issue in the civil struggle known as the Wars of the Roses.

The body of the duke was displayed in both houses of Parliament and showed no signs of violence. It seems reasonable to suppose that he died from a stroke (it was referred to as palsy in the records) to which he had succumbed quickly.

As Cardinal Beaufort died in the next month, the administration of national affairs was jointly assumed by Edmund Beaufort, now the Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Suffolk, a grandson of that able commoner and wool merchant, William de la Pole of Hull. The people of England might have been expected to feel some pride that one of their number
had thus broken through the barriers of class distinctions, especially as Suffolk did the best that mortal could do with the difficulties created by the war. Instead he was heartily disliked. The evil fortune which pursued the Poles culminated finally in his exile and murder at the hands of sailors on the ship which was taking him from England.