Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (10 page)

Louis soon discovered a snag in his otherwise faultless scheme. In order to reach Calais, Louis’s troops would need to cross Burgundian territory, something which Duke Philip of Burgundy refused outright. Having been denied access to Calais, Louis realised that the treaty was almost meaningless, and in the face of diplomatic pressure and threats from Edward IV, lost interest in equipping Margaret’s expedition.

When Margaret set sail in October, she was accompanied by only 800 men. The voyage took her first to Scotland, where Henry VI boarded the fleet, which then sailed down to Bamburgh Castle, a fortress that had been left in the hands of Sir William Tunstall, a brother of one of Henry’s chamberlains, who was prepared to surrender the castle to the Lancastrians. Jasper had sailed separately from France in time to take charge of the fortress, together with the Duke of Somerset. Meanwhile Margaret continued to Alnwick, successfully laying siege to the castle.
However, the threat of a large Yorkist force travelling northwards led by the Earl of Warwick broke her troops’ resolve, and the decision was taken to turn back to Scotland. As they sailed away in flight, their fleet was struck by a storm, with four ships wrecked on the coastline by fierce winter winds. Margaret somehow managed to reach Scotland in a rowing boat, yet many soldiers and sailors were left to fend for themselves, stranded on Holy Island.

Deserted by their king and queen, Jasper Tudor and Somerset were left isolated and exposed at Bamburgh, and with supplies fast running out, their men had been reduced to eating their own horses. Their only vain hope lay in reinforcements being sent from Scotland. This did not materialise, and on Christmas Eve they were forced to surrender. Somerset accepted a pardon and swore loyalty to Edward IV, enticed by the reinstatement of all his lands and titles. This Jasper refused to countenance; instead he managed to negotiate a safe conduct to Scotland. Alnwick fell to Warwick’s siege in early January. Only Harlech Castle, in the north-western tip of Wales, held out for the Lancastrians.

Margaret’s mission had ended in failure, yet she remained convinced that the success of her cause lay in persuading Louis XI to grant further assistance, or at least in preventing the French king coming to terms with the Yorkist regime. For this reason, between mid-April and early May 1463, Jasper Tudor, together with the Duke of Exeter and other Lancastrian leaders, made another voyage from Scotland to Sluys in Flanders, where they journeyed to France to seek an audience with Louis. Margaret followed with her son Prince Edward in July, hoping that her heir’s presence would convince the French king that hope remained in the Lancastrian cause. These hopes were dashed in October when Louis XI signed a joint truce with Edward IV and the Dukes of Brittany and Burgundy: each side promised to cease all hostilities for one year, and at the same time pledged not to assist each other’s enemies. Edward had succeeded in neutralising the Lancastrians’ greatest asset; disconsolate and frustrated, Margaret decided to travel to the sanctuary of her father, René of Anjou’s residence, where she remained for the next seven years. Jasper remained in France until December, when he was granted 500 livre tournois to return to Scotland, the only source of refuge now open to the Lancastrian dissidents.

The Scottish government recognised that the Lancastrians were being frozen out diplomatically; they were unwilling to be left isolated alongside them. With Louis XI indicating as part of the new treaty with England that he was ready to abandon traditional French protection for Scotland, its government felt it had little choice but to open negotiations with England. On 9 December 1463 a truce was agreed with Edward at York, to last until the following October while discussions continued for a more permanent treaty. With the truce, Edward had obtained the crucial promise that he must have longed for: that the Scots would no longer aid the Lancastrians. Henry VI was asked to leave the country, departing St Andrews for Bamburgh. With nowhere else to turn and separated from his wife and son, it seemed as if his chances of being restored to the throne were all but over.

Edward could have been forgiven for thinking that he was now master of his own destiny. Through a combination of effective diplomacy and military strategy, he had driven the remaining Lancastrian resistance from almost every corner of the realm.

The pinnacle of this success had been the defection of one of the Lancastrians’ most powerful supporters, Henry Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset. In light of the enmity that existed between Edward’s father, the Duke of York, and Henry Beaufort’s father, Edmund Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset, the fact that reconciliation was possible must have seemed remarkable to many. Yet Edward had genuinely believed Somerset, or at least had wanted to believe him, so much so that, according to one chronicler, ‘he lodged with the king in his own bed many nights, and sometimes rode a-hunting behind the king, when the king had no more than six men in his party, of whom three were the Duke of Somerset’s men’.

For Edward’s supporters, the king’s willingness to pursue a policy of reconciliation seemed naive at best, with frustrating consequences: already the decision to place Sir Ralph Percy, who had defected alongside Somerset, in charge of Bamburgh had backfired when he handed the castle back to the Lancastrians in March 1463, once again giving them a vital foothold. The king’s judgement was once again called into question when at Christmas 1463, without obtaining the king’s leave, Somerset fled northwards to rejoin the side of his old master, Henry
VI. It was a bitter blow and unforgivable in Edward’s eyes, and he soon launched a fresh campaign to crush the Lancastrians in the north.

Even though a fresh alliance with France was now out of the question, Jasper Tudor had refused to give up the fight. Now, heartened by Somerset’s re-defection to the Lancastrians, he began to look for new opportunities to pursue, and new foreign powers to support the cause. This came in the form of Duke Francis II of Brittany. Francis sent an envoy to meet Henry and Somerset, who assured him there was still considerable support across the country for the deposed king, and the restoration of his kingship would still be possible, if only he might be supplied with food, materials and men. Having spent Christmas at the exiled Lancastrian court, the envoy returned at the end of February 1464, with letters from Henry to his wife Margaret, her parents and the Duke of Brittany. Jasper travelled to France soon afterwards, arriving in Brittany in March. He carried with him letters from Louis XI, who did not believe that his truce with Edward prevented him from requesting that Brittany should give aid to Jasper in order to assist his return to Wales. Francis obliged, and on 26 March ordered that Jasper should be provided with the protection of a fleet led by the vice-admiral of Brittany, Alain de la Motte. However, in June, in a characteristically sudden change of mind, Louis XI wrote to the duke criticising him for the support he had given to Jasper, prompting a confused Francis to reply that he thought he had only been carrying out the French king’s wishes.

Meanwhile, in retaliation for Somerset’s double-dealing, Edward announced his intention to lead a force against the Lancastrians in the summer. Since Somerset’s defection, their cause had rallied and having gone on the offensive, several vital outposts had been captured which allowed them to control most of the countryside south of the border, and were threatening the Yorkist stronghold at Newcastle. Edward understood the urgency of the situation, and began to muster a massive royal army. A battle involving 5,000 Lancastrian troops took place at Hedgeley Moor on 25 April, resulting in a Yorkist victory, yet it was victory at the battle of Hexham on 15 May that ensured the virtual extinction of the Lancastrian cause. This time Edward would show no mercy. After the battle, over thirty Lancastrians were dragged out of their hiding places, rounded up and summarily executed, including
Somerset who had been captured in pursuit. Bombarded by the king’s ‘great guns’ that caused its walls to crumble into the sea, Bamburgh soon capitulated. Henry VI was forced to flee into hiding, wandering the countryside until he was eventually captured in July 1465 and taken to the Tower.

It seemed that after nearly five years, Edward IV had finally succeeded in pacifying his kingdom, having weeded out the last remnants of Lancastrian opposition. While Margaret of Anjou remained exiled in ‘great poverty’ at her father’s residence in France, only Harlech Castle, described by one contemporary as ‘so strong’ that ‘it was impossible unto any man to get it’, remained in Lancastrian possession.

Jasper Tudor also remained at large, though his exact whereabouts during these dark years are unknown. Surviving hand to mouth, he embarked on raids across North Wales, where his fame in frustrating the Yorkist regime was admired by Welsh poets, who wrote of his ability to command raiding parties from the Dyfi estuary. One ally upon whom Jasper relied for support was Gruffydd Fychan of Corsygedol, whose residence at Barmouth, the fifteenth-century stone house, Ty Gwyn, was celebrated in verse as being the location which Jasper used as his headquarters, planning his next moves. Ultimately, however, Jasper’s fortunes as a renegade and a rebel without much of a cause would change little without the backing of a significant foreign power to provide the money and men necessary to embark upon a major invasion and pose a serious threat to Edward IV.

The tide of diplomacy had been in Edward’s favour ever since his agreement with Louis XI. Yet this was soon to change when, against the best advice of his most powerful supporters, the Earl of Warwick included, Edward set his heart on concluding new alliances with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany in the spring of 1468. In doing so, he alienated Louis XI who, diplomatically isolated himself by the move, looked to seek revenge by once again taking up his cousin Jasper’s cause. On 1 June 1468, having been courted by Jasper and Margaret of Anjou in turn, he agreed to provide Jasper with three ships and £293 5s 5d to allow the earl to travel to Wales. In reality it was a paltry investment, with no chance of making much impact, yet Louis was not interested in backing a full-scale invasion of England. He merely sought to embarrass Edward for the affront of spurning his diplomatic
advances; making his next move across the board, Jasper Tudor was the nearest convenient chess piece.

A convenient pawn he may have been, but Jasper was determined to make the most of his opportunity. Landing in the Dyfi estuary near Harlech on 24 June 1468, he set out across North Wales, marching towards Denbigh, where in the process his forces swelled to 2,000 men. At the same time, Jasper decided to hold assizes and formal court sessions ‘in King Harry’s name’, a gesture clearly designed to show that he considered Henry VI the rightful King of England. Jasper managed to capture Denbigh without difficulty, and in an act of open defiance burned down the new part of the town, leaving it ‘clear defaced with fire’, while Flintshire was so ravaged that it would struggle to pay taxes five years later. So impressive was the force and impact of Jasper’s lightning raid, that news spread across the courts of Europe, with the Milanese ambassador in Paris reporting that in response Margaret of Anjou was also journeying to visit Louis, in an attempt to solicit further assistance.

Evidently rattled by the progress Jasper was making through Wales, Edward IV ordered William, Lord Herbert and his brother-in-law Walter, Lord Ferrers to raise a large army from across Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and the Welsh Marches to crush the insurrection. A force of some 7,000 men was split in two: one wing moved across the North Wales coast and into the Conway valley, where it was ‘wasted with fire and sword’, the other moved north from Pembroke; both were to converge upon Harlech Castle from the east and the south. Hopelessly outnumbered, the fortress surrendered with only slight resistance on 14 August. Jasper managed to escape his enemies and, according to the Welsh chronicler Elis Gruffyd, gave them the slip, managing to commandeer a boat from a gentleman ‘living at Mostyn … at a place called Picton pool’. Mention of Mostyn suggests that the Tudors may have been helped by the Conway family; John Conway was the lessee of the township of Mostyn lordship, though help may have also been given by one of Jasper’s kinsmen, Hywel ab Ieuan Fychan of Pengwern and Mostyn. In order to disguise himself, Jasper had to carry a ‘bundle of pease pods’ on his back, ‘for fear that someone should spot him – for there were plenty to spy on him in those parts’. Boarding the boat, he managed to sail to Brittany ‘more through
the craft of the earl than the craft of the boatmen of Picton’.

In spite of the early success of his invasion, Jasper had suffered a devastating setback. The once impregnable fortress at Harlech had fallen, and with it was removed from Lancastrian possession their only toe-hold left in the kingdom. His humiliation was complete when in September 1468 Edward, delighted with the outcome, rewarded Herbert for his crushing of the rebellion and capture of Harlech with Jasper’s own Earldom of Pembroke. Jasper was not the only person dismayed by Edward’s decision to raise Herbert to the earldom, a sign of his rising favour and influence at court. Silently fuming, the Earl of Warwick watched as he saw a man he considered an upstart from relative obscurity take his place alongside him as an earl, his equal. For too long, Warwick believed, he had suffered in silence; action would need to be taken, and he, the kingmaker, would be the one to act.

‘Now take heed,’ wrote one contemporary observer, ‘what love may do.’ It was a lesson that Edward IV learnt to his peril. An attractive and energetic young man standing six foot three inches tall, with ‘a goodly personage and very princely to behold’, Edward IV had an eye for the ladies, particularly those at court, and he ‘pursued with no discrimination the married and unmarried, the noble and lowly’, casting off his conquests to other courtiers ‘as soon as he had satisfied his lust … much against their will’. Nevertheless, for the security of the Yorkist dynasty, it was vital that the king should marry. The Earl of Warwick, believing that Edward owed him his kingdom, and that in turn all matters of English policy should come under his influence, had taken a strong interest in arranging a French marriage for Edward, and had entered into negotiations with Louis XI for the hand of the French king’s sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy. The match would have secured a lasting peace between England and France, something which Warwick considered particularly vital given Louis’s previous support for his Lancastrian cousins.