Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (33 page)

The king’s denial did not prevent rumours from spreading across the country. These were clearly troubling to Richard, who was determined that they should be prevented from spreading beyond the capital. On 19 April a letter from the king, signed by him two weeks earlier, was read out at the Guildhall in York:

It seems highly implausible that Richard would have wished to marry his own niece, whom he himself had declared illegitimate eighteen months before. But the king was planning to marry again, as soon as he possibly could. He was also planning for Elizabeth of York’s marriage. Already he had arranged for her sister Cecily to be married to Sir Ralph Scrope, a younger brother of Thomas, Baron Scrope who was nevertheless looked down upon as ‘a man less than her in rank’; he now began to negotiate a marriage for Elizabeth with the cousin of the Portugese king, John II, Manuel Duke of Beja who would later become King Manuel I. Less than a week after his wife’s death on 22 March Richard sent Sir Edward Brampton, a converted Portugese Jew, to the Portugese court to offer the king’s hand in marriage to King John’s elder sister, the Infanta Joana. In arranging this double marriage, Richard was conscious that he might be able to destroy Henry Tudor’s claim to be the sole descendent to the Lancastrian dynasty, since the living descendents of Henry IV’s sister Philippa, who had married John I of Portugal, were to be found in the Portugese royal family. The Portugese Council of State clearly understood the king’s reasons for the marriage, stating that the union between Richard and the infanta would unite ‘as one the party of Lancaster, and York – which are the two parties of that kingdom out of which the divisions and evils over the successions are born’. By marrying off Elizabeth of York at the same time as marrying the Lancastrian heiress Joana ‘straight away’, Richard knew that
he was in reach of defeating the challenge that Henry Tudor posed; as the Crowland Chronicler observed, ‘it appeared that in no other way could his kingly power be established, or the hopes of his rival be put an end to’.

Polydore Vergil reported in the manuscript of his history that Henry was at Rouen while a fleet was still being equipped at Harfleur when the rumour reached him that Richard was planning to marry Elizabeth of York. Henry was ‘suddenly seized by anxiety’; unable to decide what to do, being ‘in two minds’, he spoke of his fears only to the Earl of Oxford. Confiding in the Earl of his ‘great quandary’, Henry understood that if Richard did marry Elizabeth, his plans for a union between the houses of Lancaster and York would be thrown into jeopardy. Henry also believed that he would be unable to marry any of her younger sisters ‘for reasons of prestige’; if he did not, however, he would face the prospect that ‘all Edward’s friends would abandon him’. It was clear that Henry, approaching his one Lancastrian confidant in secrecy, felt constrained by his Yorkist supporters, whose agenda for supporting the earl was to restore one of Edward IV’s children to the throne, rather than lend their wholehearted support to himself alone. Already the Marquess of Dorset’s attempted defection had shaken Henry’s faith in his Woodville supporters; he recognised that if Richard managed to marry Elizabeth of York, the king’s reconciliation with the Woodvilles would be complete, leaving him without any hope of claiming the throne without their support.

Oxford, perhaps with an eye for obtaining an entirely Lancastrian succession, agreed that the price of abandoning a Woodville marriage would likely result in further defections. After a protracted discussion, both agreed that ‘another marriage affinity should be sought as a way of acquiring prestige’. Their chosen candidate was Katherine Herbert, a sister of William Herbert, the Earl of Huntingdon, both of whom Henry had known growing up in Herbert’s father’s household at Raglan in the early 1460s. According to Vergil’s manuscript history, in a sentence the Italian thought later wise to delete, Henry knew Katherine ‘well and loved’. William Herbert himself had been married to a Woodville, which may have also influenced Henry’s thinking if he hoped to retain any of his Yorkist exiles. Whether Henry would succeed in gaining Herbert’s support seems doubtful. On Richard’s
accession, William Herbert had been a staunch supporter of Richard during Buckingham’s rebellion. He was rewarded for his loyalty with his appointment as justiciar of South Wales and steward of the Duchy of Lancaster lands there, in addition to being appointed chamberlain of the Prince of Wales. Herbert’s elevation to royal favour was confirmed with his betrothal to Richard’s illegitimate daughter Katherine, that brought with it a landed endowment worth around £1,000 a year.

Despite the earl’s newfound favour, the Herbert family must have been aggrieved that their previous authority in Wales, when the first Earl of Pembroke had been regarded as Edward IV’s ‘master lock’, had not been restored under Richard. During the later years of Edward’s reign, the family became involved in violent clashes with the Vaughan family, and the second earl had been forced to surrender his earldom with its accompanying Welsh lands, receiving instead the title of Earl of Huntingdon, with a smaller landed endowment in Somerset and Dorset. If William Herbert had hoped to restore to his family their coveted Earldom of Pembroke, Richard’s new grants of land were instead located in the south-west, confirming Edward IV’s decision to move the family influence outside of Wales. Perhaps Henry believed that with the Earldom of Pembroke also nominally held by his uncle Jasper, he might be able to buy their support by offering to restore the family to the title.

Since his days at Raglan, Henry understood the network of alliances that the Herberts surrounded themselves with. The family were linked through marriage to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, a nobleman of a similar age to Henry Tudor; he had grown up with Northumberland as childhood friends when they had both been wards at Raglan castle. Later Northumberland had married one of Katherine’s sisters, Maud Herbert, in 1472. Henry hoped that through the prospect of a Herbert marriage and his former youthful friendship, Northumberland might come to his aid.

It seems surprising that Henry would have considered Northumberland a candidate for supporting his cause, especially since the earl had been instrumental in placing Richard upon the throne, colluding in Rivers’s execution. For his pains, Northumberland had been rewarded handsomely: appointed to the royal office of great chamberlain, he had also been rewarded with the cherished de Brian inheritance, which
included lands in Devon, Dorset, Gloucester, Kent, Somerset, Suffolk and Surrey. In his homeland of the north, he was granted vast influence of power as the king’s representative as warden-general of the Marches, the office of captain of the Berwick garrison worth a staggering £5,000 a year in salary, as well as being granted the lordship of Holderness, confiscated from the Duke of Buckingham, which was worth over £1,000 a year.

Yet the grants of office, wealth and land could not hide the fact that the earl felt his traditional Percy authority in the north constantly undermined by the king. Whatever Richard might have promised him, Northumberland had known for a long time that his influence in the north would always be curtailed by a king whose own northern interests threatened to undermine his ability to raise an affinity and attract men to his side. After the fall of the Earl of Warwick, Richard had been granted a large share of the Neville patrimony around which he quickly sought to construct his own powerbase. He soon fell into conflict with local noblemen such as Northumberland, who felt that Richard was drawing his own men away from him, with retainers who had previously pledged their loyalty to the earl taking offices and fees from Richard instead. This conflict of loyalties eventually had to be resolved by Edward IV, who summoned both men to his council at Nottingham in 1474, to hammer out an agreement between the two men. As a result, Northumberland had promised to be Richard’s ‘faithful servant’ and to do him service ‘at all times lawful and convenient’, while Richard pledged in turn to be the earl’s ‘good and faithful lord at all times, and to sustain him in his right afore all other persons’. He would ‘not ask, challenge, nor claim any office or offices or fee that the said earl hath of the king’s grant, or of any other person or persons … nor interrupt the said earl nor any of his servants in executing or doing of any of the said office or offices by him or any of his servants in time to come’. Richard was not to accept or retain any servant that had previously been ‘retained of fee, clothing or promise’ by the earl. Nevertheless, the agreement could only have been viewed by Northumberland as nothing other than a compromise by the Yorkist brothers, whose regime threatened to freeze out his influence in the north.

Northumberland had been wrestling with these tensions when in exile Henry had attempted to contact the earl. According to Vergil’s
manuscript, Henry sent Christopher Urswick to discuss a possible alliance with Northumberland ‘as quickly as possible’. When Urswick arrived in the north, however, he could find ‘nobody to whom he dare pass on the commission to the earl’ and was forced to return to Paris ‘without accomplishing anything’. Later, when he came to write up his printed work, Vergil glossed over the fact that there seems to have been no appetite for the match or for Northumberland’s support, claiming instead that ‘the roads were so blocked that not one of them could get through to him’. Nevertheless it is possible that Henry had not given up on his belief that his old friend might eventually provide support to his cause.

Still the slow drip of defections to his camp gave Henry some hope. During the spring, he was joined at the French court by ‘very many Englishmen, who either did flock continually out of England’, including William Berkeley of Beverstone, who had already been pardoned once by Richard in March 1484 after his uncle and his brother-in-law had provided 1,000 marks in the promise of his good behaviour; they lost their money. Other converts to his cause included those Englishmen ‘studious of learning’ in the French city, studying at the university there. Among them was Richard Fox, described by Vergil as ‘a man distinguished for both his good moral qualities and his good brain’. Henry was soon impressed by ‘outstanding loyalty’; coming to quickly trust the young man, he took Fox into his service, making him ‘a sharer of his plans and kept him always in his secrets’, including his plans for ‘the other marriage tie’.

As Richard struggled to contain the damaging rumours surrounding the queen’s death and the accusations that he had hoped to marry his own niece, his authority seemed to be ebbing away. With no other men than his northern supporters to turn to, he was becoming a victim of his own decision to focus too much power in too few hands. It seemed as if the king’s men, alien to the southern heartlands they had been rewarded with, were regarded, and often acted, as invading foreigners. An enquiry in the New Forest would later find that 500 deer had been killed in Richard’s reign by ‘the northern men’. Soon, as resistance to their enforced rule increased, some had begun to take the law unto their own hands, with Sir Ralph Ashton’s sons being forced to seize land in
Kent. Ashton himself, a Lancashire man, had acquired a reputation for brutality that had earned him the nickname of the ‘Black Knight’ not only on account of his black armour, but for his ruthless punishments meted out after Buckingham’s rebellion, when Richard had given him the power to try treason cases ‘without formalities or appeal’. Tradition records that he sentenced his victims to being rolled downhill in barrels filled with spikes. Yet he remained an indispensable upholder of Richard’s kingship: on 29 April 1485 Ashton was appointed a vice-constable to proceed against and try crimes of
lèse-majesté
‘summarily and plainly without noise and show of judgement on simple fault’. As instances of rebellion began to increase, Richard was determined to make an example of those who crossed his authority. This time there were to be no further pardons. Sir Roger Clifford, captured near Southampton, was tried and condemned to death at Westminster, to be executed on Tower Hill. Passing the sanctuary of St Martin’s le Grand on his journey to meet his death, he nearly succeeded in escaping when his confessor and crowds nearby almost dragged him to safety, but the king’s officers shouted for help; brought under restraint he was taken to the block. To those watching, it merely confirmed the growing suspicions that Richard was a tyrant, leading a merciless regime.