Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (53 page)

Meanwhile in the capital, as the outcome of the battle became known, there remained a heightened sense of uncertainty and nervousness. A proclamation was sent out by the mayor on 26 August ordering all vagabonds, ‘idle people which have no masters to wait upon’ and soldiers to depart from the city within three hours of the announcement being made. A curfew was placed on all citizens between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., with watches being ordered to patrol the city. The city began to make preparations for the triumphant arrival of their new king, an unknown exile whom most of the city authorities had never met. Four hundred and thirty-five citizens, each wearing cloaks of ‘bright murrey’ were chosen to ride to meet him, led by the mayor and aldermen. On 3
September Henry was received by the curious Londoners at Shoreditch where he was led in procession through the city; the sound of trumpeters ‘thundering forth martial sounds’ announcing Henry’s arrival was soon followed by carts laden with spoils from the battle trundling along the streets. Among the crowds was Bernard André, the blind poet who would later join Henry’s court and be commissioned to write a biography of the king, who was so moved by the occasion that he took to publicly reciting verses celebrating the triumph.

The procession made its way through the streets to St Paul’s, where at the rood of the north door, on which William Collingborne had pinned his ill-fated doggerel lambasting the dead king Richard, Henry offered up three ragged standards from the battle. The presentation of the standards was nothing less than a statement of Henry’s divine right to rule and kingship, proven by his victory in battle; Edward IV had performed the same ceremony after Barnet. What is striking, however, is Henry’s choice of standards to lay at the foot of the altar: the arms of St George, a red ‘fiery dragon painted upon white and green sarcenet’ and lastly, a ‘banner of Tarteron’ beaten with an image of ‘a Dun Cowe’; the Cow had likely been used by Henry as an assertion of his claim to the Beaufort line, since the Beauforts had claimed descent from Guy of Warwick, the legendary slayer of the fearsome Dun Cow of Warwick. Already Henry intended to make obvious to all that he was not going to forget his Lancastrian roots.

After prayers had been said and the
Te Deum
sung, Henry removed to the palace of the Bishop of London, while for several days ‘plays, pastimes and pleasures’ were performed across a jubilant city, perhaps more than anything through relief that a bloody civil war seemed to have been avoided. After spending the following fortnight at Baynard’s Castle, Henry chose to move south to Guildford, where he remained until 11 October. It was here that he spent his days in the company of his mother Margaret, at her manor house at Woking. It was the first time that mother and son had been reunited since the autumn of 1470, when Henry, aged just fourteen, had been entrusted to his uncle Jasper, soon to flee abroad to the shores of Brittany. From now on, Margaret would rarely leave her son’s sight, her rooms specially prepared at court to be adjoining to the king’s own. It was later observed how ‘the king is much influenced by his mother’, and it must have been in these early
days of reconciliation that Henry came to depend upon the woman who had been so determined to set her son upon the throne. In a letter to her, Henry declared that he was ‘as glad to please you as your heart can desire it’, since ‘I know well that I am as much bounden so to do as any creature living, for the great singular motherly love and affection that it hath pleased you at all times to bear towards me’. For Margaret, writing to her son on a separate occasion, Henry was ‘my dearest, and only desired joy in this world’. For now, it was likely that it was here that Henry offered up to his mother a present that had been discovered in Richard’s tent after the battle, the dead king’s illuminated book of hours, that Margaret would keep safely preserved for the rest of her life.

In one of his earliest grants as king, Henry ordered a London residence, the magnificent house of Coldharbour, overlooking the Thames, to be prepared for his mother; carpenters and workmen worked incessantly to prepare and renovate the building, with a stained glass escutcheon of Margaret’s arms set into the window overlooking the banks of the river. At the house, Margaret was to be entrusted with looking after Henry’s intended bride, Elizabeth of York, who was taken from Sheriff Hutton to London, where rooms were specially prepared at Coldharbour for her, along with the ten-year-old Edward Plantagenet, the Earl of Warwick, who was to be placed in Margaret’s secure custody. Accommodation was also prepared for the eight-year-old son of the late Duke of Buckingham, Edward Stafford, whose wardship, worth over £1,000, was eventually granted to Margaret. Like Warwick, Stafford had a viable claim to the throne; it was best to keep both close to the new regime, with Margaret acting in effect as their informal gaoler.

There was another reason for Henry’s decision to depart from the capital so soon after making his triumphal entrance. The citizens of London had welcomed his army of Frenchmen and ‘beggarly Bretons’ into the city walls, though they were soon to regret it. Of the city dignitaries who rode to meet the new king at Shoreditch, two mayors, six aldermen and scores of citizens would be dead within weeks. The cause of death was the terrifying disease known commonly as the ‘sweating sickness’, most likely some variant form of influenza that had struck the country in periodic bouts. It was feared as much as the plague: those who became infected burned with an uncontrollable temperature and thirst, forcing men to tear their clothes from their bodies in even the
coldest climes. Within twenty-four hours, most had succumbed to the illness. The most detailed account of the outbreak comes from the Fellows of Merton College, Oxford who recorded in their Register that:

It may have been that the disease had already appeared during the summer; according to the Crowland Chronicler, Thomas Stanley claimed to be suffering from the disease as an excuse not to travel to Richard’s court at Nottingham, while at York a ‘plague of pestilence’ had broken out by June 1485. Nevertheless, it was hard for many not to draw their own conclusions that the French and Breton mercenaries in Henry’s army had brought the disease with them. It was hardly a good omen for the new king whose arrival seemed to bring upon the capital the divine retribution of pestilence and death.

Away from London, Henry waited patiently for the arrival of his official coronation as king, set for 30 October, with a new Parliament being summoned on 15 September to meet on 7 November. In the meantime, Henry’s first priority was to make full use of his new-found powers of patronage, rewarding his close supporters and those who had accompanied him in exile and into battle. Throughout September 1485
his accounts are filled with grants of land, office and annuities, each signed at the top by the grateful king as he constructed his new regime from his loyal men who had served him in exile ‘beyond the sea’. Aside from his most obvious and noteworthy supporters, the records reveal at least seventy-four persons who were granted office, land or annuity for joining Henry in exile, with another forty-eight being rewarded for either taking part in his ‘victorious journey’ or serving on his ‘victorious field’. While it is unlikely that every single exile at Henry’s unofficial court in Brittany then France will be known, the names mentioned in the grants total almost a quarter of the 400 estimated to have been at Vannes.

Some of the earliest grants made by the new king reward those towering figures of influence to whom Henry knew he owed the crown: his stepfather Lord Thomas Stanley, described by Henry as his ‘right entirely beloved father’, was granted several manors in Flint, Chester and Warwick, as well as being appointed master forester and steward of the king’s game north of the Trent and chief steward of the Duchy of Lancaster ‘in consideration of the good and praiseworthy services performed by him before now with great personal exertions and costs, in many ways and on divers occasions, and now lately in the king’s conflict within the realm of England, and which services he ceases not to continue’. They were to be the first of many grants that would place Thomas Stanley as one of the pre-eminent nobles within the kingdom.

As promised, Sir Rhys ap Thomas was rewarded for his services with his anticipated appointment as chamberlain of South Wales. Henry was not prepared to make the same mistakes as his predecessor; instead of allowing Rhys to recreate the Duke of Buckingham’s position as an overlord in Wales, his power was to be carefully bridled, with Jasper Tudor being appointed to the office of chief justice in South Wales, while Adam ap Jevan ap Jenkin was made the king’s attorney in Carmarthen and Cardigan ‘in consideration of the true service that our well-beloved subject hath done unto our noble progenitors of long time passed, and to us now late in our victorious journey and field, to his great costs and damages’. Other Welshmen who had joined Henry on his march through Wales were rewarded for their loyalty, including Morris Lloyd whose ‘service in our late triumph’ was acknowledged with grants of office while Owen Lloyd was granted the constableship
of Cardigan castle. The Stanleys’ influence in maintaining order in Wales was further acknowledged, with their kinsman William Griffith, who had been previously placed under arrest with Lord Strange, being appointed chamberlain of North Wales, with Sir William Stanley being granted the office of chief justice of the region, as well as the constableship of Caernarfon castle and the captaincy of the town there.

As Henry pondered his chosen rewards, he had cause to remember those who had served himself, his family and the Lancastrian dynasty throughout the long dark decades of civil strife. John Denton was rewarded with the keepership of Framlingham Castle ‘for the true and faithful service done unto the king and unto his right dear and most beloved lady and mother’. John Pylton was rewarded ‘in consideration of the good service done to Henry VI, the king’s most dear predecessor’. John Robinson was given the bailiwick of Boston in Lincolnshire ‘for services done in many ways heretofore to the king’s most dear father’ Edmund. Henry’s former guardian Anne Devereux, the Countess of Pembroke, was ordered to visit the king at court, with Henry granting to his ‘most dear cousin’ safe passage. One of Henry’s former tutors, Andrew Oterborne, was granted an annuity of 20 marks ‘for services rendered to us from our youth’, as was Sir Hugh John, provided with a reward of £10 ‘in consideration of the good service’ which he ‘did unto us in our tender age’.

Then there were those who had risked their lives and safety for Henry’s own security during his exile. Stephen Calmady, whose boat had been used to assist exiles fleeing after Buckingham’s rebellion in their escape to Brittany, was given a new ship ‘with all tackle’ ‘in recompence of the great jeopardies, tribulation and losses sustained by him heretofore including his service to the king when he was in the parts beyond the sea’. Christopher Urswick, named as Henry’s ‘wellbeloved chaplain’, was appointed as the king’s almoner and granted the prebend of St Stephen’s chapel in Westminster. Lewis Carleon, Margaret Beaufort’s physician who had passed messages between her and Elizabeth Woodville in sanctuary, was given an annunity of £40 a year. Sir John Risley, who had organised a rebellion in Essex in late 1484 before escaping into exile, was given the constableship of Pleshey Castle and the keepership of Dunmow in Essex ‘in consederation of the true heart and service … borne and done unto us in sundry wise herebefore, as
well beyond the sea as at our late victorious field … to his great charge, labour and jeopardy’. Piers Curteys, Richard’s Master of the Wardrobe who had fled into sanctuary in the summer, was rewarded with the office of keeper of the king’s privy palace and wardrobe, as well as the honour of the lordship of Leicester for his ‘great heaviness, pain and fear, abiding our coming’, as well as the ‘great persecution, jeopardies, and pains, robberies and losses of his goods’ that he had suffered in the aftermath of his defection. Curteys’s reappointment to his former office was indicative of the continuity that Henry sought to achieve in several offices at court: William Misterton, who had served in the great wardrobe under Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III, was to find his services retained.

Other defectors who had joined Henry shortly before the battle were also rewarded such as Simon Digby with the lieutenancy of Sherwood and Beskwood forest, worth £20 a year. Walter Hungerford, who had defected from Robert Brackenbury’s army at Stony Stratford on the journey towards Bosworth, was granted several manors ‘in consideration of the great jeopardies, losses, costs and charges sustained in the king’s service’. John Fogge, who had finally joined Henry in exile despite being pardoned twice by Richard III, was, together with John Heyron, appointed to the office of keeper of the rolls of Common Pleas, ‘the king with certain knowledge bearing in mind the praiseworthy and gratuitous services done by them in times past, as also their losses and the dangers to their persons which they have in many ways undergone by reason of such services’.

The events of recent memory, of his journey through Wales and into England, loomed large in the king’s mind. The Welshmen who had joined his service along the route were remembered and appropriately rewarded for their support, receiving gifts of land and office, including Retherth ap Rhys and Owen Lloyd, who received the constableship of Cardigan Castle with an annuity of £10, Maurice ap Owen and Richard Owen, who became steward and receiver of the lordship of Kidwelly ‘for services to the king at his last victorious journey to resist his great enemy’, and Rees ap Llewellen ap Hulkyn who was awarded the legal status of an Englishman ‘in consideration of the true service done to the king as well in his last victorious field’. Robert Crompe, rewarded by Henry with a position at court as one of the marshals of
his hall, was granted the additional office of feodary of the honour of Wallingford and position of clerk of Sherwood forest, for ‘jeopardising his life, lands and all his goods’ by joining Henry’s forces, ‘in your late victorious field and journey at his proper cost and charge, and also by his means and diligent labour caused the town of Shrewsbury to be delivered unto your hands and your coming by that way’. The town that had finally opened its gates was itself to be rewarded with an exemption for fifty years of ten marks’ payment in tax, since Henry had for himself witnessed the ‘ruin, poverty and decay of their town’. Crossing the English border, Henry had been grateful for the support that the sheriffs of Chester, John Norys and Hugh Hurletone, had provided him, rewarding them for ‘the good and faithful service that the said sheriffs and other of our said city hath done unto us in this our victorious journey for the repressing of our great enemy the late Duke of Gloucester, and his adherents’.