Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (55 page)

Before the coronation would take place, Henry had already decided that other ceremonies should take precedence. First, he had resolved, there were further rewards to be made. On Thursday 27 October, on the eve of the feast of St Simon and St Jude, Henry dined with the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth before going to the Tower, ‘riding after the guise of France with all other of his nobility upon small hackneys, two and two upon a horse’. The next morning, after attending Mass, the king returned to his presence chamber where, under his cloth
of estate, he sat as his uncle Jasper, already appointed as Lieutenant of Ireland, was presented before him, this time ‘in the habit of estate of a Duke’. Jasper was led by the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Lincoln, having recently been released from prison, a clear sign of Henry’s determination that members of the Yorkist royal household serve the new regime, with William, Viscount Berkeley carrying his cap of estate, and the Earl of Shrewsbury bearing his sword, the pommel facing upwards. ‘In the entering of the chamber door he did his first obeisance, and in the midst of the chamber the second, and in the king’s presence the third’. The Garter King of Arms, John Writhe, delivered the letters patent to the Earl of Oxford who, as great chamberlain, in turn delivered the patent to the king. Henry handed over the letters to his secretary, commanding that they be read openly. As they were read out, Henry placed a girdle around his uncle’s neck, and a cap upon his head. After the patent had been read, ‘the king received it, and delivered the said patent of the creation of the annuity of the Duchy of Bedford to his said uncle the Duke of Bedford’.

From that day, as the legends of his seal and the opening sentence of his letters patent bear witness, whenever his name was cried out in public by heralds, Jasper was styled ‘The high and mighty prince, Jasper, brother and uncle of kings, Duke of Bedford and Earl of Pembroke’. The choice of titles could hardly have been more prestigious. There had only been two previous Dukes of Bedford, and while the second holder of the title, George Neville, the son of John Neville, the Earl of Northumberland, was relatively unknown, it was the first Duke of Bedford, Henry V’s younger brother John, whom Henry must have had in mind when seeking a title for his uncle. The link signalled Henry’s conscious desire to reflect the continuity between the house of Tudor and the house of Lancaster. It also reflected Henry’s gratitude to a man without whom his kingship would have been impossible. Whereas the first Duke of Bedford had been a pillar of the house of Lancaster, establishing a formidable reputation as a soldier and statesman, Jasper too had dedicated his life in exile to securing his nephew’s future. In doing so, he had sacrificed his own personal life, being without a wife or an heir. With his new ducal title, in his fifties, Jasper now turned to resolving the problem; by 7 November he had found himself a bride in Katherine Woodville, the widow of the Duke
of Buckingham and the sister of the dowager Queen Elizabeth. She was twenty-seven, half Jasper’s age. Jasper could have been forgiven for thinking that, over twenty-five years after he had pledged to avenge the death of his father and the fall of the house of Lancaster, in which he had given up years of exile and imprisonment for the sake of the welfare of his young nephew, only now had he only just begun to live a life for himself.

Jasper’s new title was not the only peerage that Henry decided to bestow upon his supporters over the next few months. The most unexpected promotion came for Henry’s French commander Philibert de Chandée, who had led his French mercenaries at the battle to devastating effect. Despite having no connection to the local area, Chandée was created Earl of Bath on 6 January 1486, ‘in consideration of his laudable service to us done heretofore’, and was awarded an annuity of 100 marks. He entertained the French ambassadors at Greenwich the same year, at a cost of £26, and was then conducted by one of the king’s councillors to Dover, stopping off at Braynford and racking up further expenses of £23 6s 8d, before heading back to France. We hear little more of him after, and his name disappears from record.

Sir Giles Daubeney, one of Henry’s most trusted councillors and described by Bernard André as ‘a good man, prudent, just and loved by all’, was to be created Lord Daubeney in March 1486, on the grounds that he had been a descendant of a baron from the fourteenth century, and his impeccable Yorkist credentials – he was an esquire of Edward IV’s body before deserting Richard to join Henry in exile – helped to reassure those who may have considered that Henry would reward only his Lancastrian supporters.

On the same day as Jasper’s elevation to the dukedom of Bedford, Henry further restored Edward Courtenay to the earldom of Devon, a long-cherished ambition of Courtenay’s, whose calculated gamble in supporting Henry’s cause during Buckingham’s rebellion had finally paid off. Henry also chose to reward one of his longstanding supporters, granting an earldom to Thomas, Lord Stanley, ensuring that his mother Margaret would be raised to the status of countess. Like Jasper Tudor’s dukedom, Lord Stanley’s new title of Earl of Derby had strong Lancastrian connections, since the title had last belonged to Henry of
Bolingbroke, the founder of the house of Lancaster. Though Thomas Stanley would continue to insist that he had played little part in the battle, stating in a confession concerned with Henry’s papal dispensation to marry Elizabeth of York that he had known Henry ‘well’ only since 24 August, two days after the battle, the patent creating him an earl clearly acknowledged his role in the fighting and the action on the day, referring to ‘his distinguished services to us and indeed the great armed support recently accorded us in battle, both by himself and by all his kinsmen, not without great hazard to life and position’.

Thomas Stanley’s earldom was not the only reward that Henry was prepared to bestow upon the man he referred to in his grants as his ‘right entirely beloved father’. Within weeks of the battle, Stanley was rewarded with several manors and royal offices such as master forester and steward of all the king’s game north of the Trent for ‘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’, though the most significant of all Stanley’s rewards came with the position of Constable of England, together with its salary of £100. Henry was also notably generous to Stanley’s son and his brother-in-law George, Lord Strange, who was addressed at court as ‘the king’s brother’ and lavishly rewarded with constableships of castles in Ireland, ‘in consideration of the good and laudable service which our right trusty and entirely beloved brother hath done unto us in manifold wise to our singular pleasure’.

With his brother’s elevation, Sir William Stanley must have believed that in reward for his actions on the battlefield, he would have a strong chance of a peerage, if not more: he personally coveted the Earldom of Chester. Yet no reward was forthcoming. After what must have seemed to Stanley as a deliberate snub, he was eventually forced to take the humiliating step of petitioning the king in person to confirm the manors and castles granted to him by Richard, ‘which said grant he feareth is not sure and sufficient in law’, requesting the king confirm the grant ‘in consideration of the true and faithful service of him’. Eventually, Henry reconfirmed his position of justiciar of North Wales and constable of Caernarfon Castle and captain of the town there, though any further rewards were limited to an annuity of £20
from the rent of a manor formerly belonging to Lord Lovell. For the man whose actions on the battlefield had effectively saved Henry’s own life and placed him on the throne, this was hardly the reward he could have expected as kingmaker.

After the ceremonies were complete, the newly created nobles took their place around the dining table in the king’s great chamber in celebration. After the second course, Henry proclaimed seven new knights, among them Reginald Bray, Edward Stafford, the young Duke of Buckingham and Lord Fitzwalter, and that evening Henry himself visited them to read the ‘advertisement of the order of knighthood’. The following day, on Saturday 29 October, they were formally received by the king under his cloth of estate, with a new herald also being created, with a new name, Rougedragon, no doubt reflecting Henry’s Welsh origins, before the new knights together with the king attended chapel and returned to the hall, where they dined at a single table. That same afternoon, the customary procession from the Tower to Westminster Hall in preparation for the coronation the following day took place. Riding bare-headed, as tradition dictated, Henry was dressed in a long gown of purple velvet furred with ermines as he rode on a horse trapped with cloth of gold, a royal canopy held above his head by four knights marching on foot. Ahead of his procession rode Thomas Stanley, Oxford and the Earls of Nottingham and Lincoln, behind came Jasper, now Duke of Bedford, and the Duke of Suffolk, followed by six henchmen. Finally, Sir John Cheyney, as the knight for the king’s body, led the riderless horse trapped in cloth of gold and embroidered with the king’s arms, the courser of estate.

The next day, Sunday 30 October, the stage was set for the king’s coronation at Westminster abbey. Scaffolds had been specially prepared for the crowds to witness the public ceremony. In procession, Jasper, as Duke of Bedford, bore the crown before the king; Stanley as Earl of Derby held the sword of State, Oxford bore the king’s train. As prominent Yorkist supporters, the Bishops of Durham and Bath and Wells were excluded, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourgchier, was by now considered so frail that his role in the coronation formalities was limited, though he did perform the anointing and crowning ceremony; in his place, the Bishop of Exeter asked ‘the will of the people’ while the Bishop of London sang the Mass. The
entire ceremony had a makeshift quality to it, and was hardly aided by the noise of a collapsing scaffold, overcrowded with eager onlookers, though one observer noted that no one was killed ‘blessed be God’. Perhaps a sign of the speed at which the coronation had been prepared, with most of the attention, and costs, being paid to the splendour of the occasion, little thought had been given to the text of the coronation ceremony itself. The official format that the coronation was expected to follow was usually taken from the fourteenth century
Liber Regalis
; however, since it was obvious that Henry would not be able to marry Elizabeth of York in time for the ceremony, the usual text that had been prepared for a coronation of a king and his queen would need to be shelved. In its place, a copy of the coronation text that had been used for Richard’s anointing ceremony in July 1483 was hastily altered, even though it failed to remove the dead king’s name from critical moments during the ceremony, and retained key roles reserved for the Duke of Norfolk, in spite of his death on the battlefield, and Viscount Lovell, who had fled into hiding.

Still, in the moment of the occasion, all this mattered little. The significance of Henry’s coronation as king, in many ways unfathomable to those officiating and watching from the galleries, must have left most in stunned silence. Yet as the crown was placed upon his head, the sound of one woman weeping ‘marvellously’ could be heard; it was the king’s mother, Margaret, whose tears were not of joy but rather fear. She understood only too well the responsibility that the weight of the crown bore, and the danger that it could bring to her son. If it had been a long and dangerous journey to this moment; the path ahead lay uncharted, uncertain, terrifying.

After the ceremonies had concluded, Henry returned to the Tower in preparation for the coronation banquet. At his feet, under the table, two esquires of his body, Thomas Newton and Davy Philip were placed, as if to act as bodyguards for the monarch’s personal protection. Once again Jasper took chief place as steward of the feast, riding on a horse trapped with cloth of gold trimmed with ermine. After Henry and the hall had been served the first course, the king’s champion Sir Robert Dymmock entered the hall on a horse and issued his customary challenge, demanding if there was anyone who would challenge him as defender of the king’s right to the throne. The theatrical nature of the
occasion must have been mused upon by some present, who had witnessed Dymmock performing the identical ceremony two years before for Richard III, the only noticeable difference being that then his horse had been trapped with red and white silk; now, with obvious reference to the new king’s Welsh origins, it proudly displayed a ‘rich trapper of Cadwaller’s arms’.

The final part of the ceremonies, the traditional coronation jousts were originally scheduled for the Sunday following the coronation ceremony, but were postponed to Sunday 13 November, with Sir Richard Guilford spending £50 2s 2d over the hundred marks he had been granted in preparation for the competition. It seems that the Frenchmen and Bretons who remained in the capital were drafted in for one final battle, the ‘jousts of peace’: a challenge was formally issued by ‘six gentlemen of name and of arms’ who had come from ‘beyond the sea with the king’s grace’ to be ‘disposed for the king’s pleasure and sport and the Ladies to challenge and hold Justes against all men’. For the victor who broke the most spears, just as William Caxton had urged Richard III the previous year in an attempt to restore to a nation its sense of chivalric pride, a prize of a large diamond would be awarded.

News of Richard’s death at Bosworth had reached the courts of Europe slowly. On 30 September Cadinal Sforza wrote to his nephew, the Duke of Milan, from Rome: ‘this very evening news has reached the Ambassador of the King of England that the people have cut in pieces that King’. The Bishop of Imola, wrote to Pope Innocent VIII on 20 October, still uncertain of the outcome: ‘According to common report as heard by me on the way, the King of England has been killed in battle. Here some people tell me he is alive and reigning, but others deny it’. Even when the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella wrote complaining of the piracy of Henry’s French naval captain Guillaume de Casenove or ‘Coulon’ who, after leaving Milford Haven, had headed south to Cape St Vincent in southern Portugal, attacking ships and seizing ‘a great quantity of merchandise belonging to Spanish subjects’, they addressed their letter to the English king yet purposely left the name blank. Elsewhere, as news of Henry’s victory leaked out, in Danzig one chronicler recorded that Richard had been replaced by a new king called ‘Ritzmund’.